Introduction

Wilhelm Wundt (1907/1908) thought that psychology should become the foundational discipline for the human sciences. Instead, two rather different but related things have happened. Psychology has become a protean discipline that occupies a peculiar place among the sciences, suspended between methodological orientations derived from the physical and biological sciences and a subject matter extending into the social and human sciences. At the same time, modern societies and cultures have become permeated with psychological thinking and practices, much of which relates tenuously at best to what goes on in the discipline. So, we may well ask, what are psychology’s territories, and where might they be located? And if psychology actually has such territories-meaning not only institutions, but concepts and research practices used exclusively within such institutions-then how did such

territories come to be established, how have they changed over time, and how do they compare with psychological concepts and research practices used elsewhere? The following remarks are an effort to discuss these questions in historical and interdisciplinary contexts. In so doing, attention is paid to the fact that the contributors to this volume have taken different roads. Some, including the author of this chapter, wish to explore the possibilities for a social and cultural history of psychological thought and research. Others, although not denying the usefulness of an historical understanding of psychology’s contested territories, try to address these issues from more systematic points of view.