ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an argument for the importance of history to psychology. The thesis is that history is a vital, constitutive feature of the phenomena psychologists seek to study and explain and, consequently, it is only by investigating the historical constitution of a psychological phenomenon that it can be adequately described and understood. The chapter begins by discussing two problematic assumptions that negate the significance of history and have shaped psychologists’ conceptions of psychological phenomena. Arguments are presented for why these assumptions are unsustainable on the basis of four aspects of the relationship between the words we use to describe psychological features and the phenomena they designate. Following, what is entailed in historicizing the subject matter of psychology is discussed. An exemplary method of inquiry is presented. Danziger’s “biographies of psychological objects” is designed to illuminate the historical character of psychological features and its value is illustrated in the case of “attitudes” as a topic of psychological investigation. The chapter concludes with a commentary on what can be learned from this case, and the advantages of this approach and other modes of historical study for psychology.
