Richard T. G. Walsh - A critical history and philosophy of psychology : diversity of context, thought, and practice

In line with the British Psychological Societys recent recommendations for teaching the history of psychology, this comprehensive undergraduate textbook emphasizes the philosophical, cultural, and social elements that influenced psychologys development. The authors demonstrate that psychology is both a human (i.e., psychoanalytic or phenomenological) and natural (i.e., cognitive) science, exploring broad social-historical and philosophical themes such as the role of diverse cultures and women in psychology, and the complex relationship between objectivity and subjectivity in the development of psychological knowledge. The result is a fresh and balanced perspective on what has traditionally been viewed as the collected achievements of a few great men.

With a variety of learning features, including case studies, study questions, thought experiments, and a glossary, this new textbook encourages students to critically engage with chapter material and analyze themes and topics within a social, historical, and philosophical framework.

In this textbook on the history and philosophy of Psychology our intention is to provide a comprehensive but accessible account with international content suitable for a one-term or two-term, advanced undergraduate course in which the instructor aims to foster critical thinking about the disciplines intellectual and social development. Below we describe our intellectual approach, text structure and chapter content, and the educational intent and pedagogical features of our text.

The distinctive characteristics of the text are as follows:

• Integrates the history and philosophy of Psychology.
• Distinguishes between natural-science and human-science Psychologies.
• Relies on current scholarship in the history and philosophy of Psychology.
• Takes an international and contextualized approach to psychological ideas.
• Includes applied and professional psychology, current developments in the discipline, and Psychologys research traditions.
• Fosters students critical thinking about the history and philosophy of Psychology.
• Facilitates instructors employing a different order of presenting the twelve chapters, because they are relatively self-contained, yet thematically linked.

As teachers and authors of works on historical and philosophical issues in Psychology, we were dissatisfied with the coverage of these issues in the available textbooks. Whether these works were primarily historical, theoretical, or an integration of both, the authors seemed to be relatively uncritical and to take for granted psychologists standard concepts, theories, research findings, methods, and professional practices, all of which have a history and philosophical content. Writing from a standpoint of Anglo-American nations, the authors tended to celebrate the achievements of mainly White men, universalized across times, places, and persons (Brock, 2006a).

However, the Psychology typically practised in the USA, which has prevailed internationally since World War II, represents one perspective, Psychology as a natural science . As we note throughout this textbook, another perspective, Psychology as a human science , has flourished simultaneously since the disciplines formal inception, if in circumscribed ways and contexts. Arguably, then, diverse philosophical positions best characterize Psychologys history (G. Richards, 2010; R. Smith, 1997).

Here we describe the particular emphases that we place in practising our intellectual approach, our conception of historical scholarship (i.e., historiography), and the critical standpoint that we adopt.