--> Europe's Journal of Psychology ejop.psychopen.eu | 1841-0413 Editorial Psychology’s Recovery of its Proper Projects and Methods

The contrast between a psychological and a biological study of a superficially similar phenomenon can be illustrated with the ‘cough’. The word is used generically for an explosive expulsion of air that clears the pulmonary passages. But this common meaning is set into two radically different conceptual and empirical frameworks. Imagine you are at a concert – Yo Yo Ma is approaching one the most delicate passages in the Elgar Cello concerto and you become aware of a mounting discomfort in the chest and a well nigh irresistible pressure to cough – eventually you cannot control it any more. This is the 'cough' in a biological framework of mechanisms and concepts. Consider this case – you are at the open door of colleague’s study and you see that she is earnestly advising an undergraduate. Rather than barge in you cough discretely to attract her attention. In the first case you, the person, have lost control of a biological mechanism, while in the second case you, the person, used a biological mechanism for a psychologically intelligible purpose. In the first case the cough has no meaning. In the second case its meaning is or ought to be clear. Note too, that different cultures may have different uses for the cough, just as different cultures have different uses for the smile.

to it.What the person then does is also relevant by reason of the meaning that that display has in the context and in that culture.A display of jealousy is a complex semantic phenomenon, registering a certain interpretation of the fortunes of another person, a judgment as to whether this person's good fortune is deserved relative to one's own and so on.This introduces considerations of rights and duties, opening up the question of the nature of the local moral order.The tip of the 'jealousy' iceberg may be a forced smile, but the bulk of the phenomenon is semantic and embedded in cultural niceties.As a person becomes skilled in social life the display of jealousy may be entirely private.
But why is there any need to emphasise the discursive character of psychological phenomena and psychological activities as meaning management?
The Puzzle of Paradigm Paralysis in Psychology Compared With Physics Jan Valsiner's admirable presentation of methodology for cultural psychology (Valsiner, 2007).produces a strong feeling of deja vu for those of us who were actively trying to bring psychology forwards in the 1960s and 70s.For example the use of disruption of routines to bring to light the implicit rule systems that were implemented by social actors is very similar to ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967) and its use of account analysis.
At that time there was a vigorous movement all over Western Europe to abandon the simple 'experimental' psychology of the American mainstream in favor of what we would now call qualitative/cultural studies.For example, at Oxford there was Michael Argyle's social psychology group producing studies such as Marsh's investigation of the social psychology of football 'hooliganism' (Marsh, Rosser, & Harré, 1978) and Jerome Bruner's (1986) work on the developmental dimension of intentionality; there was Moscovici (1993) and Jodelet (1991) in Paris and their colony at the LSE who were all involved in the extraction of social representations from the flux of everyday life; there was Jan Smedslund's (1988) development of psychologic, the identification of semantic tautologies in the everyday language of psychology in Oslo; there was Nardone and Salvini's (2007) studies of the life of the street in Rome; Jose Luis Rodriguez-Lopez' (1988) historical analysis of the changing personal beliefs about 'loyalty to the telephone company' in Madrid; Mario von Cranach' studies of the planning and execution of complex goal directed activities in Berne (von Cranach & Harré, 1982); Tom Luckmann's (1983) work on the social distribution of bodies of knowledge in Vienna; and so on.Despite founding of journals and the success of Harré and Secord's (1972) book, 'The Explanation of Social Behaviour' when we now reflect on the state of psychology as exemplified in such conservative journals as the European Journal of Social Psychology, the old paradigm still reigns, and tragically, young psychologists in many places now do second/third rate studies in that mode.During the crucial period the US was Top Nation.Now the US is declining as Top Nation, yet the old paradigm that emerged from a marriage of the ghost of behaviorism with the imported Viennese philosophy of logical positivism, continues on.
Here is the puzzle.The same thing did not happen in physics.Throughout the 19 th century Britain was Top Nation What was the difference?All along, the new paradigm (NP) crowd in psychology have accused the old paradigm adherents (OP) of violating the major tenets of scientific research and theorizing.But the OP did not take any notice.In the period 1905 -1935 while physics was changing, everyone agreed on what scientific research and the theorizing involved.In the period 1965 -1975 in psychology there was no such agreement.Why?The NP psychologists were inspired by the actual methods of the physical sciences, such as iconic model building, the development of topic relevant taxonomies of phenomena and so on, but the OP people were inspired by a bit of philosophy that was soon discarded by philosophers of science, namely logical positivism, especially that of Ernst Mach and the Vienna Circle.Almost all the self-destructive features of the OP can be traced to its influence, though by the time it had become the dominant research paradigm in the 1960s and 70s its protagonists had lost touch with its origins.
Here are a few examples -in physics/chemistry 'model' means analogue, and it is usually models that one studies, rarely the real thing.In psychology 'model' seems to mean 'idea', 'concept', 'interpretation' even 'theory', but almost never 'analogue'.From a clear methodological concept and procedure in physics and chemistry we enter a murky world of ambiguity in psychology.Generalizing: in physics and chemistry does not mean making a statistical analysis and deleting the instances that do not fit, but rather by proposing a possible pattern and by using the intensive design construct or identify a range of similar cases, large or small!This chlorine sample produced in my lab is typical [but of course there are isotopes!].This sample of conformity to the majority in my lab is only relevant if conjoined with a number of other instances and processed to reveal the typical case, which might be found nowhere (Lamiell, 2003).In psychology there is generalizing by statistical analysis of the distribution of responses in a small sample -30 Ann Abor undergraduates stand in for the whole of humanity!This presumes a commonality of psychological practices that ought to be the end product of centuries of research rather a presumption of the beginning.
We want to shift the focus of psychology from simplistic experiments, in which the meanings of the phenomena for participants (please -not subjects!) and experimenters are unknown, to a proper mix of psychoneurology and qualitative, that is cultural/discursive psychology.We are aiming at creating a human science that is in accordance with what physicists and chemists really do, not what a bunch of antiquated and flawed philosophers tell them they should be doing!

Can Wittgenstein Save Cognitive Neuroscience?
At this moment neuropsychology is dominating the generosity of the grant giving agency despite the striking criticisms of the very idea of such a project.Still much in the same position as the tiny mammals scuttling among the giant limbs of the dinosaurs a flourishing a program of cultural/discursive psychology already exists and is becoming more popular.Must these programs stand in hostile opposition to one another?I believe that they can actually be shown to depend upon one another.The marriage of neuroscience and cultural/discursive psychology is based on the insights of many critics of the causal framework for psychology, but one philosopher in particular, was Ludwig Wittgenstein who came to it from disenchantment with simplistic ideas about meaning.His insights can be deployed as a basis for a working hybrid science, though this was not his intention.
The fundamental principle of the many facets of the cultural/discursive approach that underlies qualitative and cultural psychologies of the present time is that the instruments of cognition are symbols.The meanings of these diverse entities are the uses to which people have, do and maybe will put them.Hybrid psychology depends on Harré to try to extract some discursive means that might be found among every human tribe.This raises a deep question -how it is possible for an outsider to understand the psychology of a remote culture -the paradox of translation.
Looked at from a wider perspective adopting the cultural/discursive paradigm involves abandoning the use of causal concepts in psychology in favour of concepts drawn from linguistic interactions as models for psychology generally.Instead of trying to show that a sequence of events are linked causally, that is a prior event or state as the necessary and sufficient condition to the coming to be of the subsequent event or state, we should see patterns of thought, feeling, acting and perceiving as linked semantically.It is the meaning of a prior act or experience that leads on the subsequent act, thought or feeling as a contribution to a meaningful sequence.The meaning patterns of conversations, the dialogical shaping of human behaviour (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010) provide the best models for a scientific psychology.
and physics was dominated by Newtonian mechanics, refined and extended to just about everything.But in 1905 a new physics developed in the German speaking world, by Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg and many others with a very different conceptual framework.Very soon it displaced the old paradigm so much so that some of leading members of the new wave such as Paul Dirac were British.And this came about despite the catastrophe that overtook Germany in the First World War.Of course after that war despite coming out victorious Britain gradually ceased to be Top Nation.