Psychology as its history

Daniel S. Robinson

pp. 41-46

in: Hans van Rappard, Pieter van Strien, Leendert Mos, William J. Baker (eds), Annals of theoretical psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1993

Abstract

The article by H.V. Rappard raises challenges and questions too numerous and deep to be addressed within a brief essay. He has chosen the daunting task of defining the very character of Psychology and locating its proper "systematology', and doing so for a discipline which, "... hasn't yet developed a history at all". What seems to be at the foundation of the concerns expressed by Rappard and by many whose works he cites is Psychology's historic immunity to theoretical integration. As it will not be unified, Rappard would liberate its energies and then find its essential nature in variation itself. If this approach is followed, then Psychology must be just its history, for variation expresses itself and becomes discernible only within historical contexts.