Theoretical dialogue and interdisciplinary relevance: Thirty years of Theory & Psychology

The continued relevance and importance of theoretical work in psychology

Theoretical scholarship is often abstract and, in many instances, not connected directly to specific problems or questions of a practical nature. In times of hardship and pressing global and local emergencies, dedicating time and resources toward theoretical questions may seem especially hard to justify. Although some theoretical topics are no doubt not intended to address practical concerns, on the whole I believe that theoretical work not only continues to have relevance; it is sorely needed. Psychology as a discipline is now connected to almost all aspects of life. Psychologists practice and conduct research in the domains of work, health and mental health, education, politics, the environment, crime and criminal justice, science and technology, and many others (O’Doherty & Hodgetts, 2019). Psychologists’ efforts to contribute constructively to the current crises are evident across all of these domains: assisting in the design of health-risk communication relating to COVID and other conditions; documenting the psychological consequences of people’s responses to COVID and measures taken to combat COVID; influencing people to engage in more pro-environmental behaviours; documenting racist practices and working to dismantle them; and much more. The work of psychologists is evident in almost all imaginable settings from mundane tasks to some of the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing us as individuals, as communities, and as a species.

This position of psychology has come with a certain degree of self-congratulation that is evident particularly in the communications of professional bodies and of many individual psychologists praising their discipline not only for its relevance, but also its efficacy in solving the world’s problems. Is this self-congratulation warranted? Depending on the metrics used to evaluate this question, many would argue that, yes, certainly it is. However, there are both cautionary and critical voices that are more skeptical. In particular, several points of criticism have been articulated:

Collectively, these points of criticism, and others I have not mentioned here, cast profound doubt not only on the ability of much of disciplinary psychology to truly help with the many crises facing humanity at this point in history; they also cast doubt on the wisdom of accepting help from psychological researchers and practitioners if they do not take seriously these criticisms and engage in explicit and meaningful reflection on the epistemological, ontological, and ethical foundation of particular programs of research and practice; and the discipline as a whole (Stam, 2020, has more to say about this problem).

These criticisms of psychology are not new. To the contrary, debates about the proper scope of psychological knowledge and its epistemological foundations date back to the founding of the discipline (Pickren & Rutherford, 2010). However, the fact that these debates are old does not mean that they have been resolved, nor that they are unimportant. Historians of psychology have argued convincingly that the early development of psychology as a discipline relied on rhetorical moves to distance the new discipline from the metaphysical concerns of philosophers and instead associate it with an empiricism seen to emulate the natural sciences. That this emulation is at best a distortion of the “scientific method” used in the natural sciences and at worst based on an erroneous understanding of outdated scientific practices in the natural sciences has not escaped observation (Robinson, 2000). More to the point, however, the metaphysical foundations of psychological knowledge have not disappeared. Different schools and paradigms of psychological research and practice have been and still are based on different and often conflicting metaphysical commitments. Pretending that they are not (and insisting, for example, that they are based solely on empirical facts) does not change this.

And it is precisely here that I see the relevance of theoretical psychology, and of Theory & Psychology in particular, today. Psychology is in dire need of theoretical reflection that makes explicit unexamined metaphysical and ideological commitments, not to eliminate them, but rather to allow for meaningful dialogue across divergent positions. Only a few of the articles published in Theory & Psychology directly address the crises of 2020 (with the notable exception of racism and other forms of marginalization, which are topics regularly addressed by contributors to the journal). However, an element in almost every contribution to the journal is an engagement with the ontological, epistemological, or ethical foundations of psychological research or practice. And in this, I argue, Theory & Psychology is highly relevant to almost all of the crises we face today. My call for more and deeper theoretical reflection in psychology is of course not new (Gergen, 1991; Gigerenzer, 2010; Slife & Williams, 1997; Stam, 1991). If it were, Theory & Psychology would not have been created 30 years ago. However, incentives and pressures to put aside theoretical reflections seem to be increasing (e.g., Phaf, 2020), and I believe that Theory & Psychology provides a much-needed respite for both readers and contributors who have the inclination and interest to step back and adopt a metapsychological perspective. Thirty volumes of Theory & Psychology also provide a deep resource to infuse psychological thought and practice with profound and creative directions across the spectrum of topics at the heart of psychological research and practice.

The intelligibility of theoretical psychological scholarship

Theory & Psychology has always been committed to publishing articles from diverse programs of psychology, often with very diverse and even conflicting theoretical foundations. To fail to do so would be a failure to recognize the truly profound conundrums and complexity at the heart of any study of human phenomena, as well as a failure to acknowledge that many foundational questions about the ontology of human phenomena have not yet been adequately addressed; indeed, we may find that we have not even been asking the right questions. That is, although there have been numerous attempts to assert particular theoretical foundations as the “one and true” way to do psychology, none have dominated for very long and none have provided a sufficiently compelling vision of human phenomena and the framework for their study to diverse epistemic and geographic communities. Therefore, any attempts to definitively locate theoretical psychology within a particular paradigm with specific ontological, epistemological, and ethical commitments is at best premature, at worst a betrayal of the richness of human life and experience.

I believe that over the last 30 years, while there has been theoretical consolidation in some areas and in some scholarly communities, on the level of individual research articles published in the journal, the diversity of theoretical commitments has increased. Whereas in the early days of the journal contributions may have come from a smaller number of identifiable scholarly communities, in particular those associated with the International Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP), submissions now come from much farther afield. Given this diversity of material published in the journal, I would like to use the occasion of the 30-year anniversary of Theory & Psychology to pose the question to what degree we should recognize a duty to be intelligible in our work. In particular, to what degree should our scholarship be intelligible not only to those working in the same field, but also to scholars who operate in other paradigms in a similar field, to scholars whose work may be the target of our criticism, scholars in other disciplines, to professionals whose work might benefit from our scholarship, or to those who have a general interest in the topic but no relevant academic training? Should we recognize an obligation to make our work intelligible to all of these, some of them, or is it sufficient to simply write for those who share a passion and expertise on the specific issue we write about and who agree with the theoretical framework we adopt?

It is no accident that “Theory” is placed in front of “Psychology” in the title of this journal. Psychology’s origin myths emphasize that with the formation of the nascent discipline came a move away from its parent discipline of philosophy that promised enlightenment by displacing mere theory with knowledge grounded in empirical data. This is an idea I have often heard repeated by undergraduate students of psychology who pride themselves on being part of a knowledge discipline that has transcended past (and irrational!) preoccupation with philosophical approaches to phenomena and is now truly a Science in the mold of physics, chemistry, and biology. I have already made this point above in the context of the ongoing relevance of theoretical reflection in psychology and I do not wish to belabour it. Suffice it to say that this journal has never sat easily with this particular view of psychology. Even though Theory & Psychology does not espouse a singular theoretical position, the contributions published in its pages align in their prioritization of theoretical concerns over empirical ones. Underlying almost all of the contributions is a clear grasp of the importance of conceptual considerations coupled with the realization that empirical investigation in psychology is never free of theoretical assumptions and presuppositions. The data, as they say, never speak for themselves; nor do the results of experiments. The problem, of course, is that in much psychological research and knowledge, presuppositions are implicit and, as such, not open to scrutiny. Thus, far from relishing the historical divorce from philosophy, contributors to Theory & Psychology collectively reemphasize consideration of theoretical matters underlying the investigation of psychological phenomena coupled with sound empirical investigation.

Beyond the emphasis on considering philosophical and conceptual matters in psychological knowledge, however, contributions to Theory & Psychology vary widely. And over the last 30 years, the articles published in the journal have increased in diversity, both in terms of theoretical orientation as well as geographical location of the contributors. I believe this diversity is a strength of the journal. However, it comes with its own challenges and, perhaps more importantly, it highlights ongoing fragmentation in the discipline of psychology. Indeed, some of the contributions published in the journal are so diverse that it is difficult to reconcile their knowledge claims with each other. This statement will not be not surprising to scholars working in theoretical or historical psychology. The different traditions of research that are featured in articles published in the journal are built upon different theoretical frameworks, each with particular epistemological commitments and ontological assumptions.

Is the fact that contributions that come from diverse frameworks cannot easily be reconciled a problem? Sigmund Koch (1993) famously noted that psychology should not be viewed as a unitary discipline and rather a collection of “psychological studies.” And, insofar as the diverging epistemological and ontological positions of different frameworks rely on diverging answers to metaphysical questions that have been debated for millennia with no clear end point in sight, this may not be a problem. It is better for scholars to be explicit about their theoretical frameworks and their commitments than to pretend that such considerations don’t matter and thus leave these questions unexamined. If one of the consequences of this fragmentation is that scholars tend to cluster in somewhat isolated scholarly communities, then this is simply a price to pay for being explicit about theoretical presuppositions. On the other hand, this siloing of academic communities may come at a greater cost when considering the ripples of scholarly work beyond academic journals and conferences.

I return at this point to consideration of the crises I mentioned at the beginning of this editorial that have characterized the past year. In that context, I noted the near omnipresence of psychology in creating a place for itself in seeking to address at least parts of all of these crises; I also questioned the wisdom of accepting the help of a psychology that has not grappled and addressed (or even acknowledged) adequately some of the theoretical problems at its core. If theoretical psychology is to be of value in this context, then arguably this cannot happen without dialogue between theoretical psychologists and more empirically focused psychologists, as well as dialogue across diverse theoretical positions among theoretical psychologists. Considering the possibility of these kinds of dialogues underscores the need to raise and examine the question of the degree to which we accept an obligation to make our work intelligible and to whom.

Dialogue is necessary in many forms and across many boundaries, but I would like to note here two particular forms of dialogue that are particularly relevant to the work published in Theory & Psychology. The first kind are the conversations between scholars who generally do not believe that their work is based on any theoretical presuppositions and theoreticians who want to convince them otherwise (see, e.g., Huniche & Sørensen, 2019); the second is between scholars who work in different paradigms and are explicitly committed to divergent theoretical frameworks (e.g., debates between advocates for critical realism vs. relativism; Edwards et al., 1995; Parker, 1999).

Both forms of dialogue involve an element of critique. In the first, the target of criticism is a perceived ignorance that the critic attributes to the target of the criticism: that is, “you are making claims about psychological phenomena, but you don’t even realize that the entire foundation of your knowledge system is flawed.” A key challenge here is to articulate the epistemological foundation of the work being criticized in the absence of formal statements that lay out this foundation. For example, critical and theoretical psychologists have posited that much of disciplinary psychology is based on positivist foundations, which are then argued to be problematic in a number of different ways (Teo, 2018). These nuanced arguments are then often taken up more broadly and at times simplified to statements about “mainstream” psychology being “positivist.” However, the problem is that researchers who are targeted in this way don’t tend to explicitly associate with the term “positivism,” nor is there any clear set of commonly agreed upon statements that could be pointed to as the foundation of this “positivism.” ¹ The challenge is thus that the critic has to first characterize the theoretical position that is the target of criticism before it can be criticized. A question therefore arises: to what degree should it be expected that scholars who are the target of this criticism are required to accept the characterization of their work (if not the criticism thereof) for the criticism to be considered valid? If the critic’s characterization of “positivism” as underlying the work of particular researchers is not accepted as a valid representation by those researchers being criticized, should the arguments of the critic be accepted? To put it another way, is it the obligation of the critic to convince those who work in the approach being criticized that their position is correctly understood by the critic and that it is flawed, or is it sufficient to make the criticism compelling to third parties who are not committed to the position being criticized?

In the second kind of dialogue I am envisaging, there is disagreement between scholars who adopt conflicting theoretical positions. The criticisms are bidirectional: “your position is untenable because . . .” and vice versa. In contrast to the first dialogue, metaphysical commitments (or at least ontological and epistemological foundations) are often explicitly and formally stated. A key challenge here is to develop dialogue between scholars who are committed to positions that are potentially mutually exclusive and opposed on foundational principles (e.g., “the proper scope of psychology should be to study only observable behaviours” vs. “the focus of psychology should be to study intra-psychic processes”). A challenge here, again, lies in the representation of the position being criticized that is adopted by the critic. Although (in contrast to the previous kind of dialogue) there are likely to be documents that clearly spell out particular positions, this does not seem to be sufficient to guarantee that both sides of the debate agree on the characterization of each other’s positions. For example, Kuhn (1970), in responding to his critics, humorously describes what clearly must be two different books, both with the same title and written by the same author—Thomas Kuhn—that nevertheless are sufficiently different that the assertions of Kuhn₂ are incommensurable with those of Kuhn₁.

A common challenge in these kinds of dialogue is thus the degree to which the target of scholarly criticism recognizes their position as being accurately portrayed by the critic. A related and more general challenge pertains to the perceived accuracy of any representation of prior scholarly work that is cited in the development of an argument. I suspect that many of us have read characterizations of our work that we find problematic. All of this again raises the question, to what degree do we have an obligation to develop characterizations of others’ scholarship that the original authors would agree with?

While I do not intend to develop answers to these questions, I would like to make some comments on their implications. First, I have seen manuscripts in an editorial capacity in which scholars are cited favourably, but these scholars don’t recognize their own work in the portrayal. For example, scholar A writes a manuscript in which they laud the work of scholar B, use their work substantively, and indeed build their own theory on that of scholar B. Scholar B is then asked to be a reviewer of the manuscript by scholar A (double blind so that neither A nor B is aware of the other’s identity) and suggests that while they are flattered to be cited, they do not recognize their own work in the characterization developed by scholar A in their manuscript. To me this example indicates the absolute minimum level of intelligibility that every scholar has to strive for. Work that is cited favourably should be characterized in such a way that it is recognizable to the authors being cited; more broadly, scholarship should be understandable to the authors whose work is cited and by the community engaged in this area of scholarship.

Second, when scholars develop theory within an existing theoretical framework that is recognizable and relatively well-articulated (e.g., discursive psychology, Foucauldian scholarship, Gibsonian ecological psychology, Lacanian scholarship, etc.) it seems reasonable to aim to make one’s work intelligible primarily to scholars with expertise in that particular field, without too much concern if it is not easily accessible to audiences outside of the field. However, if the aim is to argue for the relevance of one’s particular theoretical position or theoretical innovation beyond that particular scholarly community, then clearly there is a duty to make one’s work intelligible to those who we’re trying to convince of this relevance. For example, developing novel methodological or theoretical insights in the field of conversation analysis (CA) can be somewhat inaccessible to anyone not familiar with CA. However, as soon as an argument is made for the relevance of CA to another field or a particular topic, then arguably there is some obligation to make the argument accessible to those who are intended to benefit from these insights.

Third, when scholars target a body of work for being racist, sexist, or discriminatory in some other way, there is clearly a vested interest for the target to deny these charges. For example, when researchers working on IQ differences in race are suggested to be engaging in scientific racism, it may be unlikely that those researchers would accept the portrayal of their work as racist. It may thus not be feasible to aim to characterize their work in such a way that is accepted as satisfactory by the original authors, especially if the work is based on a racist ideology in the first place. However, the case may be different when scholars have explicitly declared themselves against certain forms of discrimination (say, e.g., sexism) but their work is criticized for being sexist. In these instances, one might certainly expect the target of the criticism to be defensive but the fact that they publicly denounce sexism and advocate for gender equality suggests that there may be hope that they are open to examining the implicit assumptions and unintended consequences of their work. Certainly, one might recognize some degree of obligation on the part of the critic to portray the scholarship being criticized in such a way that is recognizable by the original authors of that work.

Finally, if the goal of research is for it to be applied, in the sense that a particular work of theoretical scholarship is intended to directly comment on practice, policy, professional standards, or any other issue with social and material consequences for particular groups or society in general, I believe that there is a stronger case for making one’s work intelligible to those who may be in positions to make the relevant changes. For example, if the purpose is to challenge the presuppositions inherent in a particular program intended to help women guard against date rape (Kitzinger & Frith, 1999), it is clearly important to develop the argument in such a way that it is accessible beyond just the scholarly community. While convincing those who have a vested interest in continuing such programs (e.g., individuals who derive income from the programs that are being criticized) may be difficult, convincing decision-makers or funders who stand behind the larger goals of the program, rather than the specific intervention, may be a realistic goal.

In making these observations, I do not wish to disregard the possibility of scholars making “purely” theoretical contributions that turn out to have profound and extensive influence on social movements in the long run. Scholars may develop arguments, whose complexity and density initially limit accessibility to those scholars who have training in the field, but ultimately inform social movements and influence societal thinking with important implications that are taken up in policies and everyday practices. The work of Judith Butler as well as Michel Foucault’s earlier work seem worth noting in this regard.

I have focused in the preceding paragraphs on the producers of scholarly work. Of course, in particular with respect to scholarship that constitutes criticism, emphasis should also be on the reader who may be a target of that criticism. For most of us, the tendency is to bristle at the implication that our work might not be based on sound argument and informed by the best of intentions. But might it not be more effective, and indeed more scientific, to step back and accept at least the possibility that our work is not the final word on an issue? From a historical perspective, it is almost certain that our work will soon be dated, superseded, or shown to be simply wrong. As Teo (2019) suggests, adopting an attitude of epistemic humility may be a much more meaningful marker of successful scholarship than is epistemic grandiosity.

In submissions to the journal in the last few years I have noted an increase in the number of articles that successfully draw on and integrate scholarship from two or more diverse traditions. This is no mean feat. For every article that does so successfully, several more falter in appropriately recognizing important tensions and contradictions in epistemological and ontological commitments across scholarly traditions. In the instances where this has been done well, there is an impressive creativity displayed by scholars connecting such diverse approaches as cultural psychology, ecological psychology, and social constructionism. When these connections are made in ways that do justice to the portrayal of issues as recognized by scholars in the respective fields, and in doing so highlight new possibilities for understanding of human phenomena and practice, I believe these to be extremely important advances in theoretical psychology. In seeing more scholarship that succeeds in doing this without misrepresentation of others’ positions, and doing so with depth of insight, I believe we are moving the field in a promising direction, one that I hope will characterize the field until the next anniversary issue of the journal.

Introduction to 10 featured articles to celebrate 30 years of Theory & Psychology

This 30-year anniversary issue of Theory & Psychology features 10 articles from accomplished scholars. All 10 articles were invited and reflect an attempt to showcase the diversity of scholarship that has characterized the journal these last 30 years. This diversity is evident in both the theoretical orientation of contributors as well as their geographical locations. I also tried to strike a balance in soliciting the views of some scholars who have been part of the theoretical psychology community and who have published in Theory & Psychology since its early years, as well as colleagues who joined this scholarly community more recently. In all cases, I invited authors to develop their contributions in the context of a reflection about scholarship published in Theory & Psychology or in theoretical psychology more broadly during the last 30 years. The authors of the 10 articles have all done this in interesting and different ways.

Thomas Teo (2020) dedicates his contribution to examining what he sees as the core task of theoretical psychologists, namely theorizing. Teo challenges us to question whether criteria such as parsimony are indeed appropriate for theorizing in topics where we aim to understand human mental life in its complexity and wholeness. Teo then proceeds to identify three ways in which theoretical psychologists go about their work—theorizing as critique, theorizing as reconstruction, and theorizing as creation—and situates these considerations in the current moment.

Next, Suzanne Kirschner (2020) tackles a topic that has long been debated among theoretical psychologists, namely the degree to which theories of the psychological subject are grounded in the social relations in which individuals are embedded. In her critique, Kirschner targets those schools of thought in psychology that prioritize the social and cultural contexts in which individuals are embedded and see these as prior to the development of individual subjectivity. She argues that these perspectives offer an “oversocialized” view of the human subject and that they prevent addressing a foundational question, namely “how human beings achieve stable and collaborative social relations, given that individuals have desires and wishes that often are not concordant with those of their fellows or with the sociocultural systems in which they are immersed” (p. 774). Kirschner not only examines this question, she places it in the context of the diversity of the scholarship published in Theory & Psychology over the last 30 years. She provides an insightful and distinctive perspective of its evolution and its role in the discipline.

Third, Markus Eronen and Jan-Willem Romeijn (2020) draw on debates about the mathematization of nature in the philosophy of science to show the importance of considering the role of mathematics in psychology. They point to an increase in calls for theoretical work in psychology and observe that these tend to come with exhortation that theories should be more mathematical. Eronen and Romeijn consider these debates and examine both the importance of conceptual work in processes of mathematization and the role of mathematics in connecting empirical observations and theory.

Antonia Larrain and Andrés Haye (2020) then provide us with a novel perspective of Vygotsky’s views on art and subjectivity. Focusing their analysis on Vygotsky’s The Psychology of Art (1925/1971), they argue for an understanding of art as a social technique and at the core of the transformations of human cultural life.

This is followed by a contribution by Harry Heft (2020), who notes the many articles published over the years in Theory & Psychology on the social dimensions of Gibsonian ecological psychology. Heft builds on these themes with an examination of the question, “how do considerations of the social dimensions of everyday life as a context for individual development inform our understanding of the nature of perception–action from an ecological perspective?” (p. 814).

We then turn to Tania Zittoun and Alex Gillespie (2020) who examine the role of metaphors in developmental psychology and the associated development of those metaphors. In particular, they consider four “classical” root metaphors of development (formism, mechanism, organicism, and contextualism) and find them wanting. In their stead, Zittoun and Gillespie propose four new metaphors that account for the diversity of everyday experience, that are nonlinear, and that emphasize multiplicity and agency.

The next article comes from Tetsuya Kono (2020) and provides an overview of the role and development of theoretical psychology in Japan. Kono notes that in spite of the relative dearth of theoretical psychological work in Japan, important key studies have been conducted. Kono observes that contemporary psychology in Japan is characterized by multiple paradigms lacking integration and argues for interdisciplinarity and deeper theoretical and philosophical engagement to avoid a narrowing view of human phenomena.

Darrin Hodgetts, Christopher Sonn, Wendy Li, and Shiloh Groot (2020) turn their attention to the link between theory and action, drawing on their experiences and perspectives as community psychologists. They carefully examine scholarship that has been published in Theory & Psychology on this topic, with a particular focus on the special issue edited by Gergen and Zielke (2006) on Theory in Action. Hodgetts et al. (2020) call for the recognition and incorporation of perspectives that differ from those dominant in North American psychology, pointing to important contributions from distinct Indigenous psychologies. They find that, “[i]n community scholarship, engaging with questions about theory and practice and the deeper assumptions about whose knowledge, on whose terms, and for what purpose are crucial” (p. 856).

This is followed by an insightful article by Lívia Mathias Simão (2020) in which she invites us into a deeper engagement with what she terms disquieting experience. Drawing on semiotic–cultural constructivism, Simão examines disquieting experience as “an intrinsic part of [the] process of subjectivation in dialogue” (p. 865).

It is only fitting that the final word goes to the founding editor of the journal, Professor Henderikus J. Stam. Stam (2020) reflects on the state of the discipline and the state of theory in the discipline to question and criticize “the rush to expertise that characterizes psychologists’ psychological pronouncements” (p. 879). Stam remains a stalwart proponent of the importance of theoretical reflection in psychology and finds much in the current crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic to reemphasize this commitment.

In all 10 articles that were invited for this anniversary issue we see reflection on the scholarship published in Theory & Psychology over the last 30 years. The authors of the articles possess a depth of knowledge of their particular areas of scholarship that I do not, and so I am indebted to them for sharing their perspectives of the diverse areas of research featured in the journal. I am also indebted to the work of members of the editorial board, the reviewers who so generously give their time and expertise, and the many authors who choose Theory & Psychology as the venue to publish their work. I hope that Theory & Psychology will continue to provide a vibrant space for intellectual exchange in the next 30 years, next to important scholarly communities such as the International Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP).