On Starz's Psychology Integration Concept

The dissertation tries to analyze the background and development course of Staats' theory, sketch his psychological behaviorism, expatiate other psychologists' views on fragmentation and unity of psychology, and put forward our points on the unity issue.Three backgrounds provide opportunities for Staats' integration view to come into being. They are natural sciences, scientific philosophy and psychology itself. At first his view is called social behaviorism, and then paradigmatic behaviorism, and now psychological behaviorism. Staats proposes unified positivism as the unified scientific philosophy in which all sciences grow from fragmentation to unity. And psychology is thought to be a modern disunified science. A framework theory called multilevel theory and approach is brought forth. It takes the traditional fields as research levels. These levels are biological level, basic animal learning level, human learning level, social interaction level, child development level, personality level, psychological measurement level, abnormal psychology level, behavior therapy level. All these levels are arranged on a dimension that is defined by simplicity-complexity or basic-advanced. The levels are related and interactive. The principles and concepts on lower levels are starting points for the analysis on higher, more complex level. Staats' integration view has produced some influences in the field of psychology. The psychologists are paying more and more attention on the fragmentation-unity issue. Furthermore, many of them have analyzed the manifestation and roots of the fragmentation, the necessity and possibility of unity and the policies to achieve unity. From our points of view, the position on the fragmentation-unity issue depends upon the view on the basic theoretical issues in psychology. The integrity of psychology's research object and its particular discipline property determine that it must do unified research. Only to take all the useful approaches and measures, systemize its findings, can promote psychology to be a unified discipline and play important roles in various application fields.