Early Scientific Psychology Another Voice

Descriptive psychology is quite an important branch of human scientific psychology, which emerged at the start-up period of scientific psychology but has been ignored and buried for a long time. It holds that we should present the whole picture of human mental life as what it is via the method of phenomenological description or the method of hermeneutical understanding. Based on the combination of documentary and historical analysis and theoretical and logical analysis, this dissertation comprehensively and systematically combs and studies descriptive psychology, from the holistic perspective of relatively independent development of the two different lines of humanism and scientism during the history of scientific psychology. The detailed content of this dissertation is as following:Firstly, it summarizes the basic connotation, historical evolution, and theoretical modalities of descriptive psychology on the whole. Secondly, it examines the sources of thought of descriptive psychology from the various perspectives of sociology, philosophy, science, and psychology. Thirdly, it elaborates and analyzes the two research traditions of descriptive psychology and basic arguments of each theoretical modality within them. Fourthly, it elaborates the integrative development of descriptive psychology into the third force psychology and contemporary qualitative psychology. Fifthly, it generalizes the theoretical characteristics of descriptive psychology in such aspects as view of science, research object, methodology, and theoretical viewpoint. Finally, it makes objective and fair comments on the contributions, drawbacks, historical effects, and instructive values of descriptive psychology.By the1870s, many countries in Europe had made great progress in the field of science, especially in the field of natural science. This prompted people to abandon the traditional metaphysic and respect science and experience. However, this progress also caused the European thought and culture to be kidnapped by scientism and be beset with a serious crisis of human nature being lost. In order to help Europe to get rid of the crisis of thought and culture, Brentano and Dilthey tried to make psychology become a human science and finally co-founded descriptive psychology, which is a different discipline modality from genetic psychology or explanatory psychology oriented to nature science inaugurated by Wundt and others. Descriptive psychology walks along the two different paths of rigorous scientific tradition inaugurated by Brentano and romantic tradition inaugurated by Dilthey, both of which mainly exhibited three distinctive theoretical modalities. The rigorous scientific tradition of descriptive psychology included Brentano’s act descriptive psychology, StumpF’s functional descriptive psychology, and Husserl’s essential descriptive psychology. The romantic tradition of descriptive psychology included Dilthey’s lived experience descriptive psychology, Spranger’s structural descriptive psychology, and Stern’s personalistic descriptive psychology. Each of all the six theoretical modalities has its own basic argument, theoretical focus, and method preference. They form a powerful alliance within the framework of descriptive psychology in order to prevent psychology to become a nature science. Descriptive psychology as an important discipline modality finally blends and disappears in the historical course of psychology, but its basic spirits get inherited in the third force psychology including phenomenological psychology, existential psychology, and humanistic psychology and have taken a new lease of life in contemporary qualitative psychology.Descriptive psychology as a branch of psychology has rich humanistic implications and shows quite different theoretical characteristics from genetic psychology or explanatory psychology. In the aspect of view of science, it opposes to take psychology as a natural science and sticks to take psychology as a human science. In the aspect of research object, it opposes to consider mental life as mechanical and unrelated to society and culture and sticks to consider mental life as vital and related to society and culture. In the aspect of methodology, it opposes to the objective experimental paradigm under the guidance of positivism and sticks to the subjective experiential paradigm under the guidance of phenomenology or hermeneutics. In the aspect of theoretical viewpoint, it opposes to method centricism, reductionism, causal determinism, subject-object dualism, and value neutralism and sticks to question centricism, holism, libertarianism, subject-object monism, and value load theory. Descriptive psychology marks the beginning of the humanistic science approach of modern scientific psychology and has extensive and far-reaching effects on later psychoanalytic psychology, gestalt psychology, the third force psychology, and contemporary qualitative psychology. The direct confrontation between descriptive psychology and genetic psychology or explanatory psychology launches the uninterrupted opposition and conflict between the two research lines of humanism and scientism during the history of scientific psychology, which promotes the development of scientific psychology. Although descriptive psychology makes great contributions and has far-reaching effects, it also has some drawbacks, such as not owning an integrative theoretical framework, going with a speculative tendency, lacking concrete and micromesh researches, having low operability and generalizability, and so on. We should digest and absorb adequately the basic spirits of descriptive psychology and reexamine and rethink the nature of science, research object, and research paradigm of psychology from the perspective of integration of humanism and scientism. Our ultimate aim is to lead contemporary psychology to become healthier.