On The Debate Between Explanation And Understanding In History Of The Western Psychology

The debate between explanation and understanding has always run through the development of western psychology。 Explanation and understanding are synonyms for two different theory of psychology, and the debate including quality of psychology, method, topic, subject, principle, view of science, and so on. The debate covered everything about psychology and run though the development of psychology, It is useful for us to illuminate the history of psychology in a new point of view as the relation of explanation and understanding.The explanation psychology thinks that there is a general law in the mental phenomenon, the task of psychology is to obtain the interpretation of mental or behavior by revealed these laws or constructed related model, in order to prediction and control person’s mental or behavior. The explanation psychology holds cultural science tendency, method—centrism, logicism, reductionism, objectivism, cause-effect determinism. There are four forms of it in its development, such as:(1) Mental-object function relation explanation;(2) S-R explanation;(3) Inner human psychological mechanism model explanation;(4) Cognitive mechanisms explanation.The understanding psychology holds that the research object of psychology is animated psychological life. Describing the animated psychological life as a whole and understanding the exsit of human and the value of life are the task of psychology. In a word, the understanding psychology holds natural science tendency, problem—centrism, intuitionalism, holism, subjectivism. The three forms of understanding psychology included:(1) Theory of knowledge understanding;(2)Theory of value understanding;(3)Integration of theory of knowledge and theory of value understanding.The two kind of psychology can find their space in the future development of the psychology. Clarify the connotation and the history of them, based on psychological integrated horizon, and examine the merits and demerits, is the only way for the healthy development of psychology.