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60 Years Gone Astray
Methodological Thinking in Psychology:

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60 Years Gone Astray?
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Advances in Cultural Psychology: Constructing Human Development
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Advances in Cultural Psychology:
Constructing Human Development
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Living in Poverty: Developmental Poetics of Cultural Realities (2010)

Edited by Ana Ceclia S. Bastos and Elaine P. Rabinovich
Methodological Thinking in Psychology: 60 Years Gone Astray? (2010)

Edited by Aaro Toomela and Jaan Valsiner
Relating to Environments: A New Look at Umwelt (2009)

Edited by Rosemarie Sokol Chang
Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically (2009)

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Innovating Genesis: Microgenesis and the Constructive Mind in Action (2008)

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Becoming Other: From Social Interaction to Self-Reflection (2006)

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Challenges and Strategies for Studying Human Development in Cultural Contexts (2005)
Edited by Cynthia Lightfoot, Maria Lyra, and Jaan Valsiner
Methodological
Thinking in Psychology:
60 Years Gone Astray?
Aaro Toomela
Tallinn University
Jaan Valsiner
Clark University
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Methodological thinking in psychology : 60 years gone astray? / edited by

Aaro Toomela and Jaan Valsiner.
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Includes bibliographical references.
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1. Psychology--Research. I. Toomela, Aaro. II. Valsiner, Jaan.
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CONTENTS
Preface ................................................................................................. vii
1. Modern Mainstream Psychology Is the Best? Noncumulative,

Historically Blind, Fragmented, Atheoretical ................................ 1
Aaro Toomela
2. Questions, Patterns, and Explanations, Not Hypothesis

Testing, Is the Core of Psychology as of Any Science ................... 27
Stellan Ohlsson
3. The Quantity/Quality Interchange: A Blind Spot on the

Highway of Science ....................................................................... 45
Joel Michell
4. Studying the Movement of Thought ............................................. 69

Alex Gillespie and Tania Zittoun
5. Understanding a Personality as a Whole: Transcending the

Anglo-American Methods Focus and Continental-European
Holism Through a Look at Dynamic Emergence Processes ......... 89
Tatsuya Sato, Kosuke Wakabayashi, Akinobu Named,
Yuko Yasuda and Yoshiyuki Watanabe
v
CONTENTS vi
6. Metaphors in Psychological Conceptualization

and Explanation..........................................................................121
Hans Dooremalen and Denny Borsboom
7. Remembering Methodology: Experimenting with Bartlett .........145

Brady Wagoner
8. Reflections on Some Neglected Ideas About Psychological

Measurement from the Personalistic Perspective of William
Stern (18711938) ........................................................................189
James T. Lamiell
9. Qualitative Developmental Psychology .......................................209

Gnter Mey
10. The Role of Observational Methodology and the Application

of Film in Early American and European Developmental
Psychology ...................................................................................231
Kurt Kreppner
11. What Would Be Gustav Theodor Fechner Legacy For

Psychology In The 21St Century? ................................................261
Arno Engelmann
12. Forgotten Methodology: Vygotskys Case ....................................267

Nikolai Veresov
13. Vygotskys Methodological Approach: A Blueprint for the

Future of Psychology ...................................................................297
Holbrook Mahn
14. General Conclusion: Have Sixty Years Really Gone Astray?

Back to the Future .......................................................................325
Aaro Toomela and Jaan Valsiner
Contributors .........................................................................................339
PREFACE
This book is about progress in psychology. Ormaybeof its absence. Of

course, the verdict here depends on the point of viewand the pragmatics
of ones social position. When evaluating ones own context of activity we
are not patient observers looking at it from afar, but passionate participants
in the ongoing efforts to understand what it is that we are doing. And, what
we are doing here is making sense of how knowledge in psychology has
developed, develops now, and which directions it might move in the future.
Often stories about science are told as if our knowledge always accumu-
lates, newer inventions are better than what was left behind, and old ideas
are no longer important. This naively optimistic view may work well with
politicians who need to fund a science, or for public opinion that looks
for good news in amidst news about natural disasters, pandemics, and eco-
nomic crises. Yet such a picturenice as it iscannot be real. History of
the human mind cannot be characterized by steady accumulation of knowl-
edge and understanding. It means the law that everything newer is better or
more developed than old is wrong. The history of science and technology
has its ups and downsperiods of rapid advancement, of long stays in a sta-
ble state, declines, new advances, and so on. One fundamental step down,
for instance, characterizes the medieval age. Le Goff (1992) gives a large
number of examples how the time before medieval age, that began on the
ruins of the Roman world (p. 9), especially Hellenistic Greece was techno-
logically and culturally far more advanced than medieval Europe. Decline
characterized practically all aspects of human civilizationeconomy, law,
Methodological Thinking in Psychology: 60 Years Gone Astray?, pages viixii

Copyright 2009 by Information Age Publishing
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. vii
viii A. TOOMELA & J. VALSINER
technology, agriculture, church, philosophy, sciences, etc. In contrast, the

decade of the French Revolution of 1789 brought with it very rapid break-
throughs in a societythat reverberated in the following century all over
Europe.
That development is a non-linear process is no big news for developmental
scientists. The history of psychology as a science is not an exception; there is
increasing evidence that theories and methodology of psychology, especially
that of Continental Europe, were far more advanced 60 years ago than what
is considered to be our contemporary mainstream psychology. Of course
the representatives of the latter would vehemently disagree with such
evaluationtheir interests entail the need to demonstrate that psychology
is always on the narrative track of monotonic progress. We disagreeand
in some sense the present book is about the mythical emperor who had no
clothes, despite the consensus of the courtiers who saw him well dressed
maybe into fashionable brand clothes.
Aside from opinionsthose anybody can havethere are major
disputes that divide scientists in contemporary psychology. In recent years
an increasing dissatisfaction with methods and thinking in psychology as
a science can be observed. The discipline is operating under the tension
between the traditional quantitative and the new qualitative methodologies
(e.g., see Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung at http://www.qualitative-
research.net/fqs/fqs-eng.htm). New approaches emerge in different fields
of psychology and educationeach of them trying to go beyond limitations
of the mainstream. Psychology is becoming globalcontributions from all
over the world, not just from North America and Western Europe become
major players in the advancement of science. All these new approaches,
however, tend to be historically blindseemingly novel ideas have
actually been common in some period in the history of psychology. Digging
them up to help us all innovate our discipline is a noble goalrather than
nostalgia for the past.
Knowledge of historical trends in that context becomes crucial because
analysis of historical changes in psychology are informative regarding the
potential of new/old and forgotten approaches in the study of psyche.
Some approaches in psychology disappeared due to inherent limitations
of them; the others disappeared due to purely non-scientific reasons.
Before World War II two general schools of thinking in psychology, North-
American and German-Austrian, could be differentiated. The latter was
considerably more sophisticated in its theoretical and phenomenological
practices than its North-American offspring (see, e.g., Watson, 1934, and
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science [2007], 41[1]). A number
of crucial perspectives became lost in psychology when the center of
dominance in research moved Westward over the Atlantic in conjunction
with the tragedies of World War IIthe loss of careful look at phenomena
Preface ix
studied in single cases (replaced by large sample studies and statistical

generalizationsGigerenzer et al, 1989; Lamiell, 2003; Molenaar, 2004),
diminished look at dynamic processes that lead to outcomes (in favor of the
evaluation of outcomesValsiner, Molenaar, Lyra, & Chaudhary, 2009),
and discounting the value of general theory in favor of data accumulation
(leading to the science becoming largely pseudo-empiricalSmedslund,
1995).
As a result of post World War II years, the current mainstream psychology
represents the North-American way of thinking. The German-Austrian
tradition has almost disappeared. Yet there was no valid scientific reason to
abandon principles valued by German-Austrian psychologists. In our time of
reconstruction of psychology with participation of representatives of many
cultural histories it is precisely the Continental European focus that can
link with the culturally disperse phenomena from the myriad of indigenous
psychologies that are currently emerging on all continents. After all, the
social system of the United Statesand its moreshas been exported only
to one other country since the American Revolution1and with dubious
results. The Big Mac and IQ tests have succeeded better, of coursebut
their effects may be equally dubious. Psychology needs to widen its scope.
Such observations led us to dwell deeper into the question whether 60
years of psychology may have gone astray indeed. This was the starting idea
for the present book. We invited eminent scholars from different continents
each with different scientific backgrounds in psychology to contribute to
this volume. Two questions were put forward for them:
1. Which of the historical or new principles should be introduced to

the modern psychology? If you find that no new principles should
be introduced, then please provide review of the research that has
followed all important methodological principles in your field of
psychology. If new (old new) principles should be introduced,
then which?
2. How would mainstream psychology benefit from utilizing the prin-
ciples you propose to introduce into methodological thinking of
modern psychology? Here we expect a contributor to bring spe-
cific examples from her/his most beloved field of psychology, to
indicate specific questions that need to be answered but have not
been answered due to limitations of mainstream methodological
thinking.
There was no pushing the authors to agree or disagree with the idea the
editors wished to discuss. Yet we did provide a clear general orientation
the book was to be a contemplation of how to improve psychology through
1
Liberia
x A. TOOMELA & J. VALSINER
a re-look into its history. It was not meant to glorify the present state
nor to unproductively lament about its ills. Still, we have to admit that the
selection of the authors does not cover all the possible positions about the
role of history in the modernand futurepsychology. There were several
scholars who refused to participate in this project because they felt the
situation in modern mainstream psychology is good and no fundamental
revision is necessary. In a way it is interesting that instead of giving us
clear examples with thorough theoretical discussion of the current state
of psychology . . . all of them just did not care to present their opinions.
This is a proof of multiplicity of opinions in the disciplineimportant to
mention here as a feature of the background. Psychology is slowly entering
the booming and buzzing confusion of having to deal with multi-cultural
psychological issues on a worldwide basis, with rapid decisions by mouse
clicks that may change ones life, prosperity, and health, and with the
need to translate complex ideas between many different languages. The
mainstream will survive as long as it can avoid facing the new practical
tasks of the globalizing World. But will psychology be readytheoretically
and methodologicallywhen the normal science of current mainstream
collapsesthis is the (open) question.
The reader is going to encounter a rich mixture of ways in which to look
back in order to move forward. In the first chapter Toomela approaches
the basic methodological problems inherent to the modern mainstream
psychology. Evidence is provided to suggest that psychology of today cannot
answer satisfactorily to the questions every scientist asks in their studies:
What do I want to know, what is my research question? Why I want to
have an answer to this question? With what specific research procedures
(methodology in the strict sense of the term) can I answer my question?
Are the answers to three first questions complementary, do they make a
coherent theoretically justified whole? Ohlsson, next, points out, that
mainstream psychology does not ask interesting questions, does not study
patterns, and does not look for explanations. Instead psychology of today is
oriented to studying hypotheses, the attitude that brings psychology to a dead
end. Michell provides theoretical reasons to the proposal that quantitative
psychology so far conducted is misleading because psychological attributes
that are supposedly measured cannot be quantified in principle. This
analysis alone, provided that depressing majority of current psychology
research is quantitative, would be sufficient to declare the sixty years of
quantitative psychology gone astray. Dooremalen and Borsboom second
this by showing that measurement in psychology is simply a metaphor, and
metaphors are always wrong. All these contributions show that mainstream
psychology is lacking something substantially important in its quantitative
and noninsightful approach. It is shown by Gillespie and Zittoun and by
Sato, Wakabayashi, Nameda, Yasuda, and Watanabe that one fundamentally
Preface xi
important category missing in mainstream psychology is time and all time-

related aspects of mind.
Next chapters bring numerous examples of and from pre-World War II
psychologists whose contribution has been either forgotten or substantially
distorted in later accounts. Wagoner shows how the major shortcomings
of the modern memory research could be overcome with the help of
Bartletts theory. Lamiell gives an interesting account on the contributions
of William Stern. He mentions that Sterns personalistic approach has
been abandoned; together with it psychology ceased to study mind. Mey,
building his arguments on several great names of the pastWilliam and
Clara Stern, Marta Muchow, Charlotte Bhler, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky,
Alexander Luriaanalyses the ways to go beyond quantitative research
limitations, the ways to build, again, qualitative developmental psychology.
Kreppners contribution to this volume discusses, taking as an example the
use of film as a research tool, and based on the theoretical ideas of Arnold
Gesell, Charlotte Bhler, Rene Spitz, and Kurt Lewin, demonstrates how
psychology has lost understanding of a person as a whole and even if the
research tools used are similar to those of the past, the way they are used
and the interpreted, still gives theoretically very limited results. Finally,
distortion, misinterpretation, lack of the ability to understand the role of the
theoretical context comes also forward in the discussions of the Fechners
work by Engelmann and of the Vygotskys work by Veresov and by Mahn.
The potential of the Fechners and Vygotskys ideas not only is not realized
but more, what is called their contribution is actually modern theory that
found fragments from their theories and pretends to have been understood
them. There is lot to learn from the history of psychology 60 or more years
old; more than there is to learn from the mainstream psychology of today.
All contributions taken together give us a powerful picture of what
needs to happen in psychology. Even if the message may seem negative--
there would be almost nothing left from the psychology of today after
all its theoretically and methodologically questionable results have been
discardedit is actually charting out a positive re-start. We discover a strong
ground where to support in order to move psychology from the current
state into a productive theoretical science again. This ground is the theories
and methodologies we can find in not so distant past. It would be enough
to go back 6070 years and the true gold-mine of brilliant ideas would open
for psychologists.
Tallinn, Estonia and Chapel Hill, N.C., USA
August 2009
xii A. TOOMELA & J. VALSINER
REFERENCES
Gigerenzer, G., Swijtink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., & Krger, L. (1989).
The empire of chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lamiell, J. T. (2003). Beyond individual and group differences. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage
Le Goff, J. (1992). Tsivilizatsija srednevekovogo zapada. (In Russian. Translated from La
Civilisation de lOccident Medieval). Moscow: Progress-Akademia.
Molenaar, P. C. M. (2004), A manifesto on psychology as idiographic science: Brin-
ging the person back into scientific psychology, this time, forever. Measure-
ment: Interdisciplinary research and perspectives, 2, 201218.
Smedslund, J. (1995). Psychologic: common sense and the pseudoempirical. In J.
A. Smith. R. Harr, & L. van Langenhove (Eds.), Rethinking psychology (pp.
196206). London: Sage.
Valsiner, J., Molenaar, P. C. M., Lyra, M. C. D. P., & Chaudhary, N. (Eds.) (2009).
Dynamic process methodology in the social and developmental sciences. New York:
Springer
Watson, G. (1934). Psychology in Germany and Austria. Psychological Bulletin, 31,
755776.
CHAPTER 1
MODERN MAINSTREAM
PSYCHOLOGY IS THE BEST?
Noncumulative, Historically Blind,
Fragmented, Atheoretical
Aaro Toomela
Science is first and foremost a special way of thinking. In the history of mind, it is possible
to discover several steps in the development of thought that was aimed at understanding the
world around us. So, already Hegel described the ways how observation of nature changes and
develops, from the superficial description of the world to formulation of logical and psycho-
logical laws and from there to the recognition of the whole of complex relationships between
an individual and the world described (Hegel, 2005). There are two especially noteworthy
ideas here. First, our understanding of the worldthat is the aim of scienceis constrained
by the way of thinking; more developed forms of thinking allow to understand world better
than less developed forms of thinking. And second, in the course of the development of mind,
it is discovered that in order to understand whatever we study or observe, we must understand
our mind:
. . . knowledge thereby makes it clear that it has to do at least quite as essentially with
its own self as with things. This twofold essentiality produces a certain hesitation as
to whether what is essential and necessary for knowledge is also so in the case of the
things. (Hegel, 2005, p. 286)
Psychology as a science in the modern terms was born after Hegel. Therefore, in order
to understand how science is created it is useful, first, to introduce some more recent ideas
from the psychology of thinking. This book addresses the question whether pre-World-War II
psychology may have been methodologically more advanced than the modern mainstream.
There are several reasons to support this idea (e.g., Toomela, 2007a, 2007b, 2008a, 2008b).
Methodological Thinking in Psychology: 60 Years Gone Astray?, pages 126

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 1
2 AARO TOOMELA
I believe that modern psychology of thinking is not an exception and suffers from the same
methodological problems as all other fields of modern mainstream psychology. Therefore,
the following description of psychology of thinking is rooted in Vygotskys cultural-historical
approach to mind rather than in some modern theory of thinking. It is beyond the limits of
this chapter to discuss all the differences between modern and Vygotskian approaches to the
theory of thinking. I mention just two most outstanding deficiencies of modern theories of
thinking.
First, many modern theories tend to be adevelopmental; the same thinking processes are
assumed to operate at all stages of development. Instead of qualitative changes in develop-
ment only quantitative changes are postulated (cf. Toomela, 2000). Of course, such theories
of thinking do not also declare they want to explain development. An adevelopmental stance
would be fully justified if there would be grounds to suggest that either there is only one
kind of thinkingand therefore no development can occuror there are different kinds of
thinking that emerge from different sources, independently one from another. Both of these
statements would not correspond to the known facts. There are reasons to suggest that think-
ing relies on developmentally, hierarchically ordered qualitatively different kinds of processes
(e.g., Luria, 1974b, 1979; Luria & Yudovich, 1956; Piaget & Inhelder, 1969; Vygotsky, 1996). If
so, the adevelopmental position can only hinder the understanding of thinking because dif-
ferent kinds of thought operations are intrinsically related and the later developing operations
cannot be understood without understanding their developmental origin.
And second, modern theories usually do not explicate how thinking processes take place.
And even when a modern theory tries to reveal the how of thinking, it is built on assumption
that there is only one way of thinking instead of possibly many different ways simultaneously
available for solving the tasks at hand. The basic psychological fact that externally the same be-
haviorthe same solution to a problem, for instancemay rely on internally qualitatively dif-
ferent mental operations, is ignored by majority of theories (cf. Toomela, 2003b). Vygotskian
approach was free from these and several other deficiencies.
CULTURAL-HISTORICAL APPROACH TO THE PSYCHOLOGY

OF (SCIENTIFIC) THINKING
There are important principles of cultural-historical psychology that can

be applied to all mental phenomena in general as well as to thinking in
particular. Only those principles that are relevant to the issues discussed
in this chapter will be described here. First, mind develops over qualita-
tively different stages.1 Second, these general stages are stages of thinking
development. According to Vygotsky, thinking can be defined as a system
of internal processes for organizing experiences (Vygotsky, 1926). Accord-
ing to his cultural-historical approach, what defines a stage of development
is not about what information is processed but rather how the informa-
tion is processed (see Toomela, 2000, 2003b, for details). Third, stages of
thinking developmentthe hierarchical developmental sequence of quali-
tatively different ways for organizing informationare similar in ontogen-
esis and phylogenesis of mind. The last statement out of the three would
be probably the least accepted by modern psychology. Substantial amount
of evidence, however, is in complete agreement with this proposition (see
Toomela, 2000, 2003b, for the description of ontogenesis of mind, Toome-
Modern Mainstream Psychology Is the Best? 3
la, 2003a, for the description of phylogenesis of mind, and Toomela, 2005,
for examples of the kinds of thinking distinguished in cultural-historical
approach as used in modern medicine). Fourth principle can be derived
from the previous three: development of science as a phenomenon of hu-
man culture is a special case of cultural development that must correspond
to at least some general stages of thinking development.2
Stages of Thinking Development
The main question to answer for understanding thinking is how knowl-

edge is organized, which ways of thinking are available for individuals as
well as for cultures at different stages of development (Vygotsky, 1960, 1996;
Vygotsky & Luria, 1930 , 1994). In the analysis of the mental development
Vygotsky, first, distinguished between nonsymbolic or natural and semioti-
cally mediated or cultural line of thinking development (e.g., Vygotsky,
1996, see also Toomela, 1996, for justification of that controversial distinc-
tion). Both natural and cultural lines of development can further be
distinguished into substages. Natural line of development contains three
stages (cf. Toomela, 2000; Vygotsky & Luria, 1930). These stages (reflexes,
conditioned reflexes or dressure, and thinking with insight) are not rel-
evant for the understanding of scientific thinking because in these opera-
tions only nonmediated sensory information is processed. Science, how-
ever, is only about knowledge represented with symbols.
Cultural line of development was differentiated by Vygotsky also into
three stagessyncretic thinking, thinking with everyday concepts or
complexes, and thinking with scientific concepts (Vygotsky, 1996). Data
about child development accumulated after his early death allow now to
distinguish five instead of only three stages of semiotically-mediated think-
ing development (Toomela, 2003b). Vygotskys syncretic concept thinking
can be differentiated into first two stages of semiotically-mediated thinking
development. At these stages symbols refer to external world available for
sense organs but it is not possible yet to describe all aspects of this sensory
world in symbols. The main limitation of these stages is that situations, rela-
tionships between objects in sensory experiences, cannot be verbalized yet.
The third stage, thinking with everyday concepts or exemplar symbols as
I called them, allows description of situations and, correspondingly, semiot-
ically-mediated thinking about all aspects of the world available for senses.
This kind of thinking, yet, is qualitatively limited. All information encoded
with such everyday symbols is acquired from personal experiences in the
world or must be translatable into possible sensory experiences. Abstract
and theoretical knowledge can be understood only in the limits of person-
al experiences that can directly be translated into sensory experiences.
4 AARO TOOMELA
For example, scientific could mean, knowledge told by a scientist. At

this level of thinking there would be no understanding of what method-
ological requirements there are for knowledge to be scientific or by which
processes scientific knowledge is constructed. Persons thinking with such
symbols would not differentiate theoretical and experiential arguments in
making decisions (see Toomela, 2005, for examples). Another limitation of
everyday-conceptual thinking is that symbols at this stage of symbol mean-
ing development refer to categories that boundaries are fuzzy. In thinking,
correspondingly, decisions are always context-dependent because without
context it would not be possible to define in which particular category a
thought object or phenomenon is understood in a particular problem-solv-
ing situation. There are no context-independent rules that could apply in
every possible real-life situation.
A qualitative step forward emerges with the next stage, thinking with sci-
entific or classically defined concepts. These symbols refer to categories
of explicitly defined categories with sharp boundaries. Whereas at earlier
stages of symbol meaning development there is no necessary awareness why
certain objects belong to the same category, at this stage every category
without exception can be defined explicitly by individually necessary and
collectively sufficient attributes. Metacognition and metalinguistic ability
accompany the emergence of scientific concepts as a necessary character-
istic of them. At this stage it becomes possible to represent abstract theo-
retical nonpersonal knowledge. Inferences with such symbols are made in
coherent formal-logical way. Thinking is not tied to immediate personal
context and can be (but not necessarily is) entirely independent from di-
rect sensory experiences. As the category boundaries referred to by this
kind of symbols are sharp, inferences made with such symbols are all-or-
none type. The answers to questions are either correct or incorrect; there
is no context-dependence of answers. Also, all categories are mutually ex-
clusive; so areas of knowledge are sharply separated one from another with
impenetrable boundaries between the areas.
Science, as understood in our time, began to develop together with sci-
entific concepts.3 The most important aspect of scientific concepts that
is related to thinking in science is that thinking with scientific concepts is
always dualin science a scientist thinks about the phenomenon he stud-
ies and about his own thinking while he is studying it at the same time. In
other words, a scientist always must think coherently and follow principles
of formal logic; otherwise the scientific statements of a scientist would be
considered not valid independently of the content of these statements.
Thinking with scientific concepts is not the final stage of mental de-
velopment. What is still constraining thinking can be understood when we
look at the relationship between scientific knowledge and formal-logical or
scientific conceptual thinking. Science is pursuing to understand truth.
Truth is the agreement of knowledge with its object (Kant, 2007, p. 97). I
think it would be accepted by modern scientists that scientific knowledge,
in order to be reliably true, must be logically derived from observations and
experiments. So, all scientific knowledge is essentially logical. But not all
logical conclusions are true. Logical conclusions are true if and only if the
premises from which the conclusions are logically derived are true. What is
important is that the truth of the premises cannot be demonstrated by logic
itself. Rather, truth of the scientific premises is derived from the context of
the studies conducted for advancing scientific knowledge. And here lies
the main limitation of scientific concept thinking. This thinking does not
allow studying relations of truth and the context from where it is derived.
Scientific concepts define categories classically, and only one way of classi-
fication is considered to be correct. It is not understood yet that truth may
be context-dependent. It means that source of the premises for logical deri-
vation of scientific statements is not analyzed together with the two sides
of the scientific concept thinking: analysis of the studied phenomenon
and simultaneous to it analysis of cognition involved in the study. Only the
nextand laststage makes this more complex thinking possible.
The last stage of semiotically-mediated thinking development is think-
ing with systemic concepts. Systemic symbols refer to categories of all
types with explicit definition of context where and in what case a particular
categorization should be used. With the development of different abstract
theoretical frames of reference in a system of symbols, a qualitatively novel
way of categorization is acquired. With the explicit definition of in what
sense, in what system of relationships a thing or phenomenon is classified,
the same thing can appear simultaneously in different, even in the classical-
ly-defined and, at the scientific concept thinking stage, mutually exclusive
categories. So, decisions become context-dependent in a qualitatively novel
way. At the earlier stages the external context directs decisions and a per-
son is relatively passive in respect of contextual influences. At the systemic
symbol stage, in turn, a person actively and explicitly represents context in
decisions. Also, boundaries between areas of knowledge become perme-
able; but not fuzzy. Rather, all boundaries can be consciously and rationally
redefined depending on the context, which effect is taken explicitly into
account.
In science, systemic concepts allow, in addition to the processes involved
in the scientific concept thinking, to take into account the context where
the knowledge is proposed to be true. Most of the modern mainstream psy-
chology is still in the stage of scientific concept thinking. Accordingly, there
are many fundamental questions about the context of scientific activities
that are never even asked. For instance, there is no theoretical justification
for the almost universally accepted view that it is possible to reveal truth
about the internal structure of studied phenomena that are not available
6 AARO TOOMELA
for direct observation through senses (mind is not directly observable) with
the help of statistical data analysis. If to ask the question why and how sta-
tistical data analysis reveals internal and hidden from direct observation
structure of a studied phenomenon, the answer may turn out to be very
pessimisticit is not possible to understand the studied phenomena with
any kind of statistical data analysis as used in modern mainstream psychol-
ogy (Toomela, 2008b).
Or take another example: modern personality theory rests on the lexical
assumption according to which all important aspects of human personality
are coded in language (e.g., McCrae & Costa, 1996, 1999; Saucier & Gold-
berg, 1996). This assumption is actually a hypothesis that, to my knowledge,
is never satisfactorily proven. I would say the opposite is likely to be true.
It was already demonstrated by Vygotsky, almost a century ago, that word
meaning develops. Words encode different information at different stages
of development and there is no basis whatsoever to suggest that word mean-
ing cannot develop any more. If so, there is no evidence also to support
the idea that personality is satisfactorily described by individuals themselves
because there is no evidence to prove that individuals actually are able to
describe their personality through language. Therefore the whole modern
personality theory rests on the assumption that very likely is simply wrong.
And all knowledge derived on the basis of such contextual lexical assump-
tion will logically turn out to be completely misleading or simply wrong
as well. Numerous other examples of fundamental issues not discussed in
the modern mainstream psychology can be found in other chapters of this
book as well as in other papers written by the authors of these chapters.
To conclude, modern science is a form of either scientific or systemic
conceptual thinking. Modern psychology is mostly built with scientific
concepts. Scientific concepts allow thinking in two dimensions simulta-
neouslyabout the phenomena studied and about scientists own think-
ing that must follow certain principles of logic in particular and scientific
method in general in order to be valid and reliable. This kind of thinking
is still limited, science with scientific concepts does not contain the third
important component, explicit analysis of the context of scientific studies,
including explicit analysis of the sources of premises on the basis of which
scientific statements are derived. Context-dependent nature of truth(s) is
explicitly taken into account only in the thinking with systemic concepts
that comprises the last stage of thinking development.
Relations between Thinking, Planning, and Activity
Thinking, especially in science, cannot be detached from action.4 There

is no science without observations, experimentswithout active search for
data. Data do not come to mind, data can only be actively constructed.
For the psychology of science, it is important to understand the relation
between thinking and planning because planning is the link to external
activities. According to cultural-historical psychology, thinkingthought
underlies the planning of our behavior: Thought comes forward in the
role of preliminary organizer of our behavior. (Vygotsky, 1926, p. 172).
So, our actions are based on planning and planning is based on thought.
In science we plan our studies in order to construct data. These data, in
turn, may lead to reorganization of our knowledge. Which, in turn, may
lead to novel ways of scientific studies. Therefore, science can be under-
stood as a conscious activity directed to reorganizing ones own knowledge.
Relation of Thinking to the World Studied by a Scientist
There is more than one psychology of mind; several schools of psychol-

ogy have been and are trying to solve the mysteries of the human mind. In
that respect, the situation has not changed during last century (cf. Vygotsky,
1982a). One of the most influential of them was, and still is, behaviorism,
the psychology according to which the only appropriate subject matter for
scientific investigation is observable and measurable external behavior re-
lated to as much observable and measurable events in the external environ-
mentstimuli. Watson, the founder of behaviorism, suggested that in a
system of psychology completely worked out, given the response the stimuli
can be predicted; given the stimuli the response can be predicted (Watson,
J. B., 1913).
One of the fundamental problems of behaviorism is related to the idea
that there is only one external environment, the environment that exists
objectively and also can be studied objectively. This kind of environment
is what scientists eventually study and try to understand. But the problem
is that there is no objective environment in minds. Gestalt psychologists
among several other Continental European psychologists before the WWII
understood well that the objective environment may be very different
from subjective: geographical or objective environment should be distin-
guished from behavioral or subjective environment (Koffka, 1935). When
we act in the environment we plan our actions not towards the environment
as it is but as it seems to us in our thought. This distinction is important for
understanding the state of scientific methodology in modern mainstream
psychology.
Modern mainstream psychology has still several limitations inherent to
behaviorist thinking, for instance, in the ways how modern mainstream
psychology approaches methodology of research. We can find behaviorist
limitations in common textbooks on research methodology as well as in
8 AARO TOOMELA
the ways psychological research is described in practically all mainstream

psychology publications. Usually what is described as a research methodol-
ogy is a list of behavioral procedures that should be/are followed in order
to get scientific knowledge. Statistical data analysis as a main tool for inter-
preting collected datait is assumed that data are collected and not con-
structedis practically reduced to the list of mouse-clicks in the computer;
the complex mathematics and the essence of algorithms that are used in
sophisticated modern statistical data analysis procedures remains beyond
the necessary knowledge taught to students and researchers.
Psychology of thinking described above suggest that advanced scientific
thinking should involve scientific metacognition, understanding of scien-
tists own thinking that is used in construction of scientific knowledge on
the basis of scientific study activities. Analysis of common textbooks on re-
search methodology in modern psychology (e.g., Gonzalez, 2008; Johnston
& Pennypacker, 2008; Tarling, 2008) as well as everyday research practices
of scholars shows that scientific thinking does not go beyond cookbook type
behavioral recipes that are supposed to underlie scientific studies. Several
examples could be given how such thinking misleads science. Perhaps one
is sufficient here. Validity is a notion that should describe whether a test
measures what it is supposed to measure. Modern psychology, instead, un-
derstands validity as a question of how test scores (i.e., behavioral external
outcomes of test-filling behavior) fit with some theory; and the validity is
proved by a set of statistical data analysis procedures with the test scores.
The problem is that statistical data analysis cannot in principle answer the
two basic questions that are related to validity:
1. Does the attribute supposedly measured by a test really exist? and

2. Do variations in the attribute causally produce variations in the out-
comes of the measurement procedure?
There is no way to prove whether one or several different mechanisms un-

derlie behavior encoded as a variable and there is also no way to prove a
causal relation from the pattern of covariations between variables (cf. Bors-
boom, Mellenbergh, & van Heerden, 2004; Toomela, 2008b).
SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD
So, science is thinking, a special kind of thinking that involves simultaneous

and co-coordinated thinking about the phenomenon studied and think-
ing about the thinking processes involved in the study. Behaviorscien-
tific study itselfis planned, and plans are made on the basis of thought.
Therefore scientific method as actionas a studyalways involves method
as theory, method as subjective thought. The same idea can be formulated
in the opposite way: every theory always contains method; there is no theory
that is method-free description of reality.
General Questions that Underlie Scientific Method
As already suggested above, modern mainstream psychology in general

corresponds to the thinking with scientific concepts level of thought de-
velopment. So, there is no reason to discuss whether this psychology is suf-
ficiently logicalit is. What is missing from it is beyond logic, it is the ques-
tion of defining the context of studies in all respectsboth from the side of
the studied phenomenon and from the side of the scientific thinking itself.
In the first case it should be asked whether supposedly true statements are
universally true or only in certain contexts. In the second case it should be
made explicit how and why research and data interpretation methods fit to
which kinds of scientific questions.
The development of science is not determined so much by answering
questions in increasingly exact ways; the development of science is deter-
mined by asking the right questions. Already Vygotsky (1982a), following
Mnsterberg, suggested that it is much more meaningful to answer the
right question even approximately than to answer the wrong question ex-
actly. For instance, we can ask a question: Which statistical data analysis
procedure gives the best way for interpreting data? This question is asked
in modern psychology and, as a result, increasingly complex and sophisti-
cated data analysis procedures are invented. But all these sophisticated new
data analysis tools may turn out to be useless if the statistical data analysis
itself is inappropriate for understanding the phenomena studied. The first
question should be, whether statistical data analysis is appropriate for data
interpretation at all?
If there is something wrong with the methodology of a science, then it
cannot be determined which specific questions should be asked because
the science itself is developing into a dead end. The questions that need
to be asked instead should be very general. These questions are essentially
metacognitive questions; they address the subject of a scientists own scien-
tific thought.
I have found four questions to be very helpful to be asked and answered
in any study and by any scientist:
1. What do I want to know, what is my research question?

2. Why I want to have an answer to this question?
3. With what specific research procedures (methodology in the strict
sense of the term) can I answer my question?
10 AARO TOOMELA
4. Are the answers to three first questions complementary, do they

make a coherent theoretically justified whole?
Superficially, answering these questions would seem to be easy and

simple to modern mainstream psychology. However, I suggest that most of
the modern mainstream psychology is unable to answer all four questions
theoretically satisfactorily. In that respect, pre-WWII Continental European
psychology seems still to be much ahead of the modern psychology.
FOUR METHODOLOGICAL QUESTIONS: MODERN

ANSWERS AND MEANINGFUL ANSWERS
What Do I Want to Know, What is My Research Question?
Every published research paper is an attempt to answer a certain sci-

entific question. So, there have been hundreds of thousands if not mil-
lions of research questions asked and answered in psychology. And all of
them seemed to be meaningful enough for the reviewers and editors of
the journals to justify their publication. If science were only about popu-
list voting about the meaningfulness of studies, all these published papers
should contain research questions worthy to answer. But the history of sci-
ence provides sufficiently many examples to know that social support from
a scientific community may have nothing to do with the quality of science.
A study with many supporting votes may turn out as valuable or useless as
a study with no supporting votes. Therefore we can put aside the argument
that if other researchers have found the study to be worthy to publish then
we must conclude that the study has really advanced science.
In order to see how majority of research questions asked by modern
mainstream psychology may turn out to be irrelevant for advancing the
understanding of mind, we can look into the works of the founders of the
most influential pre-WWII Continental European psychology schools, such
as Gestalt psychology or cultural-historical psychology. Such major schools
of psychological thought did explicitly something that has been practically
lost in modern mainstreamthese schools were looking for the general,
unifying theory of mind (cf. Koffka, 1935; Khler, 1959, 1969; Vygotsky,
1982a; see also Toomela, 2007a, G. Watson, 1934, where it was shown that
striving for systematicity, for coherent understanding of many different as-
pects of mind simultaneously was characteristic of the pre-WWII Continen-
tal European psychology as a whole).
General or unifying psychology should not be understood as a theory
of these aspects of mind that are left over after all studies of special aspects
of mind, such as memory, thinking, personality, values, attitudes, etc., have
been taken into account. Rather, such unifying psychology should be a the-
ory that is essentially a metatheory, theory that shows how exactly theories
of subfields of psychology are complementary, how they are related one
to another in the theory of the human mind as a whole (Vygotsky, 1982a).
Modern psychology, due to its scientific conceptual thinking character, is
fundamentally fragmented; studies in one field are rarely informed about
studies in another field even when the fields should be theoretically relat-
ed. So, for instance, modern cross-cultural psychologyessentially rather a
cross-country psychology (Toomela, 2003a)is usually uninformed about
the theory developed in another and closely related field, that of cultural
psychology. If cross-cultural psychology would look around it would dis-
cover that study of individual differences related to the country of origin or
ethnicity has practically no theory of what culture is and how culture may
be related to individual differences.
Pursuit for a unifying theory of psychology leads, among other things, to
understanding that fragmented studies can never lead to a coherent and
theoretically appropriate understanding of mindas it was put by one of
the founders of the gestalt psychology, the studies should start from a given
whole, and only then arrive at the parts by analysis, while the ordinary and
less productive procedures are founded on the principle of beginning with
the parts and building up the wholes by synthesis (Khler, 1969). Khler
(1940) justified the Gestalt psychology approach as follows:
The very best support for our program can be found in the history of science.
It would be interesting to inquire how many times essential advances in sci-
ence have first been made possible by the fact that the boundaries of special
disciplines were not respected. The greatest progress which astronomy ever
made consisted in the discovery that this science has no laws of its own, that
astronomy is a part of physics. Later it was found that astronomy is a special
field of chemistry, too. Organic chemistry would never have become what it
is now, if it had remained separated from common chemistry. (p. 120). [...]
Everywhere except psychology it is regarded as an axiom that border regions,
in which one discipline is in contact with another, offer the best opportunities
for substantial discoveries. (p. 121)
The situation in the modern mainstream psychology has not changed

substantially since 1940; psychology still does not realize that border re-
gions are the most interesting regions to study. In fact, there are much
more serious reasons to suggest that fragmented psychology is theoretically
unable to lead to the understanding of mind.5 I have discussed these rea-
sons in more details elsewhere (Toomela, 2007c). Briefly, first, mind is not
a pile of mental pieces; it is a coherent organized whole. All subfields of
psychology, therefore, study the same phenomenonmindeven though
from different perspectives. And all subfields try to explain their findings,
the phenomenon they study. If psychology is fragmented, then the only
12 AARO TOOMELA
possible explanations can be found in the subfield itself. But the problem is
that in an organized whole, every component is affected also by other com-
ponents of a whole. And explanations from only one subfield will attribute
causal effects to entirely wrong sources because there are many sources of
causal effects; only part of those sources are studied in this one subfield,
other sources are studied in other subfields of psychology. Therefore there
is no other way for explaining studied phenomena in any one fragmented,
essentially isolated, field of studies than to attribute all explanations to the
information available in this field itself. If actually this subfield studies an
aspect of a whole, then, it follows, explanations proposed in such a single
field can be rejected already a priori because parts can be understood only
when their relation to the whole is theoretically explicated.
So, for instance, modern memory psychology distinguishes memory sys-
temssemantic, episodic, and proceduralaccording to the content and
organization of the information in the memory (e.g., Medin, Ross, & Mark-
man, 2005). And this is an important point; these memory systems contain
information that is differently organized. Organization of knowledge is not
a memory process, it is thinking (Vygotsky, 1926). Therefore, a substantial
part of memory psychology is actually psychology of thinking. And there is
no psychology of thinking involved in modern memory psychology; usually
the opposite is also true, no memory psychology is taken seriously in the
psychology of thinking. Eventually fragmented psychology leads to chaotic
pile of equally fragmented facts; but mind is not fragmented, therefore
fragmented facts do not lead to understanding of mind.
Here it can be seen again that problems of modern mainstream psychol-
ogy are related to limitations of the scientific concept thinking that is not
able to take into account the role of the context where the information is
processed. Unifying theory would be a theory about the mind as a whole.
Studies in all subfields that are conducted in the framework of the unifying
theory would be contextualized, every researcher would be able to under-
standas do modern physicists and biologists (cf. Vygotsky, 1982a)where
they stand in the whole context of the studies of mind. And it is not so much
the lack of such a theory that is a problem. There is no way to predict when
this theory will be constructed even though it is clear that for psychology
to advance such theory is absolutely necessary. The problem is much more
substantial: modern mainstream psychology even does not ask the question
what such a theory would be. Fragments are studied as if these fragmented
facts comprise the final and most valuable end for a science of mind. And
that happens despite substantial arguments we can find in the history of
psychology demonstrating that fragmented approaches and corresponding
research questions are out of date.
Why I Want to Have an Answer to this Question
This question should be asked from different aspects. I address these

subquestions one by one.
Is There No Answer Yet to My Question?

There would be little value to answering a question which answer is al-
ready known. Before going into more details with this question, it is useful
to reflect on what we mean by thinking that the answer is already known.
Known should not mean found in one study, because results should be
replicated in order to be treated as reliable. Modern mainstream psychol-
ogy, as a rule, has failed and still fails here for decades. Usually replications
of studies are not attempted and when they are, the replications also tend
to fail (Epstein, 1980).
There are also scientifically questionable approaches to replication or
nonreplication. For instance, replication of the dominant today Five-Fac-
tor-Model of personality, according to which personality can be understood
as composed of five orthogonal dimensions, Neuroticism, Extraversion,
Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness (McCrae
& Costa, 1996, 1999), has been attempted in numerous studies. But these
replications have been based on the sometimes implicit and sometimes ex-
plicit idea that the only correct result must be replication. So, for example,
when the Estonian version of the NEO-Personality Inventory was adapted
from the North-American original, the researchers explicitly declared:
the factor structure of the developed tests must correspond as closely as pos-
sible to the original factor structure of the NEO-PI (Pulver, Allik, Pulkkinen, &
Hmlinen, 1995, p. 111, my emphasis). Also, in the construction of the
Estonian version of the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992) one third of the
created items were removed from the finalwith a well-replicated factor
structure of the originalversion of the Inventory (Kallasmaa, Allik, Realo,
& McCrae, 2000). So replication was actually based on disregarding any
possible source of nonreplication.
There is another way to get replications, it can be done by relaxing statis-
tical criteria for replication. In earlier versions of replication studies, confir-
matory factor analyses with targeted rotation were used where the congru-
ence coefficients higher than 0.90 were considered to be satisfactory in Big
Five studies (McCrae, Zonderman, Bond, Costa, & Paunonen, 1996). A few
years later, with accumulating data that did not fit with the expected factor
solution, the satisfactory level for congruence coefficient became only 0.85
(Allik & McCrae, 2004). Similar relaxations of fit criteria can be found in
numerous studies where Structural Equation Modeling is used.
Modern mainstream psychology behaves quite chaotically. On the one
hand, nonreplicated or methodologically questionably replicated studies
14 AARO TOOMELA
are considered to be sufficient so that the answers to the research questions

to be known and not worthy of further studies. At the same time, modern
mainstream psychology is historically blind or, in other words, modern
mainstream psychology is not cumulative. Instead of building a continu-
ous line of theorizing, the same ideas that have already been discovered,
are discovered again as some novelties. I have provided a review of several
such novel discoveries elsewhere (Toomela, 2010). It turns out that many
substantial steps forward in modern psychology have actually already been
made before, considerably earlier. I demonstrated in that paper that dis-
coveries the modern authors themselvesElliott Aronson, Albert Bandura,
Gordon H. Bower, Jerome Kagan, Daniel Kahneman, Elizabeth F. Loftus,
Walter Mischel, Ulric Neisser, and Richard F. Thompsonfind most im-
portant discoveries they made in their career, were already discovered be-
fore by earlier psychologists, such as Ivan Pavlov, Lev Vygotsky, Aleksander
Luria, Kurt Koffka, Kurt Lewin, Wolfgang Khler, and Friedrich Sander.
The list of examples of new theories and discoveries could be extend-
ed. So, there is an original Rolls theory of emotion (Rolls, 2007), which
contains some new facts but theoretically is a substantially limited ver-
sion of the theory of emotions created by Russian neurophysiologist Pjotr
Anokhin more than four decades earlier (cf. Anokhin, 1978). The levels-of-
processing framework for memory research by Craik and Lockhart (1972)
was already firmly established in memory psychology in the beginning of
the 20th century in works of Karl Bhler, Lev Vygotsky, and many others
(cf. Luria, 1974a). Systemic approach to studies of brain-behavior relation-
ships is not a recent development as some neuropsychologists believe (e.g.
Kolb & Whishaw, 1996); it was already theoretically justified in early 1930s
(Vygotsky, 1982b) and theoretically and empirically elaborated by 1970s
(Luria, 1969, 1973). The modern studies conducted in cognitive neurosci-
ence category learning only begin to realize that there may be multiple
forms of category learning that depend on different brain systems (Knowl-
ton, 1999). This discovery would have been possible just by reading some
old books (cf. Luria, 1969, 1974a, 1976; Vygotsky, 1996).
My impression is that if pre-WWII Continental European psychology
would have been studied thoroughly, there would be almost nothing in
modern theories that would stand the competition against these early theo-
ries. It follows that there seems to be no sufficient reason to answer many
research questions that are asked by modern mainstream psychology; sub-
stantial number of questions that are worthy to answer are answered al-
ready.
Does My Answer Contribute to the Development of a Theory: 1?

This is another issue to be dealt with in order to decide whether a ques-
tion is worthy to ask or not. And modern psychology seems to fail here too.
There are substantial reasons, again formulated theoretically before WWII,

to suggest that scientific theories cannot be supported by evidence. Rather,
the strength of a theory is established when constantly new conditions are
looked for in which a theory could be refuted or falsified (Popper, 1994,
2002). This idea can actually be found already in Kants (1997, 2007) works.
Perhaps the idea was best expressed in his Critique of Practical Reason:
If a science is to be advanced, all difficulties must be exposed and we must even

search for those, however well hidden, that lie in its way; for, every difficulty
calls forth a remedy that cannot be found without science gaining either in
extent or in determinateness, so that even obstacles become means for pro-
moting the thoroughness of science. On the contrary, if the difficulties are
purposely concealed or removed merely through palliatives, then sooner or
later they break out in incurable troubles that bring science to ruin in a com-
plete skepticism. (p. 86, emphasis in original)
Modern mainstream psychology mostly tries to support a theory by col-

lecting more or less similar data in increasingly bigger and bigger samples.
The psychology of mental development, for instance, quite clearly follows
the rule, the bigger the studied samples became in the history of psychol-
ogy the less theory and the more fragmented facts comprise developmental
psychology. Both Piaget and Vygotsky based their theory on studies of two
to three children, and then extended their studies to different heteroge-
neous samples with sizes up to thirty or forty. In modern psychology studies
of samples larger than thousand are not unusual, but no modern theory of
development comes even close to Vygotskys or Piagets.
Extension instead of intension characterizes the growth of modern psy-
chology in most fields of studies. And yet, as early psychologists understood
quite well, the theory should be tested from as many perspectives as sug-
gested by a theory rather than by trying to support it with studies that es-
sentially repeat what has been found already. The situation is actually even
more bizarre considering that, as was discussed above, exact replications
of studies are not favored in modern psychology. The extensive support
for a theory is achieved therefore not by exact replication of studies but by
conducting essentially the same study in slightly modified conditionsin
a different country, age group, groups of patients with brain damagein
conditions that allow a researcher to attribute discrepancies with the origi-
nal theory to the very same changed conditions instead of attributing them
to the possible shortcomings of the theory.
Does My Answer Contribute to the Development of a Theory: 2?

There is yet another aspect of the same question. There can be com-
pletely meaningless questions, which answers cannot develop a theory. For
example, studies of how intelligence or personality is correlated with some-
16 AARO TOOMELA
thing elsewhatever that something else is: heritability, academic achieve-

ment, values, attitudes, mental states, etc.can have some pragmatic value
but no theoretical value because there is no way created to measure intelli-
gence or personality yet. The measures used in modern psychology quan-
tify something that simply cannot be quantified (Essex & Smythe, 1999;
Michell, 2000, 2003a, 2003b, 2004; Toomela, 2008b). Therefore it is also
theoretically meaningless to look for correlations between artificially cre-
ated numbers that do not measure anything theoretically meaningful with
whatever else. Such studies do not contribute anything to the development
of a theory.
It is quite plausible that decisions about whether a certain question is
worthy to answer are constantly made by reviewers and editors of scientific
journals. If a question seems to be not interesting, the manuscript will be
rejected. What is missing from modern psychology is the understanding
that such decisions should be based as much as possible on some theory
that allows us to disregard whole groups of irrelevant questions rather than
being forced to make such decisions case-by-case. The situation was quite
different in the pre-WWII psychology where the relevance of the questions
was constantly questioned (cf. Mnsterberg, 1899; Vygotsky, 1982a; G. Wat-
son, 1934). Definitely there are modern psychologists who have shown the
theoretical ways to reject meaningless questions (e.g., Christopher Essex,
Joel Michell, Peter Molenaar, and Jaan Valsiner, among several others). But
their work has been ignored by the mainstream psychologists. So, the main-
stream psychology seems to fit too perfectly with a situation described by
Kant (2007) already more than two centuries ago:
To know what questions may reasonably be asked is already a great and neces-
sary proof of sagacity and insight. For if a question is absurd in itself and calls
for an answer where none is required, it not only brings shame on the pro-
pounder of the question, but may betray an incautious listener into absurd
answers, thus presenting, as ancients said, the ludicrous spectacle of one man
milking a he-goat and the other holding a sieve underneath. (p. 97)
With What Specific Research Procedures Can I Answer My

Question?
Quite often methodology is understood in the strict sense as a set of

questions about who, with what tools and with which procedures are stud-
ied and how the constructed (collected) data are interpreted. It follows
from the discussion above that such view of methodology is theoretically
inappropriate. Methods are chosen or created to answer certain questions,
in which relevance is justified theoretically. Therefore the content of a
method in the strict sense is determined by the theoretical questions in

the background. Next I discuss all four main aspects of method in the strict
sense as it is usually understood in modern psychology.
Participants
Psychology studies mind, mostly human mind. So humans are the most
common participants of scientific studies. Modern mainstream psychology
assumes that there must be very many of humans involved in the study. We
already saw that this is not necessarily true. Engels (1987) gave a nice ex-
ample about this issue from physics:
A striking example of how little induction can claim to be the sole or even
the predominant form of scientific discovery occurs in thermodynamics: the
steam-engine provided the most striking proof that one can impart heat and
obtain mechanical motion. 100,000 steam-engines did not prove this more
than one, but only more and more forced the physicists into the necessity of
explaining it. (p. 509)
Next, modern mainstream psychology assumes that all (healthy) hu-

mans are more or less psychologically similar. So it becomes possible to use
the most convenient way for attracting people to participate in the study.
Most of the modern mainstream psychology studies, in the field of person-
ality research, for instance, are conducted on undergraduate students or
other groups of relatively highly educated persons (Endler & Speer, 1998;
Mallon, Kingsley, Affleck, & Tennen, 1998; Wintre, North, & Sugar, 2001).
And then, as the assumption allows, it is proposed that results of studies can
be extended to all human adults. This assumption is simply wrong. It was
found already in early 1930s that healthy persons with no formal education
are psychologically very different even from those who have attended for-
mal school system for one or two years (Luria, 1974b). Vygotskian cultural-
historical psychology revealed a substantial amount of evidence that was
constructed on the basis of even more substantial theory that not only there
are differences between persons with different levels of education but also
there is a clear way how to explain these differences theoretically (Luria,
1979; Vygotsky & Luria, 1930).
Modern mainstream psychology rarely claims that the aim of studies is
to understand undergraduate student mind. Instead it is proposed that hu-
mans as such are studied. As there is enough evidence and theory to suggest
that undergraduate students comprise a qualitatively distinct subgroup of
all humans, studies that ignore this fact and overinterpret the data have not
chosen the appropriate methodology.
18 AARO TOOMELA
Test Materials
The number of different kinds of test materials is too large to be ana-
lyzed here. But, an example of theoretically ungrounded but very common
in the modern mainstream psychology test materials can be mentioned.
There is a huge number of different questionnaires, used in many different
fields of psychology, with Likert-type answers. Such inventories or question-
naires are used almost exclusively in some fields of studies, such as in the
studies of personality, values, attitudes, mental states, etc. Continental Eu-
ropean pre-WWII psychology did not use such tools; it could be suggested,
of course, that such methods were developed later and the earlier psycholo-
gists simply did not have an opportunity to use them. But this explanation
seems to be very unlikely because that earlier psychology would refute such
tools as theoretically inappropriate for the following reasons.
There are several fundamental problems with such questionnaires. First,
they are based on the assumption that persons who fill in the questionnaires
answer all the questions that are asked. But there is no evidence that would
demonstrate it. It is possible that a question is meaningless for the respon-
dent. Obviously, without a meaningful question, there can be no meaningful
answer. So, it is possible that persons just invent answers to many questions
because they are forced by the study-procedure to answer all the questions.
Next, it is assumed that the questions are the same for all those who answer
them. This is a fundamental behaviorist mistake discussed already above:
mind lives not in the geographical but in the behavioral environment.
Therefore physically or geographically identical questions are likely to have
very different mental or behavioral environment interpretations by differ-
ent persons (cf. Koffka, 1935; G. Watson, 1934). Third, Likert scale assumes
that persons have quantitatively graded answers to the questions. This as-
sumption is not supported by evidence (cf. Toomela, 2008b).
In sum, there are many questions about the theoretical meaning of ques-
tionnaires independently of which construct they are supposed to mea-
sure. These questions are usually, again, even not asked in the mainstream
psychology. Such research tools are used mechanically and quite possibly
with no theoretically relevant result. If to look how detailed were the dis-
cussions over research tools in the works of earlier psychologists, such as
Vygotsky, Luria, Koffka, Khler, Lewin, etc., it becomes justified to suggest
that modern mainstream psychology in many areas of studies, as compared
to earlier psychology, is a failure in this issue as well.
Procedure
Study procedures are becoming increasingly mechanically designed as
well. Questionnaires, inventories, tests are used in large groups in modern
mainstream psychology. It is ignored in such studies that human mind oper-
ates always in the context. There is nothing wrong in studying mind by pa-
per-and-pencil tests presented to large groups. But in such studies the limits
of the study must also be realized: interpretations of the constructed results
should not go beyond such formally constructed contexts. Many studies have
been conducted where participants are asked to describe verbally their behav-
iors, such as alcohol consumption, sexual behavior, working habits, etc., and
then the data are interpreted as if true behaviors were studied. This study
procedure is convenient, but theoretically unacceptable. The respondents
may lie, they may not understand the questions, they may not know the an-
swer by themselves, they may interpret the same question differentlythere
are so many reasons to suspect that such so common research procedures are
simply inappropriate. Pre-WWII psychology was different here, too. Psycholo-
gists studied behaviors not verbal descriptions of behaviors when they wanted
to understand behaviors; verbal responses they studied when they wanted to
understand verbal responses (e.g., Gold, 1999; Lewin, 1997).
There is another side of the research procedures that, again, was theo-
retically better justified in the pre-WWII Continental European psychol-
ogy than in the modern mainstream. And again, the modern mainstream
psychology still follows behaviorist understanding of the mind. Externally,
geographically similar environment may be psychologically, behaviorally
very different and vice versa. This principle was very well known to Conti-
nental European pre-WWII psychology (G. Watson, 1934). A psychological
study should take this into account. Modern mainstream psychology, as a
rule, does not; when study procedures are described, then we find descrip-
tions of rooms, and timing of test presentation, and other similar informa-
tion. But we almost never find description of the study situation from the
psychological perspective of the person studied.
Data Interpretation
The majority of studies in the modern mainstream psychology interpret
data relying on two theoretically questionable procedures. First, data are
analyzed and interpreted with the help of mostly covariation-based statisti-
cal data analysis procedures. Statistical data analysis was also used by Conti-
nental European pre-WWII psychologists. But, they practically did not use
any kind of analysis that is based on the study of covariations between vari-
ables. They used what today would be called descriptive statistics. Mostly
they just provided a frequency about in how many cases one or another psy-
chological phenomenon was observed in a group of individuals. The mod-
ern statistical data analysis tools were mostly created in that time, so there
was no time to assess them theoretically before WWII. Now it is possible,
and the conclusion from the theoretical analysis seems to be that statistical
data analysis procedures based on analysis of covariations between variables
are useless for the development of a theory, even though they have some
20 AARO TOOMELA
pragmatic value for directing decision-making when no theory is available

(Toomela, 2008b).
Another major problem with data interpretation is that modern main-
stream psychology tries to understand individuals by aggregating data at
the group level. However, when data are already aggregated, returning to
the individual level is impossible. It would be theoretically possible only in
circumstances that are not observed in the psychological studies (Hamaker,
Dolan, & Molenaar, 2005; Molenaar, 2004; Molenaar & Valsiner, 2005). Pre-
WWII Continental European psychology studied cases, individualsthey
studied the phenomena what they aimed to understand. Modern main-
stream psychology studies something else, because mind is an individual
phenomenon and therefore needs to be studied at the individual level.
Are the Answers to the Three First Questions Complementary, Do

They Make a Coherent Theoretically Justified Whole?
To answer this question in the framework of the modern mainstream psy-

chology is almost not necessary, because the first three questions turned out
to be answered unsatisfactorily. So I just summarize here what has been dis-
cussed above. First, the answers to the first three questions can be theoreti-
cally complementary and coherently justified only in the framework of the
unified theory. Fragmented psychologyI believe it is theoretically strongly
justified to suggest itis not able to advance understanding of mind any
more (Toomela, 2007c). Second, there can be no coherence in scientific
methodology if the aim is to understand causal structure of mind and the
tool chosen to reach this aim is statistical data analysis. This kind of data
interpretation is inappropriate for that aim (Toomela, 2008b). The method
also does not correspond to the research questions if the aim of a study is
to understand mind, which is an individual phenomenon, but the method
to answer the research questions is analysis of aggregated data (Molenaar,
2004). There are many more inconsistencies in answers to the three ques-
tions, but no more is needed to reach the conclusion: Modern mainstream
psychology is methodologically a failure; pre-WWII Continental European
psychology was and still is much ahead of the most recent advancements of
the modern psychology.
SOME FINAL COMMENTS, POSITIVE
This text turned out quite pessimistic. Indeed, more and more reasons are
there to suggest that modern mainstream psychology has not produced and
is not producing anything that would advance psychology beyond the point
where it was about 60 years ago. This conclusion is also supported by prac-
tically all other chapters in this book. But I think whether the message is
pessimistic or optimistic is a matter of a perspective. We are talking about
something that is already past. And it is not so important whether more
meaningful science was created before or after less meaningful science.
The positive message is that this meaningful science was created and is avail-
able for us to understand and to use as a ground for truly advancing our
understanding of the mind. I am not suggesting going back in time, rather
to continue from where the psychology has peaked (Toomela, 2007b).
Apparently there are many ideas to learn from the past, and discussion
of all of them does not fit into one book chapter. So I constrain myself to
the issue I believe is most urgent to solve. What is needed more than every-
thing else is the theory that would allow going beyond fragmentation so
characteristic of the modern mainstream psychology. It is not only feasible;
it is essential, absolutely necessary to look for the unifying theory of psychol-
ogy (Vygotsky, 1982a). This task is definitely the most challenging. Because
this theory needs to unify psychology simultaneously at different levels of
analysis: it needs to unify all sciences, physics, biology, and psychology, as
much as it is relevant for understanding the mind; and the same theory
must explain what is common and what is specific to different subfields of
psychology (Toomela, 2007c). This chapter gives a further task that must
be resolved with the same theory: method is part of theories and therefore
the unifying theory must provide coherent theory of method as well. And
what makes this task especially challengingand also the most wonderful
and interestingis that unifying theory of psychology requires much more
than theory of other sciences, physics and biology. These two are really
simple compared to what needs to be accomplished by psychology: psychol-
ogy needs, in order to understand mind, to understand how the very same
mind works already before studying it. Science is first and foremost about
thinking. Method of science can be understood fully only when scientific
thinking is understood. So, we need to understand us while we try to under-
stand others; and that is possible only when we understand others. What a
wonderful pursuit it will be to accomplish this task!
NOTES
1. Stage concept is theoretically complex and has different (usually implicit) defini-
tions. One common characteristic of stages is assumed to be that in the course
of development with the beginning of a new stage all mental operations simul-
taneously begin to operate in that novel way. This understanding does not cor-
respond to the facts. Here another definition of a stage is implied; and it is un-
derstood that human mind is heterogeneous. Different persons from the same
culture and same age can be at different stages of development as well as the
22 AARO TOOMELA
same individual is always internally at different stages of development in differ-

ent domains of thinking (cf., Toomela, 2000).
2. It can be concluded on the basis of the previous Endnote that theoretically it
is entirely acceptable to assume that thinking of different scientists may be at
different stages of development even in the same area of studies; and also no
scientist individually relies on the most advanced stage of thinking operations
accessible for him/her in all domains of knowledge.
3. It is important to mention that scientific concepts are not necessarily concepts
created in science. Scientific are concepts that are characterized by following:
they (1) refer to classically defined categories, i.e. categories, defined by individ-
ually necessary and collectively sufficient attributes; (2) refer primarily to other
symbols and only indirectly to sensory experiences, i.e. scientific concepts are
defined in language rather than in the sensory world; and (3) thinking with sci-
entific concepts is constrained to formal-logical operations. All syllogistic reason-
ing, for instance, represents thinking with scientific concepts.
4. Parenthetically, it may be interesting to think about differences between science
and philosophy. Philosophy operates only in the limits of information already
encoded in language. In that sense philosophy is science without action, sci-
ence without looking for new data that are actually missing for building coherent
theory of the world. The same idea can be expressed from the opposite perspec-
tive: science is philosophy that actively seeks for missing data. That is the reason
why philosophy cannot, in principle, give an explanation of the worldexpla-
nations need more facts than available at any given moment. My approach to
psychology is rooted in cultural-historical psychology. It is widely acknowledged
that cultural-historical psychology was, in turn, rooted in Marxist theory. What is
not usually realized is that Marxism was not a philosophy; Marxism declared the
end of philosophy and was actually in its method a science and not a philosophy
(cf. Engels, 1987; K. Marx, 1976; K. Marx & Engels, 1976).
5. I am not suggesting that fragmentary studies have never been productive in the
history of any science. On the contrary, I think all sciences have started with frag-
mentary studies. However, this fragmentation must be overcome one moment in
the history of science in order to advance. The need and basis for such overcom-
ing, for developing a unifying psychology was clearly demonstrated already by
pre-WWII Continental European psychologists. All fragmented psychology that
is produced after and despite such theory is already out of date even before it has
been produced.
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CHAPTER 2
QUESTIONS, PATTERNS,
AND EXPLANATIONS, NOT
HYPOTHESIS TESTING, IS THE
CORE OF PSYCHOLOGY AS OF
ANY SCIENCE
Stellan Ohlsson
Experimental psychology in general and cognitive experimental psychol-

ogy in particular can be said to have begun in the late 19th century with
the works of, among others, Hermann Ebbinghaus, Gustav T. Fechner and
Edward L. Thorndike, so it is now a century and half old. There has been
progress. The research articles of today do a better job of developing the ra-
tionale and the background for the studies reported, the hypotheses being
investigated are typically stated more stringently, research reports are more
disciplined in format, and researchers employ more sophisticated statistical
techniques than a century ago. Experimental psychology articles published
in major journals look like products of a highly successful, rigorous and
well-organized scientific enterprise.
Turning from form to content, disquieting features of the enterprise be-
come visible. Progress, although real, has been slow. Psychology has few
principled insights into the workings of the human mind to offer the public
that both go far enough beyond common sense to be interesting and also

28 STELLAN OHLSSON
command universal assent among research psychologists. Few central ques-

tions about the mind in general or human cognition in particular have
been answered. The central filter for what counts as a publishable research
finding, the statistical significance test, has been the subject of severe criti-
cism, but there is no discipline-wide movement to abandon it. The majority
of experimental studies are carried out on subjects who are college students
in their twenties, hardly a representative sample of the human species. Be-
cause there are limits on how much, or for how long, students can be co-
erced to participate in laboratory experiments, the majority of laboratory
studies are of short duration, between one and two hours, as if every mental
process could run to completion in that amount of time. Laboratory tasks
are typically artificial and contrived, so the set of real life situations in which
the findings can be expected to hold is undefined.
These features have taken their toll on the status of experimental psy-
chology in society. When a layperson hears a description of a typical labo-
ratory experiment, his or her spontaneous response is to object. The ob-
jections vary and they are not always coherent (but couldnt that be due to
random chance?) or on target (but isnt everybody different?). But psycholo-
gists nevertheless ought to be concerned about the fact that lay people in-
stinctively feel that psychological experiments are uninformative; no such
response accompanies descriptions of laboratory experiments in the natu-
ral sciences. One observable consequence of this fact is that people with
training in other sciences and professions feel entirely entitled to write
books about the mind aimed at the general public. I have on my bookshelf
numerous trade books that proclaim this or that breakthrough in our un-
derstanding of consciousness, brain or mind, written by business people,
journalists, physicists with philosophical aspiration, medical doctors and so
on. The corresponding situation would be unthinkable in biology, chemis-
try, or physics: imagine a pediatrician trying to publish a book proclaiming
a breakthrough in quantum physics. Experimental research psychologists
have failed to earn the interest and respect of the general public and there-
by lost control over their subject matter to those who have more interesting
things to say.
My thesis is that there is a direct link between this state of affairs and
the research practices of experimental psychology in general and experi-
mental cognitive psychology in particular. There are multiple codified re-
search practices in psychology, but cognitive experimental psychology is
dominated by hypothesis testing via statistical significance: To conduct a
study, think of a hypothesis; assume the truth of the hypothesis and derive
from it a prediction about how behavior on some cognitive task will differ if
the task is presented in this way or that way; collect the relevant data and run
a statistical significance test to verify that the observed difference between
the two experimental conditions is real. If the observed difference is statisti-
Questions, Patterns, and Explanations, Not Hypothesis Testing 29
cally significant, publish; if not, run another experiment. There are many
variations and statistically sophisticated extensions of this basic paradigm,
but they do not alter the basic nature of the methodology.
There are problems with this way of investigating the human mind.
Some are discussed elsewhere in this book. I focus on three:
1. the difference between asking questions and testing hypotheses;

2. the difference between comparing conditions and recognizing pat-
terns; and
3. the difference between prediction and explanation.
My purpose is not to critique individual researchers or research efforts, so I

do not cite particular texts except when I point out strengths.
QUESTIONS
Science is about finding out what the world, ourselves included, is like. Sci-
entists ponder questions and then look at the world to find the answers. It
takes a dedicated group of people with mastery of specialized techniques to
do this, because truly interesting questions cannot be answered on the basis
of everyday experience.
As an example, consider the question: How old is the Earth? This, on the
one hand is a concrete, factual and simple question that requires a single
number as its answer, and, on the other hand, a query that at first glance
seems impossible to answer. How can we know anything about what hap-
pened so long ago? Various approaches to this estimate have been tried,
until the invention of measures based on radioactive decay. The initial an-
swers were off-way offand the current estimate of 4.5 billion years is of
such a magnitude as to surprise everyone. There were strong consequences
for other areas of science such as cosmology and evolutionary biology of
getting the magnitude right. At one point, the theory of evolution through
natural selection was threatened by an estimate of the Earths age that did
not provide the temporal scope required by Darwins theory (Gould, 1987).
The point here is not that good questions necessarily require a quan-
titative answer. As a second example, consider the question: What are the
ultimate constituents of matter? It required two thousand years of conceptual
development to move from the notion that air, fire, water, and earth are
the basic building blocks of the material world to the modern notion of
chemical elements (Strathern, 2000; Toulmin & Goodfield, 1962). The
consequences of getting the story right were of course enormous in both
intellectual and practical terms. Asking straightforward factual questions
that require descriptive answers is a core activity in successful science.
30 STELLAN OHLSSON
What questions about the mind would we like to psychologists to answer?

What questions would we expect to find answered in a cognitive psychol-
ogy textbook after a century of work? Consider the question: What is the
size of the human long-term memory? The answer to this question would be
informative from several points of view. First, given that more and more in-
formation becomes available to anyone with a web connection, it would be
interesting to know what proportion of the knowledge base of any one pro-
fessional field a person can hold in memory. Are we doomed to endless in-
tellectual fragmentation as knowledge and information pile up, or can our
long-term memory store keep pace? Second, how do our brains compare
to current computer technology? How many gigabytes of information does
a well-stocked human memory represent? Given that people now talk seri-
ously about direct interfaces between brains and computers via implanted
circuits, the compatibility, or lack thereof, of the two types of information
processing systems might be of interest. Third, there is a possibility that
cognitive decline in old age is due to interference of new information with
old when there is no spare storage capacity left. Our unexpected ability to
extend our life span beyond what Mother Nature originally intended might
have landed us in a situation in which memory capacity is exhausted in
midlife. The consequences for efforts to alleviate cognitive aging would be
profound. In short, there are multiple reasons to be interested in the size
of our long-term memory.
But after a century of memory research, psychologists have little or noth-
ing to say about this matter. Memory was one of the first components of hu-
man cognition to fall under the microscope of laboratory-based cognitive
psychology, and there are multiple scientific journals primarily devoted to
this topic which between them publish dozens of research studies per year,
but there are virtually no attempts to answer the question about memory
capacity. I know of three relevant estimates. Miller (1996, pp. 136138) es-
timated the size of the average educated persons vocabulary as between
40,000 and 60,000 words. This provides a lower boundary, because there is
much in memory besides lexical entries. Simon and Barenfeld (1969) and
Simon and Gilmartin (1973) estimated how many pieces of chess knowl-
edge their simulation model would have needed to play like a grand master,
and came up with the range 10,000 to 100,000, another lower boundary.
Finally, Landauer (1986) estimated the information in a persons memory
at age 70 to be 2 *109 bits of information. Exactly how to relate bits to words
and chess chunks is unclear.
For present purposes, the key fact is that after a century and a half of
experimental work, there are endless hypotheses about memory that have
been supported in laboratory studies, but no answer to the question of the
total capacity of long-term memory. The point is not that psychologists have
gotten their estimates wrong, but that there are almost no attempts to es-
timate. It is not a valid defense to say that it is not obvious how to arrive at
an accurate estimate, or even to say that it is not certain that the question
makes sense. (Perhaps long-term memory functions in such a way that the
notion of an upper capacity limit does not apply.) If Earth scientists could
arrive at an accurate estimate of the age of the Earth, then psychologists
have little excuse to fail with respect to the size of long-term memory. In-
venting clever techniques of measurement, sharpening definitions of what
is meant by key concepts like capacity, draw upon disparate sources of in-
formation to arrive at an answerthese are all part of the scientific process.
If the size of long-term memory were the only question left unattended
after a century, cognitive psychology would be in good shape. Unfortunate-
ly, a good many questions have been left unattended: How many times a day
does a person have occasion to deliberately recall a piece of declarative information
such as a name from long-term memory? How does the rate of acquisition of new piec-
es of declarative knowledge vary across the life span? What proportion of the human
species experience themselves as visual thinkers? Is the subjective experience of trying
to concentrate in fact associated with improved cognitive performance? And so on.
The reason why interesting questions like these go unattended for de-
cades is that the hypothesis-testing methodology deflects attention from
answering questions to testing predictions derived from hypotheses. In that
methodology, there is no room for a study that aims to answer a question.
After all, it would make little sense to hypothesize that long-term memory
has room for, say, 30 gigabytes of information, then derive some prediction
or another from this hypothesis, falsify the hypothesis (as good Popperians
should strive to do), then hypothesize that the capacity is 40 gigabytes in-
stead, conduct another test; and so on. To answer a question of this sort is
to conduct an inquiry to find out, but the inquiry does not take the form of
testing a hypothesis. Rather, it would consist of exploring different possible
definitions of the cognitive unit of information, relating them to informa-
tion in the everyday sense, collect diverse types of information that might
have a bearing on the issue and try to formulate an answer that is consistent
with all the relevant information. The extensive training in the hypothesis
testing approach that all graduate students in psychology undergo deflect
attention from the usefulness or even the possibility of such descriptive
studies.
My claim is not that experimental cognitive psychologists never conduct
studies to answer interesting questions. Consider the interesting question:
What does it take to become an expert with world-class performance in some organized
field of activity? Thanks to the works by Anders Ericsson and others in the
field of expertise research, we now have an answer (Ericsson, 1996; Erics-
son et al., 2006; Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Romer, 1993; Ericsson & Lehm-
ann, 1996): It takes a minimum of 10 years of serious practice, defined
as approximately 4 hours of practice a day, 6 days a week. Furthermore,
32 STELLAN OHLSSON
experts practice with a mindset to improve, so-called deliberate practice (to

be distinguished from mere repetition). This answer is as interesting for
what it highlights as for what it does not highlight: innate talent plays no
serious role. This answer is not only interesting, it has consequences for real
life, as witnessed by the attention given to it in books aimed at the general
public (Colvin, 2008). For present purposes, expertise research is a prime
example of a line of work that has accomplished what one would expect a
line of work in cognitive psychology to accomplish, namely providing an
interesting and consequential answer to an interesting and consequential
question, and it has done so with little or no use of statistical significance
hypothesis testing.
As a second example, consider the innocent-looking query: What is the
best way to teach? We know the answer to this one: one-on-one tutoring beats
other forms of instruction hands down, so educational researchers tell us
(Bloom, 1984). Consider next what one might expect to be the obvious
follow-up question: Why does tutoring work so well? That is, how does tutoring
facilitate learning? Given its practical importance, one would expect this
question to have received much attention from experimental cognitive psy-
chologists. In fact, it has primarily been researched by a mixed crew of com-
puter scientists, computational linguists and educational researchers, with
only a few contributions by experimental psychologists. From the present
point of view, the salient point is that progress towards the answer has so far
not come through hypothesis testing. Instead, researchers have recorded
tutoring sessions and analyzed the tutor-student interactions by identifying
particular events in those interactions and attempting to relate the occur-
rence of those events to student learning, on a case by case basis (Van-
Lehn, 1999) as well as via multiple regression techniques (Ohlsson et al.,
2007). Interpretations of the observations are then embodied in so-called
intelligent tutoring systems, which are evaluated in field studies (Evens &
Michael, 2006). None of these three research practices bear much resem-
blance to hypothesis testing as practiced by experimental psychologists.
In short, important and interesting questions are often ignored for de-
cades, and highly successful lines of research typically approach such ques-
tions through other methodologies than statistical significance hypothesis
testing. But allowing attention to be deflected from the need to answer
important and interesting questions has consequences for the relation of
psychology to the rest of society. When I teach a lecture course in cognitive
psychology, the lecture on expertise always captures the students attention.
They sometimes remain unconvinced that talent is not part of the picture
after all, but they find the arguments and the data regarding the necessity
of extensive practice illuminating. If cognitive psychologists had the an-
swers to many such questions, the discipline would find a broader audience
for its findings. If I walked into a cocktail party with an answer to the ques-
tion of the size of long-term memory, the guests would feel a need to learn
more. If I tell them about the hypotheses that cognitive psychologists are
testing, they feel a need for a second drink. Cognitive psychologists would
be better off if they regarded this difference as significant.
PATTERNS
Every empirical observation is not equally important or illuminating with

respect to the inner nature of things. Scientific progress is often stimulated
by the recognition of a significant pattern or regularity in the unfolding of
events. The recurrence of the phases of the moon is an obvious example.
If the paths of the heavenly bodies across the night sky had been random,
it is doubtful if astronomy would have been one of the earliest sciences to
develop.
As a second example of a significant pattern, consider punctuated equi-
librium in evolutionary biology. The fossil record does not exhibit gradual
transmutation of one species into another, the way Darwins statement of
his theory of natural selection led biologists to expect. Instead, the fossil re-
cord shows long periods of stasis, alternating with briefer periods of change
and speciation. As Stephen J. Gould tells the story, paleontologists had long
known about the periods of stasis, but were trained to regard such findings
as side effects of the incompleteness of the fossil record; if there were more
fossils per unit of time, the gradual changes would be more visible. Eventu-
ally, paleontologists had to accept the evidence as recorded and conclude
that stasis is data, i.e., that species do remain stable for long periods of
time (Eldredge, 1989; Eldredge & Gould, 1972; Gould, 2002). The pay-off
of attending to an intriguing pattern was a useful debate within evolution-
ary biology about the mechanism of speciation. Other examples of signifi-
cant patterns in the natural sciences include the comings and goings of ice
ages and the astronomical cycles that might cause them (Imbrie & Imbrie,
2002), the periodicity that gives the periodic table of chemical elements its
name (Strathern, 2000) and the recurring stratification of rocks of differ-
ent types across locations (Winchester, 2002). Recognizing, documenting
and describing patterns in the unfolding of events is a major type of inquiry
in the successful sciences.
This type of inquiry has little use for the statistical testing of predictions
derived from some prior hypothesis. Instead, this type of inquiry requires
a willingness to approach the data without any hypotheses, and explore it
with the possibility in mind of discovering a previously unsuspected regular-
ity or pattern.
Cognitive psychologists have recognized and to some extent document-
ed multiple patterns in cognitive processing. Jean Piaget thought he saw a
34 STELLAN OHLSSON
very large-grain pattern in human development: Cognitive growth proceeds

in a punctuated pattern of its own, he claimed, with relatively stable func-
tioning over considerable periods interrupted by briefer periods of rapid
change when the childs intelligence transitions from one developmental
stage to the next. This pattern stimulated half a century of fruitful research
on cognitive development, even though it now appears as a mistake caused
by course-grained data; look closer and the stages melt away in a bewil-
dering array of inter- and intra-individual strategy differences, within and
across the age ranges associated with the supposed stages. Other patterns
have been proposed to take its place. Siegler (1996) proposed that cogni-
tive strategies have a characteristic life span: They are rarely used right after
they have been invented; they rise in frequency of use as the child gath-
ers implicit data on the cognitive economy they provide; and they decline
again as the child invents even more powerful strategies. Multiple strategies
are maintained at any one point in time, but their life spans are displaced
with respect to each other. The result is a complex pattern of multiple over-
lapping waves. At the other end of life, Salthouse (2006) and others have
documented a clear pattern of cognitive decline.
There are patterns at shorter time intervals as well. Perhaps the best doc-
umented pattern of all is the learning curve (a.k.a. practice curve): When
an individual practices some cognitive skill, his or her performance speeds
up in accordance with a negatively accelerated curve: Improvement is most
rapid at the outset, but the rate of change smoothly tapers off until the
curve approaches an asymptote. There is debate whether the curve should
be thought of as following an exponential or a power law equation, but
nobody disputes the basic pattern of a negatively accelerated improvement
(Newell & Rosenbloom, 1981). Interestingly, negatively-accelerated im-
provement has been observed in collectives like airplane factories (Mishi-
na, 1999) and airline industries (Duffey & Saull, 2003) as well as individu-
als. Looking at individual problem-solving processes, we can see yet another
pattern called the insight sequence: a period of productive work, followed by
an impasse, which may or may not end with an insight, which in turn is
followed by another period of rapid progress (Kershaw & Ohlsson, 2004;
Ohlsson, 1992). This pattern of alterations in mode and tempo of creative
problem-solving often appears in the self-reports of creative individuals, but
is not as solidly documented as the learning curve.
The astonishing aspect of these patterns is not that they exist, but that
they are so few. I have pursued questions of cognitive change for thirty
years, and the four patterns described-multiple overlapping waves, cog-
nitive rise and decline over the life span, the learning curve, and the in-
sight sequencealmost exhaust the list of patterns that have come to my
attention. The reason is, once again, that the dominance of the statistical
hypothesis testing methodology deflects researchers attention away from
the need to look for patterns in their data. Indeed, the hypothesis testing
mindset is so ingrained that I have heard otherwise intelligent and serious
psychology professors talk about such an activity as a form of cheating; a
researcher is supposed to know what his or her hypothesis is before col-
lecting the data, and once the data are in, he or she is supposed to test for
that hypothesis and nothing else. This attitude is obviously not conducive
to finding previously unsuspected patterns in data. It should give the dedi-
cated hypothesis tester pause that the four areas of cognitive psychology
in which the four patterns are embeddedcognitive development, cogni-
tive aging, training, and insight researchare among the areas of psychol-
ogy that stimulate outside interest as well as practical applications. It seems
likely that there are more patterns in human behavior, but it seems unlikely
that they will ever be discovered as long as hypothesis testing prevails as the
dominant form of inquiry.
EXPLANATIONS
Ultimately, science is about understanding, about knowing the why and the
how of the ways of the world. The most enlightening component of a sci-
ence is its repertoire of explanations and explanation patterns. The ability
to recapitulate how some effect or event came about is what gives us a feel-
ing of understanding. Explanations are answers to why-questions. Consider
the question: Why are there ice ages? The possibility that there are cycles in
how the Earth and the sun move with respect to each other that coincide
with the comings and goings of glaciers is an intriguing idea with a rather
dramatic practical application (Imbrie & Imbrie, 2002): It suggests ways of
calculating the data when the next ice age begins; if that date turns out to
be yesterday, then the human species has work to do. Another explana-
tion question of great practical importance is: What are the causes of epidemic
diseases? The unmistakable patterns of propagationspreading outwards
from a central pointultimately lead medical researchers to the notion of
contagion, which in turn fused with the idea of germs to form of our mod-
ern conception of an epidemic (Johnson, 2006; Waller, 2002).
Answers to explanatory questions describe the mechanism by which
something comes about in sufficient detail, with sufficient clarity and at a
sufficiently fine grain so that we can understand what happened. Natural
selection is a prime example of an explanatory mechanism: Members of
a species vary in innate characteristics; due to those variations, they have
differential success in surviving long enough to reproduce in a given en-
vironment; those with greater reproductive rate pass on their genes in
greater numbers; when this process continues for many generations, the
species changes towards greater adaptation to that environment. We can
36 STELLAN OHLSSON
easily imagine this process, and see in our minds eye how the events un-
fold. The idea of natural selection is immediately and intuitively clarifying
to anyone who bothers to understand it. A second grand example of an
explanatory theory is the principle that chemical reactions occur through
the re-arrangement of the atoms that constitute the molecules of the reac-
tants. Although materials scientists and particle physicists have complicated
stories to tell about levels above and below the individual atom, it remains
true that explanations for chemical reactions are primarily stories about
the re-arrangement of atoms. Once again, we can easily imagine such re-
arrangements taking place and this gives us a sense of understanding.
It is important not to overlook exactly what scientific explanations
explain. In everyday life, we sometimes talk about explaining individual
events. For example, we want to know why the Titanic sank, even though
it was a brand new ship and supposedly unsinkable. Scientific explanations
also refer to individual events sometimes, but this is not their central role
or function. The central objects of explanation in science are patterns. The
heliocentric theory of the planetary system explains the patterns of move-
ments across the night sky; the theory of astronomical cycles explains the
patterns in the ice ages over time; the theory of natural selection explains
the patterns of geographic distribution of species and the patterns of dif-
ferences and similarities among species; and so on. A methodology that
deflects attention from discovering patterns in data does not only threaten
to rob a science of its most intriguing observations, but also undermines
theorizing by failing to supply its theoreticians with something worth ex-
plaining.
In cognitive psychology, the central mode of theorizing is cognitive mod-
eling: The design and implementation of computer models of cognitive
processes (Sun, 2008). Models are be evaluated, in part, on how well they
account for empirical phenomena. The paradox arises that the typical ex-
perimental effect, i.e., a statistically significant difference between two or
more groups performing an experimental task under slightly different con-
ditions, is too easy a target to be of any interest. It is no great trick to write
a simulation model that, for example, requires a few steps extra to solve
a particular task under this than under that set of conditions. Ironically,
hypothesis testing experiments do not provide the kind of empirical find-
ings against which cognitive modelsthe most sophisticated hypotheses in
cognitive psychologycan be tested.
In response, cognitive modelers, finding little by way of well-established
empirical patterns in their discipline, have exhibited a high level of creativ-
ity in seeking non-trivial structures in data that might provide a challenge
to model and hence provide a test of their models. For example, Ritter
and Bibby (2008) attempted to model, in detail, the exact moments dur-
ing a practice exercise that a person learned something new about a target
skill, and exactly what knowledge the learner acquired at each of those
moments. Plunkett and Julola (1999) focused on a well-established pattern,
the inverted-U shaped progress of childrens learning of the past tense of
English verbs. Just and Varma (2007) modeled the changing activity levels
in different brain modules in the course of a task performance. In each
case, the modelers were looking for some non-trivial structure in data that
could provide a difficult enough a target to be worth trying to model. There
is no particular need for hypothesis testing, nor for systematic variation
of independent variables or systematic comparisons between experimental
conditions. What a modeler needs to evaluate his or her model are non-
trivial structures in their data. Cognitive modeling, one of the most success-
ful lines of research in cognitive psychology, bears little resemblance to the
standard hypothesis testing methodology.
Perhaps the greatest gap between hypothesis testing and modeling is that
the former replaces or confuses explanation with prediction. Philosophers
of science have long understood that the two are not the same (Toulmin,
1961). For example, it is possible to predict the height of a flag pole from
the length of its shadow, as well as the length of its shadow from its height,
but only one of those relations is explanatory. A linear trend is easy enough
to extrapolate beyond available observations even if one does not know the
trend exists. However, forecasts, even accurate forecasts, do not provide
insight and understanding, but explanations do. Consistent with this state-
ment, prediction is not a key feature of the successful sciences. Astronomers
do indeed possess the knowledge needed to predict the future positions of
heavenly bodies, and physicists can predict the swings of a pendulum, the
trajectory of a baseball and the current through a lamp bulb (given precise
measures of the initial states of those systems). But this is not typical. Evolu-
tionary biologists do not claim to be able to predict future species, nor how
current species will change in the next epoch. Geology, ecology, meteo-
rology, archeology, epidemiology, and evolutionary biology are successful
sciences, even though prediction plays a smaller role than explanation in
each. In short, prediction is not the hallmark of science. Hypothesis testing
exaggerates the importance of prediction, and thereby deflects attention
from the need for explanations. A cognitive model is an attempt to explain;
whether it also provides predictions is a secondary question.
Consequently, cognitive modeling and experimental cognitive psychol-
ogy have almost fallen apart into two separate enterprises. Experimentalists
find the task of testing simulation models impossibly complicated because
those models provide a large number of variables and components that
can vary more or less freely, while modelers find standard experimental
effects of the Group X > Group Y, p < 0.5, type unhelpful in constraining
their models. This separation does not serve cognitive psychology well, but
38 STELLAN OHLSSON
it seems likely to remain until modeling becomes as common an ingredient

in the graduate method curriculum as significance testing.
THE ROAD TO METHODOLOGICAL PLURALISM
Scientists are respected because they have special knowledge that gives
them deeper insights into things than is possible on the basis of everyday
experience alone, and they earn accolades because they are capable of car-
rying out activities of intrinsic interest and great societal value. Lay people
know that it requires special competence to design a safe nuclear power
plant, to design a cheap but effective vaccine for the next swine flue epi-
demic or to shoot a space probe with such precision that it hits Mars. No
one would feel qualified to propose a novel idea in astronomy, biology,
chemistry, or physics without possessing the special competence that un-
derpins such activities.
Experimental psychologists have not earned the same respect. Instead,
they have wasted a century and more on an enterprise that interests few out-
side the discipline, and that provides a mere handful of practical applications
with dubious societal value. Most experimental studies test hypotheses that
are of little or no intrinsic interest by collecting data in artificial experimental
situations and claiming psychological reality for the effects in those data on
the basis of arbitrarily chosen statistical significance levels. As the mountain
of experimental studies rises, basic factual questions about mind go unan-
swered, the body of well-documented patterns remains in stasis and the few
truly explanatory principles are like raisins in the massive dough of unen-
lightening predictions.
The cause of this problem is not hidden or mysterious. Graduate stu-
dents in psychology are trained to think about inquiry in a narrow way that
lacks some of the features that makes science successful in other fields. The
need to collect and integrate information in the search for answers to basic
factual questions is easily overlooked due to the focus on hypotheses test-
ing. As a consequence, descriptive studies that aim to answer basic factual
questions are few and far between. The distinction between descriptive and
hypothesis testing studies should not be confused with the traditional but
sterile opposition between qualitative and quantitative methods. The ex-
amples of fruitful descriptive studies cited in this chapter all have a strong
quantitative component. Other examples with a more qualitative flavor
could have been chosen. The quantitative-qualitative and the descriptive-
hypothesis testing dimensions are orthogonal. The latter is about the type
of data collected, the former is about the uses to which the data are put.
Similarly, the emphasis on hypothesis testing obscures the need to
search for non-trivial patterns and structures in data. Given efficient soft-
ware implementations of statistical algorithms, graduate students are easily

seduced into running sophisticated statistical procedures as soon as their
data are entered and treat the more or less interpretable statistics as their
results, without bothering to study their data in order to get a sense of
what happened in their experiment. Indeed, the ethos of hypothesis testing
discourages trawling the data for unanticipated patterns. The irony is that
bottom-up searches for unsuspected patterns is becoming more and more
frequent in other sciences due to the availability of large public data bases
and the development of machine learning programs that can recognize
regularities that are not visible to the naked eye or to traditional statistical
methods. A continued focus on hypothesis testing leaves psychologists out
of this methodological development, and ensures that the body of well-
documented patterns remains too small to drive theorizing.
Perhaps the most damaging feature of hypothesis testing is its insensitiv-
ity to the explanatory power of the hypotheses tested. For a hypothesis to
be tested in the statistical manner, it has to generate a prediction about the
quantitative effects of specific variations in experimental conditions. The
possibility of generating such a prediction then becomes the main criterion
for which hypotheses are considered. This deflects attention from the ques-
tion of what a hypothesis tells us, which phenomena it explains and which
aspects of mind it enables us to understand. Many hypotheses are uninter-
esting even if they should turn out to be true, because they provide little by
way illumination regarding the nature and function of the mind. Psycho-
logical hypotheses are only sometimes answers to why- or how-questions that
somebody posed before the hypotheses were formulated, or responses to
questions or puzzlements that somebody would like to see resolved. The
result is a body of carefully-tested hypotheses only some of which are com-
prehensible, many of which provide little insight and none of which add up
to a comprehensive and coherent view of human cognition.
The situation is not entirely one sided. The hypothesis-testing methodol-
ogy is certainly front and center in the faade of academic psychology. It is
what the outside observer will see if he or she looks up an introductory text-
book in the research methodology of the behavioral sciences. It is also what
an observer sees on the pages of the most prestigious research journals
and hears about at the top research conferences. It is the type of research
methods that would be drummed into him or her, should he or she sign up
for psychology courses in college, and even more so at the Ph.D. level. Dem-
onstrated competence in the hypothesis testing methodology is part of the
grounds for passing or failing term papers, MA theses, comprehensive ex-
aminations and dissertations in most psychology departments in the USA,
and in the rest of the world. This gigantic transmission machine ensures
that the methodological biases of the past will dominate the future as well.
40 STELLAN OHLSSON
On the other hand, there is a countertradition. It is not a self-conscious

movement and nothing so organized as an opposition. This counterconcept
exists primarily as embodied in particular works that do not conform to the
dominating methodology, but nevertheless manage to escape the censor-
ship of significance levels. Expertise research and cognitive modeling are
two examples, but they are not the only ones. In these fields, researchers
pursue their questions with whatever methodology might work. They often
conduct experiments in the general sense of arranging a situation in which
the behavior of interest can be observed, but those experiments do not
necessarily compare systematically varied conditions, and the purpose is
typically to find non-trivial patterns and structures in the data. This subter-
ranean countertradition is carried by researchers who focus on questions,
patterns and explanations because they refuse to be deflected from what
interests them by methodological decrees and traditions.
Over time, the countertradition might experience a rise in self-aware-
ness and come to see itself as such. If it does, it should not reject the tools
of statistical inference and controlled experimentation, but to assign them
their proper weight and place. A tool box is better, the more tools it con-
tains. The needed reform is a matter of altering the emphasis. Graduate
training in psychology should emphasize the usefulness of asking descrip-
tive, factual questions and of looking for invariants, patterns and regulari-
ties in data, regardless of the purpose for which those data were gathered
in the first place. Students should be taught that the enlightening power of
science resides primarily in its repertoire of explanations and explanation
patterns, with prediction being a minor sideshow. Such a reform should
cultivate methodological pluralism and innovativity.
Having stated my main point, it is high time for me to return to my
reading schedule. I have a several exciting volumes to choose among. It is
a difficult choice between Quiet Leadership by David Rock, a businessman
who writes about the implications of neuroscience research for personnel
coaching, and Evolve Your Brain by Joe Dispenza, a chiropractor. The com-
petence of the latter to write a book about brains and minds is vouchsafed
in the preface by a professor who holds a position at a prestigious university.
In physics.
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lins.
CHAPTER 3
THE QUANTITY/QUALITY
INTERCHANGE
A Blind Spot on the Highway of Science
Joel Michell
Science has but one subject and only one fundamental method. Its subject
matter is the array of interconnected and interacting systems we find in the universe
around us, including, of course, the various social, psychological, and bio-
logical systems of primary concern to psychologists. Sciences fundamental
method is that of critical inquiry, whereby hypotheses about the structure
and ways or working of systems are subjected to scrutiny relative to the ob-
servations we make and logic, as we understand it. While science has but
one fundamental method, realization of that method takes any one of in-
definitely many different forms in the potentially infinite array of contexts
of investigation. In particular, in subjecting hypotheses to critical scrutiny,
various methods of observation are employed, such methods being tailored
to both the substantive and formal character of the attributes under investi-
gation.
Any system is always composed of things of various kinds standing in vari-
ous relations to one another and, so, involves attributes. Attributes always
come in ranges. That is, to take a property as an example, there is not just
one possible length; there is the infinite array of different possible lengths.
Or, to consider a relation, there is not just one possible nationality; there is
the finite array of different possible nationalities. Such arrays of properties

46 JOEL MICHELL
or relations are what I mean by attributes. Attributes differ from one another
substantially, in the sense that length is a different kind of attribute to na-
tionality, involving extension in space rather than connection to a nation
state. Furthermore, attributes may differ from one another formally, in the
sense that length is a quantitative attribute and nationality, a merely classifica-
tory (or categorical) attribute. Formally, amongst the indefinitely large array
of formal possibilities, attributes may be quantitative, ordinal, or classificatory,
the latter two kinds being instances of what is meant by non-quantitative
or qualitative attributes. It is important to note that observational methods
differ depending upon the formal character of the attribute investigated, in
particular, upon whether the attribute is quantitative or qualitative.
Examples of categories of quantitative attributes are frequencies and con-
tinuous quantities. For example, the number of people living in a city is a
frequency. Frequencies are generally observed by methods of counting and
the frequency so observed is always a natural number. Continuous quanti-
ties cannot be counted and they are best observed by methods of measure-
ment. Although counting may be involved in the process of measurement,
measurement itself is the estimation of the ratio between a particular mag-
nitude of the attribute and a unit magnitude, such a ratio always being a
positive real number.
It was through the discovery and measurement of continuous quanti-
tative attributes that science, and in particular, physical science, enabled
the spectacular progress in our understanding of the world around us that
transformed human life and society over the past five hundred years. Not
only has this progress been an inspiration for many later scientists but un-
fortunately, physics is now sometimes taken as the paradigm of what any sci-
ence ought to be like by investigators in disciplines like psychology, which
emerged after many of the triumphant successes of physics had occurred.
Thus, in the tradition of British and American psychometrics, modern psy-
chology is thought to have commenced with G. T. Fechners (1860) devel-
opment of quantitative psychophysical methods and the progress of the
discipline is gauged by the steadily increasing sophistication of quantitative
theories and methods (e.g., Rao & Sinharay, 2007).
At first, attempts at psychological measurement coexisted with non-quan-
titative methods of observation. Some of the founding fathers of modern
psychology (e.g., Freud, 1900; James, 1902; Wundt [see Haeberlin, 1916])
employed qualitative methods in their investigations and some researchers
questioned the suitability of the subject matter of psychology to methods of
measurement (e.g., von Kries, 1882). Until the middle of the twentieth cen-
tury, especially in Europe, but also in the United States, strong traditions
of qualitative research developed (e.g., the psychoanalytic tradition, the
phenomenological tradition, as well as Khler, Piaget, Vygotsky, Adorno,
The Quantity/Quality Interchange 47
and others) and these made enduring contributions to the development of

psychology as a science.
However, after the Second World War, the balance changed. In the US,
new economic conditions regulating research emerged, conditions docu-
mented by Schorske (1997) and Solovey (2004). These changes caused the
human sciences increasingly to ape the quantitative rigor of the physical
sciences. Given the collapse of psychological research in Europe during
the war and the influence of the US in the post-war period, these changes
affected psychology, first, in countries, like Britain, Canada, and Australia;
and, later, in Europe and Asia as well. Now the mainstream wanted to pres-
ent psychology as methodologically rigorous (i.e., quantitative), a strat-
egy, which it was thought would maximize funding opportunities under the
new, post-war dispensation and as a result the use of qualitative methods
declined. It is notable that these changes occurred in the context of a much
wider identification of quantification with objectivity that affected other
movements and institutions in Western society (Porter, 1995), so these de-
velopments in psychology were interpreted as riding the crest of a wave to
the scientific destiny of the discipline. While qualitative methods have re-
cently reappeared at the fringes of the discipline (Marchel & Owens, 2007),
the mainstream remains committed exclusively to quantitative methods. Is
there now room for qualitative methods in psychology and are any of the
criticisms of quantification offered during earlier times valid?
There are many issues here, but the most striking is the fact that when
the sorts of attributes psychometricians aspire to measure (e.g., mental abil-
ities, personality traits, social attitudes, and sensory intensities) is consid-
ered; these attributes are always only experienced as qualitative attributes,
never as quantitative. For example, one person gets a test item correct,
while another is incorrect and, so, the first is observed to be more intellectu-
ally able than the second with respect to that item; one person answers yes
when asked do they like to go to parties, while another says no and, so,
the first is observed to present him or herself as being more sociable than the
second; similarly, one attitude is observed to be more supportive of euthanasia
than another; or one cup of coffee is reported to taste sweeter than another.
These are observations of ordinal (i.e., qualitative) relations between de-
grees of the attributes involved, not of quantitative relations and there is
nothing in these sorts of observations per se that entails that the relevant
attributes are quantitative.
While aggregations over many such qualitative observations are quantita-
tive, what is directly observed in counting such aggregations are frequen-
cies (i.e., the number of times that a response of a given kind is made), not
continuous quantities, and such frequencies are not, by themselves, mea-
sures of the attributes investigated (i.e., of intellectual abilities, personality
traits, social attitudes, or sensory intensities). Such frequencies, of course,
48 JOEL MICHELL
may be interpreted as measures of such attributes, but doing so always re-

quires invoking the hypothesis that the relevant attributes are continuous
quantities and are linked by some specific mathematical function to such
frequencies, as is postulated in factor analytic or item response theories.
That is, when psychometricians interpret such frequencies as measures of
such attributes, they do so only via the use of hypotheses presuming that
such attributes are quantitative. That abilities, etc., are quantitative is never
observed and as I have pointed out (Michell, 1990, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2006,
2007a, 2008, & 2009), in the century and a half since Fechner (1860), no
scientific evidence has been collected capable of sustaining the hypotheses
that such attributes are quantitative. To understand the character of the
presumption that psychological attributes are quantitative and where it has
come from it is necessary to consider in some detail the difference between
continuous, quantitative (i.e., measurable) and qualitative (i.e., non-mea-
surable) attributes.
(i) Measurable Attributes
Otto Hlder (1901)1 specified the scientific sense of quantitative and later
expositions have used his axioms (e.g., Behrend, 1953; Huntington, 1902;
Kyburg, 1997; Mundy, 1987; Nagel, 1931; Niedere, 1992; Suppes, 1951;
Swoyer, 1987; & Whitney, 1968). In the following, by a quantity is meant
a measurable, determinable property or relation, such as length, mass or
duration (Armstrong, 1997). Specific, determinate properties or relations
falling under a given quantity are called magnitudes of that quantity. For
example, length, in general, is a quantity, while a length of two meters is
a magnitude of the attribute, length. Letting Q denote a quantity; letting
magnitudes of Q be designated by a, b, c, and for any three magnitudes,
a, b, and c, of Q, letting a + b = c mean that c is entirely composed of discrete
parts a and b, Hlders axioms for an unbounded, continuous quantity are as
follows:
1. Given any two magnitudes, a and b, of Q, one and only one of the
following is true:
i. a is identical to b (i.e., a = b and b = a);
ii. a is greater than b and b is less than a (i.e., a > b & b < a); or
iii. b is greater than a and a is less than b (i.e., b > a & a < b).
2. For every magnitude, a, of Q, there exists a b in Q such that b < a.
3. For every pair of magnitudes, a and b, in Q, there exists a magni-
tude, c, in Q such that a + b = c.
4. For every pair of magnitudes, a and b, in Q, a + b > a and a + b > b.
5. For every pair of magnitudes, a and b, in Q, if a < b, then there exists

magnitudes, c and d, in Q such that a + c = b and d + a = b.
6. For every triple of magnitudes, a, b, and c, in Q, (a + b) + c = a + (b
+ c).
7. For every pair of classes, and , of magnitudes of Q, such that
i. each magnitude of Q belongs to one and only one of and ;
ii. neither nor is empty; and
iii. every magnitude in is less than each magnitude in , there ex-
ists a magnitude x in Q such that for every other magnitude, x,
in Q, if x < x, then x and if x > x, then x (depending on
the particular case, x may belong to either class).
I stress that these axioms do not describe the behavior of objects: of, say,
rods when concatenated or marbles of different weights combined in bal-
ance pans. They specify the structure of attributes. Whether this specification
obtains for any given attribute may sometimes be tested via observations of
the behavior of objects, but it is only in the case of extensive quantities, like
length or weight, that such tests directly reflect the hypothesized structure.
In the case of intensive quantities, like temperature or density, evidence is
always indirect. However, in both cases, relevant attributes are hypothesized
to possess the above structure and for the attributes measured in physics,
there is overwhelming evidence, both direct and indirect, that they do.
The significance of these axioms is that they show how the possibility
of measurement unfolds from the structure of the attribute involved. If an
attribute has this kind of structure then ratios of its magnitudes equal posi-
tive real numbers and, so, if any specific magnitude is adopted as the unit
of measurement, the measure of each magnitude is its ratio to the unit. The
measurement of any magnitude, a, in units of another, b, is then an estimate
of the ratio of a to b. Quantitative structure is one thing; measurement
another, but the latter always depends on the former. Measurement is not
something that can be imposed upon any attribute. Only quantitative attri-
butes can be measured.
This understanding of measurement has its roots in Book V of Euclids
Elements (Heath, 1908), assembled around the 4th century, BC. Euclid de-
fined the concept of ratio and showed how ratios of magnitudes (including
incommensurable magnitudes) relate to ratios of numbers (i.e., in modern
terms, rational numbers), a treatment, which in some respects anticipated
the modern concept of real number (Stein, 1990). It was left to Hlder
(1901) to specify the kind of structure that an attribute must have for ratios
of its magnitudes to equal real numbers.
Because Euclids Elements was a constant component of education from
ancient times until the twentieth century (with the possible exception of
the Early Middle Ages), his concept of ratio became a key component of
50 JOEL MICHELL
the paradigm of measurement informing the Western Intellectual Tradi-

tion and, crucially, informing the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth
century, which gave centre stage to quantitative methods. This paradigm
still informs modern quantitative science. To claim that an attribute is mea-
surable is to imply that it is quantitative.
During the twentieth century, a different paradigm, the representational,
came to dominate philosophy of science. Its trajectory stretches from Rus-
sell (1903) to Narens (2002) and contributions to measurement theory car-
ried out under its auspices (e.g., Krantz, Luce, Suppes, & Tversky, 1971)
are best understood within the Euclidean paradigm as indicating the sorts
of empirical situations that may be used to gather evidence relevant to the
issue of whether attributes are quantitative (Michell, 2007a, b). Krantz, et
al. (1971) clearly display how physical, extensive quantities, such as length,
weight, and time satisfy those of Hlders axioms that are directly testable;
and how physical, intensive quantities, such as density and temperature sat-
isfy their axioms of conjoint measurement, which provide indirect evidence
of quantitative structure. Not all attributes of interest to physicists have been
shown to be quantitative. An example is hardness. Whether the structure of
this attribute satisfies Hlders axioms remains, at present, unknown (Luce,
2005) and, while different degrees of hardness may be ordered, hardness is
not presently measurable.
(ii) Qualitative Attributes
What about qualitative attributes? In so far as the sorts of attributes that

psychologists aspire to measure are considered, because these are expe-
rienced as ordinal, I will confine discussion to ordinal attributes. From a
mathematical viewpoint, Bertrand Russell (1901) pioneered the idea that
order is of interest in its own right2 and this led to a specification of ordinal
structure. Mathematicians now distinguish many varieties of order, ranging
from the strict simple to the partial (Michell, 1990). Every quantity entails a
strict simple ordering of its magnitudes as, for example, the class of all dif-
ferent lengths is ordered, each length being greater or less than each other.
A strict simple order is one in which the relevant order relation is transitive,
asymmetric and connected. Letting xRy mean that x stands in relation R to y,
these three properties are as follows.
1. A relation, R, is transitive upon a class if and only if for every x, y,

and z in that class, if xRy and yRz, then xRz.
2. A relation, R, is asymmetric upon a class if and only if for every x and
y in that class, if xRy, then not yRx.
3. A relation, R, is connected upon a class if and only if for every x and

y in that class such that x y, either xRy or yRx.
These axioms describe what is common to all of those sequences we en-

counter in life when, figuratively speaking, things can be lined up in such
a way that with respect to any two in the sequence, one always comes be-
fore the other (connexity), if one comes before another, the second does
not precede the first (asymmetry) and whenever one things comes before
another and the later comes before something else, then the first always
comes before the third (transitivity). Of course, putting the matter in com-
mon parlance, this way, shows how dependent we are upon both spatial
and temporal metaphors when describing order. We speak of things being
lined up and of one thing coming before another. The fact that space and time
are not only ordinal in structure, but quantitative as well means that we
easily slide from these metaphors into thinking that the sequences they are
used to describe are also quantitative. Likewise, sequences that are corre-
lated with spatial or temporal orders, such as the sequence of intellectual,
developmental stages, may be assumed to be quantitative because of this
association. Thus, psychologists easily came to think that intellectual devel-
opment parallels chronological age in being quantitative and, thus, saw IQ
as a measurement of intelligence.
However, comparing Hlders seven axioms with these three conditions
for a strict, simple order, it is clear that the concept of quantity involves
more than order. Quantity is order plus something else, viz., additive struc-
ture. Mere order lacks additive structure. Nonetheless, since order alone
does not rule out the possibility of quantitative structure, those who want to
measure qualitative attributes often feel free to speculate that the attributes
of interest to them are really quantitative. Psychologists have gone further
and concluded that the attributes they aspire to measure are quantitative,
even though they have no scientific evidence sustaining this conclusion. In
concluding this they have used a number of forms of argument. It is instruc-
tive to review these, for while they fail to establish the desired conclusion,
reviewing them will sharpen our focus on the relevant issues.
THE INFERENCE FROM ORDER TO QUANTITY
(i) Pythagoreanism
There is a subterranean, Pythagorean current beneath the flow of West-

ern culture (Kahn, 2001; Riedweg, 2002), one presuming that the un-
derlying structure to reality is quantitative. Filtered through Platonism in
philosophy (see, for example, Joost-Gaugier, 2006) and via Augustinian
52 JOEL MICHELL
theology (McEvoy, 1987), it is manifest in our preference for quantitative

conceptions over non-quantitative ones in circumstances where direct ex-
perience shows otherwise. The world of ordinary experience is Aristotelian
in the sense that we seem to find both quantitative and qualitative attributes
therein. It is as if the Pythagorean inhabits another world, one in which
reality is composed entirely of quantities and in which qualitatively ordered
attributes are always seen as latently quantitative. If the Pythagorean doc-
trine that all things are numbers (Burnet, 1914, p. 52) is understood to
mean that all attributes are quantitative, then it follows deductively that all
qualitatively-ordered attributes are quantitative, despite appearances, and,
therefore, in principle, measurable. For some, this Pythagorean world is
taken to be the world of science. This current is discernable in the historical
course of psychology (Murphy, 1967) and has often found verbal expres-
sion, as, for example, in Thorndikes much used credo, that whatever exists
at all exists in some amount (1918, p. 16).3 Despite its hold over our minds,
Pythagoreanism is contrary to the scientific spirit. Whether any attribute
is quantitative is an empirical issue and, so, from a scientific point of view,
must be judged on the basis of evidence and not philosophical dogma.
(ii) History of Quantitative Science
Amongst attributes now successfully measured in physics, some, in the

first instance were experienced only as qualitative orders. This has affected
the thinking of scientists and non-scientists alike, making it seem credible
that quantitative structure hides behind apparently ordinal attributes. For
the layperson, the most potent examples are temperature and pressure
because household instruments are used to measure them. These instru-
ments captured the publics imagination in the eighteenth century4 and
since then have provided ready metaphors for discussing qualitative attri-
butes (see Castle, 1995). We speak of barometers and thermometers for
many qualities, which although unmeasured are often discussed in quanti-
tative terms. However, these metaphors are theoretically loaded, exhibiting
qualitative attributes through metrical lenses. One might not believe that
some putative barometer for one or another quality measures it, but that
metaphor primes us to believe in the attributes measurability.
Within science, the slippery slope from order to quantity became a meth-
odological principle, the quantitative imperative (Michell, 1990). As Bunge
noted, The thesis that every ordinal scale can be replaced by a quantity
or magnitude has been taken for granted in physics ever since Galilei:
it is an unspoken methodological principle (1973, p. 111). By the nine-
teenth century, The world [was] seen as constituted by numerical magni-
tudes (Hacking, 1983, p. 242; see also Wise, 1995) and inevitably aspiring
sciences absorbed this imperative. Considering the history of psychophys-

ics, Titchener remarked on the constantly recurring argument that S [sen-
sation intensity] must be measurable because it is a magnitude, because we
can speak, intelligently and intelligibly, of more and less of it (1905, p.
lxiii). The fact that other human sciences followed psychophysics (Michell,
2007a) encouraged wider public acceptance of the idea that measurement
of qualitative, ordinal attributes is an inevitable feature of progress in dis-
ciplines like economics and management, and domains such as public ad-
ministration (Porter, 1995) and justice (Spigelman, 2002).
While the history of science may seem to suggest that all ordinal attri-
butes are really quantitative, this is an illusion. The history of science actu-
ally teaches the fallibility of our judgment, particularly in cases where we try
to second-guess nature. The success of quantitative physics implies no more
about the appropriateness of quantitative concepts for psychological attri-
butes than the success of any specific observational method in one sphere
implies about its appropriateness for any other. We need to know whether
the two contexts are similar in relevant ways. Physics and psychology deal
with different attributes and, so, before we can know whether quantitative
concepts are appropriate for psychological attributes, we need to know
whether such attributes are quantitative.
(iii) Explanatory Simplicity
Russell noted that: Number is of all conceptions, the easiest to op-

erate with, and science seeks everywhere for an opportunity to apply it
(1896/1983, p. 301), meaning that number enables applications of quanti-
tative mathematics with its limitless supply of numerical methods, inference
rules, and theorems. However, quantification entails deeper benefits, en-
abling parsimonious explanations of change within attributes and relations
between them.
Quantitative attributes possess two features enabling this parsimony: ad-
ditive structure and homogeneity. For example, the same length difference
may supplement any given length, as, say, lengths of 10 meters and 100
meters may each be increased by the same length, say one metre. In this
respect, the attribute of hardness seems to be different. It has been assessed
via Mohs ordinal scale since 1824 (Jerrard & McNeill, 1992) and it may yet
prove to be quantitative, but, as currently understood, hardness differences
seem non-homogeneous. That is, such differences might not be differences
in amount; instead, they might be differences in kind. That is, whatever con-
stitutes differences in hardness might be a different kind of thing at differ-
ent degrees of hardness. Then explanations of change of hardness would
54 JOEL MICHELL
be more complex than explanations of change of length. The former might

even require different laws for different degrees.
When relations between attributes are considered, quantitative concepts
again enable simpler explanations. For example, because they are quantita-
tive, the relationship between density, mass, and volume, viz., that mass =
density volume, has a simple mathematical form. However, if ordinal assess-
ment were the only possibility, the relationship would appear more com-
plex:
a. With volume fixed, mass increases with density and vice versa;
b. With density fixed, mass increases with volume and vice versa; and
c. With mass fixed, volume increases with decreases in density and
vice versa.
Furthermore, complex as these three laws are, they do not track the way
specific changes in any one attribute are linked to specific changes in oth-
ers. Again, that might require separate, specific laws for individual degrees.
With ordinal attributes, a web of complexity stands where quantification
promises simplicity.
Intensive Attributes, Additive Structure and Homogeneity

Simplicity, however, comes at a cost. It requires that differences between
degrees of the relevant attribute must be both mutually homogeneous and
additively structured. As long as quantitative science dealt only with exten-
sive attributes, like length and weight, these requirements were unproblem-
atic because then, as Bradley neatly put it, the components fall asunder
and are visible side by side (1895, p. 11). However, when first applied to
intensive attributes it was not clear how additive structure should be un-
derstood. Cross (1998) notes that the medieval philosopher, John Duns
Scotus resolved this problem. Scotus showed how qualitative increase or
diminution could be thought of as involving the addition or subtraction of
homogeneous parts of the attribute, even if not parts of the object possessing
the attribute. With extensive attributes, the quantitative structure of the
attribute is displayed in the behavior of objects possessing magnitudes; as,
for example, the behavior of rigid, straight rods of different lengths dis-
plays the additive structure of length. Scotuss analysis required distinguish-
ing attributes from objects and grasping the logical independence between
the behavior of objects and the structure of attributes. Just as there is no
logical necessity that the concatenation of rods must reflect additive rela-
tions between lengths (because how a thing behaves in any situation may,
in principle, be a function of any of its attributes), so there is no logical
necessity that the existence of additive structure within any quantitative at-
tribute must depend upon the possibility of our being able to appropriately
concatenate relevant objects. That is, it is possible to conceive of quantita-

tive increase in attributes even when there is no known additive operation
involving relevant objects. This was Scotuss insight and he expressed it in
relation to heat as follows:
Sometimes a tepid [degree] added to a tepid [degree] in diverse subjects

does not increase [heat]; [but] this is accidental, on account of the extension
and dispersal of the parts. If [the new tepid degree] were in the same [ex-
tended] part of a subject with the pre-existing tepidness, then [the subject]
would certainly be increased and hotter. (As quoted in Cross (1998, p. 190).
At the time, the dominant view was that hot and cold are qualities because
they are experienced as merely ordinal and there are no concatenation
operations upon hot or cold objects that directly reflect additive structure.
Despite this, Scotus saw that we are able to conceive of increase in heat,
by analogy with increase in length, as involving addition of homogeneous
parts of the attribute, except that such addition is not via concatenation of
separate objects, but occurs within one object as, for example, when a con-
tainer of water is heated by a flame, thereby increasing the quantity of heat.
This insight implies that the distinction between extensive and intensive
quantities is a relative one and not intrinsic to them as quantities. It has to do
with processes involved in discovering quantitative structure, rather than
with the character of that attributes structure itself, although, at first sight,
it seems the other way around. This is because extensive magnitudes are
experienced directly as both ordered and additive, while intensive magni-
tudes are experienced directly only as ordered. The quantitative structure
of intensive magnitudes is only ever known indirectly.5
Scotus successfully augmented the Euclidean paradigm of measurement,
including intensive quantities and this breakthrough endured. Consider
Kants understanding of measurement and quantity. As with Scotus, Kants
treatment of these issues was infused with the Euclidean paradigm (Suther-
land, 2004), but he had the advantage of four more centuries of scientific
progress, including the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century
and the subsequent quantification of intensive attributes, like density and
force. His understanding of the intensive-extensive distinction, however, is
remarkably similar to that of Scotus. Kant thought of intensive quantities
as, like extensive quantities, composed of additively interrelated homoge-
neous magnitudes, each magnitude being a part of those greater than it
and having as parts all lesser magnitudes.
Those who thought of qualitative, ordinal attributes as quantitative, now
had in Scotuss augmented Euclidean paradigm, a conceptual framework
within which such a way of thinking was intelligible. This package was so
successful and its simplicity so seductive that by the end of the nineteenth
century it seemed to many psychologists to be the only scientific option. For
56 JOEL MICHELL
example, the founders of the British and American psychometric tradition,

right from the outset foreclosed discussion on the matter: Francis Galton
insisted that until the phenomena of any branch of knowledge have been
submitted to measurement and number, it cannot assume the status and
dignity of science (1879, p. 147) and James McKeen Cattell, that Psychol-
ogy cannot attain the certainty and exactness of the physical sciences, un-
less it rests on a foundation of experiment and measurement (1890, p.
373). The augmented Euclidean paradigm seemed the ideal vehicle for this
vision of the future of psychology.
It should be noted in passing, however, in keeping with the theme of this
book, that other traditions of psychological thought, particularly in conti-
nental Europe were not seduced by the attractions of this package and pre-
ferred qualitative approaches. This showed a greater sensitivity, not only to
the directly-experienced character of the phenomena under investigation
but also to the logic of science, for while the explanatory advantages that
quantitative concepts deliver are real and significant, accrual of these ad-
vantages in psychology depends directly upon its attributes being quantita-
tive. There is no advantage consistent with the aims of science to be gained
by applying quantitative concepts to psychological attributes where these
attributes are not quantitative. Our overarching aim in science is to find out
how things are in nature, the structure of the attributes investigated and
how those attributes interrelate, both causally and otherwise. Quantitative
physics derives advantages from quantitative concepts only because it deals
with quantitative attributes and it can never advance science to conceptual-
ize attributes as quantitative when they are not. If psychological attributes
are actually non-quantitative, then science is only advanced by conceptual-
izing them as they are, not as we might want them to be. The preference of
these continental schools for qualitative methods was entirely justified by
what was then known about psychological attributes.
(iv) Homogeneity and the Deduction of Quantity from Order
The reasons considered in the sections above persuaded many, but a

few scholars wanted more. It seemed that quantitative structure might be
deduced from the character of merely qualitative, ordinal attributes alone.
The degrees of any such attribute, all being degrees of the same kind are
thereby mutually homogeneous. Whenever one degree is greater than an-
other, must it not contain the lesser degree as a part and, so, be composed
additively of homogeneous parts? Thus, must it not possess additive struc-
ture and, so, be quantitative? This reasoning is a bridge too far. It not only
fails logically to deliver its conclusion; it reveals the reason why that conclu-
sion cannot be delivered by indicating conditions under which qualitative,

ordinal attributes are not quantitative.
The philosopher, F. H. Bradley (1895), reasoned along the above lines.6
He was interested in the intensity of mental states (or, as he called them,
psychical states) and the issue of whether mere order entails quantitative
structure. From the observation that psychical states are ordered according
to their degree of intensity, he concluded, all psychical states if not mea-
surable in fact are at least measurable in principle (p. 11). His argument
was general, hinging on his premise that Degrees not resting on units in
the end are meaningless (p. 11). Here is his summary:
In every perceived series of degrees the second member can be seen to in-
volve the first plus something else of the same sort. All psychical states, appar-
ently without exception, stand to one another as greater or less or again as
equal amounts of my personal being. All psychical states therefore (it would
seem to follow) must contain a certain amount of common units. It is only in
spatial and temporal wholes that the components fall asunder and are visible
side by side. And, apart from this, measurement in the proper sense seems
to be impracticable. But, apart from this, measurement does not appear in
principle and in abstract to be impossible. (p. 11).
Abstracting from Bradleys psychological context, his argument is that any

two different degrees of the same kind, call them x and y (where, say, x is
greater than y) are such that x is entirely composed of y plus something else
of the same kind. (The something else, of course, is the difference between x
and y). Thus, x and y are just different amounts of the same kind of thing,
that is, are composed of different numbers of common units. Hence, they
are quantitative. Therefore, order entails quantity.
This argument relies upon the suppressed premise that degrees x and y
(where x > y) are qualitatively homogeneous with the difference between
x and y. However, not everyone would have agreed with this. For example,
Russell thought that:
We have, at the outset, a fundamental division of quantities into two kinds,

extensive and intensive, according as a change of quantity is, or is not, a quan-
tity of the same kind as the quantity changed. A change of length is itself a
length, but a change of temperature or illumination is not itself hot or bright.
(Russell, 1897/1990, p. 75).
One might disagree about whether this is the basis of the extensive/inten-
sive distinction, but it appears, for at least some attributes, there is a real
issue as to whether differences between degrees are qualitatively homoge-
neous with the degrees themselves. Russell (1897/1990) later added the
example of pleasure (i.e., is the difference between two degrees of pleasure
itself a degree of pleasure?) and it, together with other examples suggests
58 JOEL MICHELL
that degrees and differences between degrees might not always be mutually
homogeneous. For example, two legal judgments may differ in the degree
of justice involved, but is the difference between any two degrees of justice
the same kind of thing as a degree of justice? Or two prisons may differ in
the degree of freedom that inmates have, but is this difference the same
kind of thing as a degree of freedom?
However, when Bradleys argument is reframed in terms of differences
between degrees, the significance of this issue disappears. The reframed ar-
gument is as follows. Let x, y, and z be any three degrees of an ordered
attribute such that x > y > z. The difference between x and z is entirely
composed of two discrete parts, viz., the difference between x and y, and
the difference between y and z. Hence, it is an additive sum of parts and a
similar conclusion applies with any three degrees. Therefore, the range of
degrees is quantitative. But this argument in turn presumes that the class of
differences between all pairs of degrees is homogeneous.
In considering this argument, it is tempting to think of degrees as like
points on a straight line and differences as like intervals between points.
Via this analogy, the argument seems valid. Geometric analogies have been
applied to ordered qualities since Nicole Oresme in the fourteenth century
(Clagett, 1968) and are implicit in using thermometers or barometers as
metaphors for qualitative attributes and, of course, in using rating scales
for assessment of psychological attributes. Nonetheless, such analogies are
systematically misleading.
Bradleys argument, as reframed presumes two things. First, that for any
given ordinal attribute, the differences between degrees are mutually ho-
mogeneous and, second, that the class of these differences is appropriately
structured, viz., mutually interrelated by analogy with intervals between
points on a straight line. Neither is necessarily true. I will not dwell upon
the second because I have treated it elsewhere (Michell, 2009). However, in
support of qualitative methods in psychology, the first presumption reveals
a neglected window of opportunity.
The philosopher, R. G. Collingwood, while an admirer of Bradley, con-
tradicted his argument when, in discussing certain kinds of ordinal attri-
butes, denied that these things must be in principle measurable, on the
ground that whatever exceeds another thing must exceed it by a definite
and therefore measurable amount (1933, pp. 7172). To illustrate his
point, Collingwood considered the psychological attribute, sensation of heat
and claimed that:
As I move my hand nearer to the fire, I feel it grow hotter; but every increase
in the heat I feel is also a change in the kind of feeling I experience; from a
faint warmth through a decided warmth it passes to a definite heat, first pleas-
ant, then dully painful, then sharply painful; the heat at one degree soothes
me, at another excites me, at another torments me. I can detect as many dif-
ferences in kind as I can detect differences in degree; and these are not two
sets of differences but one single set. I can call them differences in degree if
I like, but I am using the word in a special sense, a sense in which differences
of degree not merely entail, but actually are, differences of kind. (1933, pp.
7273)
Observing that differences between degrees of sensations of heat are dif-

ferences of a peculiar type, which are differences at once in degree and
kind (p. 73), Collingwood concluded that This is why they cannot be
measured, for measurement applies only to pure differences of degree (p.
73). By pure differences of degree he meant those that are not also dif-
ferences in kind. In other words, he insisted that a necessary condition for
an ordinal attribute to be quantitative is that the differences between its degrees
be mutually homogeneous. He concluded that the attribute, sensations of heat,
is not measurable even though it is ordinal because the class of differences
between its degrees is not homogeneous, thereby invalidating Bradleys ar-
gument from order to quantity.
The crucial point is that if the differences between the degrees of an
ordinal attribute are not homogeneous (i.e., not differences of the same
kind), then that attribute is not quantitative, and, thus, not measurable.
Such an attribute cannot satisfy Hlders axioms of quantity. If Hlders axi-
oms apply to any attribute, then they also apply to the differences between
its magnitudes, and if differences between degrees are heterogeneous, they
do not satisfy Hlders axioms because, for example, they fail axiom 1, be-
ing not intrinsically greater than, less than or equal to one another. Hence,
the relevant attribute must be non-quantitative.
Collingwoods argument is directly relevant to psychology, but psycholo-
gists have ignored it. While this is not remarkable, given that his argument
appeared in a philosophical work and that he is a minor figure in twenti-
eth century philosophy; it is remarkable when we consider that a similar
argument had been presented fifty years earlier by von Kries (1882)7 in
his widely-cited critique of psychophysical measurement. Von Kries8 (1882)
reasoned that within any increasing series of sensations, sensation differ-
ences can never be equal because with respect to any two increases from
different points in the series, one increment is something quite differ-
ent from the other; they admit of no comparison (Niall, 1995, p. 291).
This is, von Kries claimed that psychophysical measurement is not possible
because the increments are mutually heterogeneous. That this objection
was pretty much passed over and had little impact cannot be taken as any
reflection upon its intrinsic merits. Later, von Kries developed a logical
interpretation of probability based on the very arguments he used to reject
the measurement of sensation (Heidelberger, 2004, p. 229) and the same
argument applied in that new context (von Kries, 1886) influenced the dis-
60 JOEL MICHELL
sertation on probability being written a generation later by the young John

Maynard Keynes (see Fioretti, 2001).
Keynes (1921) thought of probabilities as degrees of partial entailment
holding between sets of premises and conclusions. In cases where the prem-
ises do not entail the conclusion deductively, they may still support the con-
clusion, this relation of support being thought of by Keynes as objective
(i.e., in the argument) and not merely subjective (i.e., in the mind of the
arguer), as critics maintained. Following von Kries, Keynes recognized that
a degree of probability is not composed of some homogeneous material,
and is not apparently divisible into parts of like character with one another
(1921, p. 30) and, so, concluded that across the class of arguments provid-
ing good but inconclusive reasons for a conclusion, differences between de-
grees of partial entailment may be qualitatively heterogeneous. So this kind
of objection to the measurement of ordinal attributes was in the air prior to
the Second World War and influenced one of the centurys greatest minds.
While the idea that homogeneity is necessary for quantity is as old as
Euclid,9 it is quite another matter to recognize the possibility of non-homo-
geneity in the differences between degrees of an ordinal attribute. None-
theless, this possibility is only a small step away from the related idea of
heterogeneous differences between determinate qualities falling under a
general determinable,10 as, for example, the determinate qualities of being
a dog, being a cat, being a human, etc. fall under the general determinable,
being an animal. The difference between being a dog and being a cat, for in-
stance, is qualitatively different to that between, say, being a dog and being a
human. Furthermore, sometimes the determinates falling under a general
determinable are hierarchically ordered, as, for example, the qualities of be-
ing an animal, being an ungulate, being a perissodactyl, being a horse are ordered
because all horses are perissodactyls, all perissodactyls are ungulates, all
ungulates are animals. However, such an ordering is not also quantitative
because the differences between the consecutive qualities are not mutually
homogeneous.
These were matters of general knowledge. For example, according to
Sutherland (2004), Kant contrasted the part-whole relation obtaining be-
tween magnitudes of the same quantity and the part-whole relation obtain-
ing between hierarchically ordered concepts, that is, all pairs of concepts
X and Y, where all X are Y. The important contrast is between the fact that
with quantities, relations of equality hold between the differences between
some pairs of magnitudes and the fact that equality relations never hold
between the differences between concepts so ordered. This is because in
the latter case the differences are heterogeneous. That is, for example, the
difference between being ungulate and being a perissodactyl is qualitatively dif-
ferent to the difference between, say, being animal and being ungulate. Such
a hierarchically ordered set of concepts constitutes a counterexample to
Bradleys argument and, so, displays the fact that mere order does not en-
tail quantity.
Given the influence of Kants philosophy upon late nineteenth and early
twentieth century German philosophy and, therefore, upon Continental
psychology during that period, Kants observations on this point may also
help explain the widespread preference within Continental psychology for
qualitative methods in contexts similar to those where British and Ameri-
can psychologists favoured quantitative methods. Their Kantian heritage
inoculated them against the temptation to see every ordinal attribute as
quantitative. However, Kants influence was weaker at that time in Britain
and the US.
The failure of these psychologists to take account of these matters also
reflects the path taken by the representational paradigm of measurement
because it dominated American psychology after the 1930s (Michell, 1999).
Whereas the Euclidean paradigm locates the measurability or otherwise of
an attribute in the character of the attributes structure, in American psy-
chology the emphasis for most of the twentieth century, under the influ-
ence of the representational paradigm, was upon the numerical representa-
tion of empirical relations between objects (Michell, 2007b). The character
of the attribute was no longer taken to be an issue. By the time attention
focused again on attributes and quantitative structure (beginning with
Mundy (1987) and Swoyer (1987)), the issue of the heterogeneity of differ-
ences was long forgotten and, so, not attended to. The issue is fundamental,
however, not only because it is logically possible that differences between
degrees of an ordinal attribute could be mutually heterogeneous, but also
because it is possible that at least some of the attributes that psychologists
and others aspire to measure possess this characteristic, thereby making
those attributes unmeasurable in principle.
An Example of an Ordinal Attribute with Heterogeneous Differences

Between Degrees
As an example, consider the Functional Independence Measure men-
tioned by Embretson (2006). It is used to assess how independently the
elderly function physically in their daily lives and consists of the following
series of items, listed in order, from most to least difficult:
1. Climbing stairs;
2. Transferring to bathtub;
3. Bathing;
4. Walking;
5. Dressing upper body;
6. Independent toileting;
7. Transferring to bed;
62 JOEL MICHELL
8. Dressing lower body;

9. Mobility without a wheelchair;
10. Bladder control;
11. Performing personal grooming; and
12. Bowel control.
It appears that elderly people generally lose the ability to climb stairs
unaided before losing the ability to transfer unaided to a bathtub and that
ability, in turn, is generally lost before the ability to bathe independently,
and so on. These sorts of facts order the items. A persons pattern of physi-
cal capabilities, as assessed via this scale indicates a specific degree of func-
tional independence.11 The idea is that a person able to complete all of the
activities that another person can plus at least one further activity on the list
is the more independent of the two. Thus, degrees of functional indepen-
dence are homogeneous (because each degree includes all lower degrees).
However, differences between degrees seem to be mutually heterogeneous.
For example, the difference between being able, on the one hand, and be-
ing unable, on the other, to climb stairs, and the difference between being
able and being unable to transfer to a tub are differences of qualitatively
diverse kinds, and each of these in turn is of another kind to that between
being able and being unable to bathe independently, and so on for the
other differences between degrees of this attribute. Because of this, it is not
obvious that the differences between degrees of functional independence stand
in intrinsic relations of greater than, less than or equality to one another.
If we try to think of such differences as being thoroughly homogeneous,
we face the question, what could a decrease in functional independence be
other than an inability to do some kind of specific daily activity that one was
previously able to do independently? As far as I can see, there is no homo-
geneous stuff, independence, adhering in various amounts to each person;
there is only the set of distinct capacities to do the range of different daily
activities constituting total functional independence from others, which, in
being lost one by one, mark decreasing degrees of that attribute. Before it
would be safe to conclude that differences between degrees of functional inde-
pendence are ordered, evidence of non-arbitrary order relations between
such differences would be required. Otherwise, the safest conclusion is that
functional independence is a merely ordinal attribute.12
To generalize from this example, given an attribute that is experienced
only as ordinal, it is never safe to conclude that it is quantitative because
it is possible that differences between its degrees may be heterogeneous.
For those interested to investigate the possibility that such an attribute is
quantitative, the first task is produce evidence of non-arbitrary order relations upon
differences between its degrees.
CONCLUSIONS
If there are, as Collingwood argues, ordered attributes in which differences

between degrees are qualitatively heterogeneous then such attributes are,
as Collingwood noted, intrinsically non-quantitative and, therefore, unmea-
surable. I will refer to any such attribute as one possessing intrinsically non-
metric degrees (or IND). Recognizing the possibility of IND alters the com-
plexion of not only Bradleys argument from order to quantity, to which it
stands as an invalidating counterexample, but also the arguments looked at
earlier in this paper. This is because it raises the possibility that psychologi-
cal attributes have this form. That is, it raises the possibility of mental IND
(or MIND). Given the possibility of MIND, qualitative methods are at least
as scientifically reasonable as quantitative methods. Let me expand upon
these conclusions.
The fact that MIND appears to exist is of enormous significance for psy-
chology. First of all, it has implications for the reasonableness of all the ar-
guments that psychologists have given for preferring quantitative to quali-
tative methods. It means that in the contest between the Pythagorean and
Aristotelian visions of reality, it is the Aristotelian that is to be preferred.
All of the attributes that psychometricians aspire to measure are directly
experienced only as ordinal and it is a genuine empirical question whether
in each case the differences between degrees are heterogeneous. Consider-
ing the character of the items used in psychological tests, the psychological
processes involved in producing test responses would appear to favour the
hypothesis of heterogeneity. For example, to take the case of tests of math-
ematical ability, it seems that a person of high mathematical ability, say, does
not differ from a person of merely moderate ability by possessing the same
kind of knowledge, skills and strategies that distinguish the moderately able
from persons of low ability. Instead such a person has a high degree of abil-
ity precisely because of the qualitatively different, superior mathematical
knowledge, skills and strategies possessed. If such attributes are quantita-
tive, then not only is their quantitative structure yet to be discovered, but
also their character as different amounts of some homogeneous quantity is
yet to be specified.
Furthermore, the possibility of MIND means that it is not reasonable to
infer from the history of science alone that psychological attributes must
be quantitative. It may be that at least some psychological attributes pos-
sess a positive feature (i.e., mutually heterogeneous differences between
degrees) that distinguishes them from the kind of physical attributes that
have proved to be quantitative. Therefore, before concluding that psycho-
logical attributes are quantitative, it is necessary to investigate the possibility
that these attributes possess MIND.
64 JOEL MICHELL
For the same reason, it is not reasonable to infer that psychological at-
tributes must be quantitative just from the fact that quantification offers
simpler forms of explanation. Because of the possibility of MIND, that pos-
sibility must be first investigated even though, if true, it may require much
more complex forms of investigation. As Galileo stressed,
We must not ask Nature to accommodate herself to what might seem to us

the best disposition and order, but must adapt our intellect to what she has
made, certain that such is best and not something else. (as quoted in Crom-
bie, 1994, p. 45).
Secondly, the possibility of MIND, combined with two facts, viz., that all
of the attributes that psychometricians aspire to measure are experienced
only as ordinal, and that 150 years of psychometric research has failed to
produce hard evidence that such attributes are quantitative, jointly imply
that the use of qualitative methods in psychological research is not only
justified, it implies that qualitative methods are, on all purely scientific
grounds, not to be preferred any less than quantitative methods.
In its turn, this implication makes clear the fact that the mainstreams ob-
session with the exclusive use of quantitative methods is not good scientific
practice. In its turn, this implies that this obsession serves extra-scientific
interests. Indeed, it adds more weight to my contention that psychometrics
is a pathological science (Michell, 2000, 2004, 2008). In the excitement
of founding a new discipline, Fechners methodological turn was seen as
a superhighway through the wilderness, a mistake magnified 60 years ago
when quantification was enforced as the only straight and narrow way to
the kingdom of science. The possibility of MIND invites us to look again,
more soberly, at the place of qualitative methods in psychology and at the
wisdom of the methodological preferences of those schools of psychologi-
cal thought that flourished in Continental Europe prior to World War Two.
NOTES
1. See Michell & Ernst (1996, 1997) for an English translation.

2. Indeed, Russell (1897/1990, 1903) adopted the idiosyncratic view that order
alone, rather than order plus additivity defines quantity (Michell, 1997).
3. McCall (1922) gives a disquisition expounding Thorndikes Pythagoreanism.
4. For histories of these devices and their popularisation see Middleton (1964,
1966) and Frngsmyr, Heilbron, and Rider (1990).
5. The relativity of the extensive/intensive distinction is clearly demonstrated
by showing that had our sensori-motor capacities been different, the additive
structure of a quantity like length, which we know as extensive, might only have
been known indirectly (i.e., as intensive). See Michell (1993).
6. Bergson had proposed a similar argument in 1889 (see Bergson, 1913) and
while Bradley makes no reference to him, there are striking points of contact
between their discussions.
7. Niall (1995) provides an English translation of von Kriess paper.
8. Von Kries was a sensory physiologist who formulated the famous quantity
objection to Fechners psychophysics. He is also of some importance due to
his writings on the concept of probability.
9. Mueller (1981) discusses its central role in his commentary.
10. On the distinction between determinates and determinables see Johnson
(1921).
11. Strictly speaking, functional independence is not a psychological attribute. It
is a social attribute, which the scale indexes via a range of physical abilities,
absence of any one of which contributes to a persons dependence upon
helpers. Thus, the attribute assessed is actually a rather complex socio-physical
one.
12. Embretson notes that the Rasch model fits Functional Independence scale data
reasonably well (2006, p. 52). However, this cannot be taken as evidence that
the relevant attribute is quantitative. The statistical tests used are not sensitive
to the issue of whether the relevant attribute is quantitative and data involving
non-quantitative ordinal attributes may fit quantitative psychometric models.
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CHAPTER 4
STUDYING THE MOVEMENT

OF THOUGHT
Alex Gillespie and Tania Zittoun
Methodologies hide as well as reveal. The danger is that the affordances

of a methodology overshadow its limitations thus constraining research.
Paraphrasing the words of Karl Duncker (1945), the problem is that the
functioning of familiar methodologies narrows our perception of phenom-
ena so as to blind us to certain aspects. Duncker conducted experiments
on problem solving and functional fixedness. For example, he gave par-
ticipants matches, a candle, and a box of tacks, and asked them to fix the
candle to a soft wall. Duncker found that participants would try to tack the
candle to the wall directly or use the matches to melt it onto the wall. The
solution was to tack the box on to the wall and then use the box to support
the candle. Why did participants fail to see the role of the box in the solu-
tion? First, Duncker argued that participants were trapped in the conven-
tional use of the box as a means to store the tacks. Second, he pointed out
that the presence of the tacks and the possibility of melting the wax, and the
conventional use of both of these for securing things, blinded participants
to the secondary function of the box. In the present chapter we suggest
that much contemporary methodology has become functionally fixed on
identifying variables and consequently has become blind to the actuality of
psychological processes, namely, the situated real-time semiotic mediation
of thought and action.

70 ALEX GILLESPIE & TANIA ZITTOUN
The chapter begins with a discussion of two incommensurable para-

digms: one which takes objects as axiomatic, the other which takes process-
es as axiomatic. While the former brings objects into the foreground, the
latter brings processes into the foreground. Psychology is, for the most part,
within the paradigm of objects or things. This translates into a psychology
of variables with mechanistic relations. In contrast a psychology built within
a process paradigm would bring psychological transformation to the fore.
But unfortunately the dominance of the psychology of things, and the as-
sociated methodologies have, for the most part, rendered the movement
of thought invisible. By going back into the history of the discipline this
chapter examines research which started out with a process orientation and
sought to develop a methodology for studying psychological processes. In
particular, the focus is on the Wrzburg School, the second Leipzig School
and Vygotsky. From this brief historical review useful pointers about meth-
odologies for studying the movement of thought are obtained. The chap-
ter concludes by contributing to the development of a methodology for
studying the movement of thought, or semiotic mediation, which, although
building upon this earlier work, is also novel. The core idea is that contrary
to common assumptions the movement of thought is not always an internal
and private phenomenon, it sometimes has an external phase, for example,
in verbal utterances, writing, and the use of resources which is amenable to
rigorous analysis.
CARTESIAN AND HEGELIAN PARADIGMS
According to Thomas Kuhn (1962/1970) all sciences are embedded in

paradigms that are more or less implicit. These paradigms are sets of as-
sumptions, articles of faith, which are taken for granted. Paradigms are in-
commensurable. If they were not, then the so-called paradigms were mere
extensions of one another. Thus, the move from one paradigm to another
is discontinuous, and abrupt. Paradigm shifts are stimulated by the accu-
mulation of anomalies. Normally the tendency is to ignore anomalies. But
following the threads of these anomalies leads to the construction of a new
paradigm. It is rare for researchers to follow conflicting findings and ideas
because paradigms shape the way in which researchers see the world: what
they make observable overshadows that which is inexplicable.
Ivana Markov (1982) has used the Kuhnian concept of paradigm to
characterize two fundamental paradigms in psychology. There are those
who assume that the topic of study is first and foremost things and only
secondarily processes. On the other hand, there are those who assume that
processes constitute things just as much as things constituting processes.
Markov calls these the Cartesian and Hegelian Paradigms after their two
Studying the Movement of Thought 71
main proponents. Equally they could be called the thing and process par-
adigms. Wagoner (2009) calls these the product and process approaches,
and, at a psychological level, they overlap considerably with what Laursen
and Hoff (2006) call variable-centered and person-centered approaches.
What is critical is that the Hegelian paradigm shifts our ontology from ob-
jects toward processes, such that things both arise within processes and
constitute those processes. The methodological consequence, as we will
see, is that things and processes need to be understood together.
THE CARTESIAN PARADIGM
The Cartesian paradigm extends far beyond the work of Descartes, but Des-
cartes work is a useful typification of this paradigm. The Cartesian para-
digm includes the assumption that things in the world and in the mind
have a prior existence to processes, whether they be in the world or in
the mind. Within the Cartesian paradigm, things exist, and interactions
are secondary. The core idea is evident in Descartes somewhat infamous
ontological dualism (Rodis-Lewis, 1998). He distinguishes two ontological
realms: res extensa and res cogitans. Res extensa pertains to all that is extended
in three dimensional space, while res cogitans refers to all that appears in
the mind, including rational thought, such as a perceptual experience or
Pythagoras theorem. Res cogitans does not have any extension in three di-
mensional space.
The influence of this dualism contributed to the creation of empiri-
cism on the one hand and rationalism on the other (Markov, 1982). But
whether studying empirical objects in the world or rational objects of the
mind the key point, for the present chapter, is that in both cases, at both
ontological levels, the concern was with things, namely, things with ex-
tension (material objects) and things without extension (ideas and logical
relations). Within the Cartesian paradigm, things come first, and only then
can they enter into either material or logical relations.
In both ontological realms, that which is true is timeless. True logical
relations do not change. For example, geometry, Descartes argued, is true
for all time. The mind, which is a logical necessity, does not develop. It is,
he writes, conscious in all circumstances, even in the mothers womb (Des-
cartes, 1641). Descartes universe of truth, then, is like a Platonic realm of
ideal forms all existing outside of time. In Descartes scheme there is no de-
velopment or qualitative transformation, there is no growth of new forms.
Instead there is only the rearrangement of the parts. As with mathematics,
every finding was actually imminent within the assumptions, and as such,
nothing entirely novel can be found.
Much philosophy and science builds upon the Cartesian assumption

that things, either in the world or in mind, are primary. Bergson criticized
this tradition of thought for spatializingthat is for developing concepts
which conceal temporality within spatial metaphors (i.e., turning process-
es into things). For example, consider the ways in which time has been
measured: the movement of a pendulum, the falling of grains of sand, the
movement of the sun or its shadow, the movement of cogs, or the move-
ment of electrons in a digital circuit. In each case time is spatialized by be-
ing reduced to the movement of an object, or thing, between two places
without transformation. Within the Cartesian paradigm time is a pin-point
instant, constantly replaced by a future pin-point instant. Bergson (1910)
argued for an alternative conception of time called duration. Duration re-
fers to the phenomenological experience of time within which past, pres-
ent, and future co-exist in an irreversible movement (Valsiner, 1998). Melo-
dies, he pointed out, cannot be heard if time moves from one instant to the
next. In Ehrenfels (1988/1932) terminology melodies are a higher order
Gestalt because they exist in duration.
The Cartesian paradigm within psychology has several traces in contem-
porary research (Farr, 1996; Gillespie, 2006). Indeed, mainstream psychol-
ogy is built upon fundamentally Cartesian assumptions. First, the primary
objective of much psychology is to measure characteristics or variables.
These variables are then correlated or deemed causatively associated with
other variables. The Cartesian metaphor of a mechanistic universe is im-
minent. When change is evident, the question asked is: Which variable or
variables caused it? The assumption is that change needs explanation, but
variables do notthey are taken for granted.
The main problem with the Cartesian paradigm is that its root meta-
phor or thema (Holton, 1975), that the world first and foremost consists
of things, obscures the actuality of thought as a situated process. While the
Cartesian paradigm can conceive of, and has methodologies for, assessing
initial states and outcome states, it has trouble either conceiving or study-
ing that which happens in between. The relation between independent and
dependent variables are described in terms of probability statistics, but the
movement of thought in any given situation is not an abstract probability,
it is an actuality. Although the actuality of thought might move through po-
tentialities (see Sato, Wakabayashi, Nameda, Yasuda, & Watanabe this vol-
ume), each potentiality addressed by thought is an actual thought. Probabi-
listic statistics obscure variance, thus blending variant underlying processes
into a single abstract, and possibly non-existent, curve of probability. Within
such a methodological paradigm even asking questions about what actually
happened in a given case between input and output becomes problematic.
Studying a single case is seen to be worthless because within a paradigm
based on probability one can tell nothing on the basis of one case. Thus the
actuality of a given process (n = 1) is made invisible within the paradigm

(despite the entire statistical edifice being a collection of single cases).
Change, when observed, is always raised to the statistical level, variables
are postulated, and correlations sought. The resultant correlation, or lack
thereof, is given a reality status above the manifest process, which is often
empirically evident, within a given case.
The process that we are interested in is that of the stream of thought
(James, 1890), namely, the actual step-by-step sequence of semiotic media-
tion of thought and action. This movement of thought is what actually oc-
curs within a given case. It is the movement of thought by which a person
apprehends and gives meaning to their situation, and works out a plan of
action. In contrast to the Cartesian idea that the mind is understood as a
poor quality mirror reflecting the world more or less accurately, the ap-
proach we take is that mind is a mediator of action in the world. The chal-
lenge is to make this mediating movement of thought observable, not as a
statistical average, but as a singular but empirically analyzable process.
THE HEGELIAN PARADIGM
The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might say
that the former is refuted by the latter; similarly, when the fruit appears, the
blossom is shown up in its turn as a false manifestation of the plant, and
the fruit now emerges as the truth of it instead. These forms are not just
distinguished from one another, they also supplant one another as mutually
incompatible. Yet at the same time their fluid nature makes them moments of
an organic unity in which they not only do not conflict, but in which each is
as necessary as the other; and this mutual necessity alone constitutes the life
of the whole. (Hegel, 1807/1977, p. 2)
Hegel was a process philosopher (Markov, 1982). Skeptical of reifying

things he preferred to see them as aspects arising within the life of the
whole. Thus his basic unit of analysis was the process (which he called dia-
lectical) within which parts emerged and gained qualities, and within which
those parts gave qualities to the whole. Does the acorn come before the oak
tree? Is the oak tree superior to the acorn? According to Hegel, these ques-
tions do not make sense because both the acorn and the oak tree are dif-
ferent phases of the same process. Yet, although they are parts of the same
process, the acorn and the oak tree are not equivalent. There is genuine
non-tautological growth and transformation. Hegel wrote, somewhat flip-
pantly, that mathematics was boring because it was all tautology. His point
is that although new mathematical theorems might arise and discoveries
made, these are all tautology because the so-called newness was in fact im-
minent in the axiomatic assumptions of mathematics. The growth which

Hegel was interested in was qualitative transformation and the emergence
of non-tautological novelty.
Hegels philosophy is quite abstract. It was Dewey (1896) who brought
the process paradigm into the heart of psychology with his paper criticiz-
ing the study of stimulus-response relations in mechanistic terms. Initially
a Hegelian, and later a pragmatist, Deweys concern was always to under-
stand psychological processes, and the movement of thought, within the
life process. As he became a pragmatist, the life of the whole increas-
ingly became activitywhether individual or joint. Thus, the mind, Dewey
(1896) argued, is a phase of action. When human action gets blocked, then
mind arises. It is not, he argued, a mirror of the natural world as Descartes
assumed (Rorty, 1981). Mind, he argued, is the means through which we
reconstruct our relation to the world. In the thinking of James (1890) and
Mead (1912) mind became a stream of thought with a flow of ideas each
mediating the next and the ongoing activity. In the language of Vygotsky
and the post-Vygotskians, mind is semiotic mediation, that is, the mediation
of thought and action by signs.
The Hegelian paradigm is best understood when contrasted with the
Cartesian paradigm. Instead of the mind being an ontological realm of
pure ideas, mind is a process. Instead of mind mirroring the world with
more or less accuracy, mind is conceived to be a mediator of activity, carving
out paths of action. Instead of the mind being timeless, the mind develops
both over the life-course, and in the micro-details of the stream of thought.
Not only do the parts explain the whole, as described by the Cartesian para-
digm, but the whole can also be used to explain the parts. Instead of mecha-
nistic, or even ballistic, interactions between variables, there are recipro-
cal transformative relations. Instead of mechanistic cause and effect there
is purposive human action. Instead of everything being pre-given and the
rearrangement of the parts following mechanistic rules, there is genuine
emergence of novelty. At the level of thematic metaphors (Holton, 1975) it
is the difference between a machine and an evolving ecosystem.
It is the conception of the mind as a stream of thought or semiotic medi-
ation that the present chapter focuses upon. This conception of mind has,
it is argued, been obscured by the Cartesian assumptions in much psychol-
ogy. Methodology has been developed for studying the relation between
variables, not processes of mediation and transformation. The statistical
relation between variables decontextualizes the mind to an average which
is divorced from situated here-and-now activity settings.
The aim of the next section is to return to some early central European
research traditions in order to gain some insights into how to develop meth-
odologies which can make the stream of thought observable in research.
These traditions of research were firmly based within the Hegelian para-
digm, and they began developing process methodologies which have since
been overshadowed by the widespread functional fixedness on variables
METHODOLOGIES FOR STUDYING MENTAL PROCESSES
A widespread and early assumption for the discipline of psychology was that
thought is internal, and thus the challenge for psychology was to develop
a scientific and objective study of this internal phenomenon. To early psy-
chologists the most obvious methodology, inherited from Descartes, was
what became known as introspection. As Danziger (1980) has pointed out,
there were many varieties of introspection. Some used it in a very restricted
and experimental manner to study only perceptual processes (e.g., Wun-
dt), some used the method more broadly to study the complexity of mental
life (e.g., James), and some used the method of phenomenology to address
more philosophical issues (e.g., Brentano and Husserl), which derives di-
rectly from Descartes method of radical doubt.
Although common, the method of introspection was hotly contested (Ly-
ons, 1986). Critical voices pointed to the often contradictory results. How
could divergent introspective accounts be reconciled? What about the pro-
cess of introspecting interfering with the process of thought itself? Could
the mind observe itself at work without interfering with its own processes?
Wundt characterized the problem of introspection as being like Baron von
Mnchhausen trying to lift himself up by his own pigtails.
Wundt, being aware of the problems of introspection, yet believing that
some sort of introspection was necessary, dismissed introspection in gen-
eral, as practiced by the philosophers, and instead introduced an experi-
mental and greatly circumscribed introspective methodology. For Wundt
the main problem was that the mental process precedes the reporting of
it, and in that gap, distortion becomes possible. He reduced this source
of error by creating experimental apparatuses, which would standardize
the presentation of stimuli, thus enabling the perceiver to receive identical
inputs repeatedly. Moreover, he encouraged training participants to report
upon their thought processes quickly and reliably. Finally, he insisted that
the method only be used to study relatively simple mental processes, such
as perception. Thus introspective reports were, for example, on the size,
sequence, duration, weight, color, or intensity of a stimulus. In these ways,
with repeated presentation of simple stimuli and prompt reporting, his ex-
perimental method reduced the error between the mental event and the
report. In order to distinguish his approach from armchair introspection-
ism, Wundt called his method the experimental method of internal percep-
tion (Danziger, 1980).
Wundts method, while popular in the latter decades of the 19th century,
faced a double rejection. On the one hand there was, what Danziger (1979)
has called, the positivist repudiation of Wundt. Young psychologists, such
as Klpe and Ebbinghaus, influenced by the positivism of Mach, wanted to
redefine psychology in natural science terms. They argued that Wundts
psychological concepts of synthesis and volition were metaphysical and not
befitting a natural science. Accordingly, they tried to pare Wundts method-
ology down, stripping away all that was not clearly observable. In so doing,
they inadvertently stripped away the dynamic and processual elements in
Wundt. The result was a psychology of perception and behavior. Arguably
this positive repudiation was a key turning point in moving mainstream
psychology away from a Hegelian paradigm, based on process, toward a
Cartesian paradigm, based on the study of things.
On the other hand, there were those who thought that Wundt had not
gone far enough in examining complex dynamic mental processes, and
that he had unduly limited introspection to the study of the least interesting
psychological phenomena (Danziger, 1980). Although several researchers
of this persuasion were to be found in Wrzburg (e.g., Klpe and Marbe),
there were also other researchers across Germany, in France (e.g., Binets
use of spontaneous reports) and England (e.g., Galtons studies of mental
imagery). These researchers were united by the fact that, when faced with
the choice of limiting their study to reliable but uninteresting data, or in-
teresting but difficult to interpret data, they chose the latter. This group,
although not as influential as the positivists, are central to the present anal-
ysis because they strove towards understanding psychological processes.
Their paradigm was process oriented, and moreover, they strove to develop
process methodologies. Thus our search for process methodologies should
start with a close examination of their work.
THE WRZBURG & SECOND LEIPZIG SCHOOLS
The method of the Wrzburgers was systematic introspection (Danziger,

1980). The method was messy: they elicited qualitative accounts of psycho-
logical processes and, recognizing that direct introspection could alter
psychological processes, they often made use of retrospection, that is, the
post hoc reconstruction of the psychological process. Such reconstructions
Wundt criticized for allowing in biases via imperfect memory and precon-
ception.
But, despite being open to critique, the results produced by the Wrz-
burgers had critical implications for Wundt. Their research showed that
the seemingly simplistic perceptual judgments which Wundt advocated
studying were far from simple. In determining the nature of a perception
subjects were engaging in complex reconstructive activities. These were

invisible within Wundts analyses because he never elicited qualitative ac-
counts, instead he based his analysis only upon the final judgment his par-
ticipants made. Unsurprisingly, then, he found the judgments to be rela-
tively straightforward. Without looking for the complex thought processes
behind the judgments, he did not find them. But while Wundt had empha-
sized the outcomes of perception, thought and judgment, the Wrzburgers
and the related researchers were more interested in the processes of per-
ceiving, thinking and judgingindeed, the actual outcome of the psycho-
logical process was often quite irrelevant (Valsiner & Van de Veer, 2000).
One example of research that began to complicate Wundts conception
of basic perceptual judgments was done by Sander and Krueger (Valsiner
& Van de Veer, 2000), who examined the actual development of a percept
or thought (Aktualgenese). They examined the temporal emergence of in-
dividual percepts from unstable approximations to clear and stable per-
ception. Their method was to slow down the presentation of the stimuli,
to either present it very gradually, or present it in sub-optimal conditions.
The first appearance of the image would be, for example, either very small,
moving very quickly, or very dark. Each time the image was shown, it would
be presented more clearly, and between each presentation the viewers were
asked to report upon their perceptual processes (Valsiner & Van de Veer,
2000; Wagoner, 2009). Slowing down the process of perception formation,
and eliciting qualitative accounts at each stage, showed clearly that percep-
tion formation does not move from the partial to the complete. Each stage
of the perceptual experience produces a complete perceptual experience.
Prior knowledge, expectation and broad cultural background enter into
the perception of the partial image. Culture guides and constrains the per-
ceptual process.
The methods developed by the Wrzburg and Second Leipzig Schools
are clear examples of methodologies designed to get at the actual move-
ment of thought. The focus is upon how perception, thought, and judg-
ment develop. However, these methods received considerable criticism.
One of the major problems was the role of the experimenter in asking
questions to elicit the qualitative accounts which would form the data for
analysis. The questions would position the participant as one who should be
able to answer the questions, and faced with that expectation they did. But
the problem was that introspection became less a question of observation
than a matter of construction (Danziger, 1980, p. 253)
A second criticism of these methods concerned the possibility of a dis-
junction between the experience of the participants and the descriptions
they provided. The act of communicating entails translation and orienting
to the addressee which means that the resultant description is not equiv-
alent to the experience described. Problems include: breaking down the
experience for the purpose of communication fails to convey the whole; at-
tempting to communicate the whole gestalt usually entails metaphorical or
even poetic language; and overly-precise sensationalistic language is alien
to the quality of the experience. In the language of the time it was said that
the experimenters were rarely getting pure description (Beschreibung) rath-
er they tended to get communications (Kundgabe). This criticism, however,
yielded a very significant retort. The idea that utterances were always com-
munications was seen to be not quite accurate. Analysis of these so-called
communications showed that sometimes they were not simply reports, but
that they were an expressive part of thought (Danziger, 1980, p. 256). That
is to say that rather than either describing thought or communicating it,
the utterances often seemed to actually be part of the thought. This insight
is important, and will be returned to in the final section where we attempt
to develop this idea.
VYGOTSKY & THE METHOD OF DOUBLE STIMULATION

Vygotskys methodological approach was influenced by the post-Wundtian
researchers, such as Sander and Werner (Rosenthal, 2004). Vygotsky was
also clearly within the process philosophy of Hegel, though this was medi-
ated somewhat by Marx. Vygotskys aim was also to get at underlying causal
relationsbeyond empirical manifestationand to produce a genuinely
developmental analysis that situates the parts within the whole (Vygotsky
& Luria, 1930/1994). The concern with process made Vygotsky skeptical
of outcomes. For example, at the time it was common to compare apes
with two- or three-year-old children because they were seen to be able to
solve similar problems. However, Vygotsky criticized such complacency. Al-
though they arrived at the same outcome, he argued, the process was fun-
damentally different. The children, he argued, were solving the problems
using language (Vygotsky & Luria, 1930/1994). It follows that any analysis
which looks only at outcomes risks entirely misunderstanding the phenom-
ena, and even treating as equivalent that which is quite different.
The method of double stimulation, developed by Vygotsky, has its roots
in the work of Aveling and the Wrzburg School (Sakharov, 1994). The
underlying idea is that humans control their own conduct through the use
of signs, or secondary stimuli, which they use to regulate their relation to
primary stimuli. The classic example, often given by Vygotsky, is that of a
person upon seeing something they need to remember (primary stimulus)
tying a knot in their handkerchief (secondary stimulus) so that at some
point in the future the knot will trigger the memory, thus enabling the
desired action. This phenomenon of double stimulation, Vygotsky argued,
was the basis of higher mental functions. Normally the process was internal
(e.g., asking oneself a question or directing oneself to attend) but devel-
opmentally the process originates in social interaction (see Veresov in this
volume). The method of double stimulation refers to a range of experi-

ments that sought to make the process of double stimulation external and
observable.
Several experimental configurations were used to study double stimula-
tion. Sakharov (1994) reports on giving children a range of toys varying in
certain dimensions. These toys, it was explained to the children, were cat-
egorized in a strange language and it was the task of the children to try and
group the toys in the correct category. At each stage of the grouping the
children were asked about why they had included or excluded a toy. Thus
there was an element of qualitative self-reporting as used in experiments by
the Wrzburg and Second Leipzig Schools. The focus, however, was on the
emergence of a new category, or secondary stimuli, and how the children
would use that emerging category to organize the toys. Another variant of
the method, used by Vygotsky, was a stimuli-choice-reaction study. Stimuli
were presented to children who had to respond in a certain way. Initially
the mapping between the stimuli and responses was straightforward, thus
aiding in the task. But then the relation was made arbitrary, making the
task much more complex. In this more complex condition children were
provided with symbol cards which they could use as reminders (second-
ary stimuli) to mediate the relation between the primary stimuli and the
responses. This method makes observable the childs emerging use of a
secondary stimulus in order to semiotically mediate their memory.
While Wundt had given his subjects one stimulus and asked them to
report on the experience of that stimulus, Vygotsky gave his subjects two
stimuli, and his set up enabled them to use the second stimulus to regu-
late their relation to the first. Using a second stimulus to control the first
was, for Vygotsky, a higher mental function. As such, the method of double
stimulation goes against Wundts insistence that experimental methods can
only be used to study basic psychological processes.
From the standpoint of the present chapter, the critical point about
the method of double stimulation is that, although double stimulation is
at the centre of human higher mental functioning, it is often an external
observable process. This marks a radical break with the prior assumption
that thought is necessarily and always internal, and that, at best, people
can offer introspective descriptions which describe (or translate) inter-
nal thought processes. The assumption in the method of double stimula-
tion is that although higher mental functions are often internal, there are
times when an aspect of the actual thought process is external. Consider
Vygotskys account of Lewins experiment on meaningless situations:
[T]he experimenter left the subject and did not return, but observed
him from a separate room. Generally, the subject waited for 1020
minutes. Then, not understanding what he should do, he remained
in a state of oscillation, confusion, and indecisiveness for some time.

Nearly all the adults searched for some external point of support. For
example, one subject defined his actions in terms of the striking of
the clock. Looking at the clock, he thought: When the hand moves
to the vertical position, I will leave. The subject transformed the situ-
ation in this way, establishing that he would wait until 2:30 and then
leave. When the time came, the action occurred automatically. By
changing the psychological field, the subject created a new situation
for himself. (Vygotsky, volume 1, 1932/1987, p. 356)
What Vygotsky is pointing to in this example is the external nature of the

higher mental functions. This is an instance of double stimulation and thus
higher mental functioning. But the thought process is in a loop that in-
cludes the clock on the wall. The clock is part of the semiotic mediation
process, and to that extent, this instance of semiotic mediation is partially
internal and partially external.
The main contribution of Vygotskys method was to break away from the
Wundtian and ultimately Cartesian idea that thought is something by defi-
nition internal that needs to be reported on. Indeed, even the Wrzburgers
and those studying Aktualgenese thought that perceptions were formed with-
in the individual. Eliciting qualitative verbal descriptions opened a window
on the process, but at all times the process remained internal. Vygotskys
method marks a significant change because the psychological process be-
comes external. The childs use of the auxiliary stimuli is not describing
or communicating internal processes of thought. Rather the use of the
auxiliary stimuli is an essential part of the thought process. We regard our
method as important, Vygotsky (1978, p. 74) wrote, because it helps to
objectify inner psychological processes. Making psychological processes,
such as the movement of thought observable is important because it opens
it up to rigorous analysis.
By showing that psychological processes could go on outside the bound-
ed skull of the individual thinker, Vygotskys method of double stimulation
makes a methodological breakthrough the implications of which have yet
to be fully developed. If people can use external semiotic mediators in ex-
perimental settings, then maybe they use them in naturalistic settings, and
if so, could this provide a solid methodological basis for the study of the
movement of thought?
DEVELOPING THE METHODOLOGY

Descartes ontological dualism clearly assumed that thought was an internal
and private thing. Indeed, for Descartes the rest of the world could be an
illusion, but his thought, he maintained, was real. The method of introspec-
tion strengthened the assumption further. The very etymology of the term
is to look inwards. Wundt, like Descartes, was concerned with a metaphor

of perception as stimuli entering into the subject, and impressions being
formed in the mind within. This overpowering idea, or metaphor, that the
world was impressing itself upon a mind within, has obscured the presence
of thought as a partially external and observable process.
Contemporary research methods still assume that thought is fundamen-
tally an internal phenomenon. Self-report questionnaires try to extract
peoples experiences, views, and feelings. Interviews, when analyzed in
terms of the views elicited, also make the same assumption, namely, that
the researcher needs to coax the inner thoughts out of the interviewee. The
assumption is also particularly evident in the various scanning techniques
which promise to see through the individuals skull, to what is assumed
to be the very essence of their thoughts. One of the more subtle contem-
porary methods, advocated by the cognitive scientists Ericsson and Simon
(1993), is protocol analysis which can be seen as an heir of Aktualgenese
(Valsiner & Van de Veer, 2000).
Protocol analysis has several forms. In concurrent reporting, subjects are
asked to think aloud as they solve problems, and to avoid any attempt to
explain what they are doing. The reports are not read as explanations of
thinking, but simply as accounts of the contents of short-term memory. The
method has been successfully used by Valsiner (2003) and Capezza (2003)
in their study of the semiotic mediation of an aggressive act. However, all
who use the method recognize a problem. When people verbalize their
thoughts their utterances seem to be more than the mere dump of work-
ing memory that Ericson and Simon describe. Utterances move between
rationalizing, describing, expressing, and reflecting. As Buehler (1951)
has clearly pointed out, in the act of thinking there are always thoughts
about our thoughtsfor example, how confident we are in a memory, or
how sure we are of a belief. While this might seem to be a problem, it can
also be understood as an opening to a new method. The basic idea behind
talk-aloud protocol is, again, that thought is internal. The complicating fac-
tor is twofold: sometimes the utterances describe thought rather than be-
ing a verbal memory dump, and secondly, sometimes the utterances feed
back into the thinking process, for example, by stimulating self-reflective
thought leading to self-presentation.
This second concern leads us to the core proposition that we want to
develop: that sometimes, thought, in its natural habitat, is partially external.
Maybe thought does not need to be coaxed out of its ontologically tricky
shell. There are moments where people use observable resources, such as
the clocks and handkerchiefs described by Vygotsky, and there are times
when their externalizations, whether in talk or writing, become part of the
thinking process, feeding back into the thoughts they grew out of. In such
cases the utterances and writings of individuals cease to be descriptions,
verbal reflections, or even expressions, they become woven into the move-
ment of thought itself. In the following we attempt to develop from this
idea toward a methodology for studying the movement of thought.
OBSERVABLE THOUGHT
Thought is not a module in the brain or a thing, it is a process or movement,

and part of this movement, we argue, is often in the world. For example,
several scholars have pointed out that talk can sometimes be constitutive of
thought (e.g., Markov, 2003; Moscovici, 1974/2008). Merleau-Ponty put
it particularly forcefully when he wrote: The orator does not think before
speaking, nor even while speaking; his speech is his thought (1945/1962,
p. 180). In order to help translate this basic idea into a methodology, it is
useful to distinguish two ways in which thought is audible in talk: talk can
be an organic expression or extension of the thought and talk can stimulate
a self-reflective movement of thought, thus becoming part of the thought
itself.
Let us consider first how talk might be an expressive extension of the
thought process. Sometimes an exclamation, a gesture, or an expression so
immediately follows on from the internal thought that the external man-
ifestation is best understood as the external phase of that movement of
thought. Consider the following excerpt from a young British student, Ka-
tie, on holiday in northern India (Gillespie, 2007a). Katie was talking about
a particularly dramatic bus journey that she had just been on. Filled with
enthusiasm, and after a pause in the conversation, she said:
I have to keep pinching myself that its actually real, because its the kind of
scenery that you see in National Geographic, you look through and its like
wow imagine being there (pause) I cant believe I am here seeing it!
Within this spontaneous expression, Katie reveals the symbolic resources

(Zittoun, 2006) that have been framing her experience of northern India.
Images from the National Geographic and related publications populate
her imagination and are the measuring stick she uses to asses her own expe-
riences. The National Geographic is part of Katies thinking process.
Second, let us consider how the movement of thought can sometimes de-
pend upon the external phase. Self-reflection, often thought to be a purely
intra-psychological phenomenon, often occurs because of what has been
said. Audio recordings of informal discussions between tourists on holiday
in northern India, for example, reveal many instances of tourists begin-
ning to say one thing, then, upon hearing themselves speak, self-reflect,
and change track (Gillespie, 2007b). One English student, for example,
says that she wants to see proper India rather than just the India that ev-
eryonethat sounds rather clichdbut that tourists see. The idea of see-
ing proper India is a genuine impulse, but when verbalized, it becomes
audible to the speaker. She hears it like she would hear the utterance of
another tourist, and she judges it in the same way that she would judge
the utterance of another touristthat sounds rather clichd. The move-
ment of thought that leads to that sounds rather clichd is inextricably
external. Arguably, had she not verbalized the impulse she would not have
had the chance to critically react to it in the same way that she might react
to the utterance of another tourist. This is what Mead (1934) means by the
peculiar significance of the vocal gesture. Because we hear ourselves speak,
just like we hear others speak, so we can also respond to ourselves. That
response to ourselves is part of human self-regulation, and in it thought
becomes observable.
These dynamics of expression and self-reflection are not only evident in
talk. The artist working with the canvas (Janson & Janson, 1997), the potter
with the emerging clay/glass form (McCarthy, Sullivan, & Wright, 2006),
the blacksmith making a skimmer (Keller & Keller, 1996), and the diarist
working through her own narrative (Gillespie, Cornish, Aveling, & Zittoun,
2008), all illustrate the external movement of thought. The externaliza-
tion of the thought is a spontaneous expression which becomes part of the
thought because it is reacted to and thus feeds into the ongoing process
of thought. The painter thinks through reacting to the canvas just as the
diarist discovers her own narrative by reacting to their own writings. In Vy-
gotskys method of double stimulation, the cards used by the children are
not used to express or simply externalize mental processesthe cards are
an integral part of the thought process (which is no longer simply a mental
process).
It follows than in order to study the movement of thought we should not
be limited to expressive utterances or utterances that trigger self-reflection.
People write into diaries as a means of thinking through problems. Equally,
in peoples use of pen and paper, while solving a problem, we can see the
movement of thought. Sometimes people seek out and watch films or read
books in order to help them work through practical, identity and emotional
issues (Zittoun, 2006). In such cases the seeking out of the resource is ob-
servable, but the psychological engagement with the resource may remain
invisible, unless, for example, we can catch them working through the film
or book in discussion with a friend. In each of these cases external resourc-
es are brought into the movement of thought, and in each of these cases,
by studying how people use each, a portion of the movement of thought
becomes empirically observable which gives us leverage for speculating
abound the less observable portions.
CAVEATS AND STRATEGIES
We are not arguing that thought is never internal and personal, it always
has an internal and personal phase. We are only arguing that sometimes an
aspect of the movement of thought is observable. Moreover, the entirety of
thought is never observable in what people say or write. Visuospatial think-
ing, for example, is very difficult to pick up in talk. However, sometimes it
reveals itself in how people use pen and paper to resolve visuospatial prob-
lems. What we are arguing is that talk, writing, sketching, typing, making,
and so on are often a portion of thoughtnot a pale reflection, description
or communication. These so-called externalizations can be a constitutive
part of the thinking process, they can change the direction of thought,
feeding back into either thought or action. And although it is by no means
the complete thinking process, it is, from a methodological point of view,
a particularly important aspect because it is observable. What is observed
might only be the tip of the iceberg of thought, but it is a good starting
point. What we need to do is learn how to reconstruct the whole iceberg
from the portion which is observable.
In order to analyze talk, writing or painting as part of the movement of
thought subtle interpretation is essential. One of the reasons why talk is
often disconnected from the thinking process is due to the social situation.
In some circumstances people inhibit utterances and craft utterances with
their audience in mind. Such dynamics are unavoidable, and the research-
er needs to be aware, as far as possible, of the context of the utterance or
writing. Moreover, the analyst must be attuned to the observable manifesta-
tions of such self-presentation: hesitations, stutters, changes of topic, ges-
tures, pronoun use, slips of the tongue, and so on can all be important cues
in interpreting utterances as thought. Relatedly, knowledge of the speakers
biography, their socio-cultural background, and their interests are all useful
in interpreting what is said.
Observing thought in talk also entails obtaining the right data. One
common reason why thought is unobservable in psychological research is
a by-product of the tendency to do research with individuals. While chil-
dren may verbalize when solving a task (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005; Vy-
gotsky & Luria, 1930/1994), adults rarely do. However, if people are put
in situations where the task is a joint task, then they spontaneously express
their thoughts, and thus the movement of their thought expands to in-
corporate the talk (e.g., Wagoners, 2009 replication of Bartletts method
of repeated reproduction using dyads). Accordingly, joint problem solving
routines provide excellent data for analyzing talk as thought. Using a simi-
lar rationale, Moscovici (1991) has suggested opening up the black box of
influence processes in classic experiments by getting participants to work
in pairs. The way in which Psaltis and Duveen (2007) analyze the discourse
between young children during a task provides a good example of how this
can be done in practice.
Finally, caution must be applied in interpreting talk as thought. Such
an analysis can never provide grounds for rejecting the existence of any
psychological process. Just because the process is not observed in the talk
does not mean it does not exist. We can never fully know what processes are
part of the ongoing thought but not manifesting in the talk. On the other
hand, the processes which are observed in talk can, with a degree of confi-
dence, be said to empirically exist. Thus, the method leads to the construc-
tion of knowledge based on what is observed, not on what is not observed.
This does not mean that theory building should not go beyond what is ob-
servedit should. The external movement of thought is only a small phase
of the overall movement. The point is that we cannot dismiss the existence
of any internal psychological process simply because it is not observable.
CONCLUSION
The present chapter has examined methodologies for studying the move-
ment of thought. Developing from the early insights of the Wrzburg
School, the Second Leipzig School, and Vygotsky, the present chapter has
developed upon the idea that thought can have an external phase and thus
the movement of thought can be studied rigorously.
Early introspectionist studies had the thinker as the observer of their own
thought. Later introspectionist research, such as that initiated by Wundt, in-
troduced an experimenter to present stimuli and record the introspectors
responses. But, in this latter research the introspector was still the thinker
or perceiver and observer. The approach being advocated in the present
chapter, of analyzing the external movement of thought, entails separating
the thinker from the observer. The thinker is studied either in a naturalistic
context where thought entails an external phase, or the thinker is put in a
situation conducive to either externalization or the use of external resourc-
es. Thus, the researcher, by carefully recording and analyzing the external
movement of thought, becomes the observer. Separating the thinker from
the observer overcomes the main methodological problems with introspec-
tion. The act of observing no longer interferes with the thought process
observed, and there is no need to rely upon memory with all the recon-
struction that it entails.
The approach being advocated is within the Hegelian paradigm. It as-
sumes that thought is not a thing, but a process. It assumes that individual
thought sequences must take methodological precedence over statistical
averages. The aim is to examine the movement of thought, the process
of mediated thought and action, how one idea follows on from the next
and how material and symbolic resources are constitutive mediators within
that process. The approach is to focus upon situations where a portion of
the movement of thought is external, and then, analyzing that externalized
portion in order to make grounded speculations about the less observable
portion. This method will never make the entire movement of thought ob-
servable, but it does give us a solid basis upon which to build our analysis. It
provides us with objective data, in the sense of data that can be shared, com-
municated, and debated (Ziman, 1991). Explaining that data will entail go-
ing beyond the data and speculating about the less observable portions of
thought. Our argument is that those concealed movements leave traces in
the observable portion that should form the basis for our analyses.
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CHAPTER 5
UNDERSTANDING A
PERSONALITY AS A WHOLE
Transcending the Anglo-American
Methods Focus and Continental-
European Holism Through a Look at
Dynamic Emergence Processes
Tatsuya Sato, Kosuke Wakabayashi, Akinobu Nameda, Yuko
Yasuda and Yoshiyuki Watanabe
Psychology is an academic discipline that has two different interests. It in-

quires into both generality and diversity of the organism. Individual dif-
ferencesboth within the individual (over time) and between individuals
(at the given moment)become a problematic issue for science. Psycholo-
gists have no good reason for staying at narrow sensation-perception ar-
eas, because social change pushes them towards addressing practical issues.
In such a situation, the data collecting system depending on the stimulus
control procedure, we call it psychological experiment, doesnt always
work well. So another approach is highly needed. But still psychologists
have been tied up to build a general picture that includes the diversity of
particulars. The sub-discipline of intelligence and personality research in
psychology is a battlefield of such troublesome work. If we focus on the
general system of personality and intelligence, we can theorize the general
sphere of them. However, individual lives are so specific and unique that

90 SATO, ET AL.
we might see individual personality and intelligence ideographically. This

is what nomothetic and idiographic debate says. Psychologists bravely fight
and never withdraw from this battle. Demands for practical help from asy-
lums, schools, and factories push psychologists to supply new techniques.
Theories of personality and intelligence and practices of psychological test-
ing are both new innovations from psychology to fit clinical demands. They
have flourished and played a leading role in psychology using quantitative-
oriented method for a century.
But history of psychology tells us Youve got to look at the other side of
the coin. From the theoretical perspective, Galtonism invaded the meth-
odology of personality and intelligence, and then so-called neo-Galtonism
was formed. Neo-Galtonian only needs variables and results in regarding
the person as a bunch of variables and not as a whole person. From the
practical perspective, both theory of personality and intelligence and psy-
chological testing were sometimes used by social institutions to exercise
control over people. Eugenics is an extreme example, as its application in a
society restricts the human rights. Eugenicists have taken heredity seriously
and exaggerated the stability of individual diversity and difference.
In psychology, as we know, with a few exceptions, psychometrics, typol-
ogy and trait theory of personality, stage theory of self or personality de-
velopment, and even parts of phenomenological thinking regard human
being as a stable in its nature. Why dont they treat real dynamics of human
being? We think that disregard of the notion of time is the reason for such
oversight. As an extreme example, we find the famous Kretchmers person-
ality theory. Roughly speaking, he hypothesized that the style of body told
us the temperament. However, if we look his figures carefully, the model of
each character looks differently in age. Kretchmers typology disregarded
the trajectory of the formation and trans-formation of ones life.
Ernst Kretchmer proposed a correlation of mental disorder with the
three body types: obese, muscular, and thin. We can see three typical fig-
ures of Kretchmer from left to right (Figure 1). Each of these body types
was associated with certain character (or personality traits) and, in a more
extreme form, psychopathologies. For example, pyknic (plump) builds
were associated with manic depression. By the way, how do you answer if
you are asked how old three persons are? The left man looks his 60-year
age, and the right man looks teenaged. The man of center looks middle
aged. Kretchmers finding of relationship between constitution and psycho-
pathology might be spurious or pseudo correlation because manic depres-
sion has its onset later in life than schizophrenia and later in life people are
more plump or pyknic. So you can imagine and take seriously his trajec-
tory of life, only if you abandon the timeless theory such as Kretchmers.
More importantly is that every typology has shared this weakness such as
Kretchmers. We can challenge the validity of any other typology. Not only
Understanding a Personality as a Whole 91
FIGURE 1. Kretchmers Typology
Wundts, Jungs, and Scheldons of their personality theory, but also other
typologies such as value system.
Learning from the history of psychology, the trait theory occurred to
overcome the typology. Actually, trait theorists around 1950s criticized the
typology from the various perspectives. Simplification was one of the criti-
cisms. Even trait theorists insisted paper and pencil test and statistical
analysis might be more objective and/or scientific than the type diagnoses
based on the interview. The scientific guise of trait theory made psycholo-
gists pleased. Many and many trait scales appeared (and disappeared).
Today, typology of personality is evaluated almost historical. And trait
theory has reveled in glory. However, we dont insist to abandon the theory
of typology. We try to breathe new life into typology. The reason is that the
trait theory based on the statistic technology (especially the correlational
coefficient) tends to show us the stability of personality, not change and/or
transformation, and the trait theory has also failed to treat dynamic trans-
formation of personality within time.
The way of typology thinking arose around the 1920s in psychology, then
the trait theorists flourished since around the 1950s, i.e., about 60 years
ago. For example, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
first published in 1943. If psychology has gone astray for 60 years, the trait
theory of personality should be nominated as one of defendants.
Typological thinking is problematic not because its simplification but
because of disrespecting the notion of time. Timeless slashing of human
nature should be criticized because each persons status depends on each
life course (trajectory) within time. Many personality theories take seriously
the now (time period), as psychologists/psychiatrists diagnose the person
they meet. Diagnosing is the practice embedded in the time and context
of now.
As we saw before, the Kretchmers typology disdains patients time be-
cause patients are equivalent for the psychologists/psychiatrists. Trait theo-
rists who criticized typology also treated the subjects own time as unim-
portant. They only needed the piles of variables on questionnaires. So if we
overcome the state of being astray, we need to take time seriously.
92 SATO, ET AL.
In this chapter, we introduce a time-conscious and open-systemic view

in cultural social psychology as a new principle and propose to re-consider
the implication of typology conception. Usually, typologies are static cat-
egorizationsthey exclude reference to time. If a belongs to category A
is claimed, the particular a is freed from its realities in the here-and-now
context and united into the timeless category A. Yet it is clear that time
is the centrally important aspect in all psychological processes and as such
needs to be taken seriously. Simply speaking, we would like to propose the
new conception of Typology of trajectories. Since the precise connotation
may be revealed in the third section of this chapter, we will only briefly ad-
dress now two issues regarding. First, the notion of trajectory here doesnt
depend on the concept of the correlation coefficient. Recently, quantitative
studies of life course have noticed the notion of trajectory, and these stud-
ies highly depend on the correlational coefficient. Instead, in our proposal
of Typology of trajectories, trajectory is not the line linking the discrete
time points. Trajectory of our methodology is regarded as one which is con-
structed historically and culturally. This new approach treats the diversity of
human life within irreversible time from the perspective of cultural psychol-
ogy. It has been developing along with the new methodology called Tra-
jectory Equifinality Model (TEM; Valsiner & Sato, 2006, Sato et al. 2007).
TEM is one of the new approaches that makes time the core dimension
of psychological construction. This happens through the central focus on
trajectoriesrather than any particular point on the trajectory. Careful
consideration of the typology of trajectories is a way to understand both di-
versity and conversion of life within the irreversible time. We will look at the
area of psychological issues that confront the legal decision making, which
is one of the oldest sub-disciplines of applied psychology as it is a promising
application field of TEM. In this chapter, we prepare four sections.
In section 1, we reviewed the history of psychology in the areas of intelli-
gence and character and personality. In these areas, quantitative methodol-
ogy was strongly improved and the methods invented for these areas were
usually problematic. Especially, neo-Galtonian approach in Anglo-Saxon
tradition might be critically reviewed. In the last part of this first section, an
old-fashioned-looking approach, i.e., typology is proposed to be re-evaluat-
ed by focusing on the trajectory, i.e., the specific time going to each type.
In section 2, an example of the gender study using the cluster analysis is
presented. The cluster analysis never depends on the latent variable model,
so it is promising for the descriptive and inductive tool for grouping. At
the same time, a result of the cluster analysis is usually static and atemporal
(timeless), the well-planned (time conscious) data is helpful for interpreta-
tion of the data within time.
In section 3, The Trajectory Equifinality Model (TEM) appears. The
study on the experience of the infertility in Japan is presented and the
promising view of combination of typology and TEM are also discussed. It

is important to appreciate diversity by using the notions of TEM, especially
Obligatory Passage Point (OPP) and Polarized Equifinality Point (P-EFP),
because we can visualize how feasible life trajectories are guided by social
and/or physical restrictions. The concept of equifinality originated in the
general system model of von Bertalanffy (1968), and it means that the same
and/or similar final state may be reached from different initial conditions
and in different ways. He preferred equifinality better than goal, equi-
finality isnt the dead-end-like goal point. Polarized Equifinality Point (P-
EFP) is the methodological notion to present both set and complement set
of the experience on which researchers have an interest to focus. Obliga-
tory Passage Point (OPP) is a structurally necessary (inevitable) experience
and/or event on the trajectories to EFP. This is different from Wadding-
tons famous landscape epigenetic model, where the road broadens toward
the end and a ball can go everywhere, and the trajectories in real life tend
to hold together in some ways. Here we can discover the typology of the
trajectories. From the type of trajectories, we can know how many con-
straints we really have and some of them co-occur in daily life situation.
Even though a typological approach is applauded, the narrative approach
is also recommended to be concomitantly-used in last part of this section.
In section 4, we try to present the challenging issue of determination
of confession of the suspect in criminal procedures. There are lies in legal
situations as in everyday life situations, and these are especially important
in the criminal procedure. We can easily understand the lie that the real
criminal tells to hide his/her crime. But there is another type of lie in that
the innocent person is forced to make false confessions for many reasons.
The latter happens rarely, but it really exists. In analyzing confession, no-
body knows the truth; and, therefore, we should continuously approach
whether the confession is true or not. One important source is the written
record of the suspect. Under the condition of Japanese criminal procedure,
the suspect is investigated many times. Though the confessions are not
tape-recorded in Japan, the written records of confession are good material
for analyzing. Conditions are adverse, but innocent civilians should not be
punished. Tentative application of TEM for such a case gives us a chance
to get theoretical improvement. We should remind the Kurt Lewins mani-
festo There is nothing so practical as a good theory.
This chapter looks like a little bit a roller coaster riding. It is caused by
the scarcity of ability of authors on the one hand, but on the other hand,
it might reflect the challenging situation in psychology. Namely, our disci-
pline is operating under the tension between the traditional quantitative
and the new qualitative methodologies. But these new approaches tend to
be historically blindseemingly novel ideas have actually been common
in some period in the history of psychology (see also Toomela, this book).
94 SATO, ET AL.
So we decided our mind to take a journey to the history of psychology and

then go to journey to create new methodology of qualitative psychology.
SECTION 1: THE CORRELATION COEFFICIENT AND ITS

DERIVATIVES: HOW THE ANGLO-AMERICAN METHOD
FOCUS WENT WRONG
We start from the history of the correlational coefficient, because it pro-

vides the engine for the detecting the stabilityeven heredityinstead of
searching the variability and changeability of human nature. Though the
notion of correlation never gives us causal explanation, the notion of latent
variables allowed psychologists to pursue the entities. Factor analysis is a
key statistical method used to describe variability among observed variables
in terms of fewer unobserved variables called factors. These factors have
seemed to exist as entities. And when the notion of factor adapted in the
intelligence and personality theory, psychologists went astray in the forest
of nomothetic and idiosyncratic or generality and diversity.
Correlational coefficient, factor analysis and all the methods of data anal-
yses that stem from thesewe could call these (using a recently popular
political term) an axis of evil derived from Anglo-American psychologies
and superimposed on all the discipline. If we look back the brief history of
factor analysis, we can see easily the influence of Anglo-American psychol-
ogy (Table 1). Spearmans method combined the general and the specific
in the study of intelligence. It is Spearman (1927) who originated a math-
ematical method that allowed for multiple factor analysis. The emergence
of the factor theory was a turning point for psychology, because it makes
psychologists possible to deal with intangible entities (Peterson, 2007). Fac-
tor theory enables a psychologist to measure a hypothesized, unobservable
variable ( latent variable) by using a set of observed (manifest variable)
variables (Dawis, 2000). Later we look at the field of personality study using
factor analysiswhere at least 2 factors are needed and sometimes more
than ten factors are welcomed.
Thurstone was one of the key players at that time and he defined the
intelligence by using the term trait:
Intelligence, considered as a mental trait, is the capacity to make impulses

focal at their early, unfinished stage of formation. Intelligence is therefore
the capacity for abstraction, which is an inhibitory process. (Thurstone,
1924/1973, p. 159)
In principle, stemming from this definition of intelligence research in the

field does not inevitably need any quantified technique. But the statistical
inventions of the beginning of the 20th century resonate in harmony with
TABLE 1. Brief History of Factor Analysis

Galton (1886): regression toward the mean in heritable traits (e.g., height)
Pearson (1896): mathematical formulation of correlation
Spearman (1904): General intelligence, objectively determined and measured
Spearman (1927): The ability of man. New York: MacMillan.
Thurstone (1934): Vectors of the mind
Thurstone (1947): Multiple factor analysis
the need of a trait theory of intelligence and personality in the minds of

psychologists. The notion of a trait refers not to single instances of a be-
havior, such as solving puzzle successfully, but refers to something persis-
tent and consistent that underlies these behaviors. But what is something
consistent? Something consistent implies an invisible disposition which
makes person respond in a particular, identifiable way. We can say that psy-
chological theory of the intelligence and personality conceives a trait as a
static entity. An invariable, fixed and discrete property of intelligence and
personality are demanded from the necessity of measurement. Factor anal-
ysis and the notion of latent variables approach supply the answer to this
question in a different way. It looks like a superficially scientific way. And
more importantly, the latent variable approach and substantiation of traits
have combined and become the engine of article production.
A Distorted Story; Intelligence Testing Is Never in Need of the

Correlation Coefficient from the Point of View of a French
Psychologist
Intelligence testing needs neither correlational coefficient nor factor

analysis. Lets review the brief history of intelligence testing. French psy-
chologist, Alfred Binet of the Sorbonne pioneered a series of tests, but he
didnt have the intention to label low-score children as innately incapable.
Binet and his collaborator Simon were also conscious about the environ-
mental factor. They deliberately excluded the school-based test-items so
that the experience of school might not influence the result of the test.
They tried to exclude the influence of school experience to improve the
score.
When Binets test-system crossed the Atlantic, however, it quickly trans-
formed. Because American innovators and researchers of intelligence test
wanted to create the scientific test system, they sometimes became over-
adaptive. For example, American psychologists adopted various mundane
life experiences for creating test items. A persons knowing of a brand
96 SATO, ET AL.
name of a toothpaste was supposed to be of relevance for intelligence. As a

result, items could reflect the ordinary life situation of children in the US,
so it was difficult for the newcomer (immigrant) from foreign countries to
get a high score from it. As Danziger (1997), has pointed out, even if both
the French and Anglo-Saxon investigators collected their empirical data
in school settings, their intentions were rather different. Binet and Simon
limited themselves to the narrow technical task of assisting the educational
authorities implementing their policy of determining a pupils fitness for
different programs. Actually, there was no enthusiasm for reducing intel-
ligence to a number in France (Schneider, 1992). However, Anglo-Saxon
psychologists who had been inspired by Galton interpreted the total score
of the intelligence test as a measurement of a real entity. Not only was this
entity unequally distributed among individuals, it was also unequally dis-
tributed among social classes (the special concern of the British psycholo-
gists) and races (the special concern of the Americans).
American psychologists optimistically believed that they could exclude
the influence of knowledge derived from school, but in fact intelligence
tests resulted in expanding the influence of the socioeconomic and/or cul-
tural status to the evaluation based on the test scores. The nature of admin-
istration caused two problems in US in the 1920s. One is the intranational
problem and the other is the international problem. Intelligence test di-
vided the US citizens into two categories, i.e., the cultivated and not. Since
the tests worked in favor of the cultivated their applicationslike to the
U.S. Army in World War Iresulted in socially embarrassing findings that
the majority of the army recruits were of sub-normal intelligence. This was
an intranational problem. And intelligence tests divided immigrants from
Europe into two categories at Ellis Island. One category consisted of useful
immigrants (the cultivated ones) for the United States and the other one
did not. (yet their intelligence would be at the levels of U.S. Army recruits).
History of the Trait Theory of Personality in the US
Here we should restate the fact that the term personality was rather
new in both academic and daily context. Danziger (1997) pointed out that
Ribot (1885), who was the French medical psychologist, used the term per-
sonality instead of character, because the former seemed be essentially
diverse, an assembly of various tendency. Soon Morton Prince (1905) pub-
lished the influential book The Dissociation of Personality. This usage person-
ality blew aside rival terms, such as temperament (with medical connota-
tion) and character (with moralistic connotations), and is widely used in
the US all through the 20th century.
The role of Gordon Allport in US personality research is seminal. He con-

ceived personality as an open system (see Allport, 1960). Allport was well
acquainted with the world. After earning his PhD in 192223, Allport did his
postgraduate study at the University of Berlin, University of Hamburg, and
University of Cambridge right after WW1. He studied with Stumpf and Des-
soir, the Gestaltists (Wertheimer, Khler, and Spranger) in Berlin as well as
Heinz Werner and William Stern (in Hamburg). He gained a very broad and
deep understanding of the currents in German psychological research. He
noted later in life that Germany had converted me from my undergraduate
semi faith in behaviorism (Allport, 1967, p. 12). He also worked with both
Frederick Bartlett and Ivor A. Richards in minor fashion in England. During
the late 1930s and the Second World War, Allport served the APA as head of
an Emergency Committee in Psychology to deal with refugee scholars from
Europe (Stern, Khler, Lewin, the Bhlers, and others).
Allports book Personality, published in 1937, accelerated the tendency
to look at traits in personality. According to this textbook, traits represent
structures or habits within a person and are not the construction of observ-
ers; they are the product of both genetic predispositions and experience.
Some critic say that traits are merely names for observed regularities in
behavior, but do not explain them (See Mischel, 1968). Nevertheless, the
study of how traits arise and are integrated within a person forms a major
area of personality studies. Interestingly and being considered less serious,
Allport defended his concept by emphasizing personality as an open system
(see Allport, 1960) and objected to his opponents adherence to a (quasi)
closed-system approach (see Hermans & Bonarius, 1991 for coverage of this
discussion).
Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psycho-

physical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment
(Allport, 1967) .
Person-situation Debate by Mischel; and the Growing Popularity of

the Five-factor Model (Big Five)
Human personality nature is developmental, inevitably subject to time

and his/her social-interpersonal contexts, and primarily changes over time
and situation. For this reason American personality psychology that regards
human personality as a consistent entity failed to obtain reliable objective
data and heavily criticized in so-called consistency debate in 196070s. Wal-
ter Mischel (1968) challenged to the personality trait theory dominant at
that time. He coined the phrase personality coefficient to describe the
correlation between .20 and .30 which is found persistently when virtually
98 SATO, ET AL.
any personality dimension inferred from a questionnaire is related to al-

most any conceivable external criterion involving responses sampled in a
different medium (Mischel, 1968, p. 78)
American personality psychology after debate in 198090s seemingly re-
stored its old glory with the invention of the Big-Five taxonomy of traits, it
has only limited the objectives of personality psychology as inter-subjective
perceptions about personality. This trend also neglects its chronological
and contextual nature. One of the representative models of Big Five is the
OCEAN Model (McCrae & Costa, 1996) which propose five factors includ-
ing O: Openness to experience, C: Conscientiousness, E: Extraversion, A:
Agreeableness ,and N: Neuroticism.
Recently, McAdams and Pals (2006) advocated new scheme of Big five.
They called it New Big Five which are
1. the general evolutionary design for human nature, expressed as a

developing pattern;
2. dispositional traits (the person as actor);
3. characteristic adaptations (the person as agent);
4. integrative life stories (the person as author) complexly and dif-
ferentially situated, and
5. culture.
As McAdams and Palss (2006) argument has demonstrated, personality

psychology has gradually moved from a quantitative trend to a qualitative
one. Correlation-based trait theory of personality made it survive through
a coalition with a former adversary i.e., typology. To put it the other way
around, typology helps trait theory to survive long. So we need to analyze
the nature of typology. Does it have a weak point or vulnerability for coali-
tion with trait theory?
On the Typology of Character; The Old-New Notion of

Continental-European Tradition
From the earliest times, human beings have classified individuals into
types in order to explain human individual differences. The idea of typol-
ogy can be said as the integral approach to understand the diversity of hu-
man beings in general explanatory systems. Galens physiological typology
of Greek medicine typified individuals by bodily secretions into melanchol-
ic, phlegmatic, sanguine, and choleric types. Although Galens name is a
little notable, his theory itself has been discarded. Societal change in Euro-
pean society after the 19th century enhanced opportunities for developing
the new way of human being, at that time, character theory. As Danziger
(1997) indicated, the term of character implied the essentially unitary.
Actually the reader needs to pay attention to the combination of typology
and personality in this chapter is rather new usage. Typology has been theo-
retically linked to the notion of character.
Before the flourishing of trait theory in personality research in the US,
typology had great power in German psychology. Wundt, Kretschmer, Jung,
Dilthey, and so many scholars advocated the typology from their own per-
spective. Carl Gustav Jung is the pioneer of typological thinking on person-
ality. Typology tended to ignore the time perspective. Type was seemed to
be static rather than dynamic and historical.
European typological tradition of characterology originally tended to
regard human features as chronological and contextual nature, but the
influence of psychopathology in 192030s changed psychologists view of
personality types as hereditary and static physiological entity. As the term of
character implied the essentially unitary, typology of character inevitably
explain the unitary of the individual. Typology gradually had made little of
life long history, and had paid no attention to time. Especially after predic-
tion power and diagnosis are linked with the typology in a medical setting,
diagnosis (a type allocation) is only a static moment in the process of re-
covery from an illness. Typology sometimesmany times we hopemight
give us the holistic understanding of the living person, but it seems to pay
less attention to dynamism and variability of human development. Simply
speaking, typology may be holistic but less individual and still static.
How can we reach the holistic and individual-centered psychology? If
we rely on trait like theory, holistic understanding would be lost. If we rely
on typology like theory, individualcentered understanding would be lost.
Today, correlational-based Anglo-Saxon psychology is flourishing and this
means trait like theory is familiar with many psychologists. So turning back
to typology might give us some hints. Such thinking coincides with the ba-
sic notion of newly-arising developmental science. Its main points are both
holistic and individual-centered (Valsiner, 2009).
Typology within time is very important perspective to understand both
diversity and generality of human being. So our idea is-- moving to typologi-
cal understanding in ways that are time conscious. We will show the new
type of analysis in next section which derives from mundane cluster analysis.
Cluster analysis is an exploratory data analysis tool for solving classification
problems. Cluster analysis has many alternative names, and interestingly to
say, a typological analysis is one of them. Cluster analysis is known as a com-
mon technique. But in the discipline of psychology, the appearance of it is
far less than other multivariate analysis depending on the latent variable.
SECTION 2: FROM TYPOLOGY TO TRAJECTORIES:

MAKING SENSE OF FAIRNESS
Judgements of whether people receive fair treatment or not are not formed
in the abstract situation, but shaped by considering concrete situations such
100 SATO, ET AL.
as their real experiences and environments where they have lived. Such
contextual factors, however, are methodologically lost in variable studies
using a point scale questionnaire. So we need to try to open a door for a
method that allows us to consider contextual factors in the process of col-
lecting and analysing data by taking accounts of the concepts of time and
trajectory. Traditionally, there has been a consensus among psychologists
that the variable-based study is the main way to understand peoples psy-
chological phenomenon. For example, while capturing judgements about
fairness, a large body of literature using rating scale kind of questionnaires
has been accumulated. In such studies, usually, researchers try to prove
theories by testing hypotheses. To discuss methodological issues of the vari-
able studies using point scale questionnaire, here, Namedas (2009) study
is a good example. He used a survey to test whether Tylers social justice
theory focusing on the outcome and procedure is applicable to the context
of fairness issue in the division of family work. The result showed that mens
sense of fairness tended to be associated with the perceived satisfaction of
household work and paid work (outcome), while womens sense of fair-
ness was likely to be influenced by perceived satisfaction of household work
(outcome), interactive communication in dividing and performing family
work (procedure) and ideology of gender division. Multivariate regression
analyses were conducted in order to clarify how mens and womens percep-
tion of fairness are influenced by the perception of distributions and proce-
dures, and ideology towards gender roles. Perceived fairness was regressed
onto variables of satisfaction of household work and paid work, interactive
communication, the ideology of gender division and mutual participation
in each model. In mens model, the perceived satisfaction of paid work had
a significant impact on the perception of fairness (= .26). In addition, the
perceived satisfaction of household work also significantly influenced the
mens perception of fairness (= .24). These variables negatively worked
to the perception of fairness. The higher the score people rated, the low-
er score perceived fairness was. In other words, the more people wanted
to perform household chores and paid work, the more they perceive the
division as favorable for men. The R square of mens model was 0.12. In
womens model, the strongest variable influencing the perception of fair-
ness was the perception of interactive communication (= .56). The less
they perceive that interactive communication were performed in their rela-
tionship, the more the division of family work were perceived as unfair for
women. The perceived satisfaction of household chores had a significant
impact on the perception of fairness (= .27). The more people wanted
their partner to perform the household chores, the more they perceived
the division as unfair for women. The ideology of gender division was asso-
ciated to the perceived fairness (= .21). The more people endorse the tra-
ditional gender division of family work, the less they regard the division as
unfair for women. Considering the R square was 0.63, the womens model
had strong predictive power.
The problem of this issue is that the contextual factors of individuals
are removed in the process of collecting and analysing the data. In vari-
able approach studies that use the point scales to measure the degree of
psychological phenomena, the explanation of data is basically based on ag-
gregated scores such as a mean and a correlational coefficient. In this way
of data collection and analysis, whereas whole tendency of the data is well
described on the basis of the statistical procedure, the situation and context
where individuals have lived are not treated. For example, regression analy-
sis reveals the relationship of dependent variable and independent vari-
ables, i.e., it ascribes explanatory power of individual parts of varianceyet
the situation of each individual is still unclear. Here we need the typology
and the cluster analysis is good for grouping participants. Cluster analysis
does not depend on correlation coefficients and does not intend to reveal
latent factors. Cluster analysis has been regarded as a tedious technique,
because it explains nothing and because it has many sub-methods but no
strict standard for clustering. However it seems to be reevaluated today, as
there is a change in the focus of research. Instead of explaining by latent
variables, trajectories to each type should be explained.
Cluster Analysis Reevaluated as a New Bridge between the

Nomothetic and Idiographic Approaches
In Nameda (2009)s study, Japanese people (107 men and 73 women;

range of age is from 23 to 66), who share family work including paid work,
household, work and child rearing, were recruited in four Japanese prefec-
tures using snowball sampling. Each individuals ratings of the ideology of
mutual participation gender ideology, the perceived satisfaction of house-
hold work, the perceived satisfaction of paid work and the perception of in-
teractive communications were used for hierarchical cluster analysis using
Wards method. Six clusters were selected for understanding participants
grouping (Figure 2).
Here we take a brief look at the feature of each cluster. We use the aver-
age score of perceived advantage for men (the higher score means that
men are evaluated unfairly advantageous in a participants family) and the
ratio of men and women. The total average of the score is 4.7 (men are
evaluated as advantageous) and total ratio = 1.47 (men = 107, women =
73). Both 4.7 and 1.47 are some kind of baseline for comparing feature of
clusters each other. Cluster 1 is the group who seems to be content with
household work and paid work. The average score of perceived advantage
for men is 4.4. The ratio of men to women is 1.54 (43:28). Cluster 2 is the
102 SATO, ET AL.
22
2
7
11
9
5

10

FIGURE 2. Dendrogram of hierarchical cluster analysis (The number

within circle represents the number of cluster; The number next to
the circle shows the number of participants belonging to a minimum
size of clusters grouped; The dotted line indicates the point to deter-
mine the number of cluster detected).
group who seems to be satisfied with paid work but slightly wants to per-
form more household work by themselves. The average score of perceived
advantage for men is 4.5. The ratio of men to women is 3.33 (20:6). Cluster
3 is the group who doesnt seem to be satisfied with the paid work. The aver-
age score of perceived advantage for men is 5.4. The ratio of men to wom-
en is 3.33 (10:3). Cluster 4 is the group who seems to be satisfied with their
way of household work and paid work. The average score of perceived ad-
vantage for men is 4.9. The ratio of men to women is 1.09 (12:11). People
in cluster 5 are likely to endorse traditional division of family work and not
to have strong will of performing family work mutually. The average score
of perceived advantage for men is 4.7. The ratio of men to women is 2.83
(17:6). People in cluster 6 are characterized by high performing of house-
hold and low level of mutual communication with partner. The average
score of perceived advantage for men is 5.3. The ratio of men to women
is 0.47 (5:19). We can name each cluster. Cluster 1 is mutual satisfaction
type, cluster 2 is eager for household work type, cluster 3 is feeling of insuf-
ficiency for paid work type, cluster 4 is active collaborative type, cluster 5 is
traditional gender division type, cluster 6 is disrupted non-satisfaction type.
Putting Theoretical Variables into Life Trajectory
Yet naming of the clusters solves no problemsit creates new ones (as
the names create tautologies, e.g. person X is high on mutual satisfaction
because he has a tendency to feel satisfied), andmost importantlythe
cluster analysis excludes time. In order to take account of the contextual
factors in collecting and analysing data, here, the notion of time should be
focused on. The notion of time here represents the period(s) when people
form sense of fairness or unfairness. The point of the fairness research in
family work focusing on the notion of time is to suppose that the individu-
als experiences and situations where they live have impacts on sense of
fairness and to examine how these contextual factors influence the process
of shaping sense of fairness or unfairness. Usually in mainstream psychol-
ogy, the use of multivariate analysis is highly recommended and is regarded
as trustful and reliable. Qualitative data analyses tend to be regarded as
preliminary. But here we turn over such belief. Quantitative research is
preliminary stage for qualitative research. Next table is a summary of the
cluster analysis.
Five variables were used for the cluster analysis, which means the variable
of Perceived Mens Advantage was not included (Table 2). Average scores
of variables are classified into three levels (low, middle, high) for each clus-
ter group. The alignment sequence reflects the hypothetical layers of vari-
ables. The antecedent value system level (Gender division), the activity level
104 SATO, ET AL.
TABLE 2. Assumed Trajectories of Variables to Six Types (Nameda,

2009)
Inter-
Mutual active Satis- Satisfaction; Perceived
Gender partici- communi- faction; Household Mens
(M:W) division pation cation Paid work work Advantage
G1 (43:28) L L H M M 4.4
G2 (20:6) H H H M L 4.5
G3 (10:3) M M M L H 5.4
G4 (12:11) L H M M M 4.9
G5 (17:6) H L L H L 4.7
G6 (5:19) M M L H H 5.3
Total (107:73) 4.7
(Mutual participation, Interactive communication) and the emotional sat-

isfaction level (Satisfaction; Paid work, Satisfaction; Household work) are
hypothetically set up. The variable of Perceived Mens Advantage should
be used for analyzing the result of the types. The cluster analysis as an in-
ductive method can be useful for the typological thinking, but it is still
static. We should step further to understand each person in each cluster
dynamically. The table before is one idea and it activates further research.
Actually, the hierarchy of variable shown in this section is rather arbitrary.
So, the further research should be planned for getting more appropriate
data for using the cluster analysisthe time dependent data
Understanding People: Timeless, or Time-full?
Using the cluster analysis provides us the time-conscious thinking on

the holistic understanding of development. But it still remains in variable
approach, as Toomela (2008) called it. The use of the notion of variable
in psychology is in itself a rather recent invention (see Danziger, 1997,
chap.9). However, the term variable has been woven into the very fabric
of contemporary psychological discourse. This variable approach, depicts
a person as a mixture of many relatively independent variables, so hu-
man is regarded as a bunch of variables (Sato, Watanabe, & Omi, 2007). In
intelligence and personality areas, the latent variable model flourished and
proposed the many assumed factor structures of intrapsychic factors.
Can we understand people by understanding their intrapsychic charac-
teristics and their personality structures? The answer is No. Humans are
not completely determined by such intrapsychic factors as personalities be-
cause they also interact with the external world. We should attend to the
experiences of people embedded in social systems rather than to the effects
of personality characteristics. Here we find we need the open systemic view
for understanding human being and/or development holistic and individ-
ualistic-centered.
SECTION 3
TEM; LOOKING AT PERSONAL
TRAJECTORIES WITHIN TIME
How can we come to understand the diversity of life trajectories within the
context of the high variability in human lives? The Trajectory Equifinality
Model (TEM) which we have described elsewhere (Sato et al, 2007; Valsiner
& Sato, 2006) as well as in this chapter is a new methodological device for
psychology. It is based on the systemic view and takes the notion of irrevers-
ible time seriously. The TEM constitutes a method by which we can depict
the diversity of life trajectories while focusing on certain key elements (e.g.,
choices and actions, thoughts and feelings) over time.
The notion of open system is very important for escaping from variable
psychology (Toomela, 2008), because the measurement of inner attri-
bute is possible only for the closed system. Valsiner (1986, p. 352) insisted
that if a psychologist rejects the idea of closed-systems of psychological
phenomena and accepts an open-systems viewpoint, his treatment of the
time dimension in psychological research would change.
Von Bertalanffy, who was the founder of the general systems theory (GST;
Von Bertalanffy, 1968), regarded living organisms including human beings
as not closed systems but open systems. Closed systems are considered not
to depend upon their environments for their functioning. If phenomena in
particular science can be assumed to be of the kind of closed systems, the
traditional sampling techniques would be sufficient and there would be no
need for developing an alternative.
In his essay, The Theory of Open Systems in Physics and Biology, von
Bertalanffy (1950) sums up the main concepts of the theory of an open-
system. He insisted that: The characteristic state of a living organism is that
of an open system. And one more important thing is the notion of equifi-
nality. A profound difference between most inanimate, or closed, systems
and living systems is expressed by the concept of equifinality, he said.
Equifinality means that the same state may be reached from different initial
conditions and in different ways in the course of time. Open system con-
nects to the notion of equifinality. And equifinality needs to be the notion
of trajectories and time, inevitably (Figure 3).
106 SATO, ET AL.
FIGURE 3. Equifinality of Trajectories.
Viewed simply, equifinality and trajectories are depicted in Figure 3. The

manner of data depicting in TEM is congruent with the fact that individuals
face more choices in modern society than in previous eras. It is important
to understand the particular life trajectories being followed by specific in-
dividuals as they try to solve the day-to-day problems that pertain to living
within social systems. Simply speaking, TEM is the method to describe per-
sons life courses within irreversible time after researchers focusing impor-
tant events as EFPs. After establishing the equifinality point, trajectories
should be traced. Depicting TEM makes it possible to grasp the trajectory
with irreversible time (Figure 4). Now we present the basic notion of TEM.
Bifurcation Point (BFP) is a Point That Has Alternative Options to Go
In Figure 4, original ideas of bifurcation points (BFP) and equifinality

points (EFP) are shown in the diagram of TEM (Valsiner, 2001).
Irreversible Time
Under the influence of Bergsons philosophy, Valsiner (1999) insisted
that the irreversibility of time is an absolute given for the study of all liv-
ing phenomena. Irreversible time is the characteristic of real time never
to repeat any happening of the previous time period. Time flows from an
infinite past towards an infinite future. We dont intend to refer the repre-
sentation of time. We try to put the basic feature of time into our model.
Even if we felt we do same things, time might pass. There is no timeless
repetition, we pose.
Polarized EFP
Since EFP depends on the researchers focus and/or research questions,
EFP only shows one aspect of phenomena. We need to show some kind of
complement set of EFP. So we set up polarized EFP (P-EFP) for neutraliz-
ing implicit value system of researchers. For example, Yasuda (2005), ap-
FIGURE 4. Original Ideas of Bifurcation Points (BFP) and Equifinality

Points (EFP) in Valsiner, 2001.
proached the infertile experiences of married women in Japan looking at

their reconstructed histories of moving between P-FEPs containing having
children and not having children as the two opposites within the same
whole. Both having children and having no children should be considered
as equivalent equifinality points.
OPP
Obligatory passage point (OPP) is a concept originally emerged in the
context of the geopolitical term. For example, the Strait of Gibraltar is the
strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. So we can
say that the Strait of Gibraltar is the OPP from the Atlantic Ocean to the
Mediterranean Sea, and vice versa. Converting it in the context of TEM,
OPP means a phase and/or event persons inevitably experience through
initial condition to EFP.
The history of TEM is inter-dependent on the one of sampling method-
ologies named as Historically Structured Sampling (HSS). From the view-
point of sampling philosophy and technique, the procedure of HSS consists
of equifinality sampling i.e., the equifinality point which researchers have
an interest is the experience to focus on. From the practical view point, the
act of using the HSS and TEM involves the following steps (Valsiner & Sato,
2006):
a. locating the relevant equifinality point (EFP)as well as all rel-

evant OPPsin the generic map of trajectories necessarily present
for the generic system of the processes under investigation (theo-
retically-based activity);
b. empirical mapping out all particular casessystems open to study
that move through these points; and
108 SATO, ET AL.
c. comparison of different actual trajectories as these approach to the

equifinality point by superimposing onto each trajectory a pattern
of theoretically meaningful range measure, derived from (a.)
that specifies whether the given trajectory fits into the realm of
selectable cases.
Since EFP depends on the researchers focus and/or research questions,

we set up polarized equifinality points (P-EFP) for neutralizing implicit val-
ue system of researchers. P-EFP makes researchers notice the possibility of
invisible trajectories.
Infertility Experience of Japanese Women through TEM
Here, trajectories might appear unlimitedly diverse, but in fact, trajec-

tories to the equifinality point are combined into a pattern. It reflects the
restriction of outer world of human beings and where the typology of tra-
jectories is needed.
For example, Yasuda (2005) interviewed nine women who were unable
to have children with infertility treatment and were considering adoption.
Using the process described below, Yasuda divided their life trajectories
into four types, beginning with their infertility treatment. First, Yasuda fo-
cused on three issues that contribute to the definition of trajectory type:
1. stopping infertility treatment (Equifinality Point: EFP);

2. considering adoption (Obligatory Passage Point: OPP); and
3. relinquishing adoption (i.e., efforts to adopt failed) (Bifurcation
Point: BFP).
Next, Yasuda divided cases into four types in two steps. The first step in-
volved determining whether considerations of adoption (OPP) arose be-
fore or after stopping infertility treatment (EFP). This step would indicate
whether women could be considering adoption when they stopped infertil-
ity treatment. The second step involved whether the women relinquished
adoption (BFP), and indicates if adoption actually occurred.
Trajectories were depicted so that we might understand the diversity of
infertility experience in contemporary Japan (Figure 5).
This study arranges the 9 cases into 4 types, as shown in Table 1. We pro-
pose the following typology of trajectories:
Type 1: Considered adoption while undergoing infertility treatment,

which resulted in stopping the infertility treatment (EFP) and pur-
suing adoption instead.
FIGURE 5. Life Decision Trajectories for Infertility Issues.
110 SATO, ET AL.
TABLE 3. Types of Trajectories

The Second Step
Did not stop Stopped adoption
adoption process process
Before* Type 1 Type 2
4 cases 1 case
The First Step
After* Type 3 Type 4
3 cases 1 cases
*Before: considering adoption before stopping infertility treatment. After: considering
adoption after stopping infertility treatment.
Type 2: Considered adoption while undergoing infertility treatment but

did not pursue adoption because of disagreement within the cou-
ple. These women stopped infertility treatment (EFP) and decided
to live without children.
Type 3: Stopped infertility treatment (EFP) and decided to live without
children but subsequently considered adoption (OPP) and suc-
cessfully pursued this alternative.
Type 4: Stopped infertility treatment (EFP) but subsequently considered
adoption (OPP) and pursued it unsuccessfully. Thus, they relin-
quished adoption as an alternative (BFP) and decided to live with-
out children.
This typology, organized according to the process by which decisions

about infertility treatment and adoption emerged, reflects changes in the
subjects attitudes about having children. That is, stopping infertility treat-
ment indicates compromising the wish to give birth to children, and consid-
ering adoption indicates a compromise in order to fulfill the desire to raise
children. Relinquishing adoption indicates a compromise with respect to
the desire to have children. Because people live in societies, the desire to
have children interacts with the social milieu through a mutual feedback
system that operates within certain constraints. The typology shows that
infertility treatment constitutes the first choice and adoption the second
choice for women who want to have children in modern Japanese society.
It is important to appreciate diversity with respect to life trajectories in
addition to organizing them into types. As noted above, feasible life trajec-
tories are limited by social and physical restrictions. However, each experi-
ence is individual and multidimensional. Only to understand types is not to
understand people.
Thus, how do we depict this diversity? Yasuda extracted the narratives
describing the experience of stopping infertility treatment (EFP), consider-
ing adoption (OPP), relinquishing adoption (BFP), undergoing infertility
treatment, pursuing adoption, and the current experience or self-aware-

ness. These experiences were arranged according to experiences of ones
self, the physical body, conjugal relations, medical treatments, and social
phenomena. Yasuda classified these narratives into narratives of ones self,
body, the couple, medical treatment, and society, in that order. Yasuda then
created a time-line for these narratives: undergoing infertility treatment,
stopping infertility treatment (EFP), considering adoption (OPP), pursu-
ing adoption, relinquishing adoption (BFP), and current. Finally, Yasuda
depicted representative experiences of each type over time.
Thus, we must integrate the different types of trajectories and depict the
diversity of such trajectories in order to understand individuals as whole
and complex beings.
Jerome Bruner has insisted on the importance of distinction between
process and product of narrative. Bruner (2002) then considers the place
of narrative in law and the construction of the self. In the context of law-
suit, different stories attack each other. For example, in the criminal proce-
dure, one person who is accused is not always a real criminal.
Even though the constitution of Japan prohibits conviction based solely
on confession, confession is regarded as The King of Evidence in Japa-
nese criminal procedure. So eliciting the confession from the arrested peo-
ple is very important for the police. And sometimes, elicitation transforms
into coercion during police interrogation. In Japanese criminal procedure,
the existence of the coerced false confession is perceived recently. It is par-
tially because SAIBAN-IN SEIDO (mixed jury system) started July, 2009. So
we move on to another topic.
SECTION 4:
CONSTRUCTING THE UN-EXPERIENCED STORY WITH
PLAUSIBLE-LOOKING EVIDENCES IN TIME: THE
WRONGFUL CONVICTION WITH FALSE CONFESSION
Though Alfred Binet in Paris envisaged a science of testimony" in his La

suggestibilit in 1900, it was psychologists in Germany who promoted this
inter-disciplinary area. William Stern, a student of Ebbinghaus, conducted
many studies (Stern & Stern, 1909/1999) and at last he launched a new
psychology journal on testimony Beitrge zur Psychologie der Aussage. Stern
was invited to the US at the famous 1909 conference at Clark University
where he gave a lecture on the eyewitness testimony. The psychology and
law (or forensic psychology) was one of promising sub-discipline in the US,
as well as in the continental. Actually, one year before of the Sterns lecture,
Mnsterberg (1908) published On the Witness Stand in the US. Mnsterberg
was a friend of Stern in Germany. Since then, the accuracy of the testimony
112 SATO, ET AL.
has been one of the core issues at the intersection of psychology and law.
Over the past hundred years, this issue is of high social relevance all over
the world.
In addition to the inaccuracy of eye-witness testimony, the suspects (not
criminals) wrongful confession of their own action was hard to understand.
Most of people think that lying is the way for escaping from punishment,
so they cannot imagine that innocent people sometimes tell lies for taking
roles of criminals. But in any country in any time, the innocent people
might confess even they were not guilty. Today, the Innocence project in
the US reveals that there have been a lot of false confessions in the US
(http://www.innocenceproject.org/). In Japan, the situation seems to be
worse than any other countries. The examination of a suspected person
is still performed behind closed doors. In the situation of criminal proce-
dures of Japan, once the police section arrests a suspect legally, they can
detain the suspect for 23 days at the police station. In Japan, detention cells
in the police station are used as legal substitutes for detention centers. In
many countries, detention centers are supervised by a professional corps
of prison guards who are not involved in the investigative processes. But
in Japan, detention cells in the police station are usually supervised by the
police force, so an investigation tends to be conducted all day and night.
The suspect is literally alone, because no attorney could attend the investi-
gation by police officers. Actually, in Japanese criminal procedure, because
the confession from the suspect is regarded as a king of evidence, the
police section struggle to take the confession. In such a situation, taking
the confession itself becomes a task to achieve for the police force. In many
cases, the suspect is believed to try to hide the evidence of the crime. So, if
the suspect denies the crime or talks nothing about the crime, the police
officers easily think they should take the confession from the untruthful
suspect. An interrogation often becomes severe. Under such a physical and
psychological pressure, an innocent suspect accepts to decide to become
the criminal and begins to tell about the crime although the number of
such cases is relatively small. We call such a confession as a false confession.
In the criminal procedure, not all criminals are arrested. And not all
the arrested criminals confess. This is why the deliberate interrogation is
needed. On the other hand, innocent people are arrested and some con-
fess wrongfully. We can show the cross tabulation of the typology of such
situations in Table 4.
We consider the TEM (Trajectory and Equifinality Model) is available
for detecting the false confessions. Though, TEM has derived from the per-
spective of cultural psychology and had genuine theoretical and research
orientation, it never rejects the usage in the practical object.
The real confession of the criminal tends to depict the simple trail be-
cause the true criminal confessed what s/he did. But in false confession,
TABLE 4. Typology of Confession and/or Negation

To tell a lie To tell a truth
The criminal False negation Confession
The innocent False confession Negation
the suspect should say many things so that the innocent suspect doesnt
know what is really happened. And it takes time for the innocent suspect to
reach the equifinality point (doing the crime), because s/he knows noth-
ing about the crime. To say that Im a criminal of this crime is easy, but
to become the criminal is very difficult. But here we should point out that
there are two time flows in the false confessions. The first is the time flow of
the statements. The second is the time flow of telling the false confession.
Here the TEM seems to be applicable for analyzing the process of the false
confession. Lets make the two dimension of time in the TEM figure (see,
Figure 6). In the TEM figure, both X and Y axes represent the dimensions
of time. The first dimension (x-axis) is the time-series of statements on the
criminal event (murder or something). The second dimension (y-axis) is
the time-series that the statement was taken. Even this figure is imaginary,
we can see the trajectories to an equifinality point and it means fluctuations
FIGURE 6. The Example of TEM for Visualizing the Fluctuating Con-

fessions of an Innocent Defendant.
*The statement of Day 17 is submitted to a court.
114 SATO, ET AL.
of the confession become visible. Obligatory passage point (OPP) is a time

to confess of the crime wrongfully.
Hamada, who is an authority on the psychology of statements analysis,
points out that if fluctuation and change of the contents without any ratio-
nal reason during the confession process, the statement should be doubted
so that the suspect might be forced to confess wrongfully (Hamada, 1992,
2001). So the analyzing the contents of statement s should be important, es-
pecially after OPP (when the confession under coercion starts). The state-
ment such as I did it doesnt serve as an evidence of a crime, therefore an
innocent suspected person must begin to tell the details of a crime so that
the judge might be able to state the guilty in the court later. If the suspect
isnt a true criminal, s/he cant state the information of "truth" without in-
formation from outer world. Interestingly or ironically, interrogators some-
times have a fragment of objectively true information of the crime through
investigation of the incident, such as the way of murder, suspected arms,
and so on. So, the interaction between interrogators and the innocent sus-
pect in interrogation becomes like a game. If the suspect were a true crimi-
nal, he only talks about what he did and he can conceal what he doesnt
want to tell. But if not, s/he needs to get hints to tell a true answer from
someone, interrogators. On the other hand, interrogators should not give
true information, because the forced and/or apparently suggested confes-
sion must be authorized as illegal and invaluable evidence in the court.
Thus, it is expected that a false confession forms a story so that it may have
compatibility with the fact.
Hamamatsu Incident: Two Opposing Confessions
TEM can visualize the change of this statement. Therefore, we analyzed

the real incident with the possibility of a false charge.
Material
The real incident with the possibility of a false charge, Hamamatsu in-
cident, was taken up as a material. This incident was very unusual in the
point that both of the suspects (a suspect A: SA and a suspect B: SB) have
different declarations, as a confession and negation. The victim was the
younger child of SB. SA lived with SB who was divorced and had two chil-
dren. The child was killed due to drowning in a bathtub and there was no
evidence of an intruder. SA and/or SB should be suspected in such a situa-
tion strongly. They were interrogated separately and both of them had once
confessed the crime, then after that denied in different time.
FIGURE 7. TEMs of Opposing Confessions of the Hamamatsu Incident
116 SATO, ET AL.
Analysis
Both SAs declaration and SBs statement were distilled in the course
of time, and the changes of their declarations were analyzed. So, when we
analyze the both statements, we made consider using the phase of each
defendants stance (admit a crime or negate a crime). It was the time-series
of y-axis in this analysis.
Results
There is transition in and a difference between SAs and SBs declara-
tion, as can be seen in Figure 7. The SAs declaration had clearly diversity
of courses. Especially, after SA confessed to the crime, the course of con-
tents seems to get complex. By contrast, the course of SBs statements after
admitting a crime shows a simple structure. Therefore, the SBs statements
after admitting a crime differ from the contents before admitting a crime.
The statements of both suspects in Hamamatsu incident appears the dif-
ferent courses on TEM. The suspect Bs statement had consistency in each
phase. However, as the investigations advanced, interestingly, SAs state-
ments change and seems to show consistency. Simultaneously, the contents
of SAs statements were adversely changed with time-series of a crime. This
phenomenon is called ad hoc (posterior) explanation. After the suspect
accepted to become a criminal, both the suspect and investigators had to
constitute the story that corresponded to the facts. Therefore they recon-
struct the past statement. Naturally this reconstruction is not performed
by only one part. Though analyzing the false confession with TEM cant be
used for the true or false detection, TEMs advantage is that it can show us
the process of confession, and not the product. So, we can say TEM is the
promising visualization tool for showing fluctuations of narrative and/or
text data in the forensic field. Actually, large amounts of text data exist in
the forensic field, TEM will be useful to organize the statements and detect
the inconsistency of confessions.
GENERAL CONCLUSION
Toomela (2007, 2008) has recently brought to our attention the develop-
ment of psychology in the second half of the 20th century along two tra-
jectoriesthe North-American and the German-Austrian methodological
orientations. If it was true, Japan is an interesting site to review both trajec-
tories of psychology. Japanese psychologists have been importing academic
knowledge from foreign countries after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Be-
fore WW2, Japanese government had a strong connection with Germany.
And after WW2, Japan was occupied by the allied force including the US.
Many officers including psychologists came to Japan to reform the regime.
At the same time the cultural history of Japan provides psychologists with
rich indigenous input. In Japan, like Heraclitan philosophy, the notion of
the flow of river is suitable for considering the dynamic aspect of life (Sato,
Hidaka, & Fukuda, 2009). So we are conscious of flow of time.
We found that time conscious psychology needs the old-new concept of
typology for understanding both diversity and restriction of life trajectories.
TEM, which is based on the systemic view and the fruit of time conscious
psychology, is successfully applied in the field of law.
Valsiner (2009) pointed out that there were three major domains of
oversight in psychology:
1. Eliminating the dynamic flow of the phenomena in the data.

2. Eliminating the hierarchical order (part<>whole relations) in the
transformation of phenomena into data.
3. Eliminating the immediate context of the phenomenon in its
transformation into data.
If psychologists take the notions of time, open system, equifinality and tra-
jectory seriously, oversights of psychology might be eliminated. And learn-
ing from history of intelligence and personality psychology and equipping
typology into TEM make it possible to understand human being and/or
development holistic and individually.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are grateful to Mr. Zack Beckstead (Clark University) for his
correction of English expression.
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CHAPTER 6
METAPHORS IN
PSYCHOLOGICAL
CONCEPTUALIZATION AND
EXPLANATION
Hans Dooremalen and Denny Borsboom
Sigmund Freud (1925/1971) had a gift for creating metaphors to express

his psychoanalytic views. One of them is that the mechanism of repression
can be seen as the mechanism behind the mystic writing-pad (Wunderblock).
A mystic writing-pad is a childs toy on which one can write or draw; these
writings and drawings are made with a plastic pen, and can be erased from
the paper. But traces of the words and pictures remain in the underground
below the paper, just like in repressionor so Freud argued.
Evidently there is no mystic writing-pad in our heads, so the metaphor
seems to be misplaced, for if there is such a thing as repression, then it
surely is no Wunderblock. Should we then not be wary of using metaphors in
psychology, and science in general? This paper has the general aim to make
the reader aware of the abundance of metaphors that are used in psycho-
logical conceptualization and explanation. The importance of metaphors
in science is that metaphors are untrue, which conflicts with the search for
true scientific theories. We should therefore be aware of the fact that meta-
phors are being used, and that as such they do not generate any explanation
whatsoever. We argue that even though they are false we should not discard

122 HANS DOOREMALEN & DENNY BORSBOOM
them right away, for they do generate interesting hypotheses. The bene-
fits to psychology are twofold. First of all, raising awareness with respect
to metaphorical thinking helps psychologists discover possible falsehoods.
Second, being aware that metaphors are important heuristic devices, they
should be incorporated explicitly as such in the psychological methodology
to generate testable hypotheses.
The program of this paper is the following. First we will explain what
metaphors are, why they are always untrue, and how they differ from analo-
gies. In past times, even when metaphors were not seen as mere decora-
tive rhetorical devices of our language, is was common to argue that all
language is metaphorical. Only if this view is abandoned, and the distinc-
tion between literal and metaphorical is recognized, questions pertaining
to truth and the use of metaphors in science become clear. In the second
section we will present the problem that metaphors in science pose: since
metaphors are always false, it seems that we should discard them, for in
any science we are looking for true theories. However, we can make use
of the fertility of metaphors: they might generate interesting hypothesis.
In section three we will explain how this works, after which we will discuss
two metaphors in psychology in sections four and five. We will end with a
general note of caution.
METAPHORS
If we want to understand how metaphors might have a functional role in

generating new hypothesis we should be aware of three things. First we
should notice the difference between a metaphor and its related metaphor-
ical utterances. Second we should be aware that metaphors are always un-
true. Lastly we should distinguish metaphors from analogy or simile, mainly
because analogies usually are true. But let us first look at some older view in
the philosophy and psychology of metaphor.
All Language is Metaphorical

In the 19th century it was not uncommon for philosophers, psycholo-
gists and linguists to argue that metaphor is more than just a decorative
or rhetorical device, and that it should be taken seriously.1 We agree that
metaphor should be taken seriously, but that in doing so, one should not
make the mistake to think that all language is metaphorical. The idea that
all language is metaphorical in nature can be traced back to the 1880s
(Nerlich & Clarke 2001, p. 42), and became prominent in the nineteenth
1
For a nice overview, that goes beyond the time and geography more than the title suggests,
see Nerlich & Clarke (2001).
Metaphors in Psychological Conceptualization and Explanation 123
century. If by the slogan all language is metaphorical is meant that no

word is the thing it refers to (or even its meaning), then of course we agree:
One cannot throw the word stone. But we object to interpretations of this
slogan if this implies that [n]othing is more wrong than to suppose that we
use language to designate things in the world as the German philosopher
of language Gustav Gerber (18201901) wrote (quoted in Nerlich & Clarke
2001, p. 46). Others influential thinkers held similar views, such as Fried-
rich Nietzsche who argued that:
[w]e believe that we know something about the things themselves when we
talk about trees, colors, snow and flowers, when, in fact, the only thing we
have are metaphors of things, metaphors that do not correspond in any way
to the original essences. (quoted in Nerlich & Clarke 2001, p. 47)
Thinkers like Gerber and Nietzsche also stressed the importance of meta-
phor for the understanding of the world. We agree with this latter point,
but we will also show that metaphors should be taken literally, and that as
such, they introduce unwanted falsehoods into conceptualization and ex-
planation in psychology. If all language is metaphorical, then true knowledge
becomes impossible, and we might as well just stop exploring the world.
The old idea that all language is metaphorical is one that should be aban-
doned.
Metaphor and Metaphorical Utterances
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) say that [t]he essence of metaphor
is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another (p. 5). We
use many concepts that refer to one domain (the source domain) to under-
stand aspects of another domain (the target domain), implying that meta-
phors are not just singular expressions but entire structures. Usually the
metaphor is expressed using only capitals, while the singular metaphorical
expressions are printed as normal text. So, the expressions You are wasting
my time and This gadget will save you hours are both singular utterances,
expressing the TIME-IS-MONEY metaphor. But we all know that time is not
money: If you have loads of time, you might very well be poor.
If we understand the target domain (e.g., time) in terms of the source
domain (e.g., money), we should be able to understand the source domain
in its own terms. This might not always be the case of course, for maybe we
understand money also in terms of yet another source domain (e.g., money
is the root of all evil).
We claim that most of our normal conceptual system is metaphorically struc-

tured; that is, most concepts are partially understood in terms of other con-
cepts. This raises an important question about the grounding of our concep-
tual system. Are there any concepts at all that are understood directly, without
metaphor? If not, how can we understand anything at all? (Lakoff & Johnson
1980, p. 56)
In order to be able to truly understand parts of the world we have to have

concepts we use to think about certain domains that actually refer to the
world in the way the world actually is. The primary candidates for the things
we do understand immediatelywithout the use of metaphorare spatial
concepts like up, down, front and back. These concepts we under-
stand as they are, some things really are in front of us, and we really can
go up a hill. Such concepts can be the basis then of understanding other
domains, like emotions: HAPPY-IS-UP and SAD-IS-DOWN (p. 5758). An-
other concept of which we can say that we understand it in terms that refer
to non-metaphorically is that of the sun.
Why Metaphors are Always Untrue
William Shakespeare has Romeo famously saying that Juliet is the sun.
(Shakespeare, 1597/1984, Act II, Scene II) What does this sentence mean?
Does it mean the same as Juliet is the star nearest to planet earth or does
it have some additional meaning? Donald Davidson argues that metaphors
mean what the words, in their most literal interpretation, mean, and noth-
ing more. (Davidson, 1984, p. 245) It is not uncommon to think that a met-
aphorical expression like Juliet is the sun has both a literal meaning and
a metaphorical one. There are different ways of thinking about this second
meaning. One could argue that this is a totally different meaning, or that it
is some meaning derived from the literal one. These issues are not relevant
here, for the claim is that there is no such thing as metaphorical meaning.
The bottom-line of Davidsons argument is quite easy to understand: If a
metaphor would indeed have two meanings, then to make a metaphor is
to murder it (Davidson 1984, p. 249), for all one does is introduce a term
(sun) that now not only truly refers to the star nearest to planet Earth, but
also to Juliet. Just like bank has two different meanings, sun would beget
a second meaning, besides star nearest to planet Earth. Metaphors would
then be nothing more than homonyms.
If we agree that metaphors usually are untrue in their literal meaning
the exceptions being those that use a negation in their expressions, like I
am not the walrusand that there is no other meaning, then we have to
accept that metaphors are usually false. This feature of metaphors is what
distinguishes them from analogy or simile.
Metaphor and Simile
When Romeo says that Juliet is the sun, he says something that is false.
Given that metaphorical thinking is the understanding of one domain in
terms of another, Shakespeare wants us to think about Juliet in terms of the
sun. This would amount to ascribing all the properties of the sun to Juliet.
The propositions that would express those ascriptions clearly are false. Ju-
liet is a gaseous star, Juliet has solar flares and Juliet is radiant are all
untrue. This sharply contrasts with similes: The most obvious difference
between simile and metaphor is that all similes are true and most meta-
phors are false. (Davidson, 1984, p. 257)
If Romeo had said Juliet is like the sun, then he would not have uttered
a metaphorical sentence, but he would have used a simile. And similes are
always true, provided that the exact similarity is not specified in the expres-
sion. In this case the simile Juliet is like the sun is true, for there is some
property to be found that both the sun and Juliet really do have in com-
mon. One might for instance say that Shakespeare wrote about them. So
clearly an analogy and a metaphor differ in truth value.
The fact that a metaphor usually is false is important for two reasons.
The first reason is that the obvious falsehood of the metaphor helps us
recognize it as a metaphor. (Searle, 1979) We all know that Romeo knows
that Juliet is not really the sun. If we thought that the metaphor was true in
some sense, we would not recognize it as a metaphor. The second reason is
that if we indeed think about a target domain (say, the mind) in terms of
something else (say, a computer) we might end up with all kinds of false-
hoods, without even recognizing them as falsehoods.
THE PROBLEM
In short, the problem we are drawing attention to is that science strives to

find true theories about the world, and that if we are not careful in our use
of metaphors in theorizing and conceptualizing about the world, we will
end up with just the opposite.
Truth as Correspondence
Though there is much discussion in philosophical circles about the no-

tion of truth, we argue that truth is a property of a proposition that ex-
presses the world in the way the world is. This is known as the correspondence
theory of truth. In our everyday speech, we all use the concept of truth in
this fashion. If someone says that all dogs have five legs, then we would say
that this person is wrong. Why? Because most dogs have four legs, that is
just the way the world is. Hence, the sentence most dogs have four legs
is true because this expression corresponds to the facts; it corresponds to
the way the world really is. This is also why Juliet is the sun is untrue: this
sentence does not correspond to the way the world is.
So far we have seen that in everyday thinking metaphors are abundant
and that metaphors are untrue. If we do not recognize that some expres-
sion is a metaphor, we might end up believing that it is actually true. This
also applies to scientific theories: if, in science, we use metaphors to gener-
ate theories, then we might end up with false theories, which are contrary
to the aim of science: truth. Should we then track down the metaphors that
are being used in science and get rid of them altogether? We argue that in
the end metaphors have no place in a finished scientific theory, but that they
are useful heuristic devices. They are Wittgensteinian ladders: to be discarded
after use. (Wittgenstein, 1961/1973, 6.54) Their fertility resides in their
power to generate hypothesis.
The Fertility of Metaphors
Ernan McMullin (1984) argues that metaphors do have a function in

science: they generate novel predictions, novel hypothesis we might not
have come up with if we did not use metaphors. These novel predictions
are suggested, not implied. Hence, they need to be tested, for they might be
false. The way a metaphor works, is by tentative suggestion (p. 31). A good
model, according to McMullin, has something of this metaphorical power.
He provides us with an example. In 1915 Alfred Wegener proposed the
continental drift hypothesis to explain similarities between continents, for
instance, that the coastal lines of Africa and South America seemed to fit
together. This theory had the problem of explaining how continents could
cut through the hard material of the ocean floors. The suggestionbut not
a logical implicationof this theory was that it was not only the continents
that were moving, but huge plates on which both the continents and the sea
floors were carried (McMullin, 1984, p. 32).
The important thing to note is that there are structural continuities from one
stage [of the theory] to the next, even though there are also important struc-
tural modifications. What provides the continuity is the underlying metaphor
of moving continents that had been in contact a long time ago and had very
gradually developed over the course of time. One feature of the original the-
ory, that the continents are the units, is eventually dropped; other features,
such as what happens when the floating plates collide, are thought through
and made specific in ways that allow a whole mass of new data to fall into
place. (p. 33)
In order to see how the fertility of metaphors works, we will now turn to the
ARGUMENT-IS-WAR metaphor. After that we are ready to apply the theory
to examples in psychology.
THE POSITIVE, NEGATIVE, AND NEUTRAL METAPHOR

Without us realizing it, our everyday and scientific thinking is often meta-
phorical in nature, which means that we run the risk of accepting false-
hoods as truths. Now our awareness about this matter has arisen, we will
put forward a conceptual distinction between the positive, neutral and nega-
tive metaphor in order to make reflecting upon the use of metaphors in
psychology easier. We will first explain this using the AGRUMENT-IS-WAR
metaphor.
ARGUMENT-IS-WAR
Lakoff and Johnson list a number of metaphorical expressions that be-

long to the ARGUMENT-IS-WAR metaphor.
Your claims are indefensible.

He attacked every weak point in my argument.
His criticisms were right on target.
I demolished his argument.
Ive never won an argument with him.
You disagree? Okay, shoot!
If you use that strategy, hell wipe you out.
He shot down all of my arguments. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 4)
ARGUMENT is partially structured, understood, performed, and talked

about in terms of WAR. (p. 5) Lakoff and Johnson seem to agree with Da-
vidson that we interpret this not in any other but the literal manner: The
language of argument is not poetic, fanciful, or rhetorical; it is literal. We
talk about arguments that way because we conceive of them that wayand
we act according to the way we conceive of things (p. 5).
This is an easily overlooked aspect of metaphorical thinking: we are so
used to conceptualizing and theorizing about one thing in terms of the
other, that mostly we are not aware that we are using metaphors. This goes
both for everyday thinking and talking about arguments, as well as scientific
thinking about, say, the brain. We need to keep this in mind as we will
discuss the two case studies later.
The Positive Metaphor

As Lakoff and Johnson showed, we are inclined to think about many
aspects of the world we inhabit in metaphors. But we do not generate meta-
phors in a totally arbitrary manner: we need to see a similarity between the

thing we want to understand and that which we have an understanding of.
Vilayanur Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard (2001) speculate that syn-
esthesia might explain this:
We, along with others [], define synaesthesia as occurring when stimula-
tion of one sensory modality automatically triggers a perception in a second
modality, in the absence of any direct stimulation to this second modality.
(Harrison & Baron-Cohen, 1997, p. 3)
Ramachandran and Hubbard argue that our language is replete with synes-
thetic metaphors, like the expression that someone wears a loud shirt or the
sharp taste of cheese. Shirts of course do not make sound and you cannot
cut someone with cheese. Still we do know what is meant by these expres-
sions. One might argue that this is something we have learned, but exam-
ples can be given that are new, and in which nonsynesthetes show a natural
bias. 95 percent of people pick a drawing with sharp edges to go with the
nonsensical word kiki and associate a figure with curved edges with the
word bouba. (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001, p. 19) Their tentative
explanation is that brain representations of bodily movements, postures,
and tongue and mouth movements, are in a non-arbitrary manner linked
to sounds, and those in turn in a nonarbitrary fashion to visual appearances
of external objects.
The fact that we see non-arbitrary similarities between A and B gets our
metaphorical thinking started. Those properties that both A and B indeed
have we call the positive metaphor. In the case of the ARGUMENT-IS-WAR
metaphor these properties involve that both in an argument and a war sev-
eral parties have a difference in opinion.
The Negative Metaphor

Since we think about the world in metaphors we talk about the world in
this fashion. Philosophers of language agree that we recognize that some-
one uses a metaphor, because we recognize that they are false, and know
that the person using the metaphor knows this, too. This implies that if
one does not recognize the falsehood, the utterance is not recognized as
metaphorical. Hence the danger of using the metaphor: one mistakes a
falsehood for a truth. If the metaphor is recognized, though, it is imme-
diately recognized that not all a properties of the source domain can be
transferred to the target domain. Let us call the set of the properties of
which it is evident that they cannot be transferred the negative metaphor. If
all goes well, no one thinks that these properties of the source domain also
belong to the target domain. In the case of the ARGUMENT-IS-WAR meta-
phor such a property is that in a war people get killed, while in a normal
argument this is not the case.
The Neutral Metaphor

We have identified two aspects of the mapping of one domain upon the
other. There are properties that evidently are properties of both domains,
and there are properties that evidently only belong to the source domain
and not to the target domain. There is a third aspect though, and that is
the part in which we do not know whether the properties of the source do-
main indeed can be transferred to the target domain. This is what we call
the neutral part of the metaphor, and it is the fertile part of the metaphor, for
it provides us with the new hypothesis. In the case of the ARGUMENT-IS-
WAR one might think of the property that wars mostly are decided by some-
thing else than rational thinking. The hypothesis then might be that in
an argumentcontrary to what we might expectthe winner of a debate
often is not the most rational one, but the one with the best strategic tricks
up his sleeve. Empirical studies should then be done to see whether there
are good reasons to accept that the hypothesis indeed is true. Suppose that
the hypothesis is shown to be true. Then we have gained new knowledge
about the world, and we no longer need the metaphor. The theory about
arguments then, is a true non-metaphorical theory.
We are now ready to expand our exploration of metaphorical thinking
to metaphorical thinking in psychology.
THE COMPUTER METAPHOR IN PSYCHOLOGY AND

COGNITIVE SCIENCE
In order to understand the mind and its relation to the brain, many meta-
phors have been used:
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted
to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my
childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard.
(What else could it be?) I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great
British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system.
Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems.
Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told that some of the ancient Greeks
thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the meta-
phor is the digital computer. (Searle, 1984, p. 44)
It is since the 1960s that THE-BRAIN-IS-A-COMPUTER is the leading met-

aphor in studies of the brain and the mind. Hilary Putnam is one of the
early proponents of machine functionalismthe position in the mind-body
debate that states that the mind is a program, run (in humans) with the
brain as its supporting hardware. (Clark, 2001, p. 169) In his 1967 paper
Psychological Predicates that was later reprinted as The Nature of Men-
tal States (1975), he put forward the proposition that organisms with men-
tal states are probabilistic automata:
I propose the hypothesis that pain, or the state of being in pain, is a functional
state of a whole organism. [] The notion of a Probabilistic Automaton is
defined similarly to a Turing Machine, except that the transitions between
states are allowed to be with various probabilities, rather than being deter-
ministic. [] The hypothesis that being in pain is a functional state of the
organism may now be spelled out more exactly as follows: (1) All organ-
isms capable of feeling pain are Probabilistic Automata. (Putnam, 1975, pp.
433434)
The main idea is that just like a computer manipulates symbols using rules,
so does the brain. A Turing machinenamed after the mathematician Alan
Turingis a computer that, in principle, is able to perform any computa-
tion that one can think of. It consists of four components. First of all one
needs a tape or some other device that can contain information. Like in
a tape-recorder this tape can move forward and backward. The tape is di-
vided into separate parts (say squares), and each part can contain one piece
of information. The second component is a head that can read the tape,
is able to erase the information and can put new information on the tape.
The machine itself is the third component, whereby the machine can be in
different states, s0 to sn. The last component is the alphabet of symbolsa0
to anthat can be used. As stated, each part of the tape can contain one
piece of information, viz., one symbol of the alphabet.
Say we want to add 1 to 2. This can be done with few symbols and rules.
The initial formulation on the tape can be ##11+1##. The ## stands for
the beginning and the end of the problem, the 11 stands for 2, the +
and 1 respectively stand for + and 1. What we want to be the outcome of
the computational process is ##111##. How can we achieve this?
We need just three rules. The machine will start by being in machine
state 1 and read the first 1. The first rule we need, is that if the machine
reads a 1 it will do nothing but go one square to the right and go back to
machine state 1. It then reads a 1 again and the same rule applies, after
which the machine is in machine state 1 and reads +. The rule now is to
overwrite the + with a 1 and again go one square to the right. If the Turn-
ing machine would stop now, it would have computed that 2 + 1 = 4, so we
need to add something to the rules. After the replacement of the + by a 1,
the machine goes one square to the right is in machine state 1 and reads a
1, which according to the first rule should stay there. Now the head moves
to the right and reads a #. The rule then is that the machine leaves the # on
that part of the tape, and moves one place to the left going to machine state
2. The last rule we need is that if the machine is in machine state 2, reads
a 1, that it overwrites that 1 with a # and then halts. This will render that 2
+ 1 = 3, and will also compute any addition. Other rules can be provided to
perform different tasks.
The main idea is that thinking is also a computational process: If we
think we manipulate symbols according to certain rules:
What it is for an organism, or system, to have a psychologythat is, what it is
for that organism to have mentalityis for it to realize an appropriate Tur-
ing Machine. It isnt merely that anything with mentality has an appropriate
machine description; machine functionalism makes the stronger claim that
its having machine description of an appropriate kind is constitutive of its men-
tality. This is a philosophical thesis about the nature of mentality: Mentality,
or having a mind, consists in realizing an appropriate Turing machine [...] It
is our brains computational properties, not its biological properties, which
constitute our mentality. In short, our brain is our mind because it is a com-
puter, not because it is the kind of organic, biological structure it is. (Kim,
1996, p. 91)
Since the introduction of machine functionalism much progress has been

made. Computers have changed, and the way they work has changed. With
the introduction of the internet, computers form a vast information ex-
changing network. These changes have also influenced the way we think
about computers. For instance, with the massive use of email came those
who send spam around the world, and the need for spam filters. This broad-
ened the way we think about computers, and thereby broadened the source
domain which we could use to understand the target domain: the mind. This
latest addition to the concept of the computer indeed is used to generate
a hypothesis.
An Inner Spam Filter
In 2008 an article appeared in Scientific American entitled Your Inner

Spam Filter. The authorsAndrew McCollough and Edward Vogelar-
gued that Our mental in-box of working memorythe brain regions
and processes that keep something in mindis limited to a few items at a
time. (McCollough & Vogel, 2008, p. 74) However, there are individual dif-
ferences in the capacity of this memory in-box. The high-capacity individu-
alsthey suggestmight be better at keeping irrelevant information out
of their working memory, and suggest that such filtering is key. Empirical
data support this latest computer metaphor-based hypothesis. Some indi-
viduals are better at remembering more information at once than others.
The difference may just be a matter of having better spam filters. (p. 74)
McCollough and Vogel refer to a study by McNab and Klingberg in
which the location of the spam filter seems to be located. In the experiment
participants had to recall red and yellow squares that were shown on a com-
puter screen. They either had to remember the positions of all the squares,
or just of the red onesfiltering out the locations of the yellow objects. In
the filtering trials parts of the basal ganglia [] and the prefrontal cortex
[] became much more active than in the nonfiltering trials (pp. 7677).
In the high-capacity individuals the jump in activity levels was greatest. This
lead to the conclusion that the cooperation between these two brain re-
gions is the leading candidate for our spam filter.
It is not necessary that this is the only location of a spam filter. Other
locations in the brain might be part of this filter or even be a separate filter.
We can provide support for the spam filter hypothesis, if we turn our attention
to the evolutionary benefit such a filter would provide.
The Evolutionary Advantage of Having a Spam Filter
From an evolutionary point of view having a spam filter would be very

adaptive. It would be very time-consuming to have a brain that allowed ev-
ery detail of the surrounding to get into consciousness. Those that would
develop a filter that let only the useful information pass without actually
thinking about it, would require less time than those that would have all
the information present in their minds, and then consciously had to figure
out what the relevant information was. In those cases where time was of the
essence, they would have not survived and those with the filter would have:
arriving at conclusions automatically presumably has an advantage over
timely deliberations. McCollough and Vogel also argue for the evolutionary
plausibility of a spam filter:
Particularly intriguing is that the basal ganglia are evolutionary ancient brain
structures that have been highly conserved across species; even lizards have
them. Consequently, what is thought to be our uniquely human ability to
engage in abstract reasoning and problem solving appears to be dependent
on brain structures that have been around far longer than humans have. The
ability to filter out irrelevant spam, it seems, is critical for lizards as well as hu-
mans. (p. 77, emphasis ours)
As with all evolutionary explanations, it is easy to come up with one, but

they should stand up to empirical tests. We now discuss two hypotheses that
follow from the evolutionary views on the usefulness of having a spam
filter.
The first hypothesis is that, if a spam filter does not develop properly or
breaks down, severe interaction problems with the environment including
other humans will result. It is like all information gets in and you have to
read all your email and then decide on which to react and which not.
Sometimes spam filters do work properly, transferring most of the spam

to the spam box. But spam filters never function optimally: some spam gets
through, and worse: some genuine email ends up in the spam filter, re-
sulting in sometimes missing important information. This leads to the sec-
ond hypothesis: if the information about the environment indeed is partially
entering consciousness, then predators and prey alike might benefit from
the way the filtering mechanism works, by having themselves filtered out.
Information about them gets incorrectly thrown into the inner spam box.
Empirical studies show that both these hypothesis are supported, thereby
supporting the inner spam filter hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1: Interacting Without a Filter is Difficult

In the movie Rain Man, the leading role of the autistic Raymond Babbitt
is played by Dustin Hoffman. His character is based on a real autistic savant,
Joseph Sullivan. He is a savant, which means that he has certain capacities
that humans normally do not possess. Savants are just a small part of the
autistic population, this fraction tends to be predominantly composed of
those with early infantile autism[.] (Snyder & Mitchell, 1999, p. 590) One
famous savantStephen Wiltshireis nicknamed the living camera. He is
able to watch a scenesay an aerial view of Romeand remember it in
such detail that he is able to draw the Eternal City as if he was using a pho-
tograph (Sacks, 1985, 1995). This led researchers Alan Snyder and John
Mitchell to the provocative suggestion that an autistic mind can tap into
lower level details not readily available to introspection by normal individu-
als. (Snyder & Mitchell, 1999, p. 587) Savants like Wiltshire seem to have
access to data stored in his brain, which to normal people would not be
available. These autistic savants do not even need to make a sketch, but are
able to immediately draw an accurate picture. Despite these remarkable
skills of the savants, they usually lack many others, like being able to rec-
ognize familiar faces (Selfe, 1977). Hence, interaction with the social envi-
ronment is difficult for many autistic individuals. Apparently unconscious
information can become conscious in autistic savants that cannot become
conscious in normal humans. Snyder and Mitchell argue that we all have
detailed information stored in our minds. Hence, the mechanism for sa-
vant skills resides equally in us all but that (without some abnormality like
autism) it cannot normally be accessed for the skill in question. (Snyder &
Mitchell, 1999, p. 591) From an evolutionary perspective it does not make
a huge difference whether perceived or remembered information that be-
comes conscious is detailed or not: in both cases automatic filtering of the
irrelevant details will result in a faster response to the information. The
suggestion then is that both in perceiving and remembering information
a filtering mechanism is at workthough possibly a different one, located
at different parts of the brain. Snyder and Mitchell argued that the savant
abilities might be promoted by a loss of those centers that control execu-

tive or integrative mechanisms (p. 591). The suggestion we got from the
computer metaphor is that there is some loss of a filtering mechanism. If
it really is the case that in autistic savants a part of the brain does not func-
tion properly, then we may be able to identify which part this is, and shut
that part down in a friendly manner, in order to test the hypothesis that we
all have detailed information stored. If so, this would lend support to the
hypothesis that he brain possesses one or more filtering mechanisms.
We do know that the frontotemporal lobe (FTL) is implicated in the
development of savantlike skills in patients with frontotemporal demen-
tia (FTD). (Miller et al., 1996). That is why Young, Ridding, and Morrell
focused on this region in an attempt to generate savantlike skills in nor-
mal individuals by turning of that part of the brain via repetitive transcra-
nial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). This technique can produce sustained
and spatially selective interruptions of cortical functioning, producing safe
temporal lesions[.] (Young et al., 2004, p. 216) What happened when
this technique was applied to the FTL in participants that were unaware
of the hypothesis of the experiment? One of the tasks was to draw a horse.
The accuracy of the drawings were judged by three artists, who did not
know what the study was about and who were blinded to the experimen-
tal conditions in which the drawings were made. Not every subject was af-
fected by the rTMS. This might be due to poorly localized stimulation or
nonoptimized intensity or frequency. One of the subjects however showed
an improvement in his ability to draw a horse. In the study 5 out of 17 par-
ticipants showed savantlike skills during rTMS. This might not warrant the
conclusion that everyone could in principle access this lower-level informa-
tion, but it does lend some support to the view that the FTL is involved in
suppressing detailed information to enter into consciousness, thereby sup-
porting the inner spam filter hypothesis.
Hypothesis 2: Filtering Out Important Information

We already saw that autistic savants can remember details of scenes that
normal individuals cannot. But normal humans not only have trouble
remembering details of scenes we are no longer looking at; we also miss
the details (or even big parts of) scenes we are currently looking at, even
though we usually are under the impression that we consciously perceive
the world in detail:
We seem [] to experience a rich stream of highly detailed information con-

cerning an extensive part of our current visual surroundings. [] Our see-
ings, it seems, are not all they seem. This, then, is the Grand Illusion. (Clark,
2002, p. 182)
Different experiments concerning change and inattentional blindness have

shown that much of the information that enters our visual system by stimu-
lating the retina does not end up in our conscious experience. The most
famous of these experiments is that of Daniel Simons and Christopher Cha-
bris (1999) in which participants were asked to view a short movie of two
teams passing basketballs: a team in white shirts and a team in black shirts.
They were asked to count how many times the team in white passed their
ball. Only 27 percent of the participants detected the girl in a black gorilla-
suit walking into the visual field, stopping halfway, thumping on her chest,
and moving along. This is a case of inattentional blindness: because the atten-
tion is focused on one event in the visual field, others are missed: they are
filtered out.
Inattentional blindness differs from change blindness, for in the case of
change blindness participants are being told that a change is taking place
in the scene they are watching: their attention is not diverted away via some
other task. The task at hand is to spot the difference. An example for in-
stance is that a picture is presented in which a cornfield is shown. In this
field slowly a path emerges. Many people miss this fact, even though the
path is a considerable part of the picture. This shows that slow movements
are filtered out. Apparently slow changes usually were not that common in
the ecological niche in which we evolved, so that we evolved in a way that
these were filtered out. Some predators and some prey use this fact. Jaguars
usually do stalk their prey and sloths move so slowly that they are really hard
to spot. If all details would enter the conscious mindand this would not
slow down the processing of informationstalking prey or moving really
slowly not to be spotted by predators would have no effect.
There might be alternative explanations for the fact that not all the in-
formation that enters the brain through our senses becomes conscious, but
the hypothesis that one or more filtering mechanisms are involved is at
least made plausible.
THE THERMOMETER METAPHOR IN PSYCHOLOGICAL

MEASUREMENT
In our view, one of the hazards of the use of metaphors in science is that,
if metaphors are used intensively and repeatedly, after a while researchers
no longer recognize that we are in fact dealing with metaphors rather than
with theories. A good example of where this happens is in the literature on
psychological measurement. In that literature, a great many models have
been proposed that, as we will argue, should be based on an analogy with
measurement as it is practiced in the natural sciences, but where for most
applications the only defensible interpretation is in terms of a mere meta-
phor. Naturally, this is insufficient for concluding that our measurement
practices are structurally similar to, or even essentially the same as, those
used in the natural sciences, and actually raises questions regarding their
status as scientific. However, recently some scholars (e.g., Mislevy, 2008, in
press) have opted to embrace the metaphor without defending the analogy.
We will argue that this position in fact undermines the interpretation of test
scores as measurements.
Measurement Models in Psychology

Most measurement models used in psychology fall in the class of latent
variable models (Borsboom, 2008; Mellenbergh, 1994). Such models as-
sume a set of observable variables (often called indicators; say, IQ-items)
to be a function of a targeted attribute that is not directly observable (called
a latent variablesay, general intelligence, or g). If this is indeed the case,
then the positions of people on the targeted latent variable (i.e., their levels
of general intelligence) can be inferred from their observed item responses
(e.g., how many items in the test they answered correctly).
The general idea that underpins latent variable models sprang from
the mind of Charles Spearman (1904), who conceptualized general intel-
ligence as a latent variable. He originally interpreted general intelligence
as mental energy: the more mental energy a person had, the better his or
her performance on an IQ test. This idea derived from a proposed analogy
with physical measurement. Roughly, Spearmans idea, which is also the
general idea underlying a latent variable models, is that one has a number
of distinct measurement instruments (e.g., differently constructed ther-
mometers) that all depend on the same underlying quantity (e.g., tempera-
ture) so that one can use an aggregate score of the resulting measurement
outcomes to estimate the positions that the measured objects (e.g., differ-
ent substances that vary in temperature) occupy on that latent variable .
Now, the question arises whether the interpretation of test scores as mea-
surements should really be considered analogical to the paradigm cases in
the natural sciences, or merely as metaphorical. If the functioning of tests in
psychology is analogical to that of measurement instruments in the natural
sciences, then this means that there are structural connections between
the relations among tests, test scores, and test takers that can be mapped
onto the relations between measurement instruments, measurement out-
comes, and the objects measured. In the case of g, such a situation would
require a linearly-ordered variable that is responsible for the individual dif-
ferences in item performance in IQ-tests, so that the functioning of these
tests could be considered structurally similar to that of a number of (noisy)
thermometers, which are all dependent on the same underlying quantity
(temperature).
There are several complications that render such an interpretation prob-
lematic, and therefore the question arises whether we should take the refer-
ence to mental energy as a metaphorical expression. Spearman himself

was clearly aware of such frictions:
When asked what G is, one has to distinguish between the meanings of terms
and the facts about things. G means a particular quantity derived from sta-
tistical operations . () This then is what the G term means, a score-factor
and nothing more. But this meaning is sufficient to render the term well
defined so that the underlying thing is susceptible to scientific investigation.
On weighing the evidence, many of us used to say that this G appears to mea-
sure some form of mental energy. But in the first place, such a suggestion is
apt to invite needless controversy. This can be avoided by saying more cau-
tiously that G behaves as if it measured an energy (Spearman, 1931, as cited
in Deary, Lawn, & Bartholomew, 2008, p. 126; emphasis added).
It is interesting to note that, in intelligence research, the terminology of

mental energy is no longer used. However, for one who studies the litera-
ture on general intelligence (e.g., Jensen, 1998) it is clear that the relation
between general intelligence and IQ-scores is still conceptualized in a real-
ist fashion (i.e., g is a real entity that causes individual differences in IQ-
scores). This accords us with a literal interpretation of measurement mod-
els, in which one views a latent variable as the common cause of the item
responses (Borsboom, Mellenbergh, & Van Heerden, 2003, 2004; Glymour,
1997; Van der Maas, et al., 2006). That is, the item responses covary in a
systematic fashion (e.g., to produce the characteristic pattern of positive
intercorrelations known in IQ research as the positive manifold), because they
depend on the same property. If this is true, then the item responses can be
used to measure such a psychological property (where the term measure
is interpreted in its common meaning of finding out the value or position
of an object on a measured property; see also Michell, 1997). This means
that the relation between thermometers and IQ-tests is one of analogy: g
corresponds to temperature, the IQ-subtests or items to distinct thermom-
eters, and IQ-scores to observed thermometer readings. An analysis of the
causal effect of the temperature of a measured substance on thermometer
readings (e.g., the transfer of kinetic energy to the mercury in a rigid col-
umn, which leads it to rise or fall) is missing in measurement systems for
intelligence, as it is in most cases of psychological testing. However, one can
see the arrows in Figure 1 as coding for this effect in an anonymous fash-
ion (i.e., without specification of a causal mechanism). As such, the model
arrows are a promissory note, awaiting further explication and analysis.
Whether such a realist interpretation is in fact realistic is doubtful for
the well-researched case of general intelligence (e.g., see Van der Maas,
et al., 2006), and, a fortiori, for many other less well-researched properties
that psychologists purport to measure using techniques of latent variable
theory (Borsboom, Mellenbergh, & Van Heerden, 2003, 2004; Borsboom,
2008; Michell, 1997, 1999, 2008; see also Michells chapter in the current
volume). There are several reasons for this. We will explicate some of the
relevant problems by using g as an example, but all of these problems gen-
eralize to other areas of investigation quite easily.
First, in the previous century, the hopes were high that gbeing a sim-
ple, unidimensional, linearly-ordered propertywould turn out identical
to some other simple, unidimensional, linearly-ordered property (e.g.,
neural speed, brain volume, etc.) determined by a relatively simple consti-
tution of genes (IQ-scores produce very high heritability coefficients; see,
e.g., Boomsma, Busjahn, & Peltonen, 2002). In attempts to relate g to such
a simple properties, however, it turned out that g is moderately or weakly
related to a large set of such properties, rather than very highly to a single
one. In addition, the hope for a simple genetic explanation of intelligence
differences can at the present time safely be given up; if there were a small
set of genes that determined the bulk of intelligence differences, genome
scans would have identified them by nowinstead, very many genes ap-
pear to influence intelligence, with none of them explaining more than
2% of the variance. Thus, the g factor has been unable to shed off its status
of abstractiona ghostly intermediary between a set of test scores and an
army of genesand its claim to reality is not much stronger than it was a
century ago.
In addition to the failure to find a neuroscientific entity that may be
identified with g, recent analysis of measurement models have shown that
concepts like g have no application at the level of the individual person
(Borsboom, Mellenbergh, & Van Heerden, 2003; Borsboom, Kievit, Cer-
vone, & Hood, 2009). This is because the models that are used to identify
g are basically sampling models, which require a population for a sensible
interpretationand an individual person is not a population. The issue
becomes clear when we consider how one should interpret the expectation
operator at the level of the individual. While it is easy to conceptualize, say,
the probability of an item response given a position on the latent variable,
in a population sensenamely, as the proportion of people with that posi-
tion who give that item responseit is not obvious what such a quantity
should refer to in the individual case.
In fact, if these models are to be interpreted at the level of the indi-
vidual at all, an awkward thought experiment is necessary to elucidate the
meaning of such model applications. A good example is given by Lazarsfeld
(1959; cited in Lord & Novick, 1968, p 29-30):
Suppose we ask an individual, Mr. Brown, repeatedly whether he is in favor
of the United Nations; suppose further that after each question we wash
his brains and ask him the same question again. Because Mr. Brown is not
certain as to how he feels about the United Nations, he will sometimes give
a favorable and sometimes an unfavorable answer. Having gone through this
procedure many times, we then compute the proportion of times Mr. Brown
was in favor of the United Nations.
This interpretation of item responses, which, like many applications of sta-

tistics, is itself dependent on a suggested analogy with games of chance, is
unlikely to be faithful to actual item response processes. Holland (1990) re-
serves the term mental coin flipping for such unlikely theories. It is moreover
entirely unclear how the properties purportedly measured by psychological
tests, like personality traits, attitudes, or preferences, could act causally to
steer the item response probabilities in one or the other direction.
The same holds for g and IQ-tests. It is hard to believe that, when I am
solving a mental rotation problem, somewhere in the item response process
g suddenly kicks in to influence the probability that I answer the item cor-
rectly (see also Jensen, 1998, for a good explication of this point). In addi-
tion, there is no evidence whatsoever for such an intraindividual interpre-
tation of g (e.g., Borsboom & Dolan, 2006). This creates serious problems
for a literal interpretation of IQ-testing as a measurement process, because in
the cases that we normally count as measurement (energy, distance, mass,
etc.), the measured properties do have an interpretation at the level of the
individual object. For instance, the measurement of length does not merely
rely on hypothetical differences between objects, but is significantly parasitic
on a within-object interpretation as well: if one stretches a piece of rub-
ber, it becomes longer, and as a result the measurements turn out higher.
Similarly, if one heats a given substance, then its temperature rises, and as
a result thermometer readings become higher. In general, in such cases,
the model that describes differences between substances at a given time
point can be taken to apply just as well to differences for a given substance
across time points. Molenaar (2004) relates this assumption to the concept
of ergodicity: the equivalence of the probability distributions derived from
a) taking the limiting frequencies of event occurrences as the number of
substances goes to infinity, and b) taking the limiting frequencies of event
occurrences as the number of time points goes to infinity.
Few cases of psychological measurement are plausibly constructed as
sustaining such an equivalence (Molenaar, 2004; Borsboom, Mellenbergh,
& Van Heerden, 2003; Hamaker, Nesselroade, & Molenaar, 2007; Lamiell,
1987) or even as having any intra-individual relevance whatsoever: most are
purely between subjects, in that the only way to make sense of a latent
variable is as system of individual differences. It is unclear how such indi-
vidual differences, which are exclusively defined on the space between per-
sons, could have relevance for intra-individual processes that are obviously
implicated in the production of item responses. This does not mean that it
is impossible to make such as connection, and hence does not necessarily
invalidate the measurement model. However, it does return the difficult
question of how, if not in this obvious way, we should interpret measurement

models in psychology. Accordingly, if the realist interpretation of psycho-
metric models does not hold up, the question arises whether we are actually
measuring properties.
The Metaphorical Interpretation of Measurement Models

If the functioning of tests in psychology is analogical to that of measure-
ment instruments in the natural sciences, then this means that there are
structural connections between the relations among tests, test scores, and
test takers that can be mapped onto the relations between measurement in-
struments, measurement outcomes, and the objects measured. In the case
of g, such a situation would require that are actually is a linearly ordered
variable that is responsible for the individual differences in item perfor-
mance in IQ-tests, so that the functioning of these tests could be considered
structurally similar to that of a number of (noisy) thermometers, which are
all dependent on the same underlying quantity (i.e., temperature).
What if, as would seem quite plausible in many practical cases that sail
under the flag of measurement in the social sciences, this is not the case?
Then there are logically two responses possible: One, which Michell (1997,
1999, 2008, this volume) has followed, is to argue that this implies that the
talk of measurement is mere rhetoric. Michells point, in short, is that if one
does not fulfill the semantic criteria necessary to speak of measurement,
one simply does not have measurement, and therefore it is scientifically
irresponsibleeven pathologicalto pretend that one does. For Michell,
the semantic criteria include the existence of a quantitative trait that is mea-
sured through the test scores: Within scientific contexts the term measure-
ment has only one meaning and that is as the assessment of quantity (Michell,
2008, p. 127, italics in original). It is the assumption that such a trait with
quantitative structure exists, that Michell thinks is accepted as true in the
literature on psychological measurement, without any research ever having
been done to substantiate it:
[P]sychometrics is a science in which the central hypothesis (that psychologi-

cal attributes are quantitative) is accepted as true in the absence of support-
ing evidence (). That is, psychometricians claim to know something that
they do not know and have erected barriers preserving their ignorance. This
is pathological science. (Michell, 2008, p. 10)
How do leading scholars in the field of psychological measurement reply

to this serious charge? Interestingly, several leading scholars respond not by
challenging the validity of Michells basic analysis (i.e., that there is no case
for psychological measurement, if measurement is interpreted in a strong
quantitative sense), but by arguing that they actually never thought so and
do not see the problem. For instance, Kane (2008, p. 104) writes in his reply
to Michells paper, that:
I have spent most of my career working on achievement tests, particularly

licensure and certification tests and academic achievement tests, and frankly,
I dont think that the attributes measured by these tests are quantitative in the
strong sense that Michell is talking about.
Similarly, Mislevy (2008) sums the issue up as follows:
[T]he typical practice in educational and psychological testing of adding up

task scores and calling the totals measures, to imply quantitative variables
akin to length and force, does not verify the relationships among the ele-
mental observations that would satisfy the axioms (specifically, cancellation
conditions). In other words, most applications of measurement models in
educational and psychology measurement reason through a blend of the trait
metaphor and the measurement metaphor, without having checked the apt-
ness of the measurement portion.
The remarks made by Mislevy are of course quite interesting from our pres-
ent perspective. Mislevy actually embraces the conclusion that there is no
analogy between physics and psychology in the measurement department,
but accepts that conclusion as in itself relatively harmless. He does this by
reinterpreting model use as a metaphorical activity:
A pragmatic alternative still within the traditional measurement metaphor is

to view models such as IRT [a commonly used latent variable model] as narra-
tive frames to organize thinking about masses of observations.
This, then, gives rise to a view that implies:
seeing [psychometric models] in a way which is itself motivated by the view

of model-based reasoning emerging from sociocognitive research: Models as
narrative frames, to guide perception, understanding, and action within a
metaphor, using probability-based tools to support reasoning.
Thus, the researcher using measurement models does not actually use them
for measurement, but as inferential schemes that are based on a metaphori-
cal (hence, untrue) account of the structure than generates the test scores.
In essence, we talk about data as if they resulted from a measurement pro-
cess, without actually believing this to be the case.
Consequences of the Metaphorical View
In his response, Michell (2008, p. 128) finds Mislevys account quite re-
markable:
[I]f psychometricians adopted Mislevys stance, could they justifiably claim

to measure psychological attributes, or only at best to measure them? ()
It would be socially unacceptable for applied psychometricians to make ad-
verse decisions about clients on the basis of mere measurements; and the
marketing of psychometric tests depends too much on them being packaged
as measurement instruments, for psychometricians to risk attempting to sell
tests as measurement instruments. The mainstream of psychometrics takes
literally what Mislevy wants to see as a metaphor.
To which we may add: not just the mainstream of psychometrics. Especially

in the USA, psychometric models have been at stake in several legal cases in-
volving, for instance, the alleged presence of cultural biases in tests used for
college admissions. Are we supposed to conceive of psychometric experts
up on the witness stand to defend their tests by interpreting them meta-
phorically? By arguing that the test scores are not really measurements, but
that if we pretend that they are, it is as if the measurements are unbiased?
This is quite hard to imagine. Neither would one want to explain important
societal decisions in these terms: we may play as if games in our academic
exchanges, but our actions are as real as anything: there is nothing as if
about, say, the rejection of a college admission.
A WORD OF CAUTION
We will end with a word of caution. Psychologistsand of course other sci-
entists as wellhave the responsibility to make sure that their theories are
truthful, viz. that they do not present any theory of which they themselves
already know that it contains falsehoods. Of course no scientist will claim
that their theories are flawless, but at least one should not deliberately tell
lies. Knowing that careless metaphorical thinking results in generating
falsehoods, psychologists should be aware of the dangers of metaphorical
thinking. We do not argue that thou shalt not commit metaphor but that
metaphors be used as heuristic devices, to be discarded after use, thereby
using them to generate hypothesis and developing psychological theories.
However, the goal is to arrive at theories that are true, implying that meta-
phors in the end should vanish from the theories.
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CHAPTER 7
REMEMBERING
METHODOLOGY
Experimenting with Bartlett
Brady Wagoner
The title of this chapter has a double meaning. On the one hand, it delin-
eates the area of psychological inquiry that this chapter is concerned with:
experimental methodologies for the study of remembering. On the other
hand, it suggests that methodological thinking has, in part, been forgotten
by psychology, and that this chapter is an act of remembering to think meth-
odologically. With this second meaning, I wish to evoke Danzigers (1990)
diagnosis of contemporary psychology as practicing methodolatry, the
unthinking acceptance and practice of one single methodology, namely, the
analysis of aggregates by means of statistical techniques to make predictions
at the level of populations. This methodology is unfit to explore questions
about meaning, among other important psychological phenomena (Mi-
chell, 2004). The present chapter both points out the inadequacies of the
standard methodology to the phenomena of remembering and construc-
tively outlines alternatives.
To this end, I focus on a number of experiments in the history of psy-
chology that have explicitly taken Sir Frederic Bartletts work as a starting
point. I offer a detailed analysis of five distinct Bartlett inspired experimen-
tal methodologies as illustrative case studies in methodological thinking.
My sampling captures a wide spectrum of empirical stylesconventional

146 BRADY WAGONER
and innovative, American and European, cognitive and discursive, etc. My

choice of case studies is made in order to first, explore a number of dif-
ferent ways in which Bartlett has been constructively remembered by psy-
chologists and second, situate my own experiments in relationship to other
approaches. Likewise, each approach focuses on a different aspect of the
phenomena. In the order of their appearance they are: the relationship be-
tween collective culture and individual mentality in remembering; memory
distortion; discursive practices of remembering; the veracity of an experi-
ence revealed in a narratives form; and the use of cultural tools and strate-
gies in remembering. But, before going into these post-Bartlettian studies
I will first outline and contextualize Bartletts own methodological orien-
tation so as to later be able to compare these reproductions of Bartletts
experiments with the original.
BARTLETT IN THE CONTEXT OF

EUROPEAN METHODOLOGY
Sir Frederic Bartlett is celebrated, alongside Herman Ebbinghaus, as a

founding father of the psychological study of remembering. He is, how-
ever, very selectively remembered (one might even say distorted). What
contemporary psychology remembers of Bartlett are those ideas that seem
to be congruent with present thinking, such as memory reconstruction
and schemas. Since the late 1980s some excellent articles have been pub-
lished that highlight the neglected cultural dimensions of his thought (e.g.
Cole and Cole, 2000; Costall, 1991; Kashima, 2000; Rosa, 1996; Saito, 2000).
What remains largely missing from Bartlett scholarshipsociocultural or
otherwiseis a careful analysis of the distinctive features of his methodol-
ogy (see Wagoner, 2007, 2009).1 In this section I use Toomela (2007) and
Watsons (1934) outline of the differences between German-Austrian and
American research styles to locate Bartlett (an Englishman) firmly within
the German-Austrian methodological tradition. I will sequentially explore
each of the eight German-Austrian methodological principles in relation
to Bartlett.
Qualitative Descriptions Over Quantitative Scores
Bartletts classic text Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psy-

chology (1932) opened a radically new way to investigate and conceptualize
remembering. In it Bartlett uses few quantitative measurements and no sta-
tistical analyses. This is something he is heavily critiqued for by contempo-
rary mainstream psychologists, as we will see below. Instead, he brings us in
Remembering Methodology 147
close to the processes under investigation by providing his participants full

reproductions of narratives and images that they were to remember, and
detailed qualitative analysis of them. The readers can decide for themselves
whether Bartletts interpretation of the raw data is satisfactory, whereas
this becomes impossible with data which has already been coded, quanti-
fied, and aggregated. Gaskell and Bauer (2000) call this strategy of assuring
data quality thick description, whereby context, meanings, and interpre-
tations that illuminate the research process are provided. When Bartlett
does report findings quantitatively it is always to express a qualitative rela-
tion. For example, he reports that over half of his participants changed
canoes to boats by the second reproduction. This particular finding is
interesting only as an illustration of the more general tendency of partici-
pants to conventionalize the story material. In this way, Bartlett always
subordinates statistics to claims already qualitatively established through a
careful analysis of single cases.
Psychological Controls Over Physical Controls
Bartlett carefully attended to participants experiences as they per-

formed his experimental task, which involved sensitive observation of and
conversation with his participants (see Edwards & Middleton, 1987). A flex-
ible procedure such as this is essential when one realizes that participants
interpret the same situation and experimental materials in a variety of
ways, and that their interpretations have real effects on the way in which
they remember. To describe and theorize the role of subjective experience
in mental activities Bartlett uses the concept of attitude borrowed from
the Wrzburg psychologists (see Larsen & Berntsen, 2000). Attitude,
Bartlett (1932, pp. 206207) says:
names a complex psychological state or process which is hard to describe in

more elementary psychological terms. It is, however, as I have often indicated,
very largely a matter of feeling, or affect. We say that it is characterized by
doubt, hesitation, surprise, astonishment, confidence, dislike, repulsion and
so on.
Thus, attitudes for Bartlett are holistic processes that function to orient
the person to his or her world, largely through feeling. This concept is
quite different from contemporary uses of the word that define attitudes
as purely internal evaluations of an object, which can be easily quantified
using Likert scales. In the contemporary version attitudes are elementary
mental entities; that is, one cannot have a conversation of attitudes as
described by G. H. Mead (1934). The processual nature of attitudes (as
opposed to their static contemporary form) allows Bartlett to describe the
148 BRADY WAGONER
process of remembering as beginning by setting up an attitude toward the

target material (e.g. the story was not English or it was like I read as a
boy) and ends with the attitude in which no further questions are asked
(ibid, p. 85). By no further questions are asked he means that the repro-
duced material has reached a state, in which internal tensions are resolved,
where the reproduction feels right. Furthermore, different interpreta-
tions of the experimental situation can change the attitude a participant
has toward it and the stimulus material: What feels right in an extremely
formal experimental setting will be very different from what feels right in
a more amiable context.
A Focus on Wholes and Relationships
In the last two years of his life Bartlett wrote a paper reflecting back on
his book Remembering.2 He begins by commenting that the book was written
at a time when the general bent of psychology in Cambridge was following
the romantic approach, by which he meant treating human reactions as
wholes rather than a more itemized study of behavior (Bartlett, 2008, p.
1). In fact, it was precisely this itemized approach that Bartlett was break-
ing away from when he renounced Ebbinghauss (1885/1913) study of non-
sense syllables as a methodology for the study of remembering. Ebbinghaus
had to use wholly artificial material (literally meaningless) in order to resist
the tendency we all have to organize the material into meaningful wholes.
However, even with nonsense syllables participants strive for the whole,
creating relations among these elementary units. In contradistinction to
Ebbinghaus, Bartlett embraced the study of meaningful wholes and their
qualitative transformation through time by having participants remember
real narratives which they would engage with through their interests, per-
sonal history and social conventions. It is thus unsurprising that Bartlett
explicitly makes links between his approach and his mentorsnamely, the
holistic clinical work of C. S. Myers, W. H. R. Rivers, William MacDougal,
and Henry Head, as well as James Wards and G. F. Stouts emphasis on the
active organism. For all of these thinkers mind could not be theorized
by starting from its elements (e.g. sensations) as the classical (psycho-
physics) approach believed (see Ash, 1996, especially chapter 4); instead,
the elements could only be properly understood as part of the organisms
holistic functioning. Bartlett is clear that it is entirely artificial to separate
the mind into faculties or compartments (e.g. of perceiving, imagining, re-
membering, etc) and to conceptually remove it from the context in which it
operates. For Bartlett and his mentors, social others and social groups were
particularly important in the construction of context. The social group it-
self was considered another whole irreducible to an aggregate of individu-
als. The question became one of working out the interrelationship between
social group and individual mind without reducing one to the other.
Single Cases over Probabilities in a Group
Bartletts analysis of remembering is centered on a detailed explora-

tion of single cases. His book Remembering is full of participants whole re-
productions of complex material they were to remember and comments
on them. He uses these unprocessed single cases as indicative instances
to vividly illustrate the psychological processes under consideration. Harr
(2006) points out Francis Bacon advocated this methodology in science as
early as 1620. Contrast this approach with the majority of contemporary
studies on remembering that axiomatically assume that a process is best
demonstrated by showing its probability of occurrence in one group versus
another groupfor example, how frequently errors occur in recall within
a group asked leading questions versus a group that was not. The con-
temporary mainstream approach is equivalent to comparing the average
scores of Fords and Chevrolets to understand how an engine functions. To
believe that by simply using quantitative measures psychology makes itself a
science is to misunderstand how the natural sciences operate. Kurt Lewin
(1933, p. 559) comments:
The laws of falling bodies in physics cannot be discovered by taking the aver-
age of actual falling movements, say of leaves, stones, and other objects, but
only be proceeding from so-called pure cases.
From this perspective scientific models must apply to all cases not just to
group averagesthis is a principle both Bartlett and Ebbinghaus followed.
Thus, the researcher must also account for any deviance to their theory. For
example, when only one out of twenty participants remembers the proper
names in the story War of the Ghosts; Bartlett (1932) devotes considerable
attention to the case in order to explain it within his general theory of
remembering (see pp. 208209). Deviant case analysis is another form of
quality control advocated by contemporary qualitative researchers (in addi-
tion to thick description discussed above) to ensure a rigorous analysis of
the data (see Gaskell & Bauer, 2000).
Individual Trait Differences are a Result of Basic Type Differences
Bartlett conducted no research on individual trait differences. Instead,

his work is scattered with discussions of different psychological types or
characters. For example, in an early publication on The social psychol-
150 BRADY WAGONER
ogy of leadership, Bartlett (1926a) begins by identifying three types of lead-

ers, each of which maintains his authority by different means: the institu-
tional type by the established social prestige attached to the position; the
dominant type by his personal capacity to impress and dominate his follow-
ers; and the persuasive type by his capacity to express and persuade his
followers (ibid., p. 8). Psychological types describe differences in peoples
characteristic or preferred modes of engaging with the world; they are ho-
listic descriptions of a persons functioning. As such different types express
qualitative differences among people. For instance, in the discussions of
his experiments on remembering, Bartlett distinguishes between two dif-
ferent types of remembers: visualizers (who tend to remember through
the mediation of images) and vocalizers (who rely more on language for
remembering). These types describe the preferred means participants em-
ploy to complete the task, which is only identifiable by taking participants
subjective experiences seriously, as was discussed in point 1 above. Because
Bartlett used some of the same participants in multiple experiments, he is
able to assert that his participants classification as a type persists across ex-
periments. Lastly, Bartlett argued that social groups guided the formation
of different psychological types or mentalities (see especially Bartlett,
1932, ch. 15). This was expressed in a groups persistent tendencies to de-
velop, for example, particular forms of graphic design and folk stories. In
the next sectionAnalysis of Culture and Cognitionwe will see how
Nadel (1937) develops this idea.
Insight over prediction
Bartletts aim in Remembering was not to predict what a person will remem-
ber but to provide a general theory of remembering that will encompass
all cases. Following James Ward he understood mind to be an active pro-
cess: the function of remembering was to help an organism creatively adapt
to their changing environment. Once we recognize an organisms agency
in constructing its own future, a science focused purely on prediction be-
comes wholly inadequate. Humans (and other animals) are not caused by
purely external forces, like billiard balls hitting one another; rather, they
are themselves active centers of causality (see Harr, 2002). From this per-
spective only a very general kind of prediction is possible. For example, that
reconstructive remembering (which is not the same as memory distor-
tion) will happen in all non-pathological cases.3 This form of prediction,
as a general insight into fundamental psychological processes, is very differ-
ent from prediction of particular outcomes (for the purpose of rational-
izing societysee Danziger, 1990) as practiced by most American psycholo-
gists. Bartlett (1932) was not interested in showing what kind of person will
remember boats instead of canoes or under what circumstances unless

this contributed to understanding the general process behind the transfor-
mation. His analysis of the reproduction of foreign folk-stories points to
the general process of conventionalization, whereby participants strive to
make the strange material familiar and meaningful. However, convention-
alization is an open process: it will happen in all non-pathological cases but
the particular way in which the material becomes familiar and meaningful
will often vary considerably among participants, such that the precise out-
come will be inherently unpredictable.
The Systematic Approach to Theory Building
Bartletts work is largely a careful extension and synthesis of his mentors

work at Cambridge University. Bartlett goes beyond them by developing a
systematic program of research in experimental and social psychology (as
the subtitle of Remembering reads) that highlights the minds active and ho-
listic nature as well as its interdependence (not fusion) with social groups.
His earliest published experiments on perceiving and imagining (1916)
are essential sources for this later theorizing of remembering in 1932.
What today would generally be taken to be separate areas of researchon
perceiving, imagining, remembering, thinking, social influence and group
dynamicswere for Bartlett inseparable. It is noteworthy that only two
thirds of his book Remembering is devoted specifically to topic of remember-
ing. The other third is about perceiving, imagining, and the relationship
between social groups and psychological processes more generally. This is
unsurprising when we acknowledge Bartletts characterization of mind as a
complex unity; he says that distinctions drawn between perceiving, imagin-
ing, remembering and thinking will always be arbitrary (Bartlett, 1932, pp.
311314). This is because these are not distinct mental faculties but rather
different manifestations of the minds total functioning. It is thus essential
to strive for a unitary understanding of mind that brings together findings
from these different domains. Bartlett is consistent in this, always discuss-
ing his latest experiment in light of what he has discovered from his own
earlier work and the investigations carried out by his mentors.
Thinking over the Accumulation of Facts
Not long ago I had to get permission from the Department of Experi-
mental Psychology at Cambridge to upload a Bartlett paper held there onto
the Bartlett Internet Archive. Upon arrival in the department I was surprised
to be told, by the person in charge of the collection, something to the effect
152 BRADY WAGONER
of Bartlett did not produce any facts. His contribution to psychology was
negligible. This seemed to me a very basic (positivist) misunderstanding
of what science was: that the truth would somehow emerge by throwing one
fact on top of another. Nonetheless, as Toomelas (2007) diagnosis of con-
temporary methodological thinking might have predicted, I have found
this attitude to be very common among experimental psychologists. The
problem is that particular facts, unrelated to each other, mean very little.
Koffka (1935) points out that it is both a fact that heavy bodies fall quicker
than light ones and that all bodies fall with the same velocity in a vacuum.
The first everyday fact can be derived from the more general scientific
fact but not vice versa. Progress in science requires constructing general
models that will systematize particular facts, which are otherwise of only
local importance, if any at all. Bartlett spent a decade and a half trying to
create a model that would encompass the rich and complex findings of his
experiments and that would be consistent with the latest developments in
anthropology, biology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. His concept
of schema that appears in Remembering for the first time (i.e. it is absent
from his earlier publications on the same experiments) is an attempt at a
general synthesis of ideas. Though the word is explicitly borrowed from
Henry Head (1920), with a number of reservations, Bartletts use of it ac-
tually attempts to bring together Heads physiological, Rivers anthropol-
ogy, Wards psychology (see Northway, 1940), and even Halbwachs (1925)
sociology of memory. Books like Remembering are rare in todays academic
climate, which, instead of encouraging deep thinking, demands frequent
publications of statistically significant results.
These eight principles were unevenly adhered to by later psychologists
inspired by Bartletts work. In what follows, I will explore what principles
were adopted and abandoned in five case studies in methodology for the
study of remembering. The first case is both temporally and spatially close
to Bartlett but already shows some tendencies away from some of the core
methodological principles advocated in Remembering (1932).
ANALYSIS OF
CULTURE AND COGNITION
Five years after the publication of his book Remembering (1932), Bartlett
wrote a paper in the journal Africa arguing that (experimental) psychologi-
cal methods could be fruitfully appropriated by anthropologists (Bartlett,
1937). In that same volume, the anthropologist S. F. Nadel took on the
challenge by applying Bartletts method of repeated reproduction and method of
description to his field site in Africa. Nadel was highly influenced by Bartletts
work and had been in personal contact with him for two years before the
article was published, and continued to be thereafter (Firth, 1957). Thus,

Nadels (1937) study provides us with a revealing example of how Bartletts
methods could be appropriated to the field of anthropology.
Nadel did his doctorate research in Northern Nigeria on the Nupe tribe,
where he also came into contact with the neighboring Yoruba tribe. The
Nupe and Yoruba tribes lived in the same material environment with simi-
lar levels of technology, yet they had developed entirely different, almost
antagonistic, cultures (p. 424). For example, the religion of the Yoruba
was characterized by an elaborate and rationalized hierarchical system
of deities each of which has its specific, specialized duties and functions,
whereas the Nupe believed in an abstract and impersonal power (p. 424).
Likewise, the principal motif of Yoruba art was the human figure, while the
Nupe developed ornamental, decorative art. Additionally, the Yoruba had a
tradition of drama and the Nupe had none. Nadel claims the tendency to-
wards integrated and concrete meanings amongst the Yoruba and abstract
details among the Nupe was also manifest in a diversity of other cultural
forms in both tribestheir folklore, music, dance, habitual everyday be-
havior, etc.
These different preferred persistent group tendencies (Bartlett, 1932)
provided an excellent opportunity to test Bartletts cultural psychological
theory in a real world setting. To do this, Nadel constructed the following
story to use in a repeated reproduction experiment on children in local
schools of both communities:
Long, long ago there were a man and his wife. They had two children, sons.
When these sons had grown up, they saw a beautiful girl; they both made
friends with her and loved her very much. They loved her with one heart. But
the girl did not love the elder brother, she only loved the younger. Thereupon
the elder brother went to the younger and told him to give up the girl. He
said: I am the one to marry the girl for I am your elder brother. Thus he
spoke. But the younger refused. They quarreled a great deal till the elder
brother became furious. When night fell he went to the hut where the young-
er brother was sleeping and killed him with his sword, he killed him with one
stroke. When the people heard the news they said, He did an evil deed, God
will revenge it. But the girl cried, she cried for twenty days and her heart was
full of pain. When she had finished crying she left and went to another place.
Nobody saw her again. (Nadel, 1937, p. 427)
Bartletts theory would predict that the Yoruba and Nupe would trans-
form the story in the direction of their own social conventions: the Yoruba
towards logical coherence of narrative structure and the Nupe towards an enu-
meration of descriptive details. This is in fact what he finds. Nadel notes that
the Yoruba invent new links between parts of the story and faithfully re-
produce existing links. The Nupe, on the other hand, retell the story in
a much looser way, filling in details that are inessential to the narratives
154 BRADY WAGONER
progression. For example, the sentence when these sons had grown up is
a logical link in the storythe brothers must grow up before having a love
affair. 18 out of 20 Yoruba children reproduced the sentence in the second
reproduction. Contrast this with only 4 out of 60 Nupe children doing so!
That is 90% of the Yoruba sample versus 6.7% of the Nupe sample! Ad-
ditionally, Nadel reports most Nupe reproduced the sentence The elder
brother did an evil deed, God will revenge him simply as God will revenge
him, while the majority of Yoruba children strengthened the rational link
with an elaboration, for example, The elder brother has done very wrong.
No man can judge him, but God will revenge it (p. 428)strangely though
Nadel does not provide frequencies of these changes in the two groups.
In his analysis, Nadel is uninterested in the question of which tribe re-
membered more; instead, he (like Bartlett) is concerned with the direction
of transformationin this case, the comparative qualitative differences
in recall for Yoruba and Nupe. To illustrate these differences Nadel also
adopts the Bartlettian strategy of including full reproductions of the most
striking examples of the cognitive processes under considerationi.e. the
use of the indicative case, or instance of light, as Francis Bacon called it
Harr (2006, p. 49). Nadel provides one exemplary story reproduction for
a Yoruba and one for a Nupe. However, it should be noted that Bartlett
included more instances and did so before discussing general trends among
them. In Nadels study the emphasis is reversed, such that the exemplary
instances merely provide examples of the trends already established and, in
contrast to Bartlett, they are not analyzed any further than this.
This re-emphasis does not, however, blind Nadel to deviance from the
general trend. He is careful not to make the oversimplified assertion that
Yoruba do x and Nupe do y, though he does not analytically explore the
deviant cases in his sample. If he had attended to deviant cases he might
have discovered some of the factors mediating between culture and mind.
Instead, Nadel (1937, p. 434) merely explains, the dominant or typical
response of one group might occur as an a-typical response, in a minority
of cases, in the other group. For example, only 4 out of 60 Nupe children
reproduce the phrase when these sons had grown up. Nadel accounts for
this in his theoretical model by keeping the levels of psychology and culture
distinct, though he says they are linked by close correspondence and even,
in certain respects, effective interdependence (Nadel, 1937, p. 432). Be-
longing to a cultural group may foster a particular psychological mental-
ity or type4 (e.g. a tendency towards detached enumeration of details as
illustrated by the Nupe) but by no means does it determine it.
With this move Nadel positions himself against anthropological theories
that claim either culture is irrelevant to individual psychology (e.g. cross-
cultural experiments that attempt to show the constancy and uniformity
of mind around the world) or that culture determines individual mentality.
Each individual is unique as a result of their particular temperament, inter-

ests, personal and collective experiences, and the relationships formed be-
tween them. Unfortunately, Nadel does not develop this insight further. In
failing to further explore deviant casesclearly identified in his sample
and other qualitative complexities of single cases he has no way of identify-
ing the mechanisms either stimulating or inhabiting the formative role of
culture on individual minds.
Recently, Obeyesekere (1981, 1990, 2010) pursued this question of the
interplay between unique individuals and culture at large through rich idio-
graphic analysis of religious ascetics, who display extreme atypical religious
behavior, such as walking on coals, hanging from hooks, being possessed by
a deity, fasting till death, etc. In his book Medusas Hair (1981) he showed
how Sri Lankan priestesses sublimate painful and complex experiences
such as the betrayal of a loved one, who then diesinto publicly-accessible
meaningsfor example, possession by an avenging deity. These ascetics
were deeply motivated by their personal history to adopt an objective cul-
tural form that might help them work through their subjective psychic trau-
ma. Thus, by carefully analyzing atypical cases Obeyesekere (1981) is able
to illustrate how personal history channels and motivates the internaliza-
tion of collective culture.
Obeyesekeres (1981) study also suggests that culture is much more het-
erogeneous and dynamic than does Nadels (1937) cross-cultural study. In
Nadel (1937) culture is a dominant pattern within a group that individuals
either correspond to or not. Cultural change happens at the level of the
whole group, for example, through the contact of cultures, which was one
of Bartletts primary interests (Bartlett, 1923, 1925, 1926b, 1928; see also
Kashima, 2000). By contrast, Obeyesekere (1981, 1990, 2009) emphasizes
how individuals re-create cultural forms for their personal needs (subjecti-
fication) and how their re-creations can then feedback into the culture at
large (objectification) thus transforming it. In this way, elements of culture
(e.g. stories, rituals, imagery) are unequally distributed among members of a
cultural group, rather than uniformly applying to all or most within it. This
distributed notion of culture will be important in interpreting my own ex-
perimental results on narrative mediation of remembering discussed below.
Despite Nadels oversights he (alongside Bartlett) made early steps in
the right direction by clearly separating culture and mentality and proceed-
ing to analyze their complex interrelation. This requires recognizing the
existence of both standard and deviant cases of psychological organization
within a group. This awareness of complex relations irreducible to chang-
es seen at the level of the group is lost in contemporary reproductions of
Bartlett which focus exclusively on aggregates of individuals. It is to the
critique of aggregated analysis that we now turn.
156 BRADY WAGONER
ANALYSIS OF ITEMIZED AND

AGGREGATED REPRODUCTIONS
By the 1960s, psychology had moved well away from the study of holistic
individual functioning to a statistical analysis of aggregates. The responses
of individuals were itemized, quantified, and thrown together to create the
average subject (Danziger, 1990). These social norms have remained until
this day. A methodological imperative now exists in which any theoretical
claims must be tested by way of the standard statistical methodology, even if
that methodology is totally incommensurate with the theory under consid-
eration (Danziger, 1985). For example, in the Introduction to the most
recent edition of Remembering, Kintsch (1995, p. xiv) comments on the book
thus: There are no statistics, and there is little data aggregation. What we
get are selected examples. In my opinion, this is the weakest aspect of the
book and something that has limited historical influence. Kintsch might
be right about the methods historical influence (at least on mainstream
psychology) but his faulting the method for its lack of congruence with
todays social norms is no argumentrather it is a present day prejudice.
I have already mentioned above Bartletts use of indicative instances,
still used by several innovative researchers, such as David Middleton and
Naohisa Mori, both of whom I will discuss later. Recent qualitative research-
ers have argued that the same criteria of quality control used by quantitative
researchers should not be used to assess their research, as Kintsch (1995)
does Bartletts (1932); instead criteria such as thick description and devi-
ant case analysis (described above) should be applied (Gaskell & Bauer,
2000). Furthermore, Bartlett himself very explicitly gave reasons why he
found statistical methods to be misleading:
They are devices for handling instances in which numerous conditions are
simultaneously operating. They do not show how all these conditions are re-
lated, and by themselves they throw no light upon the nature of the condi-
tions If statistical applications in the field of psychology are to have any
value whatsoever, they must be both preceded by and also supplemented by
observation and interpretation, and the more exact these can be the better.
(Bartlett, 1932, pp. 7-8)
Replications of Bartlett from the 1960s on have generally ignored these

methodological arguments and instead insisted on large samples, indepen-
dent and dependent variables, and the use of statistical methods to com-
pare aggregates, at the expense of other research strategies. Bartletts em-
phasis on careful observation and holistic interpretation of single cases, or
at the very least mixed methods, has not been adhered to. Holistic analysis
has been replaced by the methodology of variables (for history of this

meta-language see Danziger, 1997, ch. 9).
An Experimental Critique of
Bartletts Loose Instructions
One of the first of these aggregate-style studies was conducted by

Gauld and Stephenson (1967). There is a widely-held and mistaken belief
(among memory researchers in the 1990s) that Bartletts studies have not
been replicated, which Johnston (2001) traces back to this article, even
though Gauld and Stephenson (1967) never make this claim themselves.
Instead, they make the much more modest argument that no one has re-
produced Bartletts experiments in such a way to eliminate the production
of errors through guess work. They fault Bartlett for his loose instruc-
tions which they argue incline participants to make guesses, inventions,
and inferences in order to create a more convincing narrative. To over-
come these limitations of Bartletts instructions and prove reconstruction
is not characteristic of remembering, Gauld and Stephenson (1967) set
out to experimentally isolate remembering (as a distinct mental faculty)
from other faculties, though they recognize that in everyday life they will
often appear together. This is done by using instructions that are highly
restrictive. For example:
I want you to reproduce this story as best you can in the following way. Take
great care that each item you set down correspondences with something in
the story I read younot word for word, of course, but fact for fact. So that
if you come to something you cant remember dont fill it in to make a story
of it; leave it blank. And, if you come to something youre not quite certain
about, put it in square brackets. I want you to look on this not as a test of
memory, but as an exercise in being as scrupulous and as honest as you can
in deciding what is and what isnt in the original story. If you have any doubt
over any item, come down on the side of doubt, dont come down on the side
of certainty. (Gauld & Stephenson, 1967, p. 41)
Their idea that we can fruitfully separate remembering from the minds
functioning as a whole, the effort after meaning, and its place in everyday
life was precisely what Bartlett was rebelling against when he turned away
from memory experiments using nonsense syllables (see Bartlett, 1932, ch.
1). What these instructions do is set up a particular social context for re-
membering, emphasizing discrete facts, over Bartletts more holistic and
naturalistic context of remembering. Bartlett (1932) is quite clear that the
social relationship in which remembering occurs can direct it towards lit-
eral recall or construction. The two methodologies are irreconcilably differ-
158 BRADY WAGONER
ent in that Gauld and Stephenson (1967) understand remembering to be

a compartmentalized mental process going on inside the head, whereas
for Bartlett it was irreducibly social: we cannot remove psychological func-
tioning from its social and physical context, nor can we fruitfully divide the
mind into compartmentssome being social while others are not.
A second contemporary misconception about Gauld and Stephensons
(1967) study is that it used the method of repeated reproduction (where
one participant repeatedly reproduces a stimulus at increasing time delays).
In fact, their method was that of serial reproduction (in which one par-
ticipants reproduction is passed on to another, who later reproduces it an
passes their reproduction to a third, and so on) using the War of the Ghosts
story. This false memory for their study is in part the fault of the authors
own ambiguity on the issue. They mention their method of serial repro-
duction only once in their article. Similarly, a better choice of method for
critiquing Bartletts theory of constructive remembering would have been
the method of repeated reproduction. Using that method, they could show
remembering as it occurs over greater lengths of time. Instead, they opt for
a single reproduction for each participant occurring immediately after he or
she had read the story. It is little wonder that less reconstruction occurs!
By contrast, even when using the method of serial reproduction, Bartlett
waited 1520 minute before asking participants to reproduce the material
and with the method of repeated reproduction he had some participants
reproduce the story years after they had read it.
Likewise, Gauld and Stephensons (1967) quantitative operationaliza-
tion of Bartletts idea of reconstruction was to count extreme deviations
from the originalwhat they call errors.
An error was defined as any deviation whatsoever from the version of the story
which a subject hears, with the following qualifications: (a) synonyms and syn-
onymous phrases were accepted; (b) omissions were never penalized; (c) gen-
eral words were accepted in place of particular ones, e.g. boats for canoe;
(d) time order errors were ignored, being too difficult to score; (e) obvious
mishearing, e.g. eels for seals were never penalized; (f) place name errors
were never penalized; (g) if an error reoccurred, it was penalized only once.
(Gauld & Stephenson, 1967, p. 42)
It is amazing that there were many errors at all given the conditions, in
which
1. participants reproduce the story immediately after reading it;

2. giving highly restricting instructions: and
3. defining errors so narrowly.
Add to this that omissions in subjects reproduction were not taken into
consideration as evidence of reconstruction.
These authors conclude by saying we feel that our experiments to some
extent undermine Bartletts theory of the reconstructive nature of remem-
bering (p. 48). They propose instead that errors are the result of pres-
sure to produce something completed and coherent. Yet the errors that
are produced in their own study cannot be accounted for purely along these
lines. To supplement this claim they demonstrate that there is an inverse
correlation between conscientiousness and errors. However, because their re-
sults are presented purely as statistics we are unable to see if there are cases
in which a conscientious participant produced errors. If this were the
case, we are still without an explanation for errors. Also, without provid-
ing raw data it is difficult to satisfactorily interpret these quantitative dif-
ferences in error rates. Following Toomelas (2007) principle of qualitative
descriptions over quantitative scores we would want to know the qualitative
nature of these errors, how they fit into remembering the story as a whole.
Only then could we say if they were contributing to the reproduced storys
logical coherence.
Gauld and Stephenson (1967) do raise an intriguing question about
the effect of different instructions on remembering and the place of guess-
work in the process. However, their translation of Bartletts theory into the
standard statistical methodology, in order to test it, confuses more than it
reveals. In contrast to their portrayal of Bartletts theory of reconstructive
remembering, Bartlett did not suggest that remembering was always char-
acterized by errors or distortion, even less as they are defined by Gauld
and Stephenson (1967). He gives many examples in Remembering (1932) of
exceptional memory for details, such as the prodigiously retentive capaci-
ty of Swazi herdsman for their cattle (see also Ost & Costall, 2002). Instead,
he suggests that good memory is domain specific and socialized by the
group.5 A shift from literal recall (as emphasized in memory experiments
including his own) to construction can be brought about by changing the
social context of remembering, which Gauld and Stephensons (1967) ex-
periment does seem to suggest, though raw data is needed to substantiate
it.
Can Bartletts Findings be Replicated?
A more convincing replication of Bartlett, using an aggregate analysis,

was done by Bergman and Roediger (1999). These authors were motivated
by the strange belief that Bartletts (1932) famous repeated reproduction
experiments, in which he found systematically increasing errors in recall
from the same person tested over time, have never been successfully repli-
160 BRADY WAGONER
cated (p. 937). Bartletts repeated reproduction experiments have in fact

been replicated many times (see Johnston, 2001)Nadels (1937) experi-
ments described above being one. Also, notice the language of errors
(easily testable with the standard experimental methods) again being used
to describe Bartletts results, when, in fact, Bartlett used this word rarely;
instead, he focused on the kinds and qualities of changes introduced into
the material remembered and what they said about the process as a whole.
Bergman and Roediger (1999) do, however, improve the definition of
error (as providing evidence of reconstruction) over Gauld and Stephen-
sons (1967) use. Gauld and Stephenson (1967) simply counted the num-
ber of narrowly defined errors occurring in reproductions (usually at the
level of phrases). By contrast, Bergman and Roediger (1999) code each
unit of the story as accurate, omitted, major distortion, or minor dis-
tortion. The difference between their two forms of errors is that minor
distortion was intended to reflect only changes in the surface structure of
the propositions (a rephrasing such that the proposition was noticeably
changed yet still essentially correct), whereas major distortion reflected
changes in the meaning of the proposition (p. 940). Errors are thus ex-
tended to surface level changes as well.
Bergman and Roedigers (1999) experiment also has the advantage of
testing participants over three time delaysfifteen minutes, a week, and
six monthsrather than immediately after stimulus presentation, as did
Gauld and Stephenson (1967). Interestingly, they find differences between
lenient and strict instructions similar to Gauld and Stephenson (1967) for
the first reproduction, but for the second and third reproduction those dif-
ferences disappear. Thus, even using a purely aggregate analysis, Bartletts
loose instructions cannot account for the reconstructive nature of re-
membering. These two ways of operationalizing and testing for reconstruc-
tion are obviously a result of the researchers underlying motivations for
conducting the study: Gauld and Stephenson (1967) wanted to show that
reconstruction is not necessary for remembering, whereas Bergman and
Roediger (1999) want to show just the opposite. This observation clearly il-
lustrates that the researchers intentions and the form that the data takes
is closely linked. Providing contextualized raw data can counterbalance
this tendency by enabling others to scrutinize the form the data later takes.
Bergman and Roedigers (1999) analysis of reproductions at the three
time delays reports only percentages of aggregated participants accurate,
major and minor distortion, and omitted story units (see Figure 1). There
are two major problems with this data presentation: (1) individual subjects
are lost in the sample and with it the ability to analyze deviance from the
norm, and (2) analysis of intermediate forms becomes impossible. All that
can be said of their reported data is that in the population of subjects less is re-
membered over time and the frequency of distorted material in what is re-
FIGURE 1. A strictly aggregate analysis of recall in terms of the

percentage of majorly and minorly distorted, accurate and omitted
story units. From Bergman and Roedigers (1999, p. 944)
membered increases over time. But this finding cannot legitimately be used
to describe individual cases within the sample because variation at the level
of the population of participants is not isomorphic with the variation at the
level of particular participants (Danziger, 1985; Molenaar, 2004a, 2004b).
Furthermore, there is no sense in Bergman and Roedigers (1999) study
that a participants whole reproduction is more than the sum of its parts
(i.e. the itemized units of the story). As such it is impossible to see qualita-
tive transformations, which require attending to holistic changes in a series
of reproductions produced by a single participant. Without doing this it
is impossible to observe the emergence of something new. All one can say
is that there is more distortion at increasing delays for the sample as a
whole. Dissatisfaction with the constraints of this standard methodology has
lead to the creation of a number of new approaches in the last 25 years.
ANALYSIS OF COGNITION IN CONVERSATION
Since the mid-1980s there has been a plethorization of qualitative methods

in psychology, many of which attend to the subtleties of language (Danziger,
1997). David Middleton and his colleagues have developed one such ap-
proach, naming Bartlett as an ancestor (see especially Middleton & Brown,
2005, 2008). Their approach focuses on the emergent properties of col-
162 BRADY WAGONER
lective rememberingthat is, remembering accomplished with others,

remembering that is irreducible to a set of individual cognitive processes.
An analysis of social context and the functions of remembering become
central.
Above, we saw how some aggregate style experiments attempted to cut
out the social aspects of Bartletts theory and method. In them there is
little recognition that the experimental situation is itself a social context
guiding the form remembering takes there; instead, such factors are con-
sidered to be confounding variables in a well controlled experiment. In
contradistinction to this view, Middleton and Edwards (1990) argue that
Bartletts work was not really social enough (ibid., p. 24). For example,
Bartletts (1932) method of serial reproduction (in which the reproduction
of one participant is passed onto another) is meant to simulate the process
by which cultural elements (such as stories and images) are transformed as
they circulate within a social group. Yet such circulation usually happens in
the medium of conversation. A completely remembered story is not passed
on to another person; rather, the story is remembered through question
and argument with others. Both input and output are formed in conversa-
tion. In brief, this discursive approach re-focuses the study of remembering
from internal cognitive models to understanding the contextual and micro-
processes of conversation as genuine social trans-actions.
In the majority of discursive studies the researcher does not attempt to
intervene in order to manipulate the situation and to bring about some
change. There are, however, a number of studies that we might consider
experimental, in the broader sense of the word (see Wagoner, 2009). In
these studies, the researcher creates a situation in which two distinct con-
texts of remembering are operative and then analyzes the change in the
form and content of remembering between the contexts. It should be not-
ed though that context is not treated simply as a unitary and unchanging
dependent variable; rather, it is itself actively interpreted and negotiated by
participants. Furthermore, this analysis does not involve attending to the
changes between input and output, original and reproduction, as in the
standard memory experiment. What these researchers give us is a compari-
son of two outputs at different times, serving different communicative pur-
poses, and requiring the same sort of analysis (Middleton and Edwards,
1990, p43). Thus, their focus is entirely on the socially occasioned variabil-
ity from one time to another, how different contexts and purposes change
the form remembering takes.
For example, Edwards and Middleton (1986) compared conversational
remembering of a story with the text produced by a scribe instructed to
write down the story as it is recalled by the group. The authors report that
the discussion contained 1206 words, while the scribes written account
contained 209 (ibid., p. 129). Already with this rough quantitative compari-
Table 1. A Comparison of Remembering in Talk and Text

Talk Text
1. beautiful women: messenger; serving Serving maid
wench: buxom wench: Chinese buxom
wench: she had big tits
2. he meets the mistress who was the most meets mistress. Beautiful and intelligent.
beautiful intelligent: whats happening Falls instantly in love. Goes in and they lie
to the purple wine oh, sorry purple wine on the couch, they drink purple wine and
and fornication and he goes inside and fornicate
they lie down on the couch well eventually
chatting her up first they lie down on the
couch and drink purple wine and fornicate
3. he goes back to the old noblemans Goes on to noblemans house
house
4. he decides he quite likes the idea of Decides he wishes he was back with the women
purple wine and fornication
5. so he keeps on organizing, he keeps Says hes going home but really goes back to
on talking about visiting his parents when woman in cottage.
he is going to the house in the forest
6. in town shopping, in the market- in the market
place
From Edwards and Middleton, 1986, p. 131.
son, we see that much is lost in the move from talk to text. Their primary
analysis though, is of the rich qualitative differences, which are easily seen
by putting talk and text side by side, as in Table 1.
As with Bartletts analysis we are convinced by the closeness to the phe-
nomena under discussion. These authors select illustrative examples from
talk and text to bring out the core differences between the two. They find
that written accounts tend to be detached and analytic rather than in-
volved, briefer than spoken accounts, and contain fewer distortions and
irrelevancies (ibid., p 132). These differences in talk and text will be just
as marked in experiments on memory as in the business of a meeting and
its subsequent minutes. The authors also point out the similar differences
found between oral story traditions and written story traditions. Thus, they
generalize from the single case (of one group doing an experimental task)
to the abstracted conventions of talk and text. Their analysis is consistent
with the principles of idiographic analysis whereby generalization moves
from single case to general model and back to single case: they begin with
observed differences between oral and written traditions and devise an ex-
periment to test these differences in relation to psychological phenomena,
such as remembering. Their findings are then again put into dialogue with
existing theories and findings.
164 BRADY WAGONER
The authors conclude:
The scribe study demonstrates that reworkings of reproduced material may

have at least as much to do with the conventions of text as with the nature of
memory, if indeed these can be separated (1986, p. 133)
that is, so-called memory reconstruction may be better explained by re-

working the material into a new medium, in this case text. They go on to
identify the same textual patterns at work in an extract taken from Bartletts
(1932) War of the Ghosts memory experiments. On the one hand, they are
careful not to make the strong claim that the qualitative transformation in
repeated reproduction (e.g. that Bartlett illustrated) is only the result of
conventions of text they are simply an important factor in these changes.
On the other hand, we might ask how the discursive approach can grapple
with some of these other more individual factors in remembering. We are
back to the problem of conceptually separating and interrelating mentality
and culture (as discussed in the section Analysis of Culture and Cognition
above).
Middleton and colleagues major contribution to the study of remem-
bering has been to highlight the importance of context and purpose. These
features are either completely lost to contemporary mainstream psychology
or are treated merely as variables that have an influence or cue mem-
ory, which itself is taken to be a compartmentalized mental faculty. Middle-
ton and colleagues research shows that these assumptions are untenable,
that remembering is always bound up with context, not as a background
influence but as the platform on which remembering can occur. Experi-
ments are themselves social contexts: in one of their studies, Middleton
and Edwards (1990) explore the differences between remembering a film
in an experimental context and conversation going on post-experiment (by
leaving the tape-recorder running after the experiment is over). They find
in the experimental context remembering is oriented to sequentially order-
ing and connecting events, whereas post-experiment the participants focus
on remembering their evaluation of the film and emotional reaction to it.
What is missing from discursive approach is a clear way of analyzing the
subjective or personal experience of remembering, as more than just a con-
tributor to the collective enterprise. Bartlett recognized both personal and
collective remembering as distinct from and irreducible to one another. He
is most remembered for showing conventionalization (changes that oc-
curred in multiple individuals in a social group), such as most participants
replacement of boats for canoes and fishing for hunting seals in the
reproduction of War of the Ghosts. But Bartlett is also clear that memory is
personal [] because the mechanism of adult human memory demands
an organization of schema depending upon an interplay of appetites, in-
stincts, interests and ideas peculiar to any given subject (Bartlett, 1932, p.
213). Mori (2008) points out that these personal dimensions of remember-
ing are essential to understanding whether a memory is true or confabulat-
ed, which is of central importance in contexts such as legal proceedings. Yet
both the true and confabulated experience would in many cases by indistin-
guishable from the standpoint of congruence with particular social context,
as when a defendant lies in court. The conventions of narrative practices do
not then sufficiently capture how we experientially contact the past when
we rememberwhat Mori (2008) calls the temporality of an experience.
ANALYSIS OF THE VARIETIES OF

EXPERIENCE IN NARRATIVE FORM
Following Bartlett, Mori (2010) criticizes traditional (Ebbinghausian style)

research6 for its exclusive focus on memory traces at the expense of mean-
ing and context. Memory traces are conceptualized as copies of experience,
asocial and atomic units of mind. Even when meaningful material is used
as a memory stimulus, the experimental participant is required to make an
exact reproduction of the original stimulus, not to remember the mean-
ing of the material. He is sympathetic to the sociocultural approach (e.g.
Middleton and colleagues) for emphasizing the role of others and guid-
ance of social institutions in the form and meaning of remembering (e.g.
how a therapist can help a patient to tell a more adaptive story about his
or her life) as well as attending to cross-modal remembering (Edwards &
Middleton, 1987) (e.g. verbally remembering something that was visual).
Despite these advantages, however, the sociocultural approach is unable
to address a very basic question, how can we distinguish between real re-
membering and fabrication? To do this we will have to conceptually sepa-
rate personal experience (centered in ones body) from the social context
in which it finds expression and analyze the interrelationships found be-
tween the two.
Mori was forced to make this conceptual move when asked by the police
to analyze the credibility of defendants testimony of committing murder.
He and his colleagues were able to identify different narrative forms in
the defendants remembering real experiences and his murder narrative,
even though the social context (of legal testimony) was the same (Hara et
al., 1997; Ohashi et al. 2002). Narratives of real experiences took the form
of what they called agent-alteration, that is, referring to agents of action (self
and others) alternatively, such as I did then he did so I did This
narrative form parallels Gibsons (1979) perception-action cycles, the cir-
cular interaction between agent and environment. By contrast the murder
narrative was characterized by agent-succession that is, referring to agents
successively, such as I did there, then I did
166 BRADY WAGONER
Mori (2008) wondered if these same narrative formsfor real and con-
fabulated experiencecould be demonstrated in a controlled experiment.
He constructed an experiment that models the real life social context of an
interrogation. Participants navigated one of two universities and a month
later exchanged information about the navigation with a participant that nav-
igated the other university. Each participant thus had firsthand knowledge
of one university and secondhand knowledge of another. Two weeks after
the exchange participants were interrogated about what happened during the
two navigations by a third participant (who was told the other participants
had navigated both universities). Following Bartletts (1932) method of re-
peated reproduction, an additional two interrogation sessions took place at
two-week intervals.
Four participants took part in Moris (2008) study but only one particu-
larly illuminating case was analyzedagain, we see the Bartlettian use of
the indicative instance (Harr, 2006). The single case is subjected to a
manydimensional analysis to capture differences in narrative form for re-
membering of the two universities. Though Mori is interested in qualita-
tive experiential differences in the narratives, these are accessed primarily
through quantitative coding, which is then exemplified with a rich qualita-
tive extract (see also Morgan, 1998, on complementary assistance); this
use of quantitative comparison for understanding qualitative relationships
is consistent with the principle of qualitative descriptions over quantitative
scores identified by Toomela (2007) and Watson (1934). Table 2 contrasts
the differences Mori (2008) found in narrative form for remembering Uni-
versity A and B.
First, the agent-alteration/agent-succession contrast Hara et al. (1997) had
found in the murder defendants testimony appears again here. For the
University that the participant directly experienced, agent-alteration makes
up 69.2% of the narrative, whereas the percentage is reversed for the indi-
rect experience, in which alteration only counts for 41.7%; however, with
repeated reproduction of the direct experience agent-alteration drops to
around the same level as the narrative of the direct experience. Second,
objects tended to be variously describede.g. the stairs were pretty large,
curved, and greyin remembering the direct experience, whereas de-
scriptions were poorer for the indirect experience. Third, in the narrative of
the direct experience objects tended to be unstably named, while for the in-
direct experience naming was more stable. For example, a room was called
a something room, a classroom, and a room related to information
in remembering the direct experience, whereas for indirect experience a
room would be given a single name (Mori, 2008, pp. 300301). Fourth, the
motivation for certain behavior tended to be explained as being environ-
mentally induced for the direct experience and internally induced (e.g. I
thought or I guessed) for the indirect experience. Lastly, the participant
TABLE 2. General Features of the Remembering Narratives for

University A and University B (adapted from Mori, 2010).
University A (direct experience) University B (indirect experience)
Alteration-dominant narrative Succession-dominant narrative
Multiple descriptions of an objects Poor descriptions of an objects appearance
appearance
Unstable naming of an object Stable naming of an object
Environment-induced motives Internally induced motives
Difficulties to draw a map No difficulties to draw a map
expressed hesitation in drawing a map for the direct experience (signaling

a struggle to come into experiential contact with the past) and none for the
indirect experience.
All these differences become less apparent with repeated remembering.
Mori (2008) explains this using Bartletts (1932) notion of conventional-
ization and adds that it can occur intra- and interpersonally. Interpersonal
conventionalization happens when a participant appropriates ways of talk-
ing about his or her experience from another, in this case the interrogator.
It should be noted that Mori does not make recourse to the original expe-
rience (though he has a video record of both the navigation and exchange
phases of the experiment); rather, he simply attends to the changes occur-
ring between one reproduction and the next. Mori (personal communica-
tion) points out that changes between reproductions were just as important
to Bartlett as were those between the original and reproduction, though
contemporary experimental psychology focuses almost exclusively on the
latter. The original in Moris (2008) study does not figure into the analysis
except in identifying it globally as part of a direct or indirect experience.
On the one hand, Mori is right that recourse to the original experience is
not usually possible outside the walls of the laboratory and is consistent in
not using that privilege. On the other hand, experiments are by defini-
tion purposeful distortions of reality (Valsiner, 1998, p. 317) carried out
precisely to obtain this sort of privilege (i.e., of systematic access and ab-
straction of some phenomena) not found in everyday life. Mori provides us
with another avenue for analysis but we should not need to necessarily give
up other available means.
Moris original contribution is to develop an experimental methodol-
ogywhat he calls the schema approach (Mori, 2009) following Bartlett
(1932)that is true to Bartletts insight that remembering is both personal
and social. He encompasses the social nature of remembering by devising
an experimental situation that models the social context of an interroga-
tion, in either a courtroom or police station. A participant, who was in-
168 BRADY WAGONER
volved in the navigation, engages in the free flow of conversation with a

participant interrogator, who does not know that one of the participants
narratives is a confabulation. The fact that Mori (2008) found differences
in narrative form in this experiment similar to the real murder testimony
that is, agent-alteration/agent-successionsuggests that he has success-
fully modeled some features of the real situation. Personal experience is
brought into his experiment by introducing the body. In most memory ex-
periments the participant is confined to a chair and guided to attend only
to the memory stimulus; other features of the experimental situation are
simply considered noise to be carefully controlled. By contrast, in Moris ex-
periment it is precisely the experience of bodily movement and perception
that the participant remembers (in the narrative of the direct experience)
and the experimenter tries to discover. We see clearly from Moris data that
the personal experiential qualities of coming into bodily contact with an
environment express themselves subtly in a narratives form. He shows that
the organization of schemata in each remembering is differentdue to
the qualitative dissimilarities in the experiences themselvesand that this
difference can be uncovered by attending to a narratives form.
ANALYSIS OF THE CULTURAL TOOLS OF SELF-MEDIATION
In my own work I have attempted to synthesize the methodological think-

ing of Bartlett and Vygotsky, in order to explore the role of self-mediation
in remembering, that is, the cultural means participants use to access their
past experience. My first experiment investigates the strategies participants
use to stimulate their memories for a folk-story in a conversational remem-
bering task, while the second focuses on how participants use narrative re-
sources to organize their memory for an ambiguous sequence of events and
how, in turn, what narrative resources they use shapes what they remember
(Wagoner, 2010). My interest in language and narrative here is to access
how participants constructively use cultural tools for remembering.
Thus, I borrow from the methodological resources of two seminal pre-
WWII psychologists in order to investigate psychological processes, which
the contemporary discipline has not developed a means of accessinge.g.
holistic functioning, meaning and constructive qualitative changes. From
Bartlett I borrow the method of repeated reproduction, using complex narratives
and an analysis in terms of holistic qualitative changes which takes account
of participants personal and group history. I do not, however, go as far as
Mori (2008) in using dynamic body action as material for remembering.
Vygotskys contribution to my work has been to conceptualize and op-
erationalize (with the method of double stimulation) the ways we construct
signs as artificial memory aids to solve memory problems that go beyond
our natural capacities. In an experiment conducted by Leontiev under Vy-

gotskys guidance, children were given a list of words to remember, more
than they could naturally remember (Vygotsky, 1987; see also Wagoner,
2009). In one condition of the experiment the children were also provided
with picture cards, which they could transform into a meaningful sign
that stimulated their memory for the target word. In this way the children
used culture to help them go beyond their natural memory capacities.
Children made obvious connections (e.g. using a picture of a sled to re-
member the word horse) but also constructed entirely new structures or
narratives: one child, for example, used a picture of a crab at the beach to
remember the word theatre, explaining The crab is looking at the stones
on the bottom, it is beautiful, it is a theatre (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 181). This
example demonstrates the active and creative role a person takes in con-
structing their relationship to the memory material and their own future
psychological action towards it. This focus on the construction of novelty is
necessarily absent from contemporary mainstream psychology with its need
for easily quantifiable data. With the help of Vygotsky and Bartletts work I
have bring it back into experimental psychology.
Constructive Remembering in Conversation
My first experiment extended Bartletts method of repeated reproduc-

tion by having participants remember together in conversation, rather than
reproducing the story individually on paper, as most of Bartletts partici-
pants did.7 Above, we saw how Middleton and Edwards (1990) and Mori
(2008) developed a conversational remembering task for different analytic
aims. My aim in introducing the conversation task was to access the Self-
mediation of remembering as it was occurring in vivo, and thus to display
the cultural means and strategies participants used to remember. We often
do not think before we speak, rather thought comes into being through
speech; speech is not the clothing of thought but its token and its body
(Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962, chapter 6). It is not uncommon in speech to
see people answering their own questions, opposing themselves to what
they said earlier, and elaborating on a statement from a new angleto
see communication and thought with another become thinking aloud to
oneself. In other words, we think through the mouth (Markov, 2003).
Therefore, by changing an individual task into a conversation task we shift
the mutable boundary between visible and invisible psychological processes
so as to be able to observe more. Of course, not all psychological operations
will be visiblefor example, the participant might think silently to him or
herself or have some visual imagery that he or she does not mention aloud.
170 BRADY WAGONER
But enough will be made visible to capture and analyze some spontaneous
processes of remembering.
Like Bartlett (1932) I used the Native American folk-story War of the
Ghosts for the experimental task because its unfamiliar content and narra-
tive structure so clearly illustrates the constructive processes of remember-
ing Bartlett theorized. From a Vygotskian perspective, using this material
served the purpose of primitivizing the process of remembering, which pro-
ceeds too rapidly when dealing with material that we have already been so-
cialized into. Thus, psychological processes are objectified: first, through the
use of the conversation method requiring that remembering be done aloud
and second, by using unfamiliar material in which there is no ready-to-hand
cultural strategy for making the material comprehensible and coherent.
Participants read the story War of the Ghosts twice at normal reading
speed. Fifteen minutes later one of the pair of participants was given the
role of scribe and the group was given the following instructions:
As a pair discuss and write down the story you read earlier as accurately as pos-
sible. If you decide to change what you have already written, put a single line
through the portion you want to delete and rewrite your correction next to
the deleted portion.
These task instructions were deliberately not overly lenient, to avoid the
criticism of encouraging inaccuracy (see Gauld & Stephenson, 1967), but
also not overly restrictive, which might cause participants to focus on details
of wording at the expense of the more naturalistic study of remembering.
In addition to experimenting on participants in conversation, I also
tested five participants remembering individually to get a feel for Bartletts
original experimental procedure. Weldon and Bellinger (1997) previously
found that groups remembering together remember more than any single
individual in the group remembering alone but less than an aggregate of
individuals remembering alone. However, these authors do not attend to
the obvious qualitative differences in participants attitude (in Bartletts
sense) between the individual and group remembering task. I found partic-
ipants in the individual condition worked quickly and seriously as if the task
was a school examination, whereas participants in the group performed the
task in a much more casual manner, taking on average over twice as long
as individuals working alone and laughing at several points in the conversa-
tion. As Middleton and Edwards (1990) commented about one of their own
experiments on conversational remembering, the immediate impression
is of a well practiced activity which the participants could perform with
ease and spontaneity. It was obvious that we were tapping into a familiar
discursive practice, in which remembering is done jointly (pp. 2526). My
focus, however, was not exploring conversational remembering as a social
Confabulaon
YES
Clear memory?
Start Uncontested? Next unit of the story
FIGURE 2. The Process of Remembering (from Wagoner, 2007, p. 67)
practice, but rather in using this practiced activity to display and analyze
processes of self- and other-mediation.
With this focus in mind, transcripts of the conversations were coded for
moments in which participants natural memory falls short and culture
is used to fill in the gaps (Bartlett, 1958). In conversation, remembering
would at times flow smoothly out of the participants, from one to the other,
while at other times a rupture would occur, which required a deliberate
act of confabulation in order to mend it. Bartlett (1932) called the former
low-level remembering and the latter constructive remembering. Fig-
ure 2 outlines these different directions remembering can take. In remem-
bering a story, for example, each part of the story might be clear enough
that I can move effortlessly from beginning to end; however, it is more likely
that I will be confronted, at several places, with an unclear memory in need
of elaboration. When this occurs I pause and began to consult my cultural
conventions to establish what might or should be in the missing spaces of
my memory. I may even consciously produce several possible sceneries and
then choose the one that feels best. My interlocutor will also affect this
process by either working harmoniously with me (e.g., filling in an incom-
plete sentence of mine) or alternatively expressing doubt or contesting my
memory, in which case co-constructive confabulation and argumentation
begins. The process of confabulation (i.e. of rupture and reconstruction)
is our primary interest here. Specifically, we want to know how participants
overcome uncertainties in rememberinghow they continue to construct
a coherent story despite the missing pieces. To explore this question con-
sider the following conversational reproduction and the transformations oc-
curring inside it, as well as between the reproduction and the original:
The original story

He told it all, and then he became quiet. When the sun rose he fell
down. Something black came out of his mouth
172 BRADY WAGONER
The first conversational reproduction

(15 minutes after reading the story)
Bill: He told his story and then became quiet. Right? And then the sun
sets ... or something
Henry: Well, he goes to sleep
Bill: It didnt say anything about sleep. In the morning he stood up and died
Henry: Woke up and died
Bill: All right, so he became quite after telling the story. Ahh, a photo-
graphic memory would be awesome right now. Ok now were to the
point where he woke up. Did they say he woke up?
Henry: I dont think he stood up
Bill: I thought he
Henry: I dont think he stood up. I think he did wake up
Bill: Ok, so he woke up (writes). Something black
Henry: came out of his mouth...
Bill and Henry easily remember the parts before and after the phrase
When the sun rose he fell down but they must confabulate to remem-
ber what occurs in-between these clear, accessible memories. Though the
original says nothing about sunsets, woke up, or sleep these ideas are
formed out of the vague memory of a transition between night and day.
We can see fragments of the original still linger in their conversation but
they are radically reconstructed through confabulation. The outstanding
details (what we might call imagery following Bartlett) and a vague sche-
matic memory of the scene (it takes place at night in transition to day)
must somehow be brought together into a coherent unity. In course of their
conversation, we have the sense of a diffuse field of past experience taking
shape (as opposed to individual units being read off as the inscription
metaphor would have it).
Let us consider how this is occurring more closely. Bill says first the sun
sets (in the original: the sun rose) but then expresses uncertainty with
or something. Henry puts forward another possibility (he goes to sleep)
which conventionally occurs after the sun sets. This possibility is rejected
by Bill, who instead has a feeling for the up-down dichotomy appearing in
the original as When the sun rose he fell down. At this point, Bill posits
that in the morning he stood up. Henry asserts instead that he woke up,
which synthesizes his original position with Bills most recent articulation.
This is done firstly by transforming he goes to sleep into its opposite.
The ease by which the mind moves between opposites has been theorized
at least as early as Meinong (1902/1983) and more recently by Josephs et
al. (1999), Markov (2003) and Gillespie (2010). Secondly, he stood up,
expressing an embodied up-down dichotomy, is transformed into an ori-
entational metaphor, in which consciousness is up, unconsciousness is

down (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Thus, the two differentiating parts of the
memory field (the sleep-wake and up-down complexes) are synthesized
in the expression he woke up.
Bill and Henry form a coherence account of the story by using cultural
resources, such as social conventions surrounding night and day (people
sleep at night and wake up in the morning) and the metaphorical language
utilizing the up-down dichotomy (e.g. people wake up and fall asleep).
With these resources they suggest possibilities, to themselves and their
conversational partner, for what might have been in the missing space.
In this way, suggestion is not simply a potential distorting influence, as
contemporary researchers tend to believe, but rather is a principle strategy
of remembering. Using suggestion Bill and Henry generate a number of
possibilities to fill in the gap in their memory and then choose between
the possibilities by what feels right. They effectively transform recall into
recognition, or put differently a fill-in-the-blank test into a multiple-choice
test. We can see from this example how natural memory capabilities could
be extended through cultural resources if more familiar cultural material
was used, in which case confabulation would likely lead to a close approxi-
mation of the original. Here the participants conversation displays con-
ventionalization (Bartlett, 1932), that is the constructive reworking of the
unfamiliar material into a familiar framework.
Other kinds of cultural resources and strategies were also found in this
study. One totally unexpected finding was the invention of the idea that
the protagonist of War of the Ghosts (i.e. the Indian) was himself a ghost.
There is nothing in the original story to suggest this and nowhere does
Bartlett report similar findings. Yet, the idea appears in three of my ten
pairs of participants. Furthermore, I informally asked two others, who had
participated in the conversational experiment, to recall the story aloud to
me after over a year had elapsed and found they had this idea as well. This
confabulation occurred when participants reached the puzzling point in
the middle of the story after a war had begun, which reads presently the
young man heard one of the warriors say, Quick, let us go home: that In-
dian has been hit. Now he thought: Oh, they are ghosts. The following
is an example of this confabulations occurrence:
The first conversational reproduction

(15 minutes after reading the story)
Joan: At some point he thinks theyre ghosts; he decides their ghosts

Emily: Well, I think he might be a ghost
174 BRADY WAGONER
The second conversational reproduction

(a week after reading the story)
Joan: He realizes that theyre ghosts or he says theyre ghosts

Emily: Well, I think that the point is that he is a ghost
Emilys comments reveal an effort to make the story an intelligible

wholeBartlett (1932) aptly calls the process an effort after meaning.
But how is it that this particular addition contributes anything to under-
standing? Moreover, why does it also occur in other participants in my sam-
ple? The answer presented itself by looking to the wider cultural context to
which participants belonged.
Recent Hollywood movies about ghosts (e.g. The Sixth Sense and The Oth-
ers) have developed a narrative template with a surprise ending in which
the protagonist realizes that he or she is a ghost, even though throughout
the film we were led to believe he or she was living. The surprise ending
pulls together the separate events of the film into a coherent whole and
thus gives the story narrative closer. By using this Hollywood ghost narra-
tive template as mediator, participants are able to understand a number
of puzzling events in the Native American folk-tale War of the Ghosts: First,
the protagonists sudden realization, Oh, they are ghosts. Second, the
statement that They said I was hit, and I did not feel sick repeated twice
in the story. And third, the protagonists unexplained death at the end of
the story, he fell down. Something black came out of his mouth. His
face became contorted. The people jumped up and cried. He was dead.
All of these events can be integrated and explained in the Hollywood
ghost narrative template.
In Native American society, from which the story originates (see Boas,
1901), conventions for understanding what happens when one comes
into contact with ghosts were readily accessible to anyonedifficulty in
understanding the story would be entirely absent. English listeners, by
contrast, must use their own conventions to mediate their understanding
and memory of the film. Joan told me that she had seen the both The Sixth
Sense and The Others when I later asked her, but also reported being totally
unaware of thinking of either film while remembering War of the Ghosts.
The other participant I was able to ask had seen one of the films but also
did not explicitly make a link between it and the Native American story.
Participants use of Hollywood movie narratives is then a kind of schematic
mediation. This concept comes close to Bartletts (1932) concept of sche-
mas as generalized cultural patterns, often unconsciously used to make
meaning, so as to more easily and quickly act in the social and physical
environment. More recently Wertsch (2002) has made a distinction be-
tween specific narratives and schematic narrative templates, in which
the latter provide the general structure through which the former can
be constructed. In my data the strange narrative of War of the Ghosts is
reconstructed with the help of schematic narrative templates developed
through watching Hollywood movies.
Narrative Nemplates as Tools of Remembering
My discovery of the use of schematic Hollywood movie narratives to un-

derstand and remember War of the Ghost led me to design a further experi-
ment to explore how schematic narrative templateswhich I will call nar-
rative frames from here onwere used to organize remembering. A method
was needed to foreground participants construction of a narrative and ob-
serve how it operated for remembering. To this end, I utilized Heider and
Simmels (1944) celebrated apparent behavior film, in which geometric
shapesa big triangle, a little triangle and a circle (see Figure 3)seem
to interact with each other in such a way that the film unfolds as a kind
of story. Participants utilize a wide variety of narrative frames to familiar-
ize the filmto make it understandable and memorable. In remembering
participants bring the events of the film into language for the first time
and in so doing give them a form and a meaning. The translation of a vi-
sual experience into a linguisticwhat Edwards and Middleton (1987) call
cross-modal rememberingis relatively rare in memory research, with
notable exceptions such as Mori (2008), but is the most common form of
remembering in everyday life.
FIGURE 3. An Image of the Geometric Shapes in Heider and Sim-

mels (1944) Apparent Behavior Film. T = big triangle. t = little
triangle. c = circle.
176 BRADY WAGONER
After being shown the short film there was a forty-five minute delay, in
which participants filled out a demographic questionnaire and were then
engaged in casual conversation for the remaining time. Once the time had
elapsed participants were asked to: Tell me what happened in the film in
as much detail as possible. These instructions were deliberately vague so as
to leave open how the film would be narratively framed by participants and
thus create a diversity of responses. Heider and Simmel (1944) use a similar
question in the first condition of their experiment.
I adopted the analytic strategy of moving between the analysis of aggre-
gates and single cases, as outlined in my paper The experimental method-
ology of constructive microgenesis (Wagoner, 2009). In this way, I brought
together the standard American analysis of itemized and aggregated data
with the European pre-WWII focus on single cases and holistic psychologi-
cal functioning.
First, participants narratives were coded for what discrete events were
remembered and forgotten. This approach of counting the number of
itemized units remembered is common in contemporary memory experi-
ments. I used it here to see what events were most commonly remembered
and forgotten, so as to begin to conceptualize the narrative structuring of
the film and later be able to use this knowledge to explore deviant cases. I
found a pattern similar to Ebbinghaus (1885/1913) serial positioning curve
in which items at the beginning and ending of the sequence are remem-
bered at a greater frequency, but with major exceptions to the rule in need
of explanation. As a result of these exceptions I conclude that the pattern
could be better accounted for by way of how events contributed to the for-
mation of a meaningful whole (i.e. a narrative).
As I have argued above a purely itemized analysis is artificial; it ignores
the fact the material is organized into meaningful wholes. Thus, my second
analysis explored wholes by considering what narrative frames were used by
participants to make the film meaningful and remember it. A wide range
of narrative frames were put to work for this purposefor example, a do-
mestic conflict, a territory conflict, bullying at school, gladiatorial games,
grumpy guy and playful kids, a prison escape, etc. These narrative frames
could often be traced back to a social groupand its corresponding social
frameworks (Halbwachs, 1925)to which the participant belonged. For
example, sheep trails was used as a narrative frame by one participant who
grew up in a small Welsh community to which this was a centrally important
event. However, it must be stressed here that this was not a deterministic
relationship between the participantss past and the narrative frame used
in the present. Rather participants were agentically using the past as a re-
source to help them move toward the futuresee Valsiner (2001) and the
above section Insight over Prediction.
In the third analysis, I focused in on a diversity of single cases to explore

how meaningful wholes and their parts are systemically related in the pro-
cess of remembering. Consider the following verbal remembering of the
film:
There was a line drawing of a room, with a door. And there was a large tri-
angle inside the room. And then a smaller triangle and a circle came along
the outside. Ok, so at some point the large triangle sort of nosed its way out
the door. And I remember thinking as I was watching this interaction this
could be read in two ways: either you could see the T coming out and being
threatening towards the other two or perhaps T is feeling threatened by the
approach of these other two. I wasnt sure. But the c and t acted really differ-
ently. c seemed to be more afraid and was moving away from T whereas t was
very pointy and aggressive. They were being quite aggressive to each other.
And there was quite a bit of moving about being pointy at each other. And,
umm, at one point c ended up going inside the room. And it kind of, looked
like it was sort of hanging around. I dont know if Im anthropomorphizing
or what here. c seemed to be sort of watching what was going on and sneak-
ing, trying to get to a safe place, and went to the room. But eventually T came
back into the room. And c went straight to the corner trying to get as far away
from T as possible. It was not going to confront the triangle like t was. And
then t came in, I think. And there was more interaction between those two.
No, before t came in, T at first seemed to have its attention focused still on t
outside and then turned its attention to c, who was trying to get away from it,
then t came in, I think. And then engaged T more. And then, everyone ended
up outside. There was some chasing around the room. And, oh gosh how did
it end up? Who ended up back in there? I can now not remember after all
this talking weve been doing whether T reclaimed its territory as it were. Or
[pause] I cant remember how it ended.
This participant uses a territory conflict as her narrative framethe un-

derlining narrative structure that holds the pieces together into a coherent
whole. Later, I learned that she was highly involved with the IsraeliPal-
estinian conflict, though she was completely unaware that she was using
this structure to interpret and remember the events of the film. There is
consistent characterization of all the shapes, using the same names, attrib-
uting the same motives and personalities, etc., and a consistent focus on the
territory conflict throughout. Specifically, she attends to who is responsible
for the conflict and is quite clear from the beginning that she will not take
sides. Also, only her and one other participant (N = 20) held t partially re-
sponsible for the conflict. Furthermore, she avoids saying T chased t and c,
as other participants did, preferring the vague, there was some chasing.
The strong framing of the film as a conflict over territory also seems to
block her from remembering the end of the film. She asks, Who ended up
back in there? This is the logical ending given her narrative template but
it has nothing to do with the actual last events of the film, in which t and c
178 BRADY WAGONER
leave the screen and T spins aroundin what looks like anger to most
and breaks the rectangle into pieces.
Returning to the sample as a whole, I coded each reproduction as
strong, weak or non-narrative framing. The above single case is an example
of strong narrative framing in that the film is understood through single nar-
rative theme (i.e. conflict over territory) and the shapes are consistently
characterized throughout. Participants who saw the film through multiple
narrative themes and did not consistently refer to shapes were classed as
weak narrative framing. Lastly, two participants were classed as non-narrative
framing because they did not think of the film through a narrative lens;
instead, they described the film through a technical geometric language.
For each classification the average number of events remembered and
transformed (by changing the order of events, substituting one shape for
another or adding an event) was calculated. In Table 3, there is a general
tendency for strong narrative framing to be associated with remembering
a greater number of events and transforming less events. But as I have ar-
gued above aggregate statistics can be highly misleading in that they ignore
deviance to the general trend. Thus, at this point in my analysis I used these
general trends to seek out cases deviant to the norm and explore them in
more depth.
The following participant was easily classed as strong narrative framing.
She remembers 8 events of the film but is the only participant in this clas-
sification to transform 3 events:
There was an angry triangle in a box. That hmmm opened the door to his box
and had a look outside and found a little triangle [t] and a circle [c], looked
quite playful. And then he started, pointed his little triangular face at them.
And they seemed quite alarmed and kind of being pushed away and then
there, it seemed like they were tricking him a bit. Then the other triangle [T]
opened the door to his hatch and snuck into his box and was in there for a
while. And then, came back outside again. And in the mean time, the baby
triangle [t] had been pushing the c around for a while. And at that point, I
think, T went back into the box and came out again. There was a lot of move-
ment and c went into the box. T followed him in. There seemed to be a lot
of force at the point. So whenever T pointed its pointy face c kind of got dis-
TABLE 3. Strength of Narrative Framing and Outcome of

Reproduction
Number of Events
participants remembered Transformations
Strong narrative framing 10 8.8 0.6
Weak narrative framing 8 6.5 2.125
Non-narrative framing 2 4 2.5
placed to a different corner of the box, in quite swift non-jagged movement. c

left the box and T peered its head out and t and c disappeared off the scene.
And then T seemed to get really angry and frustrated and smashed his box
apart with his pointy face.
After her narration, the participant explains that T was a grumpyquite

old guy and the other two were young playful characters (both male).
These characters get cast into a narrative template centering on the single
conflict of the youth joking around and agitating the old (in the olds ter-
ritory). It is a kind of Dennis the Menace (well known American cartoon)
narrative, in which Dennis is always causing trouble to Mr. Wilson, in his
property, while Mr. Wilson becomes increasingly angry and frustrated. The
form of antagonism in this narrative is only surface deepDennis and Mr.
Wilson are in reality quite attached. It is thus highly significant that she
later comments:
at the end when they [t and c] left the scene all together and T starting smash-
ing his walls down, I thought that he was actually quite upset that theyd gone.
I think he missed them, despite it all.
We get the sense from her narrative that T wants to be left alone, whereas
both t and c enjoy teasing him after they get over their initial alarm. T angri-
ly pushes them away when they disturb his peace and quiet and once they
are out of the way he returns to his own activities in his box, though he re-
mains agitated. Thus we can explain many of her omissions: she says noth-
ing about the fight between T and t outside the box (nearly all the other
participants do), nor anything about the chase between T and the smaller
shapes (which over half of the participants mention something about). For
her the conflict must be understood as arising from ts and cs interfer-
ence in Ts life and is settled as soon as T pushes them out of his space. For
this reason she is clear in the post-reproduction interview that c was just as
confrontational as t, which was a unique attribution in my sample (N = 20).
Now that we understand the form and logic of her narrative, how should
we interpret the transformations that occur in it? She includes two cases
of T entering and then exiting his box alone. In the original this occurs
only once after T has chased the other two shapes. Also, in between these
two events she inserts the baby triangle had been pushing c around for a
while. It is hard to know what to make of this attribution of conflictshe
is the only participant to think of t as pushing c around here. My reading,
based on her whole narrative framing, is that she interprets the event that
others see as ts and cs joyful reunion as playful fighting and includes it at
this early point to create a smoother narrative. However, it could also be
argued that the event was a mixing up of who had what roles in the fight
between T and t. In any case, all three of these transformations fit her gen-
180 BRADY WAGONER
eral narrative of T only being aggressive to a pointt and c are also held
responsible for causing trouble. Additionally, the transformations help her
to avoid including events that would not easily fit her narrative frame, like
Ts fighting with t at a distance from the house and c moving away from the
conflict. In fact, she makes the transition out of her confabulation to the
event where c enters the box with the very vague expression there was a lot
of movement, as if to cover up the unknown event. Similarly, cs entering
is interpreted as motivated not from fear (which is the common causal con-
nection made by other participants) but rather is another form of joking,
i.e. playing with Ts things.
By attending to this deviant case, we see that it is not just a matter of
strong and weak narrative framing (i.e. narrative form) but also which nar-
rative frame is used (i.e. narrative content). A strong domestic conflict
narrative frame does not tend to produce transformations, nor as many
omissions for this film. This frame seems to map onto the sequence of
events directly, whereas the Dennis-the-Menace narrative frame can be used
but requires a more active spinning of the frame to the sequence of events
to make it work, which results in a number of transformations. This study
helps us to understand different characteristics of narrative frames as me-
diators of rememberingthat is, their form (i.e. strength of framing) and
content (e.g. a territory conflict or a dennis-the-menace narrative).
THE FUTURE OF METHODOLOGY FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL

STUDY OF REMEMBERING
The above studies show that methodology as a problem for the psychologi-
cal study of remembering has not been entirely forgotten. The majority of
experimental research on remembering in the post-WWII era of psychology
has been predominately American in methodology of the form described
in the section Analysis of Itemized and Aggregated Reproductions; how-
ever, in spite of this, many methodological innovations have been made
since Bartletts classic Remembering (1932) utilizing similar methodological
principles, such as the use of single cases, focusing on the active organ-
ism, analysis of qualitative complexities, attention to the role of culture and
meaning, systematic analysis and the development of sophisticated theory.
Moreover, these innovative methodologies break away from the domi-
nant metaphor of memory as a container for experiences, or an inscrip-
tion on the mind, like writing on a wax tablet. The inscription metaphor
views memory as composed of static and asocial elements; thus, the imagi-
native and constructive aspects of memory recede into the background.
Danziger (2002, 2008) describes how some form of the inscription meta-
phor has come to progressively dominate all discourse about remember-
ingBartletts schema theory is a notable exception. How psychological

phenomena are conceptualized will have a profound effect on how we de-
cide to study them. Also, the methodological imperative to use standard
statistical methods tends to obstruct researchers from developing theories
that cannot be tested using this method (Danziger, 1985)the inscription
metaphors conceptualization of mental elements is highly congruent with
quantification and statistical analysis. In both cases, our method will tend
to support rather than call into question a given conceptualization of the
phenomena. In the memory laboratory, for example, the use of nonsense
syllables, word lists and other de-contextualized materials perpetuates the
idea that memories are discrete asocial things stored in the mind-brain and
later retrieved (Mori, 2010). But how adequate is this conceptualization to
the phenomenon observed outside this kind of laboratory?
The methodologists reviewed here (excepting those in the itemized
and aggregated analysis of reproductions) highlight other aspects of re-
membering not captured by the inscription metaphor. Nadel explored the
way social groups (or cultures) guide what and how individuals remem-
ber. This is a theme Middleton and colleagues develop by foregrounding
social context and purpose in understanding the shape rememberingin
discoursetakes. Mori acknowledged the importance of Middleton and
colleagues attention to the subtleties of narrative practices but argues
they overlook personal experience. To bring this aspect of remembering
to the fore he creates an experiment to explore how bodily contact with
the environment can be subtly seen in a narratives form. My experiments
utilize these methodologists thinking but focuses on the cultural agency
of participants, how they actively use cultural strategies (e.g. using self-sug-
gestion to transform a recall test into a recognition test) and cultural tools
(e.g. narrative templates such as Hollywood ghost movies) to remember.
All these approaches have recognized budding insights in Bartletts (1932)
methodology of remembering and constructively developed them.
In this process of constructively remembering Bartlett certain features of
the original are inevitably lost or transformed. This should not concern us
as long as new approaches recognize the complexities of the phenomena to
be accounted for and attempt to capture them or acknowledge their inabil-
ity to do so. An adequate methodology of remembering will have to address
the following characteristics of the phenomena, all of which the inscription
metaphor fails to encompass:
1. Unity of mind: The mind operates as a whole. Thus, it cannot be sep-

arated into separate faculties. Perceiving, imagining, remembering
and thinking should be thought of as manifestations of an underly-
ing unity. The task of psychology is to work out a general model of
mind that encompasses all of them. Thus, our methodology should
182 BRADY WAGONER
link remembering to other areas of inquiry and contribute to our

understanding of the minds functioning more generally.
2. Individual- environment relationship: remembering always occurs in a
context that is both social and physical; it is a creative adaption to
the demands of this environment by means of accessing a previous
experience. In this way, the person escapes determination by the
environment and constructs other possible relations with it off-
line. Thus, our methodology must simultaneously be capable of
analyzing remembering within an environment but also the ways in
which individuals go beyond environmental constraints.
3. Directedness: People need to be understood as Agents constructing
their own pasts and futures. They are not billiard balls causally de-
termined by external events. Instead, they are themselves active
centers of causality struggling to make sense and act in the world.
We all creatively strive to meet an uncertain future; thus, our meth-
odology must access how participants actively struggle to achieve a
future goal, to form the fog of memory, through the use of cultural
resources.
4. Temporal unfolding: remembering happens in time, and is oriented
toward accessing time past. We either struggle to provoke some-
thing to come into being or it occurs without our effort. In either
case there is a process of something vaguely felt morphing into
something more definite and recognizable (or failing to do so),
and then receding into the background. Thus, our methodology
must have a way of analyzing qualitative changes in time. A mi-
crogenetic methodology is the most powerful means of doing this
(Wagoner, 2009).
5. Meaning: remembering is an act of meaning-making, which contains
both personal and collective elements. Ebbinghauss (1885/1913)
attempts to exorcize meaning from the laboratory has failed. Par-
ticipants unmistakably use personal and conventional ways of orga-
nizing memory material into meaningful wholes. Thus, our meth-
odology must be able to attend to collective strategies as well as
individuals specific ways of remembering. This entails an analysis
of both normal and deviant cases.
These features, and others, were recognized by many pre-WWII psycholo-

gists. Indeed, we can fruitfully use their work to help us to move beyond
contemporary ways of thinking. However, these earlier methodologists were
unable to recognize other important characteristics of the phenomena of
remembering; the above list, reflecting insights of pre-WWII psychology, is
by no means exhaustive of the phenomena. What is now needed is to de-
velop beyond our limited perspective and theirs to further advance psycho-
logical knowledge in a continuous interchange between Theory, Method,

Data, Phenomena, and general assumptions about the world (Branco &
Valsiner, 1997). Students need to be trained to be broader minded in their
methodological thinking; automatic and stereotypical critiques (e.g. failure
to use statistical methods) of past research styles (e.g. Bartletts) or contem-
porary approaches outside the mainstream (e.g. Middletons) stifles meth-
odological and theoretical innovation.
At this point, it should be asked, what new methodological resources for
the study of remembering do we have at our disposal almost 80 years after
Bartlett The most apparent answer to this question is a number of analyti-
cal strategies for accessing and analyzing the micro-processes of remember-
ing and their qualitative complexities. This research avenue was unavail-
able to Bartlett, who in the 1910s and 1920s, did not have at his disposal
equipment to record these processes and later attend to their moment-by-
moment developments. In contrast, Middleton and colleagues, Mori and I
have all utilized this technology to access and analyze the micro-processes
of remembering; however, we have all done so for different purposes. Each
one of us has attempted to use Bartletts methodology to go beyond Bartlett
in our efforts to develop a general theory of remembering that integrates
a diverse set of observations and findings. We have all struggled to capture
complexities of remembering through the innovation of new methodolo-
gies. I hope this chapter will inspire others to do likewise.
NOTES
1, A notable exception is Edwards and Middleton (1987).

2. This paper is still unpublished but can be found on the Bartlett Internet Archive
as Notes on Remembering. The exact date of this paper is unknown. However,
it must have been written after Gauld and Stephenson article in 1967 and before
1969 when Bartlett died.
3. The mnemonist Schereshevskii is an example of a pathological case (Luria,
1987).
4. Notice Nadels use of psychological types rather than trait differences, which is
Toomelas (2007) 5th point of difference between German-Austrian and Ameri-
can psychology. Type or mentality is a holistic way in which a person relates to
their world, whereas trait is an abstracted element of the person. Nadel is also
clear that types are qualitatively discontinuous and thus it is unreasonable to
think types can be measured on a linear scale.
5. See the unpublished paper Notes on Remembering (in the F.C. Bartlett Ar-
chive), which Bartlett wrote in response to Gauld and Stephensons (1967) ar-
ticle.
6. Moris classification traditional research parallels my analysis of itemized and
aggregated reproductions above.
184 BRADY WAGONER
7. Bartlett (1932) does report verbal data from his participants, which reveal their
attitudes (in his use of the word) toward the material and experimental situa-
tion. However, he does not systematically access and analyze verbal data. This
would have been impossible in Bartletts day without the use of audio recorders.
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CHAPTER 8
REFLECTIONS ON SOME
NEGLECTED IDEAS
ABOUT PSYCHOLOGICAL
MEASUREMENT FROM THE
PERSONALISTIC PERSPECTIVE
OF WILLIAM STERN
(18711938)
James T. Lamiell
No science, wrote the German philosopher and psychologist William

Stern (18711938) in 1906, seems more impersonal than mathematics
(Stern, 1906, p. 398). Elaborating on this observation more than a decade
later, Stern opened the sixth chapter of The Human Personality, titled Prin-
ciples of Personality Measurement, as follows:
Of all the ways of thinking, the mathematical way is the most impersonal. The
application of amount and number to personal being and doing seems to sig-
nify the reduction [of the person] to an entity merely comparable [to other
entities], to a mere instance of a stiff lawfulness, in short, to a thing. It is a fact
that in virtually every instance where mathematical methodsmeasurement,
experiment, statisticshave been applied to personal life and experience as
well as to the cultural and social manifestations of personal communities,

190 JAMES T. LAMIELL
such a depersonalization has been the consequence. What is truly personal

the wholeness and individual specialness of being, the inner origin and goal-
striving nature of doinghas been submerged, and persons have been made
over into mere pieces of the measurable and countable larger world. (Stern,
1918, p. 183)1
And yet, Stern continued:
[We] should not adopt blindly a position against the possibility and fruit-
fulness of mathematization. We must only understand and approach it prop-
erly [I]t is the convergence of the person with the world that must come to expression
in specific measurable relationships and measurement principles. (Stern, 1918, pp.
183184, emphasis added).
The perspective on psychological measurement that Stern was urging

here, as well as his outlook on all other aspects of psychological investi-
gation, was firmly grounded in and guided by a comprehensive system of
thought he developed under the name of critical personalism. Unfortunately,
that Weltanschauung or worldview never gained widespread attention within
the mainstream of scientific psychology. It thus became, and up to now has
remained, almost entirely unknown to several generations of psychologists
not only in the US and other English-speaking countries but in Sterns na-
tive Germany as well (cf. Deutsch, 1991).
Even before Sterns death there were clear signs that the prospects for
personalistic thinking within the mainstream were not bright. This is re-
flected in the words of Gordon Allport (18971967), who had a personal
as well as professional relationship with Stern. Shortly after Sterns death in
Durham, NC on March 27, 1938, Allport wrote:
it troubled [Stern] relatively little that his formulations ran counter to the
trend of the times, particularly in American thought. [H]e believed so
intensely in the liberating powers of personalistic thought that he had faith
in its ultimate acceptability to others. Thinking [personalistically], Stern be-
came a monumental defender of an unpopular cause. (Allport, 1938, p. 773)
At the conclusion of his appreciation of Sterns life and works, Allport

boldly forecast that personalistic thinking would eventually have its day,
and that its day would be long and bright (Allport, 1938, p. 773), but
70 years later it cannot be said that that optimism has yet been requited.2
Accordingly, my objective in the present chapter is to introduce readers
to some of the key ideas in critical personalism, and to then discuss the
untoward consequences that the widespread neglect of those ideas has
had in one particular methodological domain, namely that of measure-
ment within the context of personality studies. This is a connection that I
gradually came to discern through reflection upon a remarkable similarity
between some ideas about psychological measurement that I began formu-
William Sterns Perspective of Psychological Measurement 191
lating on my own in the early 1980s (e.g., Lamiell, 1981, 1982) and ideas
that, unbeknownst to me, Stern had discussed several decades earlier. In
effect, I unwittingly re-introduced a perspective on psychological measure-
ment that I would have encountered much earlier but for the invisibility of
Sterns theoretical and philosophical contributions within the mainstream
literature on which my own training was based. To this extent, the present
contribution perhaps qualifies as an object lesson in just the sort of concern
that spurred the editors of this volume to their undertaking.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Renown Psychologist, Unobtrusive Philosopher
At the dawn of the 20th century, Stern held a lectureship at the University
of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), having gone there from Berlin in 1897
to complete his Habilitation under the mentorship of Hermann Ebbinghaus
(18501909). On July 31, 1900, Stern penned a letter to his friend and col-
league, the Freiburg philosopher Jonas Cohn (18691947), in which he
wrote:
I am gradually becoming more philosopher than psychologist. I am carrying

around with me so many ideas that will take me many years to formulate, and
I think that now we will have more points of contact in our thinking and in-
terests than we have had up to now. Perhaps the main difference between us
is that in your philosophizing you are seeking an epistemological grounding,
whereas I believe that what we need above all is a worldview [Weltanschauung],
one that relates the psychological and the physical, one that is anti-mecha-
nistic and vitalistic-teleological; one in which modern natural science dogma
is reduced to its truethat is, relatively inferiorvalue. This is a huge task,
but I will work on it as I am able.
Because this conceptual-philosophical work matures so slowly, it is possible
for me to proceed in parallel fashion with my more specialized objective work
in psychology. For me, this alternation between empirical work and specula-
tive thinking has always been pleasing and beneficial. You know that my book
On the Psychology of Individual Differences has been out since Easter. (Stern letter
to Cohn, July 31, 1900; cf. Lck & Lwisch, 1994, p. 33).
One very important thing to understand about Stern is that he did not re-
gard the disciplines of philosophy and psychology as in any way antagonistic
toward or incompatible with each other. Quite to the contrary, Stern was
fully convincedand would remain so for the duration of his lifethat the
task of understanding human nature would ever require the systematic co-
ordination of both disciplines. From the very start, however, this conviction
created a gap between Stern and many of his contemporaries in psychology,

and this gap would only widen over time. In 1913, Wilhelm Wundt (1832
1920) would find it necessary to publicly oppose the impending divorce
of psychology from philosophy (Wundt, 1913). Already by then, however
support for the split was strong in both camps. Moreover, within psychology
a decidedly positivistic-empiricistic outlook on scientific investigation was
gaining a secure foothold (cf. Lamiell, 2009).
These developments were anathema to Sterns personalistic views. Not
only was he of one mind with Wundt on the importance of maintaining
close connections between philosophy and psychology, but at that, Stern
regarded it as neither desirable nor even possible to limit philosophizing
to epistemology and so to rid scientific psychology entirely of metaphys-
ics. Apart from the above letter to Cohn, another clear indication of this
conviction can be seen in the following passage, which appears in a work
titled Vorgedanken zur Weltanschauung (Preliminary Considerations for a World-
view; Stern, 1915). Early in that work, Stern posed the question What is a
worldview? and then answered it as follows:
A facsimile of the world, an absolutely objective reflection of what is, in and of

itself, is not possible for a mere mortal. There is no object absent a subject. [But at
the same time], a worldview recognizes a positive reversal of this notion: There
is no subject without an object. Because even if I cannot grasp the world in and
of itself, I nevertheless grasp it as it is for me. Even if the human is no utterly
neutral and smooth-surfaced mirror that faithfully reflects what is out there,
but is instead a prism that refracts the worlds rays of light into thousands of
color gradations, it is nevertheless the light of the world that is thus refracted.
A worldview is more modest than the old metaphysics, but it is also more de-
manding than skepticism and positivism. A world view renounces the notion
of metaphysical knowledge in the sense of absolute truth, but it affirms the
metaphysical impulse toward the greatest possible unification of all convic-
tions and evaluations, and it strives to satisfy this impulse to the fullest degree
humanly possible. (Stern, 1915, p. 4)
Although the publication here quoted was published in 1915, Stern

noted on the title page of the work that it was actually written in 1901.
The publication delay was consistent with Sterns comment to Cohn, in the
letter quoted previously, that in the earlier years of his scholarly life he pre-
ferred to pursue philosophical and empirical endeavors in parallel fashion.
Moreover, for roughly the first two decades of his career Stern preferred
to keep his efforts in philosophy largely out of the view of his psychologist
colleagues, and to draw their attention instead to his methodological and
empirical contributions (see also Stern, 1930). These were many and esti-
mable.
With the 1900 book mentioned in his letter to Cohn, Stern effectively
founded the sub-discipline of differential psychology, i.e., that branch of
psychology that would embrace, as Wundtian-style experimental psycholo-
gy did not, the systematic study of individual and group differences (Stern,
1900). Part of Sterns work in this domain was devoted to the mental testing
of school children, and it was in this context that he came to invent the
intelligence quotient (IQ) through his suggestion that a quantitative index
of a childs level of intellectual functioning at any given point in time be
defined not as the difference between mental age (MA) and chronological
age (CA), i.e., as (MACA), but instead as the ratio of the two, i.e., as (MA/
CA) (cf. Stern, 1916).
Stern also made signal contributions to the literature of what was then
called child psychology. Those contributions were based largely on dia-
ries in which he and wife Clara recorded, over a period of 18 years begin-
ning in 1900, observations concerning the psychological development of
their own three children (see below).
Through his many and varied empirical and methodological writings
William Stern achieved considerable renown as a research psychologist
both in his native Germany and elsewhere (cf. Bhring, 1996; Deutsch,
1991; Lamiell, 2008). Yet even as he was producing those works, he was
quietly nourishing his furor metaphysicus (as he himself branded his philoso-
phizing impulses in his 1927 intellectual autobiography; Stern, 1927) with
his behind-the-scenes work on the elaboration of his worldview. In March
of 1904, he wrote to Cohn:
All of my recent empirical work is but something to keep me busy during the
course of the semester. The quiet vacation days have been and are dedicated
above all to my true lifes work, the worldview project. If things go well, I hope
to be able to publish the first volume by the end of the year. I feel an urgency
to finally complete a segment, even if only a small one, of the work that has oc-
cupied me for many years. Only very few people will understand it, and hardly
anyone will agree with it. It is difficult and quite off the beaten path (abwegig),
but nevertheless I believe in its future. (Stern letter to Cohn, March 9, 1904;
reprinted in Lck & Lwisch, 1994, p. 58).
As it turned out, Sterns hopes for the publication date of the work to
which he alluded in this letter were overly optimistic. It did not in fact ap-
pear until early in 1906 (Stern, 1906), and then it was greeted with what
Stern would later describe as utter indifference (recht grndliche Nicht-
beachtung). Although this did not dissuade him from proceeding with his
larger project, he did elect to continue working on it behind the scenes.3
He maintained his high scholarly profile through empirically and meth-
odologically oriented works in psychology. Among these, he published in
1907, as co-author with wife Clara, the first monograph based on the afore-
mentioned diaries, Die Kindersprache (Childrens Speech; Stern & Stern, 1907).
The following year, Stern co-founded with Otto Lipmann (18801933)
the Zeitschrift fr angewandte Psychologie (Journal of Applied Psychology), and
published the first article in that journal under the title Tatsachen und
Ursachen der seelischen Entwicklung (Facts and causes of psychological
development; Stern, 1908). This was followed in 1909 by a second mono-
graph based on the childrens diaries, Erinnerung, Aussage und Lge in der
ersten Kindheit (Recollection, Testimony, and Lying in Early Childhood; Stern &
Stern, 1909/1999). The first edition of Psychologie der frhen Kindheit bis zum
sechsten Lebensjahr (The Psychology of Early Childhood up to the Sixth Year of Life)
appeared in 1914 (Stern, 1914).
Meanwhile, all copies of Sterns 1900 book on differential psychology
(see above) had been sold by 1910, and the publisher (Barth, Leipzig) was
urging him to undertake a revision of the work. Stern maintained, however,
that the field had so proliferated during the first decade of the 20th century
that no mere revision of the 1900 book would suffice. Instead, an entirely
new book was called for, and this he published in 1911 as Die Differentielle
Psychologie in ihren methodischen Grundlagen (Methodological Foundations of Dif-
ferential Psychology; Stern, 1911).
As its title suggests, this book was essentially a methods handbook, and it
was considerably larger and more technical in its content than was its 1900
predecessor. A key component of the newer work was the delineation of
four research schemes or disciplines within differential psychology. In the
first of these, variation research, an investigator would study the distribution
of measured levels a single attribute (e.g., intelligence or some personality
characteristic such as extraversion) across individuals within a population.
In correlation research, the investigator would focus on co-variations among
two or more attributes in the distributions of their respectively measured
levels across individuals within a population. In a discipline Stern called
psychography (die Psychographie), the focus would be on a single individual,
studied in terms of the measured levels of various attributes within his/
her personality. Finally, comparison research would entail the examination
of (dis)similarities between two or more individuals in the measured levels
of various attributes within their respective personalities. Stern noted that
research carried out within the first two schemes would yield knowledge of
attributes, whereas genuine knowledge of individuals would require research
of a psychographic nature.
Of course, the fact that Sterns philosophical ideas were largely invisible
to readers of his psychological works did not somehow make those ideas ir-
relevant to those works, and in the foreword to the 1911 book Stern issued
a brief but quite pointed caveat to his readers on just this point:
That my conception of the structure of the human individual and of psycho-

logical differentiation is not uninfluenced by my fundamental philosophical
convictions is obvious. But since this book is devoted to the founding of an

empirical science, I have reduced the philosophical aspects of the work to a
minimum. For the justification of ideas many of which are discussed here only
too briefly, the reader is referred to my philosophical book. But I hope that
the usefulness of the present work is not dependent upon agreement with the
authors philosophical assumptions (which on many points deviate in non-trivial
ways from the currently prevailing opinions). (Stern, 1911, p. v; emphasis added,
parentheses in original)
The philosophical book to which Stern was referring in this passage was
the 1906 book, and it is a work that Stern wrote against the background of
a psychology that, within the mainstream, was firmly committed to a natu-
ral science view of its methods and subject matter. This implied, among
other things, that human mental life and behavior could be studied and
ultimately understood in essentially the same way that investigators in other
recognized sciences such as physics and chemistry approached their subject
matter.
One particularly forceful statement of this view was provided by one of
Sterns own teachers in Berlin and, later, his mentor in Breslau, the afore-
mentioned Hermann Ebbinghaus. In the 1908 English edition of his el-
ementary psychology text, Ebbinghaus stated:
Natural science [has] served . . . as a shining and fruitful example to psychol-

ogy. It suggested conceptions that had been found to make material processes
comprehensible. It led to attempts to employ methods that had proved valu-
able in natural science. [...] As the first important fruit of this advancement
we may cite the idea of the absolute and inevitable subjection to law of all
mental processes, which I have just said forms the foundation of all serious
psychological work. [...] In order to understand correctly the thoughts and
impulses of man, we must treat them just as we treat material bodies, or as we
treat the lines and points of mathematics. (Ebbinghaus, 1908, pp. 69)
This is exactly the perspective Stern intended to counter with critical

personalism. As the title to his three-volume series suggests, the conceptual
foundation of the system is the distinctioninadmissible by Ebbinghaus
but in Sterns view both indispensable and irreduciblebetween persons
and things. Early in the 1906 volume, Stern articulated that distinction as
follows:
A person is an entity that, though consisting of many parts, forms a unique

and inherently valuable unity and, as such, constitutes, over and above its
functioning parts, a unitary, self-activated, goal-oriented being. A thing is
the contradictory opposite of a person. It is an entity that likewise consists of
many parts, but these are not fashioned into a real, unique, and inherently
valuable whole, and so while a thing functions in accordance with its various
parts, it does not constitute a unitary, self-activated and goal-oriented being.

(Stern, 1906, p. 16)
PSYCHOLOGY MEETS PERSONALISM
By 1916, Stern had essentially completed the second volume of Person and
Thing, titled Die menschliche Persnlichkeit (The Human Personality). Alas, a
paper shortage in Germany during World War I was delaying its publica-
tion. However, with his move that year from Breslau to Hamburg, where he
planned to devote much of his time to the effort to found a university, Stern
felt some urgency to introduce his psychologist colleagues to the basic te-
nets of personalistic thinking. Fortunately, he succeeded, despite the paper
shortage, in publishing a relatively short monograph as a kind of prcis for
the rather larger Volume II of Person and Thing. This smaller work appeared
in 1917 under the title Die Psychologie und der Personalismus (Psychology and
Personalism; Stern, 1917, in press).
Early in that work, Stern explained his agenda as follows:
[I]t is a matter of some urgency to build a bridge from the side of empiri-
cal psychology to the basic questions of a philosophical worldview, and this
is the task that the present author has set for himself. He has himself, up to
now, produced primarily works of empirical psychology which, though based
on a certain philosophical standpoint whose features were quite apparent
to knowledgeable readers, were nevertheless not explicitly and systematically
incorporated into the psychological considerations. On the other hand, and
quite independent of his specialized psychological works, this same author
has sought to establish the system of a philosophical world view he has called
critical personalism. The author was always aware of an organic connection
between these two domains of work. But this connection was so little apparent
to others that many preferred to regard his preoccupation with a world view
as anti-psychological, as a dalliance that at best would have no bearing on,
and might even do damage to, the psychological works.
What is needed now, therefore, is a work making explicit the necessary
connection between these two domains of scholarship. Not only are scientific
psychology and personalistic philosophy not foreign and indifferent to one another but,
on the contrary, they necessarily belong together. (Stern, in press)
The remainder of Sterns brief monograph (which was scarcely 54 pages

long) was devoted to a highly condensed exposition of the key concepts
within critical personalism, and to a sketch of the understanding of the hu-
man personality Stern based on those concepts. No thorough discussion of
these concepts can be given here.4 Instead, it must suffice for our present
circumscribed purposes to focus on a select few of the key ideas.
Stern began with the proposition that a person is properly regarded as

a unitas multiplex, i.e., as a vast multiplicity of physical and psychological
features drawn together into a coherent, unified whole. The fundamental
problematic is to account for this unity. Stern noted that one traditional
approach to this problem has been to regard the unity as the achievement
of a soul or an I somehow existing along side of the unified entity itself.
This is a view Stern called nave personalism, and it is evidently a species
of Cartesian dualism.
A second historically-prominent view was more worrisome to Stern, as it
is one according to which there really is no unity after all, but instead just
a collection of psychological and behavioral features. Stern elaborated the
point as follows:
The individual is thus merely an aggregate: physically just a sum of atoms; psy-
chologically just a bundle of perceptions. There is no real and consequential
unity, but only a mechanical by-product of elements fully determined by the
general laws of all happenings. In short, there is no person on this view, but
only a thing. This is impersonalism. (Stern, in press)
As reflected in the July, 1900 letter from Stern to Cohn quoted previously,
it was the steady ascendance of impersonalism within psychology that most
concerned Stern about the direction in which psychology seemed headed,
and against which he believed a corrective was needed. This corrective, he
believed, could be provided by the worldview he was putting forward:
[T]he third conception of the many-one relationship seeks to justify both

moments of that relationship. Here, one sees in the confluence of the many-
and-one a final, indispensable basic fact and sees, therefore, in the individual
a person in the critical sense, that is, such an entity which, despite the multi-
plicity of parts, represents a real, unique, and intrinsically valuable unity, and
which, despite the multiplicity of part-functions, achieves a real, goal-oriented
self-activity. This is critical personalism. (Stern, in press, emphasis in original)
It was via the concept of psychophysical neutrality that Stern proposed not
so much to solve as to dissolve the so-called mind-body problem. He did
not deny that persons are subject to regard from either a psychological or
physical (biological) perspective, but he insisted that any such bifurcation
presupposes entitiespersonsthat exist prior to and hence are neutral
with respect to that bifurcation. Quoting himself from his 1906 book, Stern
underscored this point as follows:
Not that there is the physical and the psychological, but rather that there are
real persons, is the basic fact of the world. That these persons can be present
to themselves and to others, and thereby give rise to notions of the psycho-
logical and the physical, is a fact of the world of second order. (Stern, 1906,
pp. 204205; in press)
Another long-standing dichotomy that Stern sought to overcome

through critical personalism was that between nativism and empiricism. He
wrote that every inner disposition of the person is, in and of itself merely
a potentiality that must be supplemented in order to be realized in fact
(Stern, in press). In other words, Stern wrote, the person is simultaneously
goal-striving and in need of supplementation (Stern, in press). This, Stern
asserted, is how critical personalism allows for the role of the worldboth
physical and socialin the development of the person.
Further, it is just this idea of person-world convergence that on Sternss view
would have to come to expression in specific measurable relationships and
measurement principles (Stern, 1918, p. 184). These were the grounds
on which Stern rejected what had already become the mainstream ap-
proach to measuring individuals personality characteristics by comparing
people with one another. Stern argued that from the personalistic stand-
point such comparisons would be beside the point because the problem
at hand pertains not to the position of one person relative to others along
some dimension(s) necessarily presumed common to all, but rather to
the relationship between the person and his/her world (Stern, 1918, pp.
186187). The challenge left to advocates of this personalistic orientation
was to articulate a satisfactory approach to this problem.
FAST FORWARD:
REINVENTING STERNS PERSONALISTIC INSIGHTS
In the late 1970s, the present author was engaged in research having broad-
ly to do with the nature of subjective personality impressions (Lamiell, Foss,
& Cavenee, 1980). I had begun this work in the belief that the processes
involved conformed logically to the arithmetic procedures used by person-
ality psychologists to derive objective personality profiles, and was inter-
ested primarily in how subjective impressions become distorted relative to
their (presumably more accurate) objective counterparts. However, empiri-
cal findings I was obtaining is some research bearing on the phenomenon
of illusory correlation (cf. Shweder, 1975, 1977a, 1977b) suggested to
me that this belief might well be incorrect, and that lay persons assertions
about their own and one anothers personality characteristics might not
entail implicit comparisons of individuals with one another after all (see
also Lamiell, 1980; Shweder, 1980). My alternative hypothesis was that the
subjective judgments were grounded in a reasoning process that entailed
negation, so that the subject was judging each individual target not relative
other targets concurrently or previously instantiated for the subject, but
instead relative to the subjects notions about what the behavior pattern of
each individual target was not but might otherwise have been, without regard for
any empirical instantiation of those notions.5
Subsequent research provided strong empirical support for this hypoth-
esis (see, e.g., Lamiell & Durbeck, 1987; Lamiell, Foss, Larsen, & Hempel,
1983; Lamiell, Foss, Trierweiler, & Leffel, 1983). However, what also in-
trigued me at the time was the possibility of modeling formal personality
measurement procedures on the approach taken by lay persons.
Traditionally, personality measures have been derived in accordance
with so-called normative arithmetic operations in which a subjects raw
score on a putative test of some attribute is taken to be rendered meaning-
ful by placing it within the context of the raw scores obtained on the same
test by comparable others (e.g., same-age, same-sex peers). Formally speak-
ing, these operations have typically taken the form of Equation [1]:
Zpa = (XpaM.a)/sd.a [1]
where
Zpa is the standardized measure of person p on a putative test of attri-

bute a,
Xpa is the raw score of person p on a putative test of attribute a,
M.a represents the mean (average) raw score within a set of persons
on a putative test of attribute a, and
sd.a represents the standard deviation of the raw scores within a set of
persons on a putative test of attribute a.
The alternative measurement procedure that I came to envision on the

basis of the considerations described above (Lamiell, 1981) took the form
of Equation [2]:
Ipa = (Xpa Xpa min) / |Xpa max Xpa min| [2]
where
Ipa is the interactive measure of person p on a putative test of attri-

bute a,
Xpa is the raw score of person p on a putative test of attribute a, and
Xpa max and Xpa min are, respectively, the maximum and minimum scores
possibly obtainable by person p on the putative test of attribute a.
Since Equation [2] does not entail the comparison of the target individ-
ual with other individuals, it enables one to proceed even if the attribute(s)
in terms of which person p is to be characterized are not presumed appli-
cable to allor even to anyother individuals. Obviously, this is not the
case in traditional normative measurement. Moreover, since this question

of general or universal applicability had become a central issue in the well-
known nomothetic-idiographic debate within personality sparked by All-
port (1937), Equation [2] seemed to me to offer a viable way of meeting
one of the primary objections that defenders of mainstream thinking had
voiced in their rejoinders to the criticisms of such thinking that had been
leveled by Allport (cf. Lamiell, 2003).
In adopting the label interactive for this alternative approach to mea-
surement, I understood myself to be following the lead not of William Stern,
with whose works I was not yet familiar, but rather the lead of Raymond B.
Cattell (19051998). In the context of a discussion of psychological mea-
surement (Cattell, 1944), Cattell had distinguished interactive measure-
ment from normative measurement, where, as seen above, an individuals
standing on some given attribute dimension is determined by comparing
him/her with others, and from ipsative measurement, where ones stand-
ing on a given attribute dimension is determined by comparing the indi-
vidual with him- or herself, either on other attributes or at different points
in time. Interactive measurement, Cattell (1944) stated, is measurement:
within a restricted framework defined by the test. It recognizes the oneness

of the organism-environment and pays tribute to the oft-forgotten fact that
a trait is never resident only in the organism but is a relation between the
organism and the environment. (Cattell, 1944, p. 293)
Consistent with these ideas, Equation [2] above defines person ps status
with respect to some given attribute a within a framework defined by a puta-
tive test of that attribute. The features of the test determine the maximum
and minimum possible raw scores, and it is strictly with reference to these
limiting alternative possibilities that the raw score actually obtained by a
given individual is rendered meaningful under the terms of Equation [2].6
The characterization of an individual that emerges from this procedure
may thus be understood as the result of a convergence of that individual with
a specific aspect of his/her environment, in this case an instrument (test)
designed by some other person. It is in this light that I would later find in
interactive measurement an idea that articulates well with Sterns person-
alistic notion of person-world convergence, and indeed I am now prepared
to suggest that the expression convergent measurement serves well to de-
scribe the formal compatibility between Equation [2] and Sterns nascent
ideas about what personality measurement from a genuinely personalistic
perspective would entail. In order to make this connection, however, I had
first to familiarize myself with Sterns works.
The themes I had introduced in the 1981 American Psychologist article
were themes I had occasion to elaborate further at the Second European
Conference on Personality, which was held in Bielefeld, Germany in 1984.
FIGURE 1. Footnote on p. 210 of Stern (1923)
Some weeks after the conference, one of the other attendees, the now de-
ceased Belgian psychologist Jean-Pierre deWaele (19262000) mailed to
me a photocopy of Chapter 6 of the second edition of Volume II of Sterns
Person und Sache, the volume titled (in English translation) The Human Per-
sonality (Stern, 1923). The chapter sent to me by deWaele is titled Princi-
ples of Personality Measurement, and in the mailing de Waele deliberately
drew my attention to a footnote on p. 210 of the chapter (see Figure 1)
where Stern was seeking to explicate certain of the ideas that were central
to his perspective on these issues.7
For his part, Stern took as his point of departure ideas borrowed from
the psychophysics of Gustav Fechner (18011887). In Sterns view, the most
fundamental problem was to represent quantitatively the personal signifi-
cance to a particular individual of some specified stimulus event. In this
connection, Stern introduced the concepts of the personal range (der
persnliche Umfang) and the personal midpoint (die persnliche Mitte) of a
continuum of stimulation. The personal range would encompass alterna-
tive possible levels of stimulation extending between opposite extremes,
with the extremes defining what Stern called personal range thresholds
(die persnlichen Umfangsschwellen). Having introduced these basic concepts,
Stern explained in the aforementioned footnote the following:
Let L, M, N, O represent the physical values of various stimuli, and L1, M1,
N1, and O1 represent their respective polar opposites. Further, let repre-
sent the personal midpoint of the stimulus continuum, likewise expressed in
physical terms. Finally, let Z and Z1 represent, respectively, the polar extremes
[personal thresholds] of the stimulus continuum. Accordingly, the quantity
(M ) defines the physical effect of stimulus M on the individual for whom
has been defined, and quantity (Z Z1) defines the full range of effec-
tive physical stimulation for that same individual. The potential psychological
significance of stimulus M for the individual in question is thus given by the
expression (M )/(Z Z1). (Stern, 1923, p. 210)
The quotient (M )/(Z Z1), Stern emphasized, would thus index the
psychological significance, to a specific person, of a given stimulus as the
ratio of its actual effect to the range of its potential effects on that particular
person (Stern, 1923, p. 210, emphasis added). In effect, such ratios would
represent person-world convergence in its most basic form.
Extending this line of reasoning to his conception of personality dis-
positions as potentialities (see above), Stern then introduced the additional
concept of personal preference (der persnliche Vorzugswert), i.e., that position
between the extremes of an individuals personal thresholds toward which
that individual would strive purposely, in accordance with his/her goals, on
the one hand, and the demands/affordances of the environmentsocial
and physicalon the other. This notion of personal preference thus intro-
duced a teleological component to psychological measurement conceived
in terms of person-world convergence.
What seems clear from all of this is that Stern was aiming toward a theo-
retical understanding of the problem of dispositional measurement accord-
ing to which what is said to be the case about an individual would prop-
erly be understood in terms of a context defined not by what is found to
be the case about other individualsagain, Stern explicitly dismissed such
between-person comparisons as irrelevant to the problem of representing
person-world convergencebut rather in terms of what is notbut might
otherwisebe said to be that case about that same individual given his/her
aspirations (objectives, preferences) and prevailing circumstances within
the external world.
As a simple and somewhat playful but nevertheless instructive illustra-
tion of this last point, consider the sketch shown in Figure 2. From the
perspective of the traditional individual differences approach to the study
of personality, the answer to the question Why is Ralph sad? would be
Figure 2. Why is Ralph (Johanna) Sad?

Because he is shorter than his sister Karen. From the personalistic stand-
point, however, Ralphs predicament is to be understood by considering
his height not relative to that of his sister (or of anyone else, singularly or
collectively) but instead relative to the placement of the cookie jar. It is,
as Stern insisted, the person-world relationship on which one must remain
focused in personalistic inquiry, and comparisons between Ralphs height
and that of one or more others really are quite beside the point.
Note that the challenge faced by Ralph in this simple example would be
quite the same even if Karen were shorter than he, or, indeed, even if Karen
were not part of the picture at all! As one possible solution to his problem,
Ralph might use a chair as a stepladder, and in this fashion converge with
his environment in such a way as to realize his immediate objective. Karens
height would play no role at all in this solution.
It is this fundamental shift in orientation, away from between-persons
comparisons and toward person-world convergence, which is demanded
by the personalistic approach. It was my encounter with this rudimentary
idea that enabled me to appreciate the basic affinity between my suggested
idiothetic approach to personality studies (Lamiell, 1981) and Sterns
personalistic orientation.
THE PRESENT CHALLENGE

In his own discussion of these matters, Stern made clear his full apprecia-
tion for the technical difficulties that would impede attempts to actually
implement his ideas concerning measurement in the conduct of empiri-
cal research. In fact, little headway on this problem has been made since
Sterns time. Of course, a major reason for this is that for decades his dis-
tinctly personalistic ideas have simply been ignored. Perhaps, however, the
time is ripe for a reconsideration and sustained exploration of the possibili-
ties here.
As noted earlier, some modest headway in this direction has been made.
I refer here once again to the research carried out in the 1980s yielding
evidence strongly supportive of the hypothesis that subjective personality
judgments are mediated by considerations more interactive than either
normative or ipsative in nature (Lamiell & Durbeck, 1987; Lamiell,
Foss, Larsen, & Hempel, 1983; Lamiell, Foss, Trierweiler, & Leffel, 1983;
refer to discussion above). In a more recent extension of this line of in-
quiry, Weigert (2000) was able to show in a series of studies that individuals
Big Five profiles derived on the basis of the NEO-PI-R Inventory (Costa &
McCrae, 1992) were more predictive of profiles of those same individuals
constructed (a) on the basis of their ratings of themselves, and (b) on the
basis of their respective spouses ratings of them when the NEO profiles
were derived by applying interactive measurement methods (Equation [2]
above) than when they were derived using the standard normative mea-
surement procedures.8 At a minimum, these findings indicate (a) that in-

teractive measurement methods can sensibly be implemented with formal
assessment devices (e.g., the NEO-PI-R) even when those devices have been
constructed with traditional normative measurement procedures in mind,
and that (b) there is good reason to favor the interactive method if one is
concerned to represent the subjects of ones investigation in accordance
with the way in which, it would appear, they think about themselves.
It is to be hoped that in the not-too-distant future, empirical work based
on the principles of interactiveor what I should now like to call, follow-
ing Stern, convergentmeasurement can be extended into content domains
richer and more nuanced than those explored heretofore. Consider as just
one possibility Frijdas (1988) discussion of the laws of emotion. With spe-
cific reference to what he terms the law of comparative feeling, Frijda
(1988) states that the intensity of emotion depends on the relationship
between an event and some frame of reference against which the event is
evaluated (p. 353), and he goes on to point out that [g]enerally speak-
ing, the frame of reference that determines what counts as an emotional
event consists of that which is deemed possible (p. 353). Frijda notes that
sometimes this leads to the consideration of how things are for others, but
such considerations are clearly secondary to the more basic consideration
of ones own alternative possibilities.
Reading Frijdas (1988) article, one is struck by the extent to which the
lawful regularities he has identified or hypothesized in the domain of emo-
tion point to a psychological process whereby ones appraisal of what is or
seems to be given in a set of circumstances is framed with reference to what is
not (or seems not to be given in those same circumstances.
It is this basic orientation that is crucial for seeing the problem of mea-
surement in psychological research as a matter of representing person-
world convergence. Perhaps, then, we have identified a broad and worthy
challenge for a new generation of personalistically-oriented psychologists.
May the effort to meet this challenge begin!
NOTES
1. Here and elsewhere throughout this chapter where German language texts have
been quoted, the translations have been made by the author unless otherwise
noted.
2. Efforts in this direction have been and are being made, however. See, for exam-
ple: Bhring (1996), Deutsch (1991), Kreppner (1992), Lamiell (2003), Lamiell
and Deutsch (2000), Lamiell and Laux (in press), Lck and Lwisch (1994),
Renner and Laux (2000).
3. The larger project was a three-volume series that Stern titled Person und Sache
(Person and Thing), and it was through this series that Stern set forth critical per-
sonalism in detail. The 1906 volume, titled Ableitung und Grundlehre (Derivation
and Basic Tenets) was the first of these three volumes. Volume II, Die menschliche
Persnlichkeit (The Human Personality) would be published in 1918, and Volume

III, Wertphilosophie (Philosophy of Value) would appear in 1924 (Stern, 1924).
4. In addition to Stern (in press), the reader may consult Lamiell (2003, esp. Chap-
ter 8) and Lamiell and Deutsch (2000).
5. The question often arises: would not knowledge about how others actually are,
gained through experience, be necessary for (and hence epistemically prior to)
conceptions of how one is not but might otherwise be? My answer to this ques-
tion is no. For a thorough defense of this position, see Lamiell (2003).
6. Recently, Hofstee (2007) has described me as advocating absolute measure-
ment (p. 253). This is not a term that I have ever used, however, and indeed I
do not regard it as appropriate. All measurement is relative measurement. The
question is: relative to what? In conventional normative measurement, a subjects
raw score is scaled relative to some group mean and standard deviation. In
interactive measurement, the raw score is scaled relative to the maximum and
minimum scores obtainable on the instrument. This does not make interactive
measurement absolute measurement.
7. The following discussion of Sterns ideas about measurement draws extensively
from my treatment of the same topic on pp. 247248 of my 2003 book (Lamiell,
2003).
8. A more complete discussion of this research can be found in Lamiell (2003).
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CHAPTER 9
QUALITATIVE
DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY
Gnter Mey
Developmental psychologylike psychology in general for decades domi-

nated by quantitative methods and a preference for so called hard data
is showing an increasing interest in using qualitative methods for recon-
structing the developmental conditions and contexts, the life stories and
individual experiences from the perspective of the subjects. This interest
was aroused, at the latest, as developmental psychology began to look at the
individual in his or her life-word, a world which is being interpreted by the
actively acting and potentially self-reflexive subject. Doing this, researchers
started to focus on and recognize (at least partially) the subject as a con-
structor of his or her own life as programmatically expressed thirty years
ago in the concept of individuals as producers of their development (Lerner &
Busch-Rossnagel, 1981).
For research on self-reflexive subjects that interpret and co-construct
their environment qualitative methods, focusing on meaning and expe-
rience are predestined. But more: The very object of developmental psy-
chology makes it necessary to not only incorporate selected qualitative
themes and procedures but also start a discrete research program based
on qualitative methodology and methods. An important precondition for
such a program would be a widened understanding of empirical research

210 GNTER MEY
in psychology and the acknowledgment that the objects of developmental

psychology are inner states and their transformation, making it hard to
operationalize them in an easy way.
PIONEERS OF QUALITATIVE
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
In light of the object of developmental psychology and the methodologi-

cal potentials of qualitative research the disciplinary starting points deserve
more attention again.
For a long time the founding fathers and mothers of developmental psy-
chology had been forgotten and their work was ignored or in some cases
discredited by attributing words like anecdotic or unscientific. Today
a growing number of researchers recognize that the founding fathers and
mothers of the discipline already had a distinct set of tools available. A sys-
tematic analysis of their pioneering methodical worksimilar to the one
carried out in regards to their theoretical impact (see e.g., Diriwchter &
Valsiner, 2008; Valsiner, 2007)for the foundation of a qualitative develop-
mental psychology however remains to be done.
The founding fathers and mothers of developmental psychology pro-
vided many arguments for establishing and developing a qualitative de-
velopmental psychology, although they never used the label qualitative
themselves. Among other things, the distinction between the terms quali-
tative and quantitative that is common today was missing. But it goes
without saying that discussions on methods in psychology were not missing.
There was, for example, the debate on The Historical Meaning of the Crisis
in Psychology: A Methodological Investigation by Lev Vygotsky (1987/1927; see
also Bhler [1927] on the same topic, written independently and without
linkages to Vygotsky) that characterized the discipline in the first phase of
the last century. In parts it involved discussing the suggestion to distinguish
between nomothetic and idiographic science (instead of natural sciences
[Naturwissenschaften] vs. humanities [Geisteswissenschaften]).
Simply talking about founders or forerunners of qualitative research
leaves the fact that these are retrospective attributions under-determined.
It wouldto use an analogy that Mario Erdheim (1996, p. 85) hinted at in
the context of discussing deferred actioncompletely miss the point to say
El Greco had anticipated expressionism and at the same time had been one
of its forerunners: Expressionism rather created a sensibility that allowed
for a new and fruitful appraisal of El Grecos work. Generalizing from this
thought means that at any point in time because of the prevailing problems
(and their understanding) attention is concentrated on the past in exactly
the way which seems necessary to solve the respective current problems.
Qualitative Developmental Psychology 211
Diaries, Ethnography, Interviews with ChildrenSome Selected

Examples
Sterns Research Diaries

Beside some very early research diarieswritten down by Charles Dar-
win (already in 1877; see Conrad, 1998) or by William Preyer (1923; see
Cairns & Cairns, 2006) and relevant as starting points in history of develop-
mental psychologythe diaries on lived and narrated human life by Clara
and William Stern (1965/1907) are very important to establish an ethno-
graphical approach in developmental psychology. Sterns research diaries
for instance, aimed at an ethnography of the childrens lives beyond ivo-
ry-tower schemes and abstractions that we too often encounter under the
name of Psychology (W. Stern, 1927, p. 17; as cited by Lamiel, 2003, p. 6).
Since Clara and William Stern wanted to capture expressions of children
in their entirety they kept a separate record for each of their three children.
The analysis as well allowed to at first present the three individual case stud-
ies in close relation to the data collected and only thereupon comparisons
in relation to a broader theoretical context. In William Sterns approach
the theory of personalisma qualitative research style was embedded from
the very beginning, a fact which often remains unmentioned while at the
same time Stern is often acknowledged as the one who coined the term
intelligence quotient.
Muchows Ethographical Work on Life Space of Urban Children

Also worth mentioning are the ethnographic studies conducted by Mar-
tha Muchow (1935), who in 1933 committed suicide because she personally
gave up in face of the Nazi-regime in Germany. Her study Der Lebensraum
des Grostadtkindes [The Life Space of the Urban Child] that was pub-
lished posthumously by her brother Hans-Heinrich is an example of the
groundbreaking work in the first decades of the last century. Muchow used
different open-ended methods like participant observation, conversations,
methods based on essays next to the analyses of documents, and standard-
ized methods. She acknowledged that to understand the particular nature
of children requires to understand the difference between adults (also re-
searchers) and children, a position which is also crucial for contemporary
research in the interdisciplinary field of children and childhood studies
(CCS) and childrens rights (see e.g., Burman, 2005; Greene & Hogan,
2005).
Bhlers Content Analysis of Adolescents Writings

The analyses of adolescents diaries done by Charlotte Bhler (e.g. 1929)
also need to be mentioned: her book Das Seelenleben des Jugendlichen
[Adolescents Psychology] (orig. 1922; latest edition published in 1981)
212 GNTER MEY
and her publications Tagebuch eines jungen Mdchen [Diary of a Young

Girl] and Zwei Knabentagebcher [Two boys diaries] had been milestones
in the research on youth development. Bhler regarded the psychological-
experimental approaches that were prevalent at that time to be of limited
use for research on the adolescent emotional life (Seelenleben). By using
diaries she introduced a distinct approach that was more suitable for study-
ing this special objectinner states and their processing.
But Bhler as well as other researchers at that time was not critical of
methods in the way following generations of developmental psychologists
asked for. Her work displayed a mixture of hermeneutics and content analy-
sis that cannot be qualified accurately, because the two approaches are not
methodically distinguished in an exact way.
Bernfelds Deep Structure Hermeutics of Diaries

An outstanding example of conducting studies in a methodical profound
way is Siegfried Bernfeld, who still far too often goes unmentioned within
developmental psychology. Bernfeld analyzed adolescents diaries (e.g. in
his major work Trieb und Tradition [Drive and tradition] 1978/1931) using a
hermeneutic approach in combination with psychoanalytic methods whilst
taking into account a social-historical perspective. In addition, Bernfeld ex-
plicitly demanded reflection on the relationship between the researchers
and their objects, which became clear in a passage where he enthusiastically
addressed the issue of introspection: To him without introspective remem-
bering everything that scientific observation of the child or the adolescent
can possibly discover remains incomprehensible in the end, or research-
ers are in danger of grasping it in the sense of the adult Seelenleben.Vice
versa, from todays perspective Bernfeld for sure was endangered to over-
emphasize remembering (and to stress the idea of facts to be discovered
while using the correct method) and to miss processes of (re) construc-
tionas they were discussed for example, in the psychoanalytic concept of
deferred action, which acknowledges the constructive character of memory
and experience, for example, within the current discussions on the auto-
biographical memory.
Piagets Epistemology
Jean Piagetprobably the most prominent developmental psychologist
of the 20th centuryshould not remain unmentioned while listing pioneers
of qualitative developmental psychology. Piagets qualitative focus is self-ev-
ident given his theory of genetic epistemology and his innovations of meth-
ods. Gerard Duveen (2000) considered Piaget as an ethnographerand
his research as a version of ethnography. In the case of his clinical method
Piaget (1929) expanded the boundaries of the experimental approach to
include context-specific tasks that can be applied to children in everyday
life settings. He considered standardized observations to be unsuitable as

well. Piaget showed how the choice and development of methods can be
based on the object investigated. According to Piaget, traditional test pro-
ceduressuch as intelligence test itemsfail to address relevant questions,
such as inquiry into childrens spontaneous interests and their emerging
entirely original understandings.In a similar vein, David and Rosa Katz
(1928) kept a record of the conversations with their children Wilhelm The-
odor and Julius Gregor. They understood the 154 dialogues written down as
a possibility to gain access to their thinking, wishing and feeling.
The genetic epistemology by Piaget (1970) and his comments on the
interplay of assimilating and accommodating operations provide impor-
tant theoretical links to understand the interaction between researcher
and researched (or more general: the interaction between research and
the object of research) and underline the important part Piaget played in
conceptualizing developmental psychology as a qualitative research field in
its very core.
Vygotsky and Luria

Similarly, Lev Vygotskys (1962/1934) reflections on (developmental)
psychological hermeneutics show how developmental psychology can only
be built on a qualitative ground. Likewise, his demand that a psychology
that wants to investigate whole objects in their complexity requires analy-
sis into units (rather than into elements) while at the same time preserving
the whole objects in their complexity (see in general the basics given by van
der Veer & Valsiner, 1991).
Two case studies presented by Vygotskys partner Alexandr Luriain the
context of his romantic scienceare also brilliant examples of longitu-
dinal studies which are very informative for a qualitative developmental
psychology. The Man with a Shattered World (Luria, 1968) is about a man who
suffered a left brain injury from shell splinters during World War II. The
study which is based on more than 3000 pages of diaries and annotations
by Luria captures the development of a man over a time span of 25 years.
The second case studyThe Mind of a Mnemonist (Luria, 1972)describes
the remarkable memory capacity of a man who performed as a mnemonist
for a long time.
Summary
The brief overview may give a first insight in the brightness of these early
methodological approaches andas hardly any examples to refer to ex-
isted at that timethe innovativeness of these studies on developmental
phenomena. From the research only hinted at here, I hope it becomes ap-
parent that for defining and founding a qualitative developmental psychol-
214 GNTER MEY
ogy it is essential to remember ones own research tradition including a

rethinking of the theoretical and methodical assumptions.
From todays perspective this early work is interesting because (among
other things) it reveals an understanding of the object that already points
to central features of qualitative research such as wholeness/holistic meth-
ods, historicity, reference to single-case studies, and introspection,
and it is closely linked to some more general premises of a qualitative ap-
proach to developmental psychology to be unfolded in the next section.
GENERAL METHODOLOGICAL PREMISES OF A

QUALITATIVE DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
From my previous account it becomes evident that it proves to be insuffi-

cient if qualitative research is understood solely as a means of getting access
to the field, conducting exploratory studies and preparing for the quanti-
tative main study, or if it is only seen as a possibility to study clienteles or
milieus that would otherwise be difficult to access. In fact, it turns out to be
absolutely necessary for developmental-psychological research and a sub-
stantial understanding of the (genesis of the) development of the subject to
take recourse to a genuinely qualitative methodology and to use qualitative
methods on their own right. Otherwise research will risk sticking to an ab-
stract notion of development, to be defined by the increase or decrease of
this or that ability or by the transition from one hypostatized development
stage to anotherand forget to take into account a holistic view on abilities
and functions within a developing person and between a developing and
actively constructing person in a developing system/life world.
Having the early research tradition in mind the interest to support a con-
temporary research program for a qualitative developmental psychology
requires its methodological as well as its methodical elaboration. In order
to do this one first of all has to take into account that qualitative methodol-
ogy offers a unique access to perception, description and interpretation of
reality which is prominently expressed in three central principles, in par-
ticular: the principles of openness, strangeness and communication. These
principles open up interesting perspectives when related to basic assump-
tions of developmental psychology.
The Principle of Openness: Individuals Perspectives
According to Franz Breuer (2000) a reconstruction takes the subjective

realm of experience of the individuals investigated as a starting point (e.g.
their perception of problems, concepts, strategies, vocabulary). The aim is
to use this as a basis to (further) generate theories, to attain thick descrip-

tions of developmental-psychological phenomena and to gain understand-
ing of the possible different development paths (that run parallel) instead
of ending up at the forced common conception of development as a more
or less linear finality (that is defined ex ante from the perspective of the
researcher only). The guiding principle of openness should help to appro-
priately reconstruct (subjective) reality from the subjects perspectives and
to gain theoretical explanations. This principle has been formulated first by
Christa Hoffmann-Riem (1980) who asked for framing research in general
and the actual investigation in particular in such a way that a priori hypoth-
eses (like, for example, development as a linear finality) are avoided. Thus
openness can help to lessen the impact of ex ante conceptualizations by
the researchers and enable the subjects investigated to (co)structure the
research; theoretical preconceptions by the researchers in qualitative re-
search are rather understood as sensitizing concepts. Today beside the
strict position, endangered to conceptualize researchers as a tabula rasa,
it is emphasized that qualitative research is compatible with a theoretical
approach (even one that is guided by hypotheses). So, for example, Wer-
ner Meinefeld (2004) argued that openness for the new depends on the
way we methodically structure the search for the new and not on keeping
the well known (on the content level) implicit. It is therefore necessary for
researchers to (re)arrange the studies, (re)select the methods and have a
mindset that actually permits to discover something new and to be aware
of discrepancies.
The Postulate of Being a StrangerDiversification and

Development
Eventually, the postulate of being a stranger comes into play whenever

researcher and researched meet. It implies to explicitly accept the partici-
pation of the researcher in the research process in a way that he or she
becomes an integral part of the field studied and of theory formation and
therefore needs to be recognized and reflected. In the debate on qualitative
research the postulate of being a stranger is closely linked to the principle
of openness. It prohibits the researcher to (self-evidently) equate his or her
own concepts (of development) with those of the culture, group or person
studied. Only this way it is possible to conceptualize or at least explicitly
highlight differences between the researchers and the researched, what is
essential within cultural developmental psychology and (cross)cultural studies
(including studies on [sub]cultures of ones own society) as well as within
children and childhood studies where the difference between children and
adults becomes evident when the culture of the child meets the culture
216 GNTER MEY
of the adult (see Burman, 2005). Here a qualitative approach helps to

prevent researchers from confusing their own experiences and concepts
with those of the children researched, while at the same time children and
childhood studies and related areas of research are posing an exceptional
challenge for qualitative research as it has been very much focused on lan-
guage until now. Forms of expression typical of children can be of limited
verbal nature and therefore it is often necessary to interpret preverbal artic-
ulation, gestural symbolizations, playful expressions and the like. Research
from the perspective of the children or the aging people is not pos-
sible without additional reflection on the researcher as a person, the way he
or she is conducting the research and consequently the conditions under
which scientific knowledge is generated (see Mruck & Mey, 2007).
The Principle of CommunicationDevelopment as a Process
The relationship between the researchers and the researched that was
hinted at in the context of discussing the postulate of being a stranger is
reflected in the principle of communication, as well. According to this
principle it is assumed within qualitative research that all data are jointly
constructed by those involved in the situation. Every research situation en-
tails an intervention and hence a modification of the object of research
(for fundamental considerations see Devereux, 1967, who stated: Instead
of regretting the disturbances that result from our presence in the field
and doubting the objectivity of behavioral observation, we should solve the
problem constructively and should try to discover what kind of otherwise
unobtainable positive knowledge we can infer from the fact that the pres-
ence of an observer (who is as human as the person being observed) in-
terferes with the observed event. (Devereux 1967, p. 304; my translation)
The principle of communication plays a pivotal role within process anal-
ysis, one main task of a qualitative developmental psychology, as it enables
to adequately conceptualize data as having a temporal dimension, data in
time that can be analyzed in a sequential and developmental-psychological
manner: Any research situation needs to be understood not as a unit but
as a sequence of events, taking place between those (researchers and re-
searched) involved that can be microgenetically analyzed. It is promising
to adapt this view when it is important to actually describe processes and
based on that to develop process models.
REMARKS ABOUT THE USAGE OF

QUALITATIVE METHODS IN
CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
In relating the three basic principles of qualitative research to develop-

mental psychological requirements it became apparent that qualitative
methodological considerations can help to outline the object and demands
of developmental psychological research in a way that allows to analyze
transformations and adequately describing development as a sequence of
change in the context of concrete life-worlds and life stories.
Based on the overview given so far, key aspects of a methodological and
specifically a methodical elaboration can be further specified. Reflections
are needed. Such a foundation for qualitative methods within a develop-
mental-psychological context for the most part is missing. A foundation,
however, is necessary in view of the object of developmental psychology
processes and transformationsthe particular phenomenon and the partic-
ular age-groups investigated. And an explicit developmental-psychological
foundation is required, because many qualitative methods were developed
predominantly within sociology due to a long-term marginalization within
psychology and therefore first need to be imported into developmental
psychology.
Interviews
Some fields of developmental psychology have prominent ambassadors

of qualitative research. Note, for example, based on Kohlbergs research
on moral development, the methods by Carol Gilligan (see Kiegelmanns
talk with Gilligan, [Kiegelmann, 2009]), Mary Main (see George, Kaplan, &
Main, 2001) or James Marcia (2007), who, in their areas of research (on at-
tachment and identity, respectively), developed, used, and popularized spe-
cific interview techniques. A good example is also the work of Hans Thom-
ae and Ursula Lehr, who already in the 1950s established the biographical
method within developmental psychology in order to study the individual
and its world; the development of methods was part of their Bonn Geronto-
logic Longitudinal Study (see Thomae, 1976). Today it is almost impossible
to imagine gerontology interested in biography without using qualitative
methods, though some shortcomings seem to persist. So beside elaborated
methods like those developed by Thomae and Lehr many developmental
researchers use traditional semi-structured interviews, often closer to
questionnaire than to a genuinely qualitative approach. Instead, more at-
tention needs to be paid to the many existing qualitative interview variants
available so that the breadth of innovative methods proposed expands into
218 GNTER MEY
developmental-psychological research (see for example the narrative inter-

view [Wengraf, 2001], often used in biographical research, or the problem-
centered interview [Witzel, 2000] as a special interview technique which
supports the dialogue between interviewer and interviewees by using ele-
ments from the Rogerian psychotherapeutic approach; for combining both
interview forms in a study on youth identity development [see Mey, 2007]).
Observation & Ethnography
Contemporary observational research extensively uses videography (see

Kreppner, this volume; Secrist, Koeyer, Bell, & Fogel, 2002)here it is vi-
tal to press for a consistent use of participant observation. Ethnographic
research in particular is of outstanding importance for developmental-
psychological questions since it permits a very flexible and methodically
comprehensive approach to the research contexts of the everyday life (thus
the contexts of development) and development that takes place therein.
Therefore staying in the field, close to the participants (and their interac-
tions) is an outstanding precondition for detailed descriptions of different
situations and for longer periods of timeso ethnography (including diary
recordings as done early by Stern and others) is an important strategy for
collecting longitudinal data.
An additional feature of ethnographic research needs to be highlight-
edits reference to single cases (or to few cases) as a unique starting point
for idiographic science (see, for example, Molenaar, 2004, who stresses
ideographic science in contemporary discussions).
With a focus on individual case studies (instead of usual large sample
designs) other methodological implications of participant observation will
also gain importance like for instance the idea of interpretation author-
ity, i.e. that researchers are only able to generate adequate interpreta-
tions while collecting and systematizing extensive field knowledge instead
of straining going native as a disadvantage time and again. Such an ac-
centuation means to apply interpretive methodologies which allow thick
descriptionsa term coined programmatically by Clifford Geertz (1973).
Group Discussions
The particular value of group discussion for developmental-psycholog-

ical questions can be identified precisely at one point of criticism of this
method, namely that the results (contents) of group discussions are not
reproducible. This is the case because in the course of group discussions,
collected data and formed opinions depend on the unique interactions
taking place within a specific setting, so in a strict sense reliability cannot be

guaranteed. But criticizing the lack of reliability ignores that the concept
of reliability on the one hand and of development on the other hand do
not really fit each other. For this reason group discussions are of particular
use, when it comes to analyzing how opinions, attitudes and orientations
emerge, constitute, influence, and modify each other in an exchange of
viewsin a word: when it comes to the genesis of (developmental) pro-
cesses.
Furthermore, the focus on discursive, argumentative and communica-
tive contexts opens up additional possibilities to study negotiation process-
es in age-homogenous and -heterogeneous groups. Likewise the study of
the meaning of (self)socialization in peer cultures is a particularly promi-
nent example of developmental-psychological questions group discussions
do provide an extraordinary access to, compared with those (qualitative
and quantitative) methods which are designed for researching individu-
als. Group discussions in general, provide an opportunity to investigate the
genesis of knowledge (see for group discussion and focus groups in more
detail Morgan, 1997). All these possibilities of group discussion were point-
ed out by Piaget already. He convincingly demonstrated how childrens
thinking developed after a quarrel took place between children and how
during a quarrel or discussion functional moments emerge that initiate the
development of self-reflection.
Qualitative Experimenting
While group discussions gradually became accepted at least within

qualitative research, qualitative experiments remain virtually unnoticed.
In many of the publications that give an overview of qualitative research
they are not even mentioned. Disregarding qualitative experiments may be
due to the fact that a combination of the experiment (believed to be the
epitome of nomothetic science) and qualitative research (and its implica-
tions and aims) seems impossible to many. Gerhard Kleining in particular
speaks out against a merely scientific (naturwissenschaftlich) interpretation
of the experimental approach and the resulting limitation of possible ap-
plications within the social sciences. Instead, Kleining (1986) considers the
experiment a basic technique that first and foremost is to be ascribed to
qualitative research when used in its heuristic and explorative function.
Kleining systematically developed a methodological foundation and me-
thodical measures for the qualitative experiment and located it within his
qualitative-heuristic methodology. Within this methodology Kleining com-
bines general premises like openness and the affordance to systematically
explore and vary different perspectives with methodical recommendations
220 GNTER MEY
like using minimal and maximal contrasts to secure an adequate under-

standing of the respective field of research, additionally using the reflexive
feedback on the experimental setting contributed by those involved in the
experiment.
In developmental psychology it was Piaget againfollowing Clapa-
redewho recognized the value of experiments within a qualitative design.
Kleining explicitly acknowledges Piaget as an important pioneer also as far
as qualitative experiments are concerned. Around the same time Karl and
Charlotte Bhler as well as Hildegard Hetzer in particular planned and car-
ried out qualitative experiments in Vienna; see also the discussion about Vy-
gotsky as experimenter by Ren van der Veer (2009). With his clinical method,
which he by all means understood to be an experimental method in the
broader sense, Piaget hoped to prevent to fall victim to systematic errors
as it so often happened to the pure experimenter when he or she too rig-
idly clings to his or her experimental set-up (Piaget 1929, p. 8, orig. 1926).
This indicates the use precisely for developmental psychology, and it has
been Bronfenbrenner (1977) in his harsh criticism of experimental meth-
ods with regard to ecological validity who pleaded for not using experi-
ments as a verifactory tool but as a heuristic strategy. The guiding principle of
his transformation experiments wasinspired by the Soviet Psychology
if you want to understand something, try to change it (Bronfenbrenner,
1977, p. 517). According to this maxim qualitative experiments provide a
window to analyze processes within developmental psychology or at least
to represent those processes in which precisely those modifications are
provoked (for current examples of use see e.g. Abbey & Valsiner, 2004).
Qualitative experiments are appealing as well, because in contrast to the
otherwise prevailing import of methods from other disciplines in this case
a genuine developmental-psychological specification of the method could
be elaborated and then handed over to the canon of qualitative research.
Visual Data
Recommending the use of more and different sorts of data and docu-
ment is as necessary as pleading for an extended use of different meth-
ods. The value of nonverbal and visual data and particularly of childrens
drawings, films, photos, or other artifacts created during play, etc., is often
underestimated. For example, photos are of little importance within the
repertoire of developmental-psychological methods and their use inexpli-
cably is restricted essentially to the documentation of growth processes.
But beyond this children might be invited to photograph their human and
physical environments and to explore them with techniques interesting for
them. It also makes sense to not limit analyses to the product (the photo-
graphs) but to use the process (photographing) to gain insight in the way
they construct person-environment relations. Similarly, other visual docu-
ments created by children are hardly used for research purposes, and only
recently childrens drawings have received some attention (see, e.g., Mat-
thews, 2003), but most times within work on childrens diagnostics.
Contrary to photographs, videography has gained far-reaching accep-
tance within developmental psychology andwith reference to Piaget and
the science film makers Arnold Gesell and Kurt Lewinobtained some
theoretical elaboration (see Kreppner, this volume; Thiel, 2003). However,
in the research practice videos are often produced and used for analysis
without sufficient methodological reflection, due to the unquestioned
commitment to traditional quality criteria such as inter-rater reliability. In
the course of the analyses it is often ignored that records produced in
such a way capture only reduced fragments of reality that furthermore are
restricted to the static perspective of the camera and in many respects are
inferior to the human capability for sensual and Gestalt perception. While
pictures and photographs often are considered not as representations but
as merely perspectival constructions, video recordings seem to capture
reality, an impression which overlooks that they do not relieve from the
duty of interpreting the fixed. The irony of it is that for the interpretation
the observers who were banished before because of lacking objectivity are
needed again.
Analyzing data
Siegfried Hoppe-Graff and Lamm-Hanel (2006) localize the central

distinguishing feature of qualitative and quantitative research not within
data collection but within the process of analysis. Although this estimation
cannot be readily approved, since it leaves the process of data collection
under-determined, it still needs to be retained that for reconstructions of
development generally far too much attention is paid to data collection
and (far too) little to questions of qualitative data analysis. One result is
that often the dynamic of life world (accounts)for example, narrations
in an interview, a vivid dialogue within a group discussion or complex field
interactions, videotaped or written down in protocols or diariesis frozen
and becomes static (expressed in categories or numbers without emphasiz-
ing processes).
An appropriate reconstruction of development requires an analyzing
procedure not in the traditional (quantitative) sense. In this respect the
potency of qualitative methods still has to be (re)discovered within de-
velopmental psychology and methods of data analysis are to be specified,
respectively. As far as qualitative methods of data analysis are concerned
222 GNTER MEY
predominantly only qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2000) is known

and accepted within developmental psychology (as well as within psychol-
ogy as a whole). From a qualitative perspective this dominance is incompre-
hensible insofar as qualitative content analysis is a method that is above all
useful for assigning categories to large quantities of data up to possibilities
of quantification. This method, however, has considerable limitations that
Mayring points out himself. He considers the procedures of qualitative con-
tent analysis less appropriate if the research question is highly open-end-
ed, explorative, variable and working with categories would be a restriction,
or if a more holistic, not step-by-step ongoing of analysis is planned (May-
ring, 2000, para. 27). The latter applies for developmental-psychological
research especially inasmuch as the temporal nature of phenomena which
need to be reconstructed. The effective aspects of development such as ex-
periences, actions, patterns of interpretation, orientations, and motives are
involved. In order to understand them methods are required that assume
an access to psychic, social and cultural realities based on understanding
of meaning to attain a description and (re)construction of development
phenomena through condensation, analysis, and evaluation of everyday
material. Conversation and narrative analyses point at processuality in par-
ticular: So the narrative analytic differentiation between the event of telling
(thus narrating itself) and the event told (that what is narrated) moreover
provides the opportunity to explicitly address temporality.
As detailed process analyses they permit to anchor a phenomenon inves-
tigated within a developmental-psychological perspective by comprehensi-
bly representing developmental processes instead of giving a (rash) synop-
sis of single (told or observed) units or events (e.g. Pantoja, 2001).
The latter explains why interpretative methods meanwhile are also be-
ing used in cultural psychology (cultural developmental psychology, to be more
specific). Here questions are raised regarding the formation of individual
processes of interpretation and rule systems in the context of culturally-
shared patterns of interpretation and rule systems, in order to analyze the
transformation processes between culture and person. We can also find
a self-confident qualitative approach within a narrative developmental psy-
chology (see Nelson, 1989). The use of qualitative methods in this area of
research is comparable to cultural psychology and can to some extend be
understood as a result of Jerome Bruners work and his groundbreaking
book Acts of Meaning (Bruner, 1990).
An increasing interest in grounded theory methodology sensu Glaser
and Strauss (1967) as well as Strauss and Corbin (1990) which enables to
rule-governed and systematically organize the process of theory develop-
ment has been noticeable for some time (Mey & Mruck, 2007). Although
grounded theory methodology envisages an explicit process perspective
(see e.g. Strauss & Corbin, chapter 9), for this originally sociological ap-
proach a procedure elaborated from a genuine developmental-psycholog-

ical point of view is still pending. This equally applies to a translation of
the paradigm model, proposed by Strauss and Corbin as a dynamic condi-
tions-strategies-consequences-matrix (see an attempt outlined in a study on
youth identity development; Mey, 2007).
Other methods (research approaches would be more precisely) should
be made beneficial for developmental-psychological research, for example
metaphor analysis (Schmitt, 2000). The use of metaphor analysis is already
obvious for the term development that can be understood as a meta-
phor itself (although mostly restricted to the path-metaphor: e.g. to forge
ahead, to stay behind) or further enters concepts of education (e.g., to
look after/to protect, keep an eye on). A metaphor analysis offers an
exceptional potential for the reconstruction of the description of develop-
ment from the perspective of the subject for instance as a deficit-oriented
imagery in terms such as age degeneration or loss of functioning and
their important role for understanding the experiencing of age processes.
It should be noted that descriptions of such processes always presuppose
longitudinal observations.
DISCUSSION
Taken my outline on methodological perspectives, beneficial for develop-

mental psychology into account one can say that after decades of method-
ological debates, qualitative research seems so have finally entered psychol-
ogy and its subdisciplines including developmental psychology (see also
Mey, 2005).
This is not too surprising, having in mind that Hayne Reese and William
Overton (1970) highlight the multiparadigmatic nature of the discipline
already about forty years ago, thereby suggesting that different theories,
models and questions coexist which require different methods of data col-
lection and analysis (see also Eckensberger, 1979). In this respect, qualita-
tive research has always had a defined location within a multiparadigmatic
developmental psychology. Methods based on meaning and experience
are predestined for research on self-reflexive subjects that interpret and
co-construct their environment. And from that location it starts to spread
into the whole discipline. So for example new textbooks and handbooks
of developmental psychology not only acknowledge qualitative research
approaches, but dedicate whole chapters to the topic (e.g. Smith & Dun-
worth, 2003).
But is this general diagnosis correct? Indeed, at a round-table-discussion
in 1999, nearly two-thirds of the editors of English-language mental health
and child development-journals argued in favor of publishing more em-
224 GNTER MEY
pirical qualitative studies toas they emphasizedinitiate a necessary

shift in this area of research (Azar, 1999). But it must be added that the
editor of one of the most important mainstream journalsDevelopmental
Psychologypersisted in an opposing view:
I do think that there is a place for (qualitative methodologies [added by Azar;

GM]) in the literature ... I also think, however, that [the journal, my inser-
tion] Developmental Psychology has a long and strong history of publishing
papers using more quantitative methodologies, and I think that the develop-
mental community has been well served by such methods (as cited in Azar, 1999,
unpag.; my italics).
And even if frontiers are not always defined in such a rigid and explicit way,
they persist in contemporary debates subtly: This happens, for example, if
the increase in methodical knowledge (and skills) is confined to a more
open process of data collection (interviews and observations are predom-
inantly used), and when it comes to analysis only (the) hard methods
seem to be permitted and sacrosanct to guarantee scientificity. In this
context Maximilian Forte talks about the (old) ghost that seems to haunt
not only Colin Robons handbook on research methods:
What left me uneasy was how Robson never lets qualitative research be simply
qualitative: even here he has to find a way of injecting statistics and software-
driven analysis. In part, this seems to be the product of being haunted by the
ghost of old science. (2002, para. 28)
Nevertheless although we can see important steps towards a qualitative de-

velopmental psychology, these steps are only first steps. The way qualita-
tive methodology and methods are embraced by developmental psychology
(and the whole discipline and the broader research landscape alike) in
some cases still appears rather cosmetic.
To avoid any misunderstanding: My argument is not against combining
quantitative and qualitative methods as the The guiding principle of Hans
Thomae (1959) has already been: It can be considered a rule of develop-
mental-psychological research today that one shall not base a statement
on one single method alone because no method or group of methods
alone is able to solve any question within developmental psychology (ibid,
pp. 6263; my translation).
This principle includes the meaningful combination of qualitative and
quantitative methods as it is being discussed mostly under the topic mixed
methods today (see e.g. Gelo, Braakman, & Bentke, 2008), and for which
several suggestions regarding developmental-psychological questions have
already been available (e.g. Hoppe-Graff & Lamm-Hanel, 2006).
In this respect, the method pluralism advocated here emphasizes that
developmental-psychological research requires a qualitative research style
on an equal footing with quantitative oriented approaches. But indepen-

dently from contemporary preferences of combining methods there is a
need for a much more fundamental debate: Concerning the choice of
qualitative and quantitative methods the most widely shared criterion is
that of object adequacyi.e. the decision for or against methods needs
to be derived from the research questions and the object of investigation,
respectively. Taking this seriously it is time to promote a discussionin-
formed about quantitative and qualitative methodsabout the nature of
the objects of developmental-psychological research (see Valsiner, 2000).
Such remembering in a wider sense is relevant for the necessary revision
of the object understanding of developmental psychology in general to cor-
rect the errors that emerged from the turn towards a modern (variable-
oriented instead of person-oriented) developmental psychology with its fo-
cus on observable (measurable) behavior (see Toomela 2008; see also Jan
Smedslunds powerful critique first published in the 1990 that large parts
of psychology are pseudoempiricalproving empirically what is already
known in common sense: e.g., Smedslund, 1995).
Qualitative research and methods belonging to this research style are
able to givegeneralizing the position of Werner Deutsch (2001)with
regard to rediscovering research diaries (as written down by the married
couple Stern)to give fresh impetus when a psychology that breaks up
humans into structures and functions is substituted by a view on humans
that emphasizes the connections of these structures and functions within a
developing person.
It is time to restore the inside of human development, the Seelenleben
(inner/emotional life) as a legitimate object of developmental-psychologi-
cal research. In addition to this content-related challenge and enrichment
the look on ones own tradition also provides the opportunity to get hold of
the variety of methods the field displayed which can serve as a model for fu-
ture research. It is self-evident that it cannot and should not be about copy-
ing early work, but it is about independent interpretations and further
development of the methods as it is exemplarily documented in qualitative
research in current overviews (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Flick, Kardorff, &
Steinke, 2003and continuously in the online-journal Forum Qualitative
Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, http://www.qualitative-
research.net/fqs/; see also Mey & Mruck, 2005).
A serious discussion between developmental scientists and qualitative
researchers is to restartto talk about the respective required nature of
the triad theory-method-data, to overcome the (incomprehensible) self-im-
posed restriction to interviews and observations within the current develop-
mental psychology towards a method pluralism, i.e. recognizing the variety of
methods available and deciding for a method only after its appropriateness
for a specific research question has been reflected sufficiently.
226 GNTER MEY
Qualitative methods are especially welcome for research in everyday life

situations where developmental processes happen, including an emphasis
on a minimum of artificiality. This would help to overcome critics like the
well-known Urie Bronferbrenner (1977, p. 513) who addressed the disci-
pline more than thirty years ago: it can be said that much of developmen-
tal psychology, as it now exists, is the science of strange behavior of children
in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of
time.
The emphasis on bringing back developmental research into its com-
plex contexts, to its (inter)actors while using the voices, narrations, and
artifacts of the developing individuals is one consequence of taking qualita-
tive research in a future program of developmental research seriously into
account. The other consequence will be: using qualitative research meth-
ods for collecting and analyzing data adequately will help the research focus
to come back to temporality and in this way will guarantee developmental
psychology a genuine developmental perspective on their subject: process-
es and transformation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to the editors, Jaan Valsiner and Aaro Toomela, for their com-
ments and editorial work, these were very helpful to make the article more
straightforward. Many thanks to Sebastian Ruppel and Katja Mruck for co-
translating and copy editing the text and bringing it into readable fluid
English. Thanks also to Angret Zierenberg for a helpful final reading.
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CHAPTER 10
THE ROLE OF
OBSERVATIONAL
METHODOLOGY AND THE
APPLICATION OF FILM IN
EARLY AMERICAN AND
EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY
Kurt Kreppner
The thesis of the existence of two different cultures in psychological thinking

is traced back to fundamental distinctions of models for psychological func-
tioning like those, for example, offered by Kant (17241804) (1781/1968,
1788/1968) and Tetens (17361807) (1777/1979) on the one side, and
Locke (16321704) (1690/1911) and Hume (17111776) (1748/1964) on
the other. These two strains of theories about human thinking can be fol-
lowed over time into the various models and world views in todays psycholo-
gy. This schism is present even in developmental psychology as in the view on
the developing child in two basically different perspectives: as a personality
endowed with the possibility to rationality and morally, intentions and motifs,
on the one hand, or as a perceiving subject, dependent from the incoming
stimuli, a product of drives and learning processes, based on stimulus-reac-
tion chains, on the other. To put it in drastic terms, a full-fledged individual

232 KURT KREPPNER
and intentional human being with high developmental potential against a

more or less mechanical construction reacting to inner or outer forces.
It is sometimes believed that such a distinction describes European ver-
sus Anglo-American thinking. However, things seem much more compli-
cated. If one goes back into the history of psychology in both cultures, there
is not such a clear distinction. William James, without doubt an American
and raised in the Anglo-American tradition, is seen as the great pragma-
tist. As a physiologist and brain researcher he created a psychology based
on knowledge of the fundamentals of nerves and stimulus reaction cycles
which nonetheless reached out to a phenomenological description of very
complex concepts such as will, intention, and motivation. James basic ideas
are not very different from those of great European thinkers such as Wundt
or the Wrzburg School like Karl Buehler and Oswald Klpe, or of the
Berlin Gestaltists like Wertheimer or Koehler. They have in common that
they all James, the Wrzburg School and otherstried to deal with the
more complex phenomena of human perception, association, motivation
and thinking. One could also mention the approach of v. Ehrenfels and
Meinong, both students of the philosopher Brentano, who focused on the
elaboration of active perception, the process of doing something while per-
ceiving an unknown object. For example, forming a gestalt and comparing
it with similar objects. In America, it was the generation after James that
began to give up the human idea of the entire personality as an individual
and started to decompose human acting into chains of stimulus-response
chains. From James Watson to Burrhus Skinner, learning theory dominated
psychological discourse in America, whereas in Europe perception, think-
ing, and the genesis of personality played a more important role.
In the following article, a single aspect will be selected, which, as an ex-
ample, may illuminate the rise and fall of observational methodology in
psychology and the use of the new medium film during the twenties and
thirties in America as well as in Europe. Of course, before film, meticulous
descriptions were done about childrens day-to-day developmental proceed-
ings, e.g., drawings of grasp schemes were used to illustrate such details of
development and photographs were used to illuminate posture variations
at different stages. As to the new medium, film, more parallels than differ-
ences are seen between America and Europe concerning its application
in the area of human development. Film was intensely used by American
developmentalists during the twenties and thirties to study human growth.
During the same time period, the method of observation and film analysis
had a climax in both German and Austrian psychology. The protagonists of
the new technology in Europe had to emigrate to the US during the thir-
ties; they continued to apply this technique in America, but unfortunately
they were not successful in keeping their approach alive in main stream
psychology during the three decades which followed.
Observational Methodology and Film in Developmental Psychology 233
THE ROOTS OF CHILDRENS OBSERVATION
Human development as a basic source of knowledge about the growth of

body and mind in the human species has its roots in the aftermath of Dar-
wins evolution theory. It was the belief that the intensive study of human
development, particularly during the first years, could generate also knowl-
edge about the secrets of evolution processes.
Charles Darwin (18091882) described his sons (Doddy) development
during the first two years, in 1840 and 1841. Darwin noted in his diary dif-
ferent behaviors in his son which he considered to be common in the hu-
man species as well as in other species. These observations and daily de-
scriptions were conducted after Darwin had returned from his trip with
the MSM Beagle, that is, during the period before he focused on the final
elaboration on his thoughts about evolution. Darwins descriptions of his
son were not meant to represent a kind of biographical sketch of an indi-
viduals development, but rather aimed at the illustration of basic modes
of expressions in a child compared with animals, as this has later been por-
trayed in his book The Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). As
critics have formulated, Doddy Darwin appeared in his fathers descriptions
as a product of the fathers theoretical ideas about evolution.
Though never explicitly formulated by Darwin himself, his new ap-
proach inspired, for example, Ernst Haeckel (18341919) to his recapitu-
lation theory (1866) versus the end of the 19th century. The theory claims
that children during their individual development repeat the evolutionary
development of the own species, or even, more generally, of all species.
Ontogeny was conceptualized as the recapitulation of phylogeny. More-
over, parallels were drawn between the so-called primitive societies of
the early history of human mankind and children. Therefore, some scien-
tists thought that the intensive study of children during their development
could illuminate those motor or even mental stages of development which
preceded mankinds present stage in evolution. The child as an object of
scientific study was strongly linked to the hope that scientists would find out
crucial new details about the functioning of evolution. This enthusiasm in
studying child development most likely can be considered as one reason for
the beginning blossoming of diary-writing.
Later, embryologists like Wilhelm Preyer (1882), biologists like Jean
Piaget (1923, 1924) or psychologists like William Stern (1907, together
with Clara Stern) observed intensively their own children and focused on
single developmental motoric, language, or intellectual aspects when they
did their observations. When the new medium film came up in the twen-
ties, it was used and reflected as an instrument to conduct more effective
registrations for the analysis of developmental processes in the child, both
in America and in Europe.
234 KURT KREPPNER
THE REVOLUTION OF REGISTRATION: THE APPLICATION

OF FILM INSTEAD OF METICULOUS DESCRIPTIONS IN
DIARIES
Arnold Gesell, Charlotte Bhler, Ren Spitz, and Kurt Lewin
The new technique of cinema recording and cinema analysis was applied
both in America and Europe. In America, particularly Arnold Gesell (1928,
1935) and his ample documentation of human growth gained much atten-
tion during the thirties. By the same token, Myrtle McGraw (1935, 1939)
used the new medium to follow up twins who had been differently trained
during their motor development.
It was Arnold Gesell who, aside from intensively using film recordings,
started to reflect the possibilities of the new medium in a very impressive
photographic documentation collection of of human growth during the
early years (Ames, 1989; Gesell, et al., 1934). However, these authors com-
plex and comprehensive work did not gain the long-term influence on
the further theoretical thinking about development. Instead, learning and
behavior-oriented scientistssuch as Watson, Guthrie, and Thorndike
gained increasing influence in the field of developmental research in the
decades that followed. Neither Watson, who did cinematographic observa-
tions of his experiments about instincts, nor McGraw who used film to re-
cord the individual differences in the motor development of the observed
twins Johnny and Jimmy as well as to document the behavior of babies mov-
ing in water, did elaborate the specific opportunities which offered the new
medium for the research on human development as did Gesell. Theoreti-
cally, there were rather dissimilar orientations: Whereas Watson and follow-
ers brought behaviorism to a high in American thinking during the forties
and fifties, McGraw, who had Dewey as a mentor, leaned to pragmatism
(learning by doing) and later approached Lewins field theory in order
to underline the importance of the context for individual growth. Gesell
(1948), in his later work tried even to refer to the new systems-theory to
explain his holistic view of human growth. In so far, Both McGraw and Ge-
sell were more oriented toward European thinking at their time than many
contemporary American psychologists.
In Europe, Charlotte Bhler, after a visit to Gesells new observational
research center in Yale, brought the enthusiasm for the new medium to Vi-
enna to do research at an institution where infants were brought who either
had been abandoned by their parents or given there because the parents
were not able to bring them up appropriately. It is interesting to see how
Charlotte Buehler on the one hand adopted the techniques she had expe-
rienced during her trip to America, but criticized the way the observation
methodology was used there, on the other. She underlined the importance
to keep the entity of the observed child in focus. Charlotte Bhler stands
out for her systematic observation of the first year and the registration of
the changes with regard to basic activities. Furthermore, she was the first
who focused also on the growing social behaviors in babies when together
in playpens. Later, Ren Spitz took over the Vienna institution to do re-
search in it by using observation in general and observation with registra-
tion in the new film medium in specific. Spitz was the only person at that
time in Vienna who was able to connect Freudian thinking with the more
experimental approach of Charlotte Bhler. Ren Spitz founded an entire
new branch of infant research which most likely paved the way to the break-
through of the empirical mother-infant observations in the 70s and 80s in
the field of human ethology. He is well-known for using film recordings to
record changes in babies behaviors when being exposed to shorter or lon-
ger periods of separation from their mothers. He extensively applied the
technique of slow motion as a tool to find out details of infants adaptations
in adverse settings.
Still another psychologist should be mentioned in this context, a scien-
tist who is well known for his bold theoretical formulations (field theory)
but who also, in his early years, experimented with the new medium film
and its use in demonstrating childrens behavioral patterns during different
stages of their development: Kurt Lewin. He can be considered as a fervent
cineast during the early days of this medium as he invested his own money
in buying cameras and film materials and used his own children and those
of his relatives and colleagues in order to document childrens typical be-
haviors at different stages of development on the one hand, and to register
their specific reaction to experimentally induced ecological conditions, on
the other. These conditions, he claimed, were the forces of the psychologi-
cal field affecting a childs behavior. He achieved to record unique scenes
in which children of different ages showed patterns of behavior which were
of major interest for developmentalists as they obviously indicated devel-
opment in the making. Moreoverin search for demonstrations of his
field-theoretical approachLewin managed to show the many attempts
of children to overcome hindrances standing between them and attractive
objects. Although more oriented towards questions in general psychology
and human motivation, Lewin left a series of film recordings which were
milestones for theorizing in developmental psychology. For example, his lit-
tle film Hannah and the stone shown at the International Conference of
Psychology in 1929 in Yale raised much interest in the public and brought
the Russian psychologist Alexander Luria to think of an observational cen-
ter in Moscow with Lev Vygotsky possibly getting to work in it.
In the following article, Arnold Gesells reflections about the use of the
medium film will be compared to the European approaches. It will be stat-
ed that Gesell and his failure to influence future research in the US has to
236 KURT KREPPNER
do with the fact that he was more a European in his thinking and theoriz-
ing than his American colleagues at his time. A reason for this could be
his admiration for his academic teacher, Stanley Hall, from whom he took
the devotion to Darwinian thinking to explore change processes, keeping a
more gestalt-oriented view compared to the more reductionistic approach-
es of both reflex- or stimulus-response-oriented views. Perhaps this is the
reason that he was perceived as a maturationist during times when learn-
ing theory and behaviorism gained ground. It is an interesting question,
whether Gesell was using film just as an instrument to better document
both interindividual and intraindividual variations in infant development
or to be better equipped in the search for more basic patterns of change
in extant forms of infant behaviors. Being convinced that knowledge about
growth would not emerge from the elementarization of organic entities
(basic behavior formats in infants like paying attention, grasping, moving,
etc.), Gesell in his work most likely concentrated on the recognition of
transformation rules for these patterns. In this respect, he had different aims
compared to most of his American colleagues. As he considered the use of
film as an instrument to look beyond the visible phenomena, he tried to
give advice how to use the new medium for reaching this goal. Therefore,
no wonder, it turns out in a compact view of Gesell together with Bhler,
Spitz, and Lewin, that he not only was a highly talented technical ingenieur,
but also a pioneer thinker who began to discuss new possibilities to register
and compare development and growth under methodological perspectives.
In this context, Gesells method on cinemanalysis including meticulous
frame-by-frame analyses, could well be understood as a special tool for not
just documenting variations of child behaviors during different develop-
mental periods, but rather as a kind of microscope by which the relevant
rules of transformation could be detected.
ARNOLD GESELL (18801961)
After the grown interest in childrens development as a paradigm for hu-

man evolution after Darwin, the changes themselves indicating progress
came into focus. Continuity and change at the same time are two basic
concepts which on the surface seem to contradict each other, but when
the concrete life of children was observed and details carefully written
down in diaries, these descriptions of day-to-day confrontations with tasks
and childrens continuous attempts to cope with reality on the one hand,
and with the changing body and growing skills on the other, the interplay
of continuity and change seemed to be a proper mode to depict the ob-
served situations. The labels used so far in order to define childrens body
development or age-specific capabilities appeared to be inefficient for the
real capturing of the dynamics in a childs struggling for accomplishing a

task which could not be accomplished with acquired routines. The ques-
tion was, how do changes from one level of skills to the next really occur?
Which aspects can be found responsible for those developmental shifts?
How and why does an 18-month-old infant better in certain tasks than
one 9 months old? The daily registration in parental diaries certainly was
a good beginning, but now, in the twenties, the new technique of record-
ing and reproducing by film allowed microanalyses of movements which
could bring researchers closer to answers. Gesell believed that growth it-
self could only be explained when it was linked to earlier growth. Thus,
by taking advantage of the most advanced technical tools available at that
time, properties of growth, that is, change or movement, could be ana-
lyzed down to their most basic elements, the single moments of move-
ment as a frozen section of behavior. Together with his colleague Helen
Thompson he conducted the analysis of his films, showing behaviors like
a physician doing biopsy:
Cinema analysis is a form of biopsy which requires no removal of body tis-

sues from the living subject. Yet it is truly a study of the structurization of the
childs living being. (Gesell & Thompson, 1934, p. 19)
For the completeness of registration with film they argued:
The cinema registers completely and impartially; it sees everything with in-
stantaneous vision; and it remembers infallibly. It preserves in correlated
combination the movements of members and of the whole. It registers in
their simultaneous totality the attitudes of head, trunk, arms, legs, eyes, fin-
gers, and face. It crystallizes any given moment of behavior in its full synthesis
and permits us to study this moment as a frozen section of behavior pattern.
By multiplying the moments, the cinema reconstitutes the entire reaction
event and permits us to study a whole episode of behavior manifestations.
(Gesell & Thompson, 1934, p. 20)
However, Gesell and Thompson did not only underscore the possibilities
of registration, but also mentioned an additional possibility in the new film
technique for generating data which would be helpful in understanding
the nature of growth: he saw a new access to the understanding of larger
ontogenetic changes by condensing time, thereby directly contrasting be-
havior patterns lying months or even years apart.
But in the service of genetic research the cinema can do still more. It can
chronicle succeeding days, months, or years and bring them into seriation.
Thus, the cinema makes available for study (a) the behavior moment; (b) the
behavior episode; (c) the developmental epoch. When the cinema records
are subjected to minute analysis, they open deep vistas in the detailed me-
chanics of behavior. When the cinema records are viewed in broader perspec-
238 KURT KREPPNER
tive, they reveal configured trends and sequences in the ontogenetic cycle.
Growth thus becomes a complicated form of motion which may be studied in
terms of time and space. (Gesell & Thompson,1934, p. 21)
Gesell stood in the tradition of Darwin and his evolution theory on the
one hand, and George Coghill, the embryologist who worked on a concep-
tualization of neural maturation, on the other. In order to document the
dynamics of infant behavior during development, or, put in other words, to
study the embryology of behavior, Gesell extensively applied film technology in
his growth studies. He was well aware of the fact that a film is just represent-
ing a seriation of single photographs. Therefore he talked about the film
as chronophotography, that is, film as photography across time. Consequently,
he referred in his explications to the work of Edward Muybridge, whoas
no film cameras existed in his timedeployed 24 single photographic ap-
paratuses along a horse track, which took snapshots one after the other.
In the analysis of these single snapshots, Muybridge could fix the single
elements of the horses motions along the track. With the help of the so-
called thumb-camera (that is, watching 24 single photos which are quickly
switched one after the other), a watching person is provided with the illu-
sion of perceiving the horse moving.
Gesell enumerated five technically very simple features of chrono-pho-
tography, which, however, have far-reaching methodological implications
for an objective analysis of behavior:
1. The film being propelled at a known speed minutely records time

values and sequences.
2. Simultaneously and also minutely the film records space relation-
ships and configurations.
3. The film records these spatial and temporal data in a series of dis-
crete, instantaneous registrations.
4. These registrations can be serially reinstated at normal, retarded,
and accelerated rates.
5. Any single registration can be individually studied, in terms of time
and space, as delineation of a single phase of a behavior pattern or
a behavior event. (Gesell, 1935a, p. 4)
To give a vivid example of Gesells meticulous approach, the following

episode may illuminate his integrative use of the new cinema technique for
the analysis of motion in infants. He describes a short 20 second film se-
quence, in which a 20-week-old infant, lying on the back, is stimulated by a
rattle. The aim of this manipulation is the observation of the infants visual
fixation and grasp responses. The camera is positioned exactly above the
infant. The sequence has been recorded on 16-mm film at 16 frames per
second. This yields 320 frames for the entire sequence. Each frame is evalu-
ated. To do this, the infants body has been differentiated into seventeen
segments: head, eyes, mouth, right arm, right hand, right fingers, left arm,
left hand, left fingers, thorax, pelvis, right leg, right foot, right toes, left leg,
left foot, and left toes. The infants motions were categorized according
to each of the seventeen segments: C = critical phase; this body segment is
quiet or totally changing its movement status. K = kinetic phase; a motion
is being built up. R = phase of resolution; the motion has been done. The
results of this analysis are then presented in a table in which both number
and category of phases per body segment are indicated. Within the time pe-
riod of 20 seconds, 360 phases of motion, as defined above, could be identi-
fied. With such a registration it becomes possible to analyze synchronicity
or direction of the motion phases in all the single body segments. Gesell
avoids any kind of interpretation of these results because he wants:
simply to show the striking degree to which cinemanalysis can augment the
scope and the certitude of observation. The result attests the refractive power
of cinemanalysis as an aid to scientific observations. (Gesell, 1935a, p. 9)
Arnold Gesell was particularly interested in the new technology of film be-
cause he wanted to study changes in the body gestalt. To do this in full
detail, he developed, together with his colleague Louise Bates Ames, a new
apparatus which allowed a picture by picture analysis of the recorded film,
a method which he named cinemanalysis. By applying this technique,
he could not only demonstrate body changes in an authentic, iconically
equivalent format, that is, in film sequences, but also used systematic com-
parison of different stages of development in order to define basic formats
or standards of growth. He documented all sorts of changes during human
development in infancy and early childhood in his atlas of infant behavior
(1934), containing 3200 photographs focusing on children physical devel-
opment. His scientific approach to the study of development wasat least
between 1927 and 1937widely accepted and often-times copied (McGraw,
1935; Shirley, 1931). By his frame-by-frame analysis and his comparison
technique Gesell successfully used the new standard of cinematographic
documentation for illustrating continuities and changes in individual de-
velopment. In addition, he suggested expanding the new approach by the
use of contrasts between developmental stages in order to observe develop-
mental changes directly in a quasi compressed format. In 1934 Gesell pro-
duced 10 films in which his numerous laboratory studies are illuminated.
Some of these films have titles such as The Growth of Infant Behavior, Early
Stages, Posture and Locomotion, From Creeping to Walking, A Babys Day at 12
Weeks, Behavior Patterns at One Year, and Early Social Behavior (after Ames,
1988, p. 164).
Registered behavior on film in its original integrity provides the ob-
server not only with the opportunity to conduct detailed analysis of various
240 KURT KREPPNER
perspectives in the same episode, which would be never possible without

filming, but also with a totally new access to the study of observational ma-
terial, particularly when growth and development in children is the focus.
The chronological sequence of the recordings can be altered ad libitum.
This implies entirely new modes for comparing an infants behaviors that
have been recorded at different occasions over a long period of time:
The function of the camera is to dissolve the encumbrance of chronological

age so that the sequences of growth may be glimpsed in close, spatial juxta-
position without the deteriorating tedium of a long lapse of time. (Gesell,
1928, p. 57)
Gesell gave a number of excellent examples (1928, p. 57) in which he il-

lustrates how the chronology of registered behavior may be changed by
specific comparisons of episodes in developmentally condensed or even
reversed ordered time frames. For instance, the behavior of a three-month-
old infant can be juxtaposed directly to the behavior this child shows at
the age of six months. Of course, the time span may be enlarged for even
stronger contrasts of developmental stages.
Another way to illuminate variations in development is to liken two chil-
dren of the same ages. With this comparison, the cross-sectional aspect
which features the variability among children at similar ages can be visual-
ized in a very condensed format. These comparisons can elaborate those
characteristics which may depict the entire range of childrens behaviors,
skills and abilities at certain stages of development.
By using film, all longitudinal and cross-sectional comparisons become
possible in principle. Gesell realized these different kinds of comparisons
either by sequential presentation of different segments of behavior or by
parallel presentation with two simultaneously working cinema projectors, a
method comparable to modern split-screen technique.
In this sense past and future are absorbed into present.....The camera to
this extent does dissolve ordinary limitations of time and space; and makes
for manipulative observation.
In this sense past and future are absorbed into present ... The camera to
this extent does dissolve ordinary limitations of time and space; and makes
for manipulative observation. Genetic phenomena occur in changing orders of
magnitude and in changing orders of pattern. There is as yet no absolute unit
of mensuration for either of these two spheres of analysis. For this reason the
refinement of comparative methods of observation and of normative formu-
lation must remain an essential part of the scientific study of child develop-
ment. Systematic photography becomes a scientific method when it is used as
a tool for comparative observation. (Gesell, 1928, p. 70)
What is called manipulative observation by Gesell is nothing else than

film montage. Thus, he introduced this new approach as a way to conduct
post hoc experiments. Such an approach, of course, took the focus away
from the study of reflexes or stimulus-response units and turned it to the
intensive study of processes. By cutting observations of either longitudinal or
cross-sectional material into new sequences, Gesell was the first who went
beyond the usual chronological fixation of childrens behaviors. By con-
trasting and condensing different developmental stages, or by enlarging
the elapsing of time in an episode by using slow motion technique, new
knowledge was generated leading to a better understanding of the processes
underlying human development. Gesell was a professional perfectionist, as
his devotion to film-registration and the detailed exploration of changes
in his cinemanalysis show. One can ask the question, why these excellent
techniques did not make their way into mainstream American developmen-
tal psychology? As already mentioned above, Gesell used the film to make
visible what could not be directly observed on the phenomenal level: the
process of change in functional units, in children. As major interests in the US
psychology during the thirties, forties and fifties were extraordinarily fixed
on the exploration of learning, neither the methodology nor the conceptu-
alization of Gesell or McGraw could survive in mainstream science.
Of course, Gesell was not the only developmentalist who began to dis-
cover and reflect the new technique of cinematographic registration for
exact analysis of developmental processes. The use of the new medium won
also new momentum in Europe. Charlotte Bhler (18931974), Ren Spitz
(18871974), and Kurt Lewin (18901947) are three developmental scien-
tists (Bhler and Lewin, psychologists; Spitz, physician and psychoanalyst)
who also both applied the new methods and considered in detail the new
opportunities of registration and categorization. Interestingly, although
similar in their principle engagement to learn more about the secrets of hu-
man development, the three researchers used the new technique in quite
different areas of child research.
CHARLOTTE BHLER (18931974)

Bhler emphasized the role of systematic observation of natural situations
already in her book (1927) about the first social behaviors of the child, she
wrote about the problems of observation and registration:
Systematic observation is the method (to be applied in developmental research,

KK) that is, systematic observation in natural, only carefully varied situations
of life. This means also observations of the entire behavior. (translation K.K.)
(1927, p. 2)
and, a few pages later:

242 KURT KREPPNER
The method of behaviorism is the systematic observation including all tools

appropriate for a fine-grained analysis such as phonography, photography, or
cinematographic recordings. As in all collections, the principles of order and
selection of categories are of utmost importance. (translation K.K.) (Bhler,
1927, p. 11).
Charlotte Bhler established the first center for systematic observation of

children at the University of Vienna in 1926. There she studied children and
analyzed their behaviors during the first year. For example, she and her staff
worked on a 24-hour schedule when she studied average behavior changes of
infants during the first 12 months (Bhler & Hetzer, 1927). Moreover, Bh-
ler (1927) extended the observation of single children and began to focus
on interactive episodes of two infants (of dissimilar ages) when together in
a playpen. After analyzing her film material, Bhler distinguished different
types of characters such as the tyrant or the submissive.
In her theoretical approach, she argued against a puristic behavioral
approach in developmental psychology as well as against a more biologi-
cal-evolutionary-behavioral approach as this was favored by, for example,
Lloyd Morgan (1903, 1909) at that time. After a visit in the US, where she
met, among others, Arnold Gesell, she was much engaged in the idea that
observation and registration by film could bring new information about
the essentials of developmental processes. The difference of her approach
compared to that of Preyer and Stern, for example, consists not only in
her application of film for the documentation of observations, but also in
the way she combined observation with experiments. In Vienna, she could
work with a relatively large number of infants and a big staff. Influenced
by the way Gesell used to describe differences in developmental abilities in
infants, Bhler suggested a list of achievements or performances infants
should show at various developmental stages.
In order to propagate the use of the new medium when analyzing behav-
ior patterns in various areas, in her search for basic units, Bhler compared
Thorndikes attempt to isolate quite a number of elementary instincts in
order to characterize the origins of more complex behavior patterns with
the approach in linguistics to break down sentences and words into basic
phonetic units: (1927, p. 5)
What Thorndike is looking for are elements of behavior, the smallest units
of behavior. This is indeed a very important task if one keeps in mind the
restrictions of this approach. Only intentionally we do find these phonet-
ics of behavior. De facto his lists of behavior elements are not generated by
exact observation. Rather we only find a general enumeration of all kinds of
reflexes and parts of actions which are neither ultimate elements nor repre-
senting a total inventory. With the aid of observational methods used so far
this, straight away, seems impossible. What is needed here is the additional
application of photographic and cinematographic apparatus for recording,
a method which would allow one to study the recorded material similarly to
microscopy. (1927, p. 5, translation KK)
A few pages later, she continues:
Behaviorism has started to lay out an inventory of behaviors. Its method is

systematic observation including all aids like phonograph, photograph, cin-
ematographic recording etc. As in every collection, the chosen principles to
structure the material are of utmost importance.
If one compares this with the task of a botanist when he describes a classifi-
cation scheme for plants or the task of an anatomist when he depicts muscles
or fibers, immediately new aspects arise from such a likening. In the same
way the botanist is combining plants according to families, species, and larger
groupings, we find a hierarchy in behaviors which can be meaningfully taken
from the material. This is connected with other problems. In order to under-
stand the cell structure of a muscle, the anatomist uses the microscope. The
isolation of units which may be easy for the classification of plants, is more
difficult for the fine-grained cell structures. Even more difficult seems the
isolation of behavior units. However, this difficulty could be overcome when
sequences of behavior were presented cinematographically in slow motion.
This would facilitate the dissolution into single components. But there is still
another, an inner difficulty. Higher-order units of behavior are dynamic units,
for which single impulses and reflexes are nothing but material dominated
by will or by tasks. Dissolution of action into reflexes, as this has been tried
by Bechterew even before behaviorism, is unsatisfying because these reflexes
have only a subordinated meaning in the real actions compared to the psy-
chological tasks and motives which unite reflexes in the formation of the ac-
tion. (Bhler, 1927, pp. 1112, translation KK)
Furthermore, dealing with the difference between a general behavioristic

and a more holistic approach in psychology, particularly in developmental
psychology, she wrote in her book The First Year of Life about the choice
of adequate units of behavior:
Units of Behavior
The main question in this work is: How does one take the recordwhat are
the data to be quoted and collected? Let us begin the discussion of this ques-
tion, which has a great theoretical and practical importance, by giving a few
concrete examples. Suppose you have in front of you three children at the
ages of two, five, and eight months. You put a towel in the face of each child
and observe their reactions. You will find that the youngest, displaying all the
movements he is able to produce, tries with all means to get rid of the towel.
The whole set of reflexes from top to toe is roused. At the same time the child
may cry. But despite all his efforts he is not and cannot be successful. The
second child will develop organized and directed movements instead of the
chaotic and undirected reflex reaction. He will grasp with his hands in the
direction of the towel and sometimes, though with much effort and pain, he
244 KURT KREPPNER
will even be successful in drawing it away. The oldest child (eight months),
however, will show neither effort nor pain, but will grasp and draw the towel
away, maybe even in a laughing and playful manner. His movements are not
only organized but at the same time straight and easy. And what was pain and
trouble for the younger ones has now become play and joy. These are the
three cases. I come back now to my question which I raised and ask: How shall
we take the record? and How shall we collect and classify the data of these
three situations and responses?
So far, only one ideal of objective description has been emphasized, and
that most radically by Bechterew and Watson. This method is to give a com-
plete enumeration of all reflexes which are displayed by the child in the whole
situation. The result in this case would be a list of all single movements within
the sequence of the whole process. Even supposing this would be possible,
we would have at the end a table which would enumerate and score so many
hundred of reflexes of all possible kindsthat is, when studying the young-
est child. Then in the second child, you will find a considerable decrease of
reflexes but an increase of organized movements; and there would probably
be a further increase of motor coordination in the third child. In addition to
this, a complete record would take in the reactions of crying and laughing
and also, of course, the duration of the reaction.
Now, suppose, we had such tables of all the reactions, during the whole
day, with natural situationstables which would enumerate and score and
show the total of reflexes, coordinated movements, and durations. Would
that in itself be of any psychological interest? It would certainly not . . .

Considerable doubt has been raised as to whether there are any single reflex-
es, movements, and impulses; and whether they can be isolated and separated
from each other, as they sometimes appear to be. But on the contrary, it is the
belief of some psychologists, as W. Koehler and his group emphasize, that it
is the psychophysical system as a whole which reacts to the situation. Gold-
stein and Lewin have given concrete examples of individual cases and explain
how they are to be understood according to the conception of the Gestalt-
psychology. According to Goldsteins thinking, the stimulusas, for instance,
the towel in our experimentcauses an excitation of the whole organism.
...
But in what now are we really interested, if we take an inventory of the childs
development? I think there is one feature which as yet has not been discussed
at all, and that is the success or the failure of the efforts to reach their ends. Is
not the relationship of means and ends, or the outcome of success and failure
of certain behaviors within the situation, the main factor of our psychological
interest? If we agree with that, any record which refers only to movements
of the child is of no use, because it is quite incomplete. Instead of this, we
should need a record which also would include the changes that take place in
the object in the situation with which the child is concerned in the reaction.
...
Applied to a concrete example: For the understanding of the childs develop-

ment, it seems very important to us to see how the child masters a difficult
situation of life. In this connection it seems of extreme interest that we are
able to show stages of this mastery over a simple obstacle: a first stage, where
the child never succeeds; a second stage, where he succeeds sometimes and
with effort; and a third stage, where the child is successful always and with
ease. To understand this, the lack of coordination, as well as the degree of co-
ordination in movements of the child, seemed to us to be of importance: not,
however, the listing of each single reflex movement, enumerating and scoring
them. Thus it was that we observed the childs behavior from the viewpoint
of performance which was to be recognized and scored. So we worked out a
scheme of performances. (from Bhler, 1930, pp. 1015)
Summarizing Bhlers merits in the application of observation methodol-

ogy and also cinematographic techniques, it becomes very clear not only
that she was an exceptional scientist when her rigor concerning exact ob-
servation is considered, but also that she was a highly reflective and sensi-
tive person in her discussions focusing on the appropriate classifications for
her observations and debating the problems of describing developmental
changes in non-elementaristic terms. She openly criticized the elementary
and reflex-oriented approach of her American colleagues and argued for a
more material-sensitive, higher-order categorization that can better repre-
sent human behavior units.
When another pioneer began to work at the place in Vienna where she
had done most of her work, he could build upon the expertise that Char-
lotte Bhler had already collected. This Pioneer was Ren Spitz who began
to use film to explore another sector of reality: Infants reaction to separa-
tion from the mothers.
REN SPITZ (18871974)
Ren Spitz, a student of Sigmund and Anna Freud as well as of Karl and
Charlotte Bhler in Vienna, used the new possibility of film recording
when he began to study infants and their development in functioning and
disrupted relationship with their mothers. As a psychoanalyst, he was first
practicing in Vienna during the late 20s and early 30s, and strongly inter-
ested in the ego-oriented approaches of Anna Freud and Heinz Hartmann.
After he went to Paris in 1932 where he taught psychoanalysis and develop-
mental psychology at the famous cole Normale Suprieure, he was asked
by Charlotte Bhler in 1935 to do experimental work with infants at the
Kinderbernahmestelle (Reception house for children in Vienna). Having
available such a large number of infants and a great variety of conditions
246 KURT KREPPNER
under which these infants were brought to this institution, Spitz used this
situation to lay the ground for a new empirical approach with regard to
early infant development within the framework of psychoanalytical theory.
He conducted experiments and tested these children systematically and
began to observe them in different situations (e.g. various care-taking situa-
tions, with mothers and without mothers etc.), in addition he used film for
documentation as well as for fine-grained analyses. When he was forced to
leave Vienna and Europe during World War II, he went to New York and
continued his empirical work including the observation of mother-child
dyads with the medium film. He investigated children who grew up with
their mothers in prison as well as children who grew up together separated
from their mothers in nurseries under good hygienic conditions and with
competent personal. Astonishingly, babies growing up with their mothers
even in prisons developed in a much better way than did babies in the
nurseries separated from their mothers. With the experience of these both
observational and experimental studies, Spitz developed the concepts of
hospitalism and anaclitic depression, starting from the emotional deficien-
cies which he observed in the child and their consequences on the psycho-
emotional development. Moreover, Spitz also concluded from his research
that specific maternal behaviors or attitudes like anxiety, hostility or neglec-
tion with regard to their children had serious consequences for the chil-
drens emotional and social development.
Spitz can be considered as one of the founders of mother-infant interac-
tion research who began to systematically apply cinematographic record-
ings for conducting detailed analyses. A few examples are given from Spitzs
work where he explicitly points to the importance of observation and film
recording in his research. In his book about the development of the first
object relationships, he writes (1954/1973, pp. 1819):
Each child in the study has been observed for four hours per week. For
guaranteeing an objective registration of our observations and in order to
being able to study a certain phenomenon ad libitum, we made film record-
ings of many of our observations. We used a method which I had introduced
into infant research in 1933 under the label of film-analysis. It consists in
the recording of 24 pictures per second. The observation can be repeated
as often as it is necessary. In addition, it becomes possible to slow down the
sequence of pictures to eight per second which produces a slow motion ef-
fect. It means a slowing down by the factor three with regard to the rhythm of
movements as well as to the physiognomic expression. Each child was filmed
when we saw it for the first time, that is, as soon as possible after birth, some-
times even during delivery. In the following months all those behaviors were
filmed which deviated from the average of our observations. We also filmed
our experiments with the children. Aside from clinical data and films we also
have protocols and interviews with parents and the professional caretakers.
(Spitz, 1954/1973, pp. 1819, translation KK)
Spitz explicates the huge aid of the recorded film material for the de-
tailed analyses of infants micro-movements when interruptions in breast
feeding had been observed. For example, after intensive inspection of the
slow motion film material, Spitz was able to interpret these movements of a
babys head as a precursor of the later gesture of yes as it occurs together
with no at the third organizing principle:
On nodding ones head and yes and no
When we very carefully investigated our film material with babies at their
mothers breast in order to find out whether it contained some hints about
the origins of nodding, we observed something very informative. In our se-
ries of observation of babies we regularly conducted an experiment which
had been proposed by Margaret Fries (1947). This experiment should render
some information about newborn behavior on the one hand and, it should al-
low conclusions about babies reaction to frustrations on the other. A similar
experiment had been earlier designed by Rippin and Hetzer (1930) for test-
ing the perception in early infancy. The experiment consists in bringing the
baby into the position of being breast fed. First, the baby is allowed to find the
nipple and to suck. After 60 seconds the nipple is taken out of the mouth for
another 60 seconds, then the baby gets the nipple back. The observation fo-
cuses on the baby how it first takes the nipple, how it reacts to the withdrawal,
and then to the renewed giving of the breast. We made this experiment with
all children whom we could observe while being breast fed, in each case we
filmed the entire course of events. When we watched these films repeatedly,
we detected a very informative behavior pattern in one of the older infants. It
is case CC25 (age 0,3 + 17). When the nipple was drawn out after 60 seconds,
this baby did a number of striving movements with its head in the direction of
the breast. These movements were phenotypically identical with the gesture
of nodding with ones head. (Spitz, 1957, p. 89, translation KK)
Furthermore, Spitz refers even to the use of single film frames for his analy-
sis:
The single film frames illuminate how this similarity is generated. The striv-
ing to the breast is actually a forwards and backwards movement of the head.
However, the somewhat older infant is in a semi-sitting, if not nearly upright
position when being fed. The muscle system of his neck has now developed
in a way that both forwards-backwards movements and nodding movements
are possible. The forwards-backwards movements, however, are rather tiring.
Thus it occurs that surprisingly often the forwards-backwards movement is
ended by a nodding movement. (Spitz, 1957, p. 90, footnote, translation KK)
These are some examples for the immense advantage of having exact
reproductions of an entire situation available, and, in addition, of the pos-
sibility to observe details of interactions in great detailframe by frame or
slow motionrepeatedly. As it is the case in Spitz studies, the use of film
propelled discussions about essentials of developmental influences into
248 KURT KREPPNER
new directions, such as the registration of tiny details in infants behav-

iors that had not been perceived beforebecause of the rapidity of actions
and reactionsand which could now, for example with the film technique
of slow motion, studied and interpreted. However, it lasted until the early
seventies until Spitzs techniques of observation and analysis spread to a
broader public, when human ethologists began to observe mother-child
interaction in more detail. During the fifties and sixties, Spitzs empirical
work was mostly classified as belonging to the area of psychoanalytic and
clinical research. There it seemed to be appreciated, but it lasted a long
time until his work won attention in general developmental psychology. It
was connected with the acceptance of the competent baby as a result of
a decade of observational research in the 70s, and of attachment theory as
a serious approach to explain differential emotional behavior patterns in
infants when separated from their mothers in the eighties.
KURT LEWIN (18901947)
Kurt Lewin began to apply the new medium film in order to illustrate the
interplay between environmental conditions and childrens behavior. Influ-
enced by the theoretical considerations of Stern and the philosopher Ernst
Cassirer, a colleague of Stern in Hamburg, Lewin saw physical space with
its attractions and impediments as a stimulating factor for human action
and motivation. Dealing with the problem of human will and motivation,
Kurt Lewin formulated a new theory of the environment and its dynamics
with regard to the specifics of human actions. In this theoretical approach
he elaborated concepts about forces of the environment and their impact
on human action and motivation. According to Lewin, it is important to
observe the life space of a person, that is, the proximal environment,
in which a subject behaves, and it should be the aim to isolate both the
forces set by the attractivity of specific objects on the one hand, and the
subjects activities which influence the environment on the other. Lewin
refers to ideas which were strongly formulated by Narziss Ach (1910), the
philosopher and psychologist who has discussed human motivation and
thinking under new perspectives. In psychology he became well-known for
his demands with regard to new methodological approaches such as strict
introspection for a closer study of the determining tendencies in the hu-
man thinking process (see Lewin, 1931, 1939). With the zeitgeist of Gestalt
and holistic psychology, Lewin not only tried to connect human will and
motivationlinked to subjective perceptionto a subjects physical space
or life-space, but also, for the first time, conceptualized the person-envi-
ronment interaction as a holistic entity which always has to be considered
(and observed) in its totality. On the one hand, Lewin developed a rather
mathematical and formalistic conception of psychologial space, explaining

how forces are generated by the attractivity of objects and how psychologi-
cal motivation affects human behavior. On the other hand, however, this
approach was a conception referring to the concrete exchange of a single
individual with the environment and elaborated the idea that space and its
dynamics always had to be considered as a person-related context.
Since 1923 Lewin was occupied with the new film technique, he bought
films and little cameras (on his own costs) and began to produce a num-
ber of films in which he focused on various aspects of developing behavior
patterns in small children when they were confronted with conflicts such
as seeing an attractive object but at the same time being unable to reach it
because there was an impediment between the child and the object. Origi-
nally not a developmental psychologist, Lewin preferred subjects in his film
demonstrations were children of different ages. As subjects for his experi-
ments he used his own children, his nieces, or, for example, the daughter
of Wolfgang Koehler, the director of the Psychological Institute in Berlin,
where Lewin worked. He had been inspired by the work of his director,
who had conducted various experiments with chimpanzees in Teneriffa
and documented these on films. Lewin tried to illuminate his new theory
with his films and showed in a brilliant way childrens changes in behavior
patterns in challenging conflict situations. He could illuminate both devel-
opmental progress and dynamics of the concrete situation in which a child
was trying to find a solution to a problem. A well-known example is Lewins
little film Hanna sits down on a stone [Hanna setzt sich auf den Stein]. A
little girl, aged 1 year 7 months, wants to sit down on a stone. She circles
around the stone several times, props herself with her arms on the stone,
even kisses it, but is unable to get into a position from which she could sit
down on the stone. In terms of Lewins field theory, the stone has a high
degree of valence, that is, attractivity to the girl. In order to successfully
sit down, the girl had to turn around, i.e., to turn away from the stone, away
from the attractive object. Direction of movement (towards the stone) and
direction of looking (away from the stone) are divergent. For the girl, look-
ing away from the stone means also to move away from the stone. The film
shows the inability of this child to solve the problem of moving towards the
stone and at the same time looking away from it. Lewin contrasts the little
girls behavior with that of a little boy of about the same age. Hans, the
little boy, finds a new, creative solution: He moves backwards in direction of
the stone, at the same time he is bent down and looks through his legs in
direction of the stone. Thus, direction of looking and moving are identical,
and finally he can successfully sit down on the stone. The contrasting ef-
fect of the two different problem solving attempts made this little film very
famous. It attracted great attention in the public when it was showed on the
International Congress of Psychology in New Haven, CT, in 1929, together
250 KURT KREPPNER
with Lewins talk on The effects of environmental forces [Die Auswirkun-

gen der Umweltkrfte]. Gordon Allport, for example, wrote:
This film contributed to the fact that some American psychologists had to
revise their theories about the nature of intelligent behavior and learning.
(citation after Murray, 1977, p. 75)
Unfortunately, there is no systematic explication by Lewin how he ex-

actly used the film material in his research. Only in talks he held when
he showed his films, he exemplified more deeply why he worked with the
new medium. One definite reason to use film was to demonstrate the ef-
fects of (good and bad) ecological conditions and social milieus on the
development of children. His film The Child and the World won great public
resonance when it was shown in matinee cinemas during the beginning of
thirties (see the review of this film by Stern, 1932/1987). With these kinds
of film demonstrations a new conscience grew for the role of environment
for the life of children.
However, it was obviously not only for the reason of demonstration, but
also for the genuine analysis of dynamic aspects of behavior in specific situ-
ations that Lewin wanted to document with the new medium. There were
aspects which could only be recognized by the technique of film recording,
freezing the entire complex situation mechanically in a way that no dis-
tortion (like in the human memory) could occur. In order to underline his
approach to use film as a kind of scientific tool, particularly in the area of
child psychology, he wrote:
The possibility of film to record an entire course of psychological events in

a specific situation makes it an enticing aid for scientific research and dem-
onstration in all areas where characteristic aspects do not appear in single
momentary states but become visible only when the entire course of events is
being observed. (Lewin, 1926, p. 414, translation KK)
Talking about the differences between psychopathological and normal

children and how difficult it is to find them, Lewin points to the big advan-
tage of the medium film, which facilitates the discovery of these differences,
unrecognized so far, by following the psychological dynamics of these chil-
dren, the kind of how psychological tensions are built up and then reduced
by both normal and psychopathological children. Only with recorded situ-
ations, it becomes possible not only to observe and analyze these kinds of
rising and declining states in full detail as continuous processes, but also to
find out the tiny nuances of differences during this process between the two
groups of children.
As a consequence of his experience concerning the work with film mate-
rial, particularly in the area of affection and expression in children, Lewin
formulates an interesting methodological result in his paper:
More and more I come to the conclusion that with the help of film the dynam-
ics of psychological events, even very short courses of events, can be registered
in such a way that the scientific analysis and evaluation can go far beyond what
is possible when applying simple observation. Furthermore, film recording
combined with the scientific analysis and evaluation has convinced me that
the stringent lawfulness of psychological events (including motor activity)
allows an unexpectedly extensive analysis and evaluation of single acts and
activities. This means, in other words, that one encounters far less random
events than one may have expected. The condition, though, for this kind of
analysis is that the single event is never taken only for itself, as an isolated pro-
cess, but rather that its status and meaning is always interpreted with regard to
the totality of events and by the situation as a whole, in which a subject showed
specific actions and expressions. (Lewin, 1926, p. 418 translation KK)
Here Lewin openly doubts the conception of random behavior as a

reality when humans and their behavior are being observed. He denies the
possibility of finding meaningful interpretations when concentrating on
only single and isolated pieces of behavior. Instead, he insists on the ob-
servation of the total situation, that is, on the thorough inspection of the
entire life-space of a person and his behavior. The existence of irrelevant
or even random behavior in humansa position which was largely held
by learning theorists during the thirties, forties, and fiftieswas something
that Lewin strongly rejected, particularly in the light of his experiences with
film materials that could be analyzed under different aspects and which
were able to preserve the observed total situation. Such a position kept
by learning theorists, Lewin points out, is only to be understood as a con-
sequence of a methodological deficit, caused by the lacking possibilities to
study and analyze entire courses of psychological events down to the tiniest
details and finest nuances. He distinguished between the description of the
observable surface of events or behaviors, and the search for the conditions
that he suspected create the visible behavior. He called this the distinction
between the phenomenal properties, which can openly be observed, and
the conditional-genetic interrelationships which he believed can explain
the causes of observed behaviors or events:
Concerning the research objects in psychology, two kinds of questions can

be asked like in other sciences. One may ask about the phenomenal properties
of the psychological structures or events, e.g., which kind of emotions can be
distinguished qualitatively, which characteristics constitute the experience of
volition. The second kind of questions deals with the why, with the question
of cause and effect. It is the question about the conditional-genetic interrelation-
ships. One might ask under which conditions a decision is born and which
specific effects are following after this decision. The statement concerning the
phenomenal characteristics of an event is usually called a description, whereas
the statement concerning a causal relationship is usually called an explanation.
252 KURT KREPPNER
In experimental psychology the belief to first study the phenomenal char-

acteristics of its objects has prevailed in a certain way during the past period.
The last quarter of the century has brought very specific descriptions of lon-
ger courses of experience. Although this description task has not yet finished
and although it will continue to dominate psychology, there has been a clear
backlash in turning again to problems of explanation. With these questions con-
cerning relationships in the area of psychological events, the concepts of
cause and effect have returned, questions of causa efficiens and causa finalis,
of power and energy, of experiment and proof, of law and random. (Lewin,
1927, p. 377, translation KK).
Moreover, Lewin like Bhler was clearly very critical to the psychol-
ogy of the elements, the epoch of psychology which he assumed to be the
past already at the end of the twenties:
Psychology of the past epoch is often-times characterized as psychology of the

elements. This points to the fact that the questions of this period centered
around microscopic issues and that particularly the elements of psychological
life were under study, for example, what kind of subexperiences are part of a
full experience of will, or what kind of emotional elements are necessary to
form the experience of fear. Complex courses of experiences were seen as
special constellations of such elements. Today it is rather believed that only in
a limited number of cases the totality of an experience can thoroughly be ex-
plained by its single parts. It is possible in those cases which have been called
and-sum [Und-Summe] by Wertheimer. However, in most of the cases, total-
ity is different, it is a real entity [Ganzheit] which is more than the sum of
its parts.... If there are entities, they cannot be explained by their parts. Only
by the entity the function of the parts are determined, moreover, only by the
entity can be determined which parts have a psychological existence. Move-
ments, efforts, achievements, behavior patterns, as well as certain experiences
which might be nearly identical as isolated events may be totally different in
what they mean to the subject if they occur as parts of different processes of
experience, when they are embedded in different courses of events. (Lewin,
1927, p. 382)
His critique and the hope to gain better information about the underly-
ing structures of behavior patterns and their development is manifest in
Lewins statement about the promising use of the new film technique which
would allow at least a very exact reconstruction and the detailed analysis of
observed events:
Suppose one has the task to describe a childs behavior during a certain
period of time. In order to facilitate this task, the behavior is documented by
a cinematographic recording or by a continuous protocol. A phenotypical
description of the kind and structure of this behavior is obviously not very
difficult.....
...More difficult is the separation of different events which belong to a certain

type and are taken from an entire course of events in a historical reality, when
the aim is not the description of phenomenal characteristics of events but
the depiction of the genetic-conditional interrelationships within the course of
events. (Lewin, 1927, pp. 400401 and 402403, translation KK)
Later, when Lewin has settled in the US, he still argued for such a differ-
entiation between the phenomenal descriptions and the interpretations of
the causes which create these observable phenomena. According to Lewin
(1946, pp. 793794):
Theories are unavoidable. Without theories it is impossible in psychology, as

in any other science, to proceed beyond the mere collection and description
of facts which have no predictive value. It is impossible to handle problems
of conditions or effects without characterizing the dynamic properties behind
the surface of the directly observable phenotypical properties.
The terms need, association, conditioned reflex, excitatory tendency, ge-
stalt, libido, and super-ego are examples of theoretical constructs with which
various psychological schools have attempted to characterize certain underly-
ing dynamical or genotypical facts. It is important to distinguish those facts
which are essential for prediction and explanation from their various symp-
toms. For instance, an emotional state such as anger can lead to a variety
of very different symptoms (noisiness, as well as extreme politeness [Dembo
1931]); tensions can lead to aggressiveness as well as apathy (Lewin, Lippitt, &
White, 1939). The same personality may manifest itself in practically opposite
actions. In other words, a given state of a person corresponds to a variety of
behavior and can, therefore, be inferred only from a combined determina-
tion of overt behavior and the situation. This is only another way of saying that
behavior (B) is determined by the person and the environment [B = F(P, E)]
and not by the person or the environment alone.
It seems that Lewin, although very eager to adapt to the American life-
style, kept clear distance to both the elementaristic and reductionistic as
well as to the learning-theoretical mainstream of his period.
THE NEW FLOURISHING OF OBSERVATIONAL METHODS

AND THE USE OF FILM IN INFANCY RESEARCH AND
HUMAN ETHOLOGY
Strangely enough, the method of observation and the use of film were not
the method of choice for most researchers in the field of developmental
psychology during the following decades, the 50s and 60s, when in the do-
main of learning theory experiments with rats and pigeons were believed
by many to be the most promising approach to find out the secrets of learn-
ing processes in children. With the exception of Spitz, who continued his
254 KURT KREPPNER
work in the 40s and 50s in the US and gained acceptance in the clinical
area of infant development, there was no relevant discussion or further
development of the observational methodological approach in the field of
developmental psychology. Exogenistic, endogenistic, or the Piagetian con-
structivistic models prevailed. The situation was perhaps a little different
in the area of family research, where, during and after World War II, the
conceptualization of family development and communication theory paved
the way for the observation and registration of very complex family interac-
tions over time.
One may ask the question why observational technique in combination
with the medium film were lost in the decades of the 50s and 60s, although
its reflection could have fostered the application of a more holistic and
non-elementary classification for the study of observed behavior of children
and their course of development concerning the acquisition of skills and
the mastery of tasks. Observation including film registration as an accepted
method lost its appreciation also in Europe during the two decades follow-
ing World War II. It was not until the late 60s and early 70s before systematic
use of systematic observation and film and video recording found their way
back into the field of infant development (Bell, 1968; Escalona, 1973; Rheingold,
1969) as well as into clinical and non-clinical family research (see Kantor & Lehr,
1975). Particularly in infant research, the film registration of observations
was connected with an increased interest in the detailed and film-assisted
study of mother-child interactions, mainly stimulated by the new discipline
of Human Ethology, which tried to use the methodology of animal observa-
tion in the realm of human development. The quality of relationship be-
tween infant and mother as well as between infant and father became a
salient issue, when researchers of human infancy began to look at everyday
interactions between parents and children and detected the bidirectional
exchange even in early infant-parent interactions (Sander, 1969; Schaffer
& Emerson, 1964). However, there was still a discussion about advantages
and disadvantages of the application of film for the registration of the ob-
served. Debates on observation were conducted as if the registration still
had to be done without film or video. Observers were forced to do instant
registrations by using only a few, often very crude categories. The question
of reliability among observers seemed to play a major role, although these
problems of rater agreement could have been solved otherwise, e.g., by the
conservation of the observed situation on film and by repeatedly showing
the observed original situations to the raters. But in the end, finally, the
use of film recordings focusing on early development in the mother-child
context could help create new categories for the depiction of more relation-
oriented behaviors. Nonetheless, it should be borne in mind that this move
towards more holistic categories in child- and family research was a very
lengthy and arduous process, as Richards and Bernal (1972) have put it:
Our recording of categories grew out of our observations rather than being
imposed on them by some pre-determined theoretical position. At first we
watched without making any attempt to record. Later we began to note fea-
tures of behavior that recurred regularly. (p. 181)
And Colwyn Trevarthen, for example explained his special access to find
new categories:
I have avoided quantitative analyses until the patterns of action became clear.
(Trevarthen, 1977, p. 9)
With the use of video recordings, this open approach in observational

studies was even more extended. For example, different perspectives could
now be taken into account during one recorded situation when behaviors
of persons in a complex relationship or holistic aspects of the character of
a relationship were to be analyzed (Kreppner, 1991). As the original situ-
ation in all its complexity was frozen on videotape, a variety of different
categories describing multiple aspects of behaviors and relationships could
be applied.
However, observation and registration with film as a full-fledged scien-
tific method at that time appeared not at the highly reflected level found
in the contributions of Gesell or Buehler. Instead, observation had to go
through the sometimes paradoxical procedures of systematic decomposi-
tion of behavior units into time-specific units (second-by-second registra-
tion) with hard-to-interpret meanings.
The growing knowledge about the sensitivity of infants to social rela-
tionships and to variations in communicative contexts had considerable ef-
fects on a new designing of empirical studies as well as on the selection of
methodological approaches using observation and film recording as stan-
dards. It was then when a new series of discussions began centering once
more on the classification problem when complex patterns of behaviors or
interactions had to be observed and registered. Researchers who started
from a traditional behavioral framework and focused on the microanalysis
of single actions recognized that they were not successful when they applied
their traditional tools. The intense observation of mother-child interactions
and communications led to the establishment of new, more molar catego-
ries which tried to describe structural or dynamic aspects of exchange pro-
cesses. Such attempts led to the descriptions of interaction rituals and to
categories like greeting behavior in very young infants interacting with
their mothers (Papousek & Papousek, 1977), or secondary intersubjectiv-
ity (Trevarthen & Hubley, 1978), a behavior in 8-month-olds checking the
affective reaction of the caretaker when exploring objects. Thus, by the end
of the 70s, the combination of observation and film or video recordings
had again found its way into the field as the appropriate approach. How-
256 KURT KREPPNER
ever, todays search for the localization of specific activities and behaviors
in the brain seems, compared to the discussions about the best capturing of
processes of change in the twenties and thirties, a step back. Perhaps there
is an outlook for future discussions, when research about brain functioning
and localization has produced enough data which need further explana-
tion on the behavioral level, particularly when processes are to be explored.
Then, as this is addressed in the final chapter, observation methods and
reflections about them may have a new renaissance.
A FINAL WORD
At present, expectations loom high in the area of neurosciences and hu-

man genetics when researchers apply the new techniques of these disci-
plines in the area of human growth and individual development. What
do these disciplines have in stock for explaining human behavior? At first
glance, it seems that many well-known and well-established methodological
approaches in the field for collecting information about the causes and
correlations of human development have lost their validity and are no lon-
ger of interest. Writing diaries about the daily progressions of a baby in its
first years, ethological approaches to register behavioral units by a second
by second observation, or the cinematographic approach using techniques
like slow motion or montage seem to be outdated in the face of the new
electrophysiological techniques of brain imaging. With this new technol-
ogy, it seems to be possible to look directly into a human brain and its vari-
ous areas of activity, even longitudinally into a childs brain and its nerve-
cell activities during different periods of development (see Johnson, 1997).
The increasing successes of neuroscience to trace down human activities to
specific regions of the brain as well as to collect new knowledge about the
specifics of growth and selection processes in the neural network during
sensitive periods in postnatal brain development have fostered a general
belief that many methodological approaches used so far in the discipline
of developmental psychology, including advanced methods of observation,
may no longer be needed.
Advances in the electrophysiological techniques of measuring brain ac-
tivity (both ERP event-related brain potentialsand (f)MRI (functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging)have led to an increase in studies dealing
with the living brain even of small children. These activities have created
the new field of developmental neuroscience (Grosmann & Reid, 2006).
The hope is that this kind of new techniques provides us with tools to in-
vestigate the neural underpinnings of developmental behavioral change
(Grosmann & Reid, 2006, p. 20). Developmental psychology and neurosci-
ence, particularly the new discipline of cognitive neuroscience, have gradu-
ally started to merge. However, this merging needs a new focus on behavior
observation. Only by combining the new electrophysiological techniques
with intensive observation on the behavior level in infants, results showing
differential brain activities can be traced back to real behavior in infants
and children. With the new technology in combination with observation,
new questions can be asked, such as, for example, how variations in the
growth of nerve cell during critical periods of development may occur un-
der specific conditions of stimulation or interaction (Braun et al., 2000).
Thus, as a developmental psychologist, one could argue that even with all
the new technologies in neurosciences, perhaps a new round of debate is
necessary concerning observational methodology including the registra-
tion by film and video. In this debate about the appropriate interpretation
of the results coming, e.g., from the brain imaging research, the method
of exact observation of behavior, action, and interaction patterns in infants
will keep its prominent role as a necessary source of information in the
future. And perhaps another round of discussion will start with regard to
the preference of an elementaristic, reflex-oriented approach on the one
hand, or a holistic, action- and motivation-oriented access in the study of
human functioning and human development on the other.
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CHAPTER 11
WHAT WOULD BE GUSTAV

THEODOR FECHNER LEGACY
FOR PSYCHOLOGY IN THE
21ST CENTURY?
Arno Engelmann
It is 122 years now since Fechner passed away. His name as it is retained in
usual histories of psychology is restricted to the description of the method
of thresholds and to the also the description of the method of smallest
differences of stimuli. Osgood wrote in 1953 in his book on experimen-
tal psychology: Although the metaphysical connotations of the term
have not persisted, the methods themselves have become an integral part of
psychological technique (Osgood, 1953, p. 43). Fechners methods have
been pulled out from the whole of his contribution. They are the surviving
methods of Fechner, but to ignore his tree of knowledge is not to know
why they have been grown. It is fundamental to know the whole tree.
Gustav Theodor Fechner was born in 1801. He died in 1887. According
to Boring, during his long life Fechner worked on physiology from 1817 to
1824, on physics from 1824 to 1839,then paused from 1839 to more or less
1851, and continued in psychophysics from 1851 to 1865. This was followed
by interest in aesthetics from 1865 to 1876, after which he again took inter-
est in psychophysics from 1876 to 1887. In 1842, Fechner slowly recovered
from his crisis suffering (Boring, 1950).

262 ARNO ENGELMANN
FECHNERS POSITION ABOUT THE RELATION BETWEEN

THE SOUL AND THE BODY
One of Fechners main interests was the relation between the mind and
the body. All the known thinkers in the nineteenth century took a position
on this problem, including Fechner. And all of them have their origin in
whatat that timewas the two hundred-year-old Descartes question.
Let us see the problem as Descartes put it and how he developed it. On
the one side, he considered himself as a thinking thing. This thinking
thing was capable of any possible course that he wanted to follow. For
example, Descartes could affirm that he was awake. But if he really was not
awakebut dreaming that he was awake? For another example, Descartes
could be feeling enormously hot while he was lying naked without a cover
on his bed in a cold night. But his enormous heat was the result from a suf-
fering from influenza. On the other side, there is an outside world plenty
of things that did not obey his will. Between these two independent be-
ings, Descartes concluded that he simply demonstrated the existence of two
substances. On one side he feels a substance that obeys his will and on the
other side he feels a substance that would not obey his will. One substance
was only thinking; the other substance was pure extension. It is interesting
to note that according to Descartes thinking did not occupy a space in the
world. It was pure thinking (Descartes, 1642/1967).
In the same century Spinoza, partly a follower of Descartes, wrote that
there was only a single substance, not two. But this substance has an infinite
number of attributes. As a human being, that Spinoza was, only two attri-
butes of the substance could be known by him: thought and extension. It is
natural that the two attributes were exactly the two substances of Descartes.
But the two attributes were knowledge of the same substance, not knowl-
edge of two substances (Spinoza, 1677/1965).
In a certain way Fechner reasoned that the same type of occurrence as
those that have characterized Spinoza. But the relation was really closer
that Spinozas thought and extension. The relation was between the day
vision of the soul (Seele in German) or the spirit (Geist) or the mind (Sinn)
and the night vision of the body. Fechner gives a good example of these two
kinds of view in the beginning of his Elements of Psychophysics. It can be simi-
lar to a circle. The human beingwhen in the so-called concave part of the
circle is allowed a bright day vision. However, when looking at other human
beings he knows only the convex side. And this convex side is the only part
directly known. With the name of psychophysics, Fechner invented for orga-
nizing the two ways of knowing around the same substance: psycho will
give the day vision and complementarily physics will give the night vision.
In his 1848 book Nanna or the Souls Life from the Plants (Fechner, 1927) and
the 1860 Elements of Psychophysics, Fechner wrote that his new term should
Gustav Theodor Fechners Legacy 263
be understood here as an exact theory of the functionally dependent rela-

tions of body and soul or, more generally, of the material and the mental, of
the physical and the psychological worlds (Fechner, 1966, p. 7, my emphasis;
Woodward, 1972).
Psychophysics is not a science that studies the physical, able to reveal the
psychological sideas it is conventionally viewed todaybut a science that
studies with equal rights to the physical side and to the psychological side. As
natural the psycho is the day vision; the physics is the night vision. However,
even during the days of Fechners living, there were scientists for whom the
inner psychophysics or the mental vision could be only inferred through the
outer psychophysics. This inferring is something completely different from
the two-but-one being that was Fechners core idea (Fechner, 1851/1906,
1860/1966, 1882, 1889).
Fechner wrote against a radical materialistic scientific view of the world.
He believed in a world that can be inspected as a day view and also as a
night view. Further he means that the day view is also the being in things
that the majority of people do not believe. He came to this position bas-
ing himself on analogy. Analogy is the resemblance between two observed
similar beings. In Zend-Avesta from 1851, Fechner puts analogy standing far
behind the induction in science. Based on analogy, Fechner has his power
to conduct himself from his soul to others souls, from others souls to ani-
mals souls, from animals souls to plants souls, and from plants souls to
the earth soul. The importance of analogy resulted in a soul everywhere
where it was sought, even when he looked on the earth. Fechner was sure
that the earth has also soul. On one side the soul is inside everywhere, on
the other side it is a monistic conception, not a dualistic conception (Fech-
ner, 1851/1906; Scheerer, 1987, 1989; Woodward, 1972).
FECHNER AS THE FIRST SCIENTIST USING EXPERIMENTAL

METHODS IN CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES
Twenty-eight years before Wundt, Fechner and his brother-in-law Volk-

mann, started experiments that related the soul as depending on the body. It
was very important for Fechner because the physical data are open to mea-
surement while the psychical were not. A series of experiments were done
on the visual brightness, on the pitch, on the lifted weights, etc. Theoreti-
cally, Fechners basic point was the equality of just-noticeable-differences or jnds
on a given dimension. This just-noticeable-difference must be always equal
in the soul said Fechner. In the body they are not equal.
In Fechners Elements of Psychophysics (1860) measures were established
to calculate the jnds in the whole scale. Summing up the jnds found for
every grade, the scale will be established. After thatusing mathematical
264 ARNO ENGELMANN
formulaeFechner came to a logarithmic law. It was this idea of a direct rela-

tion between the body and the soul that was responsible for the logarithmic
formula (Fechner, 1860/1966). After 1860, many other scientists became
involved in psychophysical measurement. Some of these data question the
logarithmic law. In 1887, Fechner himself accepted this critique. He said
that the logarithmic law was not necessary. The only thing necessary was
the equality of internal or souls jnds (Fechner, 1877, 1882; Piron, 1963;
Scheerer, 1989).
Fechner was also the first scientist who invented three methods for es-
tablishing the thresholds and also for establishing the lowest intervals that
individuals determined as different. They are the method of just noticeable
differences, the method of right and wrong cases, and the method of aver-
age error. Today these three methods are still valid. The only change is in
their names.
The interest of Fechner in aesthetic problems is very important. For
example, he studied the shapes of rectangle more beautiful and came to
a proportion between highness and basis, the golden section (Fechner,
1876a,b). There was popular interest about two Madonna paintingsboth
from Holbein the Younger, a younger painter from the Renaissance. One
was really beautiful, the other were a poorer one. Was the poorer Dresden
Madonna a more recent reproduction from the richer Darmstadt Madon-
nas one? Fechner studied the two paintings and came to the result that
both were paintings from Holbein the Younger (Fechner, 1871).
THE IMPORTANCE OF FECHNER IN PRESENT-DAY SCIENCE
What is the importance of Fechner for present-day science? Fechner was

really the first scientist to use participants in trying to get data about con-
sciousness or, to employ Fechners terms, about his day vision. It happened
in the years before and during 1860s. As I know from the history of psy-
chology, nobody has examined repeated data from consciousness before
him. These repeated data were studied in examining the stimuli which were
physically equal or physically different in small amounts. These night vi-
sion data for Fechner were light vision for the participants. Today it is clear
that the beginning is in the contemporaneous term experimental psychology
although the term was not in use in Fechners early time.
What are the uses of Fechner in science? The first is about the use of his
three methods for the measuring thresholds or the just noticeable differ-
ence. The three methods are still being used. Only the names are different.
Instead the method of just noticeable differences the name today is the
method of limits; instead of the method of right and wrong cases the
Gustav Theodor Fechners Legacy 265
name today is the method of constant stimuli; and instead of the method
of average error the name today is the method of adjustment.
Second what would be with the contemporaneous use of analogy?
There is contemporaneous use of analogy. One example is the electronic
computer as an analogue of human brain. Or the systems from the cell
to the supranational system are analogy between themselves (Miller, 1978;
Scheerer, 1989; Simon & Newell, 1964; Woodward, 1972). Fechner was a
user of analogy. Would they use something about the Fechner use of analo-
gy? One, at least, would be according the present use of analogy. It would be
the analogy that comes from people that used psychophysics for thresholds
or scaling for small differences toward to the thresholds and the scaling for
small differences for the whole of human beings.
However, Fechner being the first scientist to use experiments on con-
sciousness, there were nothing in the necessary division between the ex-
perimenter and the experimented. At least, I did not read about this division in
Fechner, a person who thought about the methods in science. This division
has become absolutely essential in empirical science (Engelmann, 2008).
In general the modern contribution by S. S. Stevens reduces the Fechners
real contribution (Stevens, 1957, 1961a, 1961b, 1970). But there are scien-
tists who reconcile the two psychophysics laws, the Fechner law and the S.
S. Stevens law (Engelmann, 1966; Krueger, 1989).
REFERENCES
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cartes. uvres philosophiques. Tome II (pp. 1751073) [Philosophical works of Des-
cartes. Volume II. Paris: Garnier. (Originally published 16411642)]
Engelmann, A. (1966) A lei de potncia de Stevens: um caso de constncia per-
ceptiva? [Stevens potency law: a perceptual constancy case?]. Jornal Brasileiro de
Psicologia, 3(1), 1948.
Engelmann, A. (2008) From the terrible loneliness to the wonderful agreement of
human beings. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42, 5675.
Fechner, G. T. (1871) Holbeinschen Madonna [The Holbeins Madonna]. Leipzig:
Breitkopf & Hrtel.
Fechner, G. T. (1876a) Vorschule der sthetik. Teil I [Preparatory school for esthetics.
Part I]. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hrtel.
Fechner, G. T. (1876b) Vorschule der sthetik. Teil II [Prepatory school for esthetics.
Part II]. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hrtel.
Fechner, G. T. (1877) In Sachen der Psychophysik [On matters of psychophysics]. Leip-
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Fechner, G. T. (1882) Revision der Hauptpunkte der Psychophysik [Revision about more
celebrated points from psychophysics]. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hrtel.
266 ARNO ENGELMANN
Fechner, G. T. (1889) Elemente der Psychophysik. Zweite unvernderte Auflage. Zweiter Teil
[Elements of psychophysics. Second unchanged edition. Second part]. Leipzig:
Breitkopf & Hrtel.
Fechner, G. T. (1851/1906) Zend-Avesta oder ber die Dinge des Himmels und des Jenseits.
Dritte Auflage [Zend-Avesta or about things from heavens and from the beyond.
Third edition]. Leipzig: Leopold Voss. (Original work published 1851)
Fechner, G. T. (1927) Nanna oder ber das Seelenleleben der Pflanzen [Nanna or About
the life of soul from the plants]. Leipzig: Leopold Voss. (Original work published
1848)
Fechner, G. T. (1860/1966) Elements of psychophysics. Vol. 1 (H. E. Adler, trans.). New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. (Original work published 1860).
Krueger, L. E. (1989) Reconciling Fechner and Stevens: Toward a unified psycho-
physical law. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 251320.
Miller, J. G. (1978) Living systems. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Osgood, C. E. (1953) Method and theory in experimental psychology. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Piron, H. (1963) La psychophysique [Psychophysics]. In H. Piron, R. Chocholle,
& J. Leplat Trait de psychologie exprimentale II. Sensation et motricit [Experimental
treatise II. Sensation and prime mover] (pp. 162). Paris: P.U.F.
Scheerer, E. (1987) The unknown Fechner. Psychological Research, 49, 197202.
Scheerer, E. (1989) Conjuring Fechners spirit. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12,
288290.
Simon. H. A., & Newell, A. (1964) The uses and limitations of models. In M.H. Marx
(Ed.) Theories in contemporary psychology (pp. 89104). New York: Macmillan.
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nier. (Original work published 1677)
Stevens, S. S. (1957) On the psychophysical law. Psychological Review, 64, 153181.
Stevens, S. S. (1961a) To honor Fechner and repeal his law. Science, 133, 8186.
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body problem. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Science, 8, 367386.
CHAPTER 12
FORGOTTEN METHODOLOGY
VYGOTSKYS CASE1
Nikolai Veresov
The XXIst International Congress of Psychology in Paris was opened by

Paul Fraisse, its President, with an address whose first sentence was:
The field of psychology is in a state of crisis. The crisis is more than a parox-
ysm of growth, however, because it is theory that is really at stake. We are, in
fact, in the midst of a scientific revolution and, in Kuhns terminology, we are
working our way toward a new paradigm. (XXIe Congress International de
Psychology, 1978, p. 63)
Since 1978 not so much changes happened.

At the APA Annual Convention in New York in 1995 almost twenty years
after the Paris Congress, David Bakan, among many others, made a strong
statement that the crisis of psychology is not in the lack of psychologists or
lack of literature being produced. It is in the poor development of under-
standing of human life, the science itself, and the relationship of the science
to the world. In his paper, Bakan discusses three senses in which there has
been losssubject matter, method, and the mission (Bakan, 1996). Such
claim indicates that the crisis is not historical, but rather methodological.
As Yurevich (2009) mentions:
Even so, in spite of the circumstances that mitigate the sense of crisis much
of the psychological community is highly sensitive to it, and not so much to

268 NIKOLAI VERESOV
the symptoms mentioned above but to the lack of progress in overcoming

them. Assessments of the general methodological status of psychology given
by William James, Karl Bhler, and others over the past hundred years do not
differ much from modern assessments of the crisis. Thus, any present-day
psychologist would probably go along with James contention that psychol-
ogy is reminiscent of physics before Galileo: there is not a single universally
recognized fact nor a single universally shared generalization (James, 1890).
Lack of progress in overcoming the crisis puts into question the progress of
psychological science in general (Yurevich, 2009, p. 2).2
Yet, it is very comfortable crisis, at least for psychologists. In contrast to

physicians, experimental psychologists feel free from mind-crashing puz-
zles of how to interpret theoretically the data they obtain; as for psycho-
logical theoreticiansthey are free to mix various concepts and principles
in order to create the theory they like to create, as if they are building a
house out of Lego blocks. For developed3 sciences, for example, physics or
biology, the crisis is extraordinary situation which requires the unification
of efforts to overcome it as soon as possible. For psychology the permanent
crisis is an ordinary state of affairs, which everybody in this science experi-
ences as something normal. The situation looks like the classical anecdote
about the patient who had a problem, but after visiting psychoanalyst he
has the same problem, and now he is not worrying anymore, but is just
proud of it. In some sense such situation in psychology is understandable,
especially now, in the so-called post-postmodernist times, when every opin-
ion is correct, every truth is the truth and at the same time it is not. What
else could we expect in a situation when Culture was gradually reduced to
Text, then to Discourse and finally to the Narrative, and the personality
was reduced to the Agent and then to Recipient-Reagent? Psychology goes
even further: as Tatsuya Sato has to note, one of the defining features of
contemporary psychological methodology is to depict a person as a mixture
of many relatively independent variables. Ironically speaking, human be-
ings are viewed as if they were determined by precisely those many variables
in which psychologists have interest (Sato et al, 2007 p. 53).
More than ten years have passed since the New York Conference, and
not everybody is so pessimistic about the future of our science. Thus, in
his paper of 2007, Aaro Toomela presents his view on the possibilities of
methodological breakthrough in psychology. As he claims, there are two ways
for overcoming limitations of methods used in psychology. One is to invent
new methods of research. The other way is to look back into the history
of methodological thought and ask whether methodological principles ap-
plied in research long time ago and abandoned in the course of history
disappeared due to purely non-scientific cultural reasons (Toomela, 2007,
pp. 67). According to Toomela, contemporary mainstream psychology
follows the traditions of pre-World War II North American psychology. Con-
Forgotten Methodology 269
siderably more insightful methodological principles of GermanAustrian

psychology have moved into periphery of psychological thought (Toome-
la, 2007, p. 18). I cannot completely share his opinion on the geographical
division of the psychological mainstream (for example, North American
psychology was, in some sense, the result of British philosophy of empiri-
cism), but what I agree with is that history of psychology could bring some
unexpected surprises to our science. On the other hand, such strong claim
looks abstract without certain historical example. I discuss such an example
in my paper. I took historical example of how insightful methodological
principles have moved into periphery of psychological thought. So, my pa-
per is a sort of historical-methodological case study; that is why it is entitled
The Vygotsky case.
WHY VYGOTSKY?
I have at least two reasons to address to L.Vygotskys scientific legacyone

historical, and second, methodological. The historical reason is that already
in the middle of 1920s he made a deep historical and methodological sur-
vey of state of affairs in psychology in Historical meaning of the crisis in
psychology (Vygotsky, 1982). Of course, every generation of psychologists
has proclaimed a crisis in psychology or of psychology. But Vygotskys case is
something special; having discovered the historical meaning of the crisis,
he proposed an alternative approach in methodology, known as cultural-
historical theory. In some sense his cultural-historical theory was a sort of
methodological proposition of how to overcome the crisis. It might be of
interest to undertake a survey of, first, what methodological alternative Vy-
gotsky proposed, and second, why it still remains partly forgotten and partly
misunderstood.
My task is not to give a sort of description of the main traits of Vygotskys
psychological theory; I will focus on the items directly connected to the top-
ic of this paper. There are at least two interconnected aspects in Vygotskys
which sound extremely crucial nowadays and make possible to speak on
his theory as a really existing methodological alternative for contemporary
psychology.
1. Claim against empiricism and descriptive methods. Thus, in his Histori-

cal meaning of Crisis he wrote:
There is one fact that prevents all investigators from seeing the genu-
ine state of affairs in psychology. This is the empirical character of its
constructions. It must be torn off from psychologys constructions like
a pellicle, like the skin of a fruit, in order to see them as they really are
(Vygotsky, 1982, p. 377).4
270 NIKOLAI VERESOV
Later on, in the beginning of 1930s, improving this critical posi-

tion to empirical theorizing in psychology, he wrote: Empirical
character of such constructions leads to the situation when they
lose any theoretical sustainability and eclectically include and as-
similate allogenic elements (Vygotsky, 1932, p. 12). For Vygotsky,
the descriptive explanatory models and principles based on em-
pirical methods of investigation should be replaced by explanatory
models and principles.
2. Claim of developmental analysis and qualitative research methods. Instead
of merely describing the stages of development, psychological the-
ory should find the ways of how to explain development (includ-
ing its sources, laws, conditions, moving forces, contradictions, and
underlying mechanisms). Development is always very complex and
contradictory process, but, first of all, it is a process of qualitative
change.
Vygotskys claim and basic principle was: To understand the mental func-
tion means to restore both theoretically and experimentally the whole
process of its development in phylo- and ontogenesis (Luria & Vygotsky,
1992). Later on in my paper I shall discuss these matters with more details,
yet here I cannot get rid of the temptation to give an historical example,
which shows Vygotskys approach in condensed form. In 1966 at the XVIII
World Psychological Congress there was a short conversation between Jean
Piaget and Piotr Galperin, former student and collaborative of Vygotsky.5
After presenting their materials Piaget said Dear Professor Galperin! I see
the difference between our approaches. I investigate things how they are,
whereas you investigate things how they could be. Galperins reply was
Things as they are is just the private case of how they could be.
Unfortunately, some of Vygotskys methodological findings (including
the two I mentioned above) remain undiscovered in contemporary main-
stream psychological discourse, and some of them remain misunderstood
by Western and Russian Vygotskians. To make the point as clear as possible,
I will concentrate on two items from Vygotskythe one, which is unknown
(general genetic law of cultural development), and the other one, which is
well known (zone of proximal development).
THE THEORY: SUBJECT MATTER AND THE GENERAL LAW
What Vygotsky proposed was a sort of methodological alternative to tradi-

tional psychology in a sense of the subject matter and in a sense of method. Let us
make a short survey on the first of them.
Vygotskys theory deals with higher mental functions in humans. In this

respect it was an alternative to dominating methodological thinking in psy-
chology, which entailed Wilhelm Wundt, that they could not be studied in
experimental psychology. They could only be studied by historical analysis
of various cultural products (folktales, customs, rituals and so on). Vygotsky
proposed something different:
Higher mental functions are not built on the top of elementary processes,
like some kind of second storey, but they are new psychological systems com-
prising a complex nexus of elementary functions that, as part of a new system,
begin themselves to act in accordance with new laws (Vygotsky, 1978, p.58)
For Vygotsky, the subject matter of the theory was higher mental func-
tions not as they are, but in the very process of their development. Cultural-
historical theory was the theory of the origin and development of higher mental func-
tions.
The one-sidedness and erroneousness of the traditional view (emphasis mine

NV) ...on higher mental functions consist primarily and mainly in an inability
to look at these facts as facts of historical development, in the one-sided con-
sideration of them as natural processes and formations, in merging and not
distinguishing the natural and the cultural, the essential and the historical,
the biological and the social in the mental development...; in shortin an in-
correct basic understanding of the nature of the phenomena being studied...
Putting it more simply, with this state of the matter, the very process of de-
velopment of complex and higher forms of behavior remained unexplained
and unrealized methodologically (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 2)
For Vygotsky, the fatal fault of traditional psychology (including empiri-

cal psychology, American behaviorism and Russian reflexology) was in de-
composing of higher forms and structures into primarily elements, while
ignoring the problem of quality, which is not reducible to quantitative dif-
ferences (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 4).
But what exactly does the development of higher mental functions
mean from qualitative perspective? What differentiates Vygotskys approach
from other developmental theories of that time?
The concept development of higher mental functions and the subject of

our research encompass two groups of phenomena that seem, at first glance,
to be completely unrelated, but in fact represent two basic branches, two
streams of development of higher forms of behavior inseparably connected,
but never merging into one. These are, first, the processes of mastering exter-
nal materials of cultural development and thinking: language, writing, arith-
metic, drawing; second, the processes of development of special higher men-
tal functions not delimited and not determined with any degree of precision
and in traditional psychology termed voluntary attention, logical memory, for-
272 NIKOLAI VERESOV
mation of concepts, etc. Both this taken together also form that we...call the
process of development of higher forms of the childs behavior (Vygotsky,
1997, p. 14, emphasis mine)
I could call this the principle of two streams or the principle of two
processes. The second important item here is the general law of the theory.
Since the subject matter of the theory is the process of development, corre-
spondingly the general law was named the general genetic law of cultural
development of higher mental functions.
It makes sense to look on the formulation of the general law since the
whole Vygotskys theory is based on it, and to understand the law means to
understand the theory. And conversely, any kind of misunderstanding of
the law brings deep misunderstanding of the whole theory. Later in this pa-
per I give an example of such fatal misunderstanding, yet here let us make
a brief survey of the meaning of the law in a form given by Vygotsky:
[...] any function in the childs cultural development appears on stage twice,
that is, on two planes. It firstly appears on the social plane and then on a
psychological plane. Firstly it appears among people as an inter-psychological
category, and then within the child as an intra-psychological category. This is
equally true with regard to voluntary attention, logical memory, the forma-
tion of concepts and the development of volition. (Vygotsky, 1983, p. 145)
At first glance it looks very close to the famous socio-genetic principle

developed by Pierre Janet. Even more, for many researchers it looks even
obvious. Thus, Valsiner, expressing the wide-spread opinion, wrote that the
Vygotskys main contribution was in his consistent application of the basic
socio-genetic principle, borrowed from Pierre Janet to issues of human de-
velopment. Therefore, the general genetic law in cultural-historical theory
could be appropriately labeled the JanetVygotsky law (Valsiner, 2000,
p. 40).
Yet, I think that such understanding is not completely relevant to the
original meaning of Vygotskys law. Some things here should be clearly
identified. Let us try to make a step to such kind of identification. I under-
took a detailed analysis of the formulation of the general genetic law in my
previous publications (Veresov, 2005, 2006, 2007a,b), so here I just repeat it
in brief with main emphasis to what is necessary for the topic of this paper.
At first glance, Vygotskys formulation emphasizes the most important as-
pectsocial origins of mind, as fundamental in cultural-historical approach
to human development. But, an attentive and careful reader can easily see
some discrepancies here. Actually, if every function appears first in the so-
cial relations between people on the social level, and then inside (within)
the child, how then mental functions appear in the social relations, and in
which form they exist? If they do appear in social relations, how then they
change their location moving from social to individual? What is the transi-
tional mechanism? Or do they disappear from the social level and then ap-
pear by some mystical way again within the individual? Internalization can
explain the transformation from the social level to individual, but cannot
explain appearance of the function on the social level, within the relations.
The crucial point is that, according to Vygotsky:
[] every higher mental function, before becoming internal mental function

was external because it was social before it became an internal, strictly mental
function; it was formerly a social relation of two people. (Vygotsky, 1997, p.
105)
Social relation is not the area, not the field, and not the level where
mental function appearsthe social relation itself becomes human indi-
vidual functionherein lays the answer.
Second, if every higher mental function was a social relation between two
or more people, does it mean that every social relation can become a mental
function? There is clear notion of what type or relation can become a mental
function. I mean particularly the word category ( ) Vygotsky
uses in the formulation. The term category (which is repeated twice in
the formulation of the general law) has definite meaning. In Russian pre-
revolutionary theatres vocabulary the word category meant dramatic event,
collision of characters on the stage. Vsevolod Meierhold (famous Russian
theatre director) wrote that category is the event, which creates the whole
drama.
Vygotsky was familiar with the language of Russian theatre and arts and
had to use the word category to emphasize the character of the social rela-
tion, which become the individual function. The social relation he means is
not an ordinary social relation between the two individuals. This is a social
relation that it appears as a category, i.e., as emotionally colored and expe-
riencing collision, the contradiction between the two people, the dramati-
cal event two individuals. Being emotionally and mentally experienced as
social drama (on the social plane) it later becomes the individual intra-
psychological category.
Probably, the best example here might be the case of debate between
two people. Imagine (or just remember) that one day you met a friend
and had a debate, expressing opposite positions. Dramatical collision in
a debate, experienced by the both participants, can lead to a sort of self-
reflection. In a course of time, (for example on next morning) one of the
participants remembers the event and what he has been done and said. It
could happen like I was wrong saying that, I made a mistakeI should not
say such sharp wordsI was so aggressive and did not pay enough attention
to what he tried to sayHow stupid I was yesterday We see here that the
individual now experiences the same category intra-psychologically. In this
type of internal category all the mental functions of the individual are in-
274 NIKOLAI VERESOV
volved (memoryI said something rough, with emotionsHow stupid

my behavior was, what a shame, while thinkingI have to think it over
and never repeat such bad things, and volitionI must stop it, I will never
forget of what I have been done. I promise to myself to be patient).
Such emotionally experienced collision brings radical changes to the
individuals mind, and therefore it is a sort of act of development of mental
functionsthe individual becomes different, he feels higher and above
his own behavior. Without internal drama, an internal category, such kind
of mental changes are hardly possible. So, the term category is a key word
here. Dramatical character of human development, development through
contradictory events (acts of development)this is Vygotskys emphasis.
One could ask, nevertheless, why Vygotsky himself did not use the term
dramatical collision or just drama openly. Probably, such interpretation
of the general law is nothing else then a wild fantasy of Nikolai Veresov?
Probably he is just attributing to Vygotsky what he actually did not mean.
The only trusted evidence, the final and the best evidence must be the
evidence of Vygotsky himself. So, on the same page and even in the same
paragraph where Vygotsky formulates the general genetic law of cultural
development, he specifies how the law is connected with the experimental
method:
From here comes, that one of the central principles of our work is experi-
mental unfolding of higher mental process into the drama, which happened
between the people. (Vygotsky, 1983, p. 145).
The requirement to experimental research is the necessity to restore the

original form of any mental function, the form of social relation named by
Vygotsky clearly and openlythe drama. What other evidence do we need?
Every higher mental function originally exists as an inter-psychological cat-
egory (dramatical social event in the relations of the two people) and after
that it appears as an intra-psychological category. If the only way of objec-
tive analysis of the higher mental function is experimental reconstruction
of the history of its development, we have to start from the experimental
reconstruction of its original formthe drama between the people.
There is one more consideration on this topic. If we understand Vy-
gotskys category as dramatical collision, from this it logically follows that
the experiencing (perezhivaniye) has to be the dynamical unit of analysis of
consciousness, since development of consciousness, according to the law, is
dynamical living complex unity of external and internal drama. If my un-
derstanding of the general law is correct, nothing but experiencing should
be considered as such unit. Vygotsky made this logical conclusion:
An actual dynamic unit of consciousness, i.e. the complete unit which con-
sciousness consists of, will be experiencing (perezhivanie) (Vygotsky, 1983,
p.383).
So, the principle is quite strict and clear. If an experimental study does
not unfold the initial form of higher mental function (the dramatical event
between two people), it hardly could be identified as genetical experiment,
it does not belong to the experimental-genetical method. It seems that we
have enough ground for such a strong expression. With this in mind let us
turn to the analysis of experimental method of Vygotsky.
THE METHOD: GENETICAL EXPERIMENT

Methodological requirements for the research method follow logically
from the general law. Yet, there is one more methodological issue which
should be taken into account. In order to find an objective scientific ex-
perimental method of study of the development of higher mental functions,
Vygotsky principally rejected the way to study the functions which are al-
ready matured. The matured ones (flowers of development) are closed
for direct investigation and this circumstance requires different approach.6
Even more, when functions become ingrown, i.e., when they move within,
an extremely complex transformation of all of a functions structure takes
place, and their entire structure becomes indiscernible. Galperin describes
this so, that when the functions are developed they recede into the depths
and are covered by phenomena of a completely different appearance, struc-
ture, and nature (Galperin, 1966, p. 26).7
Let us have a look how Vygotsky characterizes experimental-genetical
method.
The method we use may be called experimental-genetical method in the

sense that it artificially elicits and creates a genetic process of mental develop-
mentThe principal task of analysis is restoring the process to its initial stage,
or, in other words, converting a thing into a process. This kind of experiment
attempts to dissolve every congealed and petrified psychological form and
convert it into a mowing flowing flood of separate instances8 that replace one
another. In short, the problem of such an analysis can be reduced to taking
each higher form of behavior not as a thing, but as a process and putting it in
motion so as to proceed not from a thing and its parts, but from a process to
its separate instances.9 (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 68)
What does it actually meanrestoring the process to its initial stage?

This means the necessity to restore the initial, the original form of the func-
tion under study; this means to restore the social relation as primary form
in which the mental function originally exists.
276 NIKOLAI VERESOV
The requirement to experimental research is the necessity to restore the

original form of any mental function, the form of social relation named
drama.
I would like to take as an example the experimental study of Vygotsky
from The history of development of higher mental functions (Vygotsky,
1997, Vol. 4). The aim of the experimental study was to observe the process
of transition from direct operation to using a sign. A child was placed in a
situation in which he was presented with a problem of remembering, com-
paring or selecting something. If the problem did not exceed the natural
capacity of the child, he dealt with it directly, or with the ordinary method.
But the situation in experiments was almost never like this. The problem
confronting the child usually exceeded his capacity and seemed too dif-
ficult to solve with this kind of direct method. At the same time, beside the
child, there usually were some objects which were completely neutral in
relation to the whole situation (pieces of paper, wooden sticks, peas, shot,
etc). In this case, under certain conditions, when the child was confronted
by a problem he could not solve, experimenters could observe how the
neutral stimuli stopped being neutral and were drawn into the behavioral
process, acquiring the function of sign (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 85).
Explanation of the diagram reveals its transitional, dynamical aspect,
rather than the structural one (Figure 1):
In our diagram two arbitrary points, A and B are presented; a connection

must be established between these points. The uniqueness of the experiment
consists of the fact that there is no connection at present and we are investi-
gating the nature of its formation. Stimulus A elicits a reaction that consists
in finding stimulus X, which in turn acts on point B. Thus, the connection
between points A and B is not direct, but mediated. This is what the unique-
ness of all higher forms of behavior consist of. (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 80)
The processes of active searching and finding a sign, as well as transform-

ing of the whole unit and transition from direct connection to indirect (me-
diated) connection were in the focus of Vygotskys experimental studies of
origins of mediating activity.
FIGURE 1. General Scheme of Mediating (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 62).

When the obstacle arises, the neutral stimulus acquires the function of
a sign and from that time, the structure of the operation takes on an essen-
tially different aspect10 (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 85). Thus, the process of genesis
of higher mental function was experimentally investigated. The process was
restored from its initial stagedrama, collision, an obstacleto its final
form. Traditional structural analysis (analysis of mediated activity) in this
case cannot serve as relevant research method. Genetical experiment in-
cludes the structural analysis as an aspect, but even a structure, the combi-
nation of components within the whole system is seen from developmental
perspective. I would like to note that, describing experiments, Vygotsky in-
sistently repeats again and again: there is no connection at present and
we are investigating the nature of its formation; the problem confront-
ing the child usually exceeded his capacity; when the obstacle arises,
the neutral stimulus acquires the function of a sign as if he was afraid of
being misunderstood.
The general model of genetical method of analysis could be presented
in the following general two-step model (Figure 2). The model presented
in Figure 2 (act of development as two-step transition from the collision
to sign creation and then to the use of sign) is a kind of basic principle ap-
plicable to various concrete research programs conducted by Vygotsky and
his co-workers in late 1920s (including Vygotsky-Sakharov famous research
in creating of artificial concepts (Sakharov, 1994/1930); even more, it un-
derlies all his famous examples of the development of higher mental func-
tionsappearance of the pointing gesture in child, the knot for memory,
drawing a lot, etc.
What is much more important is that this two steps model is method-
ologically connected with the issues I already discussed in this chapter:
Tool (sign) creation Use of sign

Dramatical collision TRANSITION
THROUGH
TRANSFORMATION
= ACT OF DEVELOPMENT
FIGURE 2. General Model of Genetical Method.

278 NIKOLAI VERESOV
1. the subject-matter of the theory, since higher mental functions are

social in origin, mediated by cultural signs in their structure and
voluntary in their mode of functioning;
2. the general genetic law of development of higher mental func-
tions; and,
3. the principle of two streams.
So, Vygotskys methodological alternative proposal to study higher men-

tal functions and cognitive processes seems to be not only of historical in-
terest, especially in respect to its emphasis on development, and in respect to
the research method aimed on qualitative analysis, instead of quantitative
descriptions. However it remains mostly unknown and unaccepted by the
mainstream psychology, even by those scientific schools which identified
themselves as developmental. Why then, despite obvious methodological
potential, cultural-historical theory stays somewhere on the periphery? As
I tried to show, Vygotskys cultural-historical theory is exactly the case of
how, in words of Aaro Toomela (2007, p. 7), methodological principle ap-
plied in research long time ago abandoned in the course of history and dis-
appeared. Sometimes, however, the problem is not just disappearance of
ideas without scientific reasons. In other cases, ideas, superficially, are not
forgotten. In such cases, ideas can be distorted or misunderstood instead.
Such distortion characterizes the perception of several Vygotskys ideas.
The next section of the chapter discusses these items.
VYGOTSKY AND VYGOTSKIANS:

ADAPTATION AT THE COST OF LOSS?
There is relatively large scientific community identifying itself as Vygotski-
ans.11 No doubt, during last decades the Vygotskians undertook an enor-
mous amount of efforts to include the cultural-historical theory into the
world psychological discourse.12 The results are impressive; the splash of
the interest to Vygotsky and his approach is the best and obvious indication
of the state of affairs.
Who if not Vygotskians are able to open his methodology to the world
psychology? Closer inspections of the state of affairs reveals, however, con-
fusion and incoherence among those who could be called Vygotskians.
Thus, Seth Chaiklin, the editor of The theory and practice of cultural his-
torical psychology (2001) says:
In this volume, we find chapters that are self-described as sociocultural

psychology,sociocultural studies, sociogenetic psychology.socio-
historicocultural, sociohistorical co-constructivist, cultural-historical,
or refer to cultural-historical activity theory. One could say that that we are
in danger of having as many labels as we have authors (Chaiklin, 2001, p. 24)
Such kind of strange situation with the multiplied labels shows indirectly
the state of affairs inside Vygotskian camp nowadays; it reflects somehow
its theoretical fuzziness and methodological uncertainty. In response to this
challenge, Chaiklin provided the following explanation:
Ultimately the concrete scientific practices and accomplishments that are en-
compassed by a label seem more important than the label itself. In this spirit,
we could ignore the problem of multiple labels used to refer to the cultural-
historical psychology, arguing that what matters is the content of the scientific
work and not its labelThe label often serves to identify a particular tradition
of problems and key persons (Chaiklin, 2001, p. 25)
It is not my task to discuss the variations and differences inside the com-
munity.13. I simply use this label-multiplication play example as an indica-
tor that not everything is clear in Vygotskys theory even for Vygotskians.
The only one thing which is clear is that in spite of differences in various
wings of the community, the first key person for it is Lev Vygotsky. It is much
more interesting to look on the tradition of problems in this community.
Looking from the historical angle, I should say that since Mind in Society
was published in 1978, the target of Vygotskians was the recognition of Vy-
gotskys theory in world psychology, especially in Northern America. Actu-
ally, Mind in society, the small book of translated cocktail-like compilations
from Vygotskys was, as the Russians say, the first swallow in introducing
of Vygotsky to Western readers.14 That was, and still is, the great aim, but
the strategy of introduction, from my point of view, was, and remains inap-
propriate. Vygotskians like to speak about non-classical psychology of Vy-
gotsky (see, for example, Asmolov, 1998). What they mostly have been done
is that non-classical Vygotsky was adapted and incorporated into classical
traditional psychological theoretical stream. The price for this was its meth-
odological simplification and theoretical fragmentation. In some sense, the
cocktaillike compilations of various simplified theoretical fragments re-
mains as the dominating style of the theorists in Vygotskian community. For
someone it might look as an advantage, since Vygotsky is not a holy cow,
and his theory is not a museum exhibition. Every theory must develop in a
course of time, but the point is what in the theory must be developed and
how it must be done. Dealing with the texts of contemporary Vygotskians,
I cannot get away from the impression that they are modernizing the over-
simplified and fragmented image of the theory instead of the theory itself.
Several examples of such simplifications and fragmentations can be pro-
vided. It is not possible to go into all details here. So, I would like to draw
the attention to two examplesone of simplification and second on frag-
mentation, one in respect to theory and its subject-matter and the other in
respect to methodology. My first example will be about general genetic law
280 NIKOLAI VERESOV
of development of higher mental functions and second will be about the

concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD).
FIRST EXAMPLE: GENERAL GENETIC LAW AS A VICTIM

OF SIMPLIFICATION
In Mind in Society (1978) the formulation of the general genetic law is given
in the following way:
every function in the childsdevelopment appears twice: first, on the so-

cial level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsycho-
logical), and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally
to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts.
All the higher mental functions originate as actual relations between human
individuals (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57)
This formulation was quoted and repeated so many times that it gradu-
ally obtained a status of classical formulation for generations of researchers
in Vygotskian community. Yet, this formulation is not Vygotskian, it rather
belongs to translators of Mind in Society.
Where is simplification here? Comparing this with the formulation taken
from Vygotsky that is presented above, one could see that what is missed is
category, collision, dramatical event between the individuals, which is the
key word in Vygotskys formulation and the core of the law. Stressing that the
higher mental function does not first appear in social relation, but appears
as a social relation, it says nothing about the nature of such social relation.
Omitting the central concepts from the law definitely looks like simplifica-
tion, if not to say more.
Second, it seems that words on the stage and on two planes Vygotsky
uses are not metaphors, which might be omitted or ignored. Stage in Rus-
sian means scene. the arena, literally the place in the theatre where actors
play. Scene has two planesthe front plane (also called the first plane)
and the back plane (often called the second plane). According to the-
atres traditions, main events of the performance should happen on the
front plane of the scene (the same law we could find in visual arts). So, it
means that on the stage of our development, the category appears twice
inter-psychologically (on the first, front plane) and then intra-psycholog-
ically (on the second internal individual plane). Therefore there are no two
levels in development, but there are two planes on ONE stage, two dimensions of one
dramatical event. Higher mental function is not something which is jumping
from one level to another, appearing and disappearing without a trace, it
appears and exists on the same scene; they all develop according to one and
the same law.
What really disappears, or becomes unclear, here is the deep theoretical
difference between the cultural-historical approach and neo-behaviorism
(or social constructivist theoretical constructions). Really, what is the differ-

ence between this simplified image of general genetic law and the principle
of Janet?
Michael Cole and Vera John- Steiner, the editors of Mind in Society, say
that the aim of the book is to change the image of Vygotsky as a sort of ear-
ly neo-behaviorist of cognitive developmentan impression held by many
of our colleagues (Cole & John-Steiner, 1978, p. ix). Does the simplified
formulation of Vygotskys basic fundamental law really change such image?
On the contrary, due to this simplification, contemporary social behav-
iorists and social constructivists often consider Vygotsky as one of them.15
I can understand their appreciation. Yet, at the same time, their answers
to questions: What is original in Vygotsky from the theoretical standpoint?
What really new does it bring? Where is the methodological novelty here?
are not convincing at all. The references of Vygotskians on the items of the
social origin of mind or to sign mediation (Cole, 1995, 1996; Wertsch,
1985, 1991) do not look convincing, since they were known long before
Vygotsky (Veresov, 2005). Being isolated from the theoretical developmen-
tal context (general law of development) in which they only make sense in
cultural-historical theory, these two ideas lose their explanatory force.
So, the given example shows how an adaptation of Vygotskys theoreti-
cal heritage to the existing traditions in psychology goes through simpli-
fication at the cost of its explanatory potential. Such forced adaptations
to inappropriate theoretical contexts may explain why many ideas ...have
moved into periphery of psychological thought, abandoned and nearly
forgotten (Toomela, 2007, p. 18).
One could say that this example does not reflect the whole picture and
there is nothing more than just sad mistake of translation. Actually, since
1978 the correct and complete formulation of the general genetic law ap-
peared twicein 1982 (Vygotskys Collected Works in Russian) and in 1997
(particularly in Volume 4 of Vygotskys Collected Works in English). But the
point is that even after that and until now, researchers (Vygotskians and
non-Vygotskians) refer to the simplified formulation of 1978. Furthermore,
the editors of both books did not provide any kind of scientific commentar-
ies of why Vygotsky stressed the term category and what it could mean.
Twenty six years passed and there is no even single article in attempt to find
the correct explanation of Vygotskys general genetic law. Nobody puts into
question whether the formulation of 1978 is correct. Researchers continue
to create and conduct their experimental programs on the basis of this
simplified image, being sure that they are working in Vygotskian paradigm.
Rare attempts to provide a new and complete explanation of the gen-
eral genetic law based on the original meanings of Vygotskys terms (e.g.,
Veresov, 2005) remain ignored by leading theorists in modern Vygotskian
community. Such resistance is understandable since Vygotskys law strongly
282 NIKOLAI VERESOV
contradicts their theoretical constructions. for example, in the triangle

of activity of Engestrm, which is the basic theoretical model of the so
called cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) there is no place at all
for dramatical collision, i.e. for the initial form of existence of the higher
mental functions, according to Vygotsky (cf., Engestrm, 1987, 1990, 2008;
Engestrm, Miettinen, & Punamki, 1999). The problem, therefore, is not
only in erroneous translation; the problem is that the Vygotskys law is a
sort of victim of fatal theoretical and methodological simplification. What
is really sad is that by doing this the Vygotkskian community marginalizes
and encapsulates itself and loses developmental perspective of the whole
approach, which has very high theoretical potential.
SECOND EXAMPLE: ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT

AS A VICTIM OF FRAGMENTATION
In contrast to the general genetic law of development of higher mental
functions which remains mostly unknown to the modern mainstream psy-
chology (and even for those inside the Vygotskian community), the con-
cept of a zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a sort of the visit card of
Vygotsky. For example, G. Lefrancois writes:
Three underlying themes unify Vygotskys rather complex and far-reaching

theory. The first one is the importance of culture, the second theme is the
central role of language, and the third one is what Vygotsky calls the zone of
proximal development. (Lefrancois, 1994)
First of all, ZPD was not the central concept in cultural-historical theory.
Rather it was a sort of application of the theory and developmental research
method to the concrete educational practices, particularly to the problem
of the connections of learning and mental/intellectual development (Vy-
gotsky, 1934/1987; Vygotsky, 1935). Even the definition of ZPD looks pro-
foundly learning-practice oriented. This often-quoted definition of zone of
proximal development presents it as
...the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by in-

dependent problem solving and the level of potential development as deter-
mined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration
with more capable peers... The zone of proximal development defines those
functions that have not yet matured but are in the process of maturation,
functions that will mature tomorrow but are currently in an embryonic state.
These functions could be termed the buds or flowers of development rather
than the fruits of development. The actual developmental level character-
izes mental development retrospectively, while the zone of proximal develop-
ment characterizes mental development prospectively (Vygotsky, 1978, pp.
8687)
At first glance it really looks very practice-directed in respect to teaching-

learning process, easy to understand and therefore attractive to research-
ers and practitioners in this area. Yet, even this simplicity does not prevent
from its misunderstanding. For example, like this:
Perhaps Vygotskys most influential ideas are those related to zones of devel-
opment. What a child can do alone and unassisted is a task that lies in what
Vygotsky calls the zone of actual development (ZAD). When a teacher assigns
a task and the students are able to do it, the task is within the ZAD. (Wilhelm,
Baker & Dube, 2001)
Such a mixture of a distance and the levels of development could be con-

sidered as a sort of minor inaccuracy, but it generates some consequences,
i.e. deep disappointment in the whole idea:
We feelthat Vygotskys ZPD presents a restricted view of learning processes

and reduces the learners role to one of passivity and dependence upon the
adult (Lambert & Claydon, 2000, p.29)
This view, as the result of the mixture of and distance and levels misleads
the reader and completely contradicts the whole Vygotskys idea. For Vy-
gotsky, ZPD deals not only with the learning process, it deals with develop-
ment. Thus he wrote:
Play creates a zone of proximal development of the child. In play the child
always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as
though he were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of magnifying glass,
play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form and in itself
is a major source of development (Vygotsky, 1966, p. 101).
It is hard to imagine that the child in play is passive and dependent upon
the adult.16
In connection to this it should be mentioned that the concept of scaf-
folding, introduced by Jerome Bruner in the 1970s, moves to the central
place (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). Bruner proposed the notion of scaf-
folding:
On the one hand the zone of proximal development has to do with achiev-
ing consciousness and control. But consciousness and control come only
after one has already got a function well and spontaneously mastered. So how
could good learning be that which is in advance of development and, as it
were, bound initially to be unconscious since unmastered? (Bruner, 1985, p.
24)
The resolution comes from the teacher offering a vicarious form of control:
284 NIKOLAI VERESOV
If the child is enabled to advance by being under the tutelage of an adult or a

more competent peer, then the tutor or the aiding peer serves the learner as
a vicarious form of consciousness until such time as the learner is able to master
his own action through his own consciousness and control. When the child
achieves that conscious control over a new function or conceptual system, it
is then that he is able to use it as a tool. Up to that point, the tutor in effect
performs the critical function of scaffolding the learning task to make it
possible for the child, in Vygotskys word, to internalize external knowledge
and convert it into a tool for conscious control. (Bruner, 1985, pp. 2425)
The teacher performs the task of enabling the child to gain that mas-
tery by scaffolding it for her or him: breaking down the task into simpler,
more accessible elements; keeping the child stimulated and motivated; and
gradually withdrawing that adult support.
Yet, there is no clear definition of scaffolding; as Hammond notes, it
is sometimes used loosely to refer to rather different things (Hammond,
2002, p. 2). Briefly, scaffolding represents the helpful interactions between
adult and child that enable the child to do something beyond his or her
independent efforts. A scaffold is a temporary framework that is put up for
support and access to meaning and taken away as needed when the child
secures control of success with a task (Balaban, 1995; Clay, 2005; Rodgers,
2004, and others). The attractiveness of scaffolding is that, as Hammond
mentions, teachers find the metaphor appealing as it resonates with their
own intuitive conceptions of what it means to intervene successfully in stu-
dents learning (Hammond, 2002, p. 2). Furthermore, several instructional
programs were developed on the basis of the notion of ZPD interpreted
this way, such as reciprocal teaching and dynamic assessment (Palincsar,
Ransom, & Derber, 1988; Rosenshine & Meister, 2007).
Researchers of scaffolding emphasize its strong historical connection
with that of ZPD (Bordrova & Leong, 1998; Brown & Campione, 1994,
1996) viewing it as an application of ZPD to contemporary educational
contexts (Hobsbaum, Peters, & Sylva, 1996) or as a way of operational-
izing Vygotskys concept of working in the zone of proximal development
(Wells, 1999, p. 127). My task, however, is not to undertake an analysis of
the interrelations between these two concepts,17 but rather to show this as
one of the examples of fragmentation of Vygotskys theory.
There is a danger that a failure to understand the complexity of Vygotski-
an theory as a whole can lead to interpretation of the zone of proximal
development as a domination over a childs initiative and active position as
a learner. The criticism of the Vygotskian notion of the zone of proximal
development by Lambert & Clyde (2000) is the best illustration of taking
Vygotskian definitions of the ZPD out of the context of its theoretical as-
sumptions.
These two examples could be considered as a kind of methodological

query against the fragmentation of ZPD from the whole Vygotskys theory.
Again, who else, if not Vygotskian community is able to show the method-
ological limits of the concept of ZPD when it is artificially stripped from the
whole theory. On the other hand, who else, if not Vygotskian community,
is able to show its strong power and efficiency for the educational prac-
tices? Who else is expected to raise their voice against fragmentation of the
theory which destroys its methodological unity?
What is the approach to the concept of ZPD inside the Vygotskian com-
munity? In order to find the answer I choose two papers, published in 1993
and 2003. The reasons of my selection of these two papers from hundreds
published on this topic were that they both summarize and reflect the state
of affairs with ZPD in Vygotskian community at different points of time and,
second, they both deal with the methodological and theoretical aspects of
ZPD. It might help, using S. Chaiklins (2001) expression, to identify a
tradition of problems in this particular case.
Jaan Valsiner and Rene van der Veer (1993) begin with the assertion
that the concept of ZPD in which
Vygotsky brought into the focus of attention of psychological discourse in
early 1930s, and that has become widely known in contemporary psychologi-
cal discourse has been captivating the mind of many a contemporary re-
searchers. (Valsiner & van der Veer, 1993, p. 37)
Furthermore, the methodological aspect of the matter is stressed by the

authors:
Psychology has had a long history of semantic transformation of its measure-

ment-based descriptive concepts into causal concepts attributed to be be-
hind these measurements (latent variables or traits). Vygotsky recognized
that theoretical impasse well before he started to use the ZBR concept.
(Valsiner & van der Veer, 1993, p. 39)
...the logic of development of Vygotskys cultural-historical theory led to the

need to conceptualize the developmental processes that operate in the do-
main of present-to-future transformation of the functioning structure of the
psychological system. (ibid, p. 37)
Authors provide a nice illustration of the reasons of Vygotskys meth-

odological arguments against the measurement of intelligence by way of
documenting the mental functions that have already finished their course
of development. Using the comparison with a clinician who on the basis of
observable symptoms can diagnose the underlying causes of a disease, he
explained the need of mental testing to go beyond mere documentation
of the observable symptoms to the explication of the underlying causal sys-
tem. Indeed, the traditional definition of intelligence by way of what intel-
286 NIKOLAI VERESOV
ligence tests measure would equal a physicians statement that the patient
has influenza because the thermometer measures the body temperature to
be above normal. (ibid, p. 39) They, therefore express a reasonable skepti-
cism to scaffolding:
Scaffolding assumes maturational emergence of abilities heterochronically

those abilities that are not yet matured cannot participate in the problem
solving, and therefore the tutor must scaffold these aspects of action that rely
upon these abilities. Here the teaching-learning does not proceed ahead
of development (in Vygotskys favorite words), but rather tries to fit in with
the maturational schedule of established abilities In sum, the scaffolding
version of ZPD follows the individual-ecological reference framebecause
(from the childs perspective) the social scaffolds that the tutor builds around
the childs task-oriented actions are merely human additions to the task. It
does not concentrate on having impact on those psychological functions that
are not yet presently available, but might come into being in the near future.
(ibid, pp. 5051)
Accordingly, the restoration of the methodological context of ZPD in

structured theoretical framework seems to be of the primary importance:
Very few efforts have been made to construct theoretical frameworks that lo-
cate ZPD in a structured theoretical context. Furthermore, sometimes theo-
retical efforts in present-day psychology serve as convenient umbrella systems
to allow the investigators to carry out a myriad of empirical studies without
much innovation in the theoretical sphere (ibid, p. 51).
However, in 1993 the authors left this challenging task for the future.
Ten years passed. In 2003, Chaiklin again began with the description of the
current situation: ZPD now appears in most developmental and education-
al textbooks, as well as some general psychology books. Within educational
research, the concept is now used widely (or referred to) in studies about
teaching and learning in many subject-matter areas (Chaiklin, 2003, p.
40). He enumerates these areasfrom reading, writing, mathematics and
violin teaching to computer-mediated communication and psychotherapy.
Despite that, the author says that there is an obvious lack of theoretical
framework in discussions around ZPD:
The zone of proximal development was introduced as a part of general analy-

sis of child development. It is not a main or central concept in Vygotskys
theory of child development. Rather, its role is to point to an important place
and moment in the process of child development. To understand its role, one
must appreciate the theoretical perspective in which it appeared. That is, we
need to understand what Vygotsky meant by zone of proximal development
in general, if we are going to understand what he meant by zone of proximal
development in particular. In this way, the reader can develop a generative
understanding of the theoretical approach, which will be more valuable than

a dictionary definition of the concept (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 4546)
In Chaiklins opinion, many issues remain to be discussed; among them

(1) the historical context and methodological basis on which these ideas
were developed; and (2) relations with Vygotskys theory f the development
of psychological functions (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 58)
So, the whole picture is that the concept of ZPD being stripped from the
theoretical framework was gradually adapted to existing traditional educa-
tional practices and its strong methodological potential gradually disappears.
We could even say that ZPD being included into various educational practices
did not change them substantially (which was the original task and purpose
for which it was created in the cultural-historical theory); on the contrary,
existing traditional educational practices substantially changed the original
theoretical and experimental content of ZPD.18 The task of restoring of the
lost connections between ZPD and the theory still remains unsolved.
It is not an easy task. It might look like a call for unnecessary and artifi-
cial complication of the concept of ZPD. Yet, it might look like this for those
who mostly deal with simplified and adapted versions. Unlikely, among
hundreds papers published, there is no even one research done showing
better results of use of ZPD taken within Vygotskys theoretical framework
in contrast to simplified versions of ZPD stripped from the theoretical per-
spective. In my opinion, one of the main obstacles which prevent to under-
take such kind of study is theoretical fuzziness which Vygotskian scientific
community clearly demonstrates in this case. ZPD, therefore, remains a vic-
tim of fragmentation and simplification.
It seems that in this case it makes sense to come back to Vygotsky in or-
der to find if not clear answer, but at least indirect hints, which somehow
create zone of proximal development for researchers. The hint deals with
the idea of development. Yet, there is one point in Vygotskys definition of
ZPD which seems to be unclear. On one hand, he defines ZPD as a distance
between two levels of development.
the zone of proximal development defines those functions that have not
yet matured but are in the process of maturation, functions that will mature
tomorrow but are currently in an embryonic state. These functions could be
termed the buds or flowers of development rather than the fruits of
development (Vygotsky, 1935, p. 42).
On the other hand, he says:

The actual developmental level characterizes mental development retrospec-
tively, while the zone of proximal development characterizes mental develop-
ment prospectively (ibid.)
288 NIKOLAI VERESOV
It would be logical to say that in contrast to the level of actual devel-

opment, which characterizes the development retrospectively, the level of
potential development is that characterizes the process prospectively, since
the ZPD is a distance between these two levels. Why then Vygotsky speaks
not about the levels, but about the actual level and a zone (distance)? In
this case, the very concept of ZPD as a distance loses sense. Furthermore,
being applied to learning process this Vygotskys thought obtains practical
significance:
...instruction is maximally productive when it occurs at a certain point in the
zone of proximal development(Vygotsky, 1934, p. 212)
It looks rather strangewhy Vygotsky did not say that instruction is maxi-
mally productive when it occurs at the level of potential development? Cer-
tain point in a zone of proximal development is definitely not the level of
potential development, since ZPD is the distance between two levels. This is
not just an inaccuracy. In all texts about ZPD (Vygotsky, 1934, 1934/1998,
1935) he practically repeats the same, comparing the level of actual devel-
opment not with the level of potential development, but with ZPD.
What actually means and what is this magical certain point in develop-
ment existing somewhere between the levels in a zone of proximal devel-
opment? How is it possible to detect it? Is it just a logical gap? If there is a
logical gap in Vygotskys considerations, this means that J. Bruner is abso-
lutely right when speaking about hidden paradox in ZPD (Bruner, 1985).
But what if there is no such gap and the simplicity of definition of ZPD is
illusive? To find the answer let us turn to interconnected methodological
principles of Vygotskys theory which were discussed in previous sections of
this chapter:
1. development of higher mental functions as the subject-matter of
the theory;
2. the general genetic law of development of higher mental functions;
3. the two streams principle;
4. the method of genetical experiment (two step model).
If we approach the process of learning in ZPD from this theoretical
framework, we could see quite easily, that it completely corresponds to the
genetic experiment of Vygotsky described above in this chapter. At the be-
ginning, the child is placed in a situation in which he was presented with a
problem or the task which exceeded his capacity and directed to the buds
of flowers of development. The child experiences this problem as a sort of
collision, dramatic event (the category). At a certain point the child (with the
help of adult or in cooperation with more competent peer) finds or creates
an appropriate tool for the solution of this collision. In this very point two
streams of development meet each other; on one hand, the child becomes
able to organize and master his behavior with the help of a new tool (for
example, the sign)and this is the first stream of development, and, at the
same time, the radical change in development of his higher mental func-
tions occursthe bud gradually becomes the flower and then the fruit. The
concrete solution of the task or problem, which is found with the help of
adult or in cooperation with more competent peer (the level of potential
development), is not the point of primary importance here; what really is
important is what happens at a certain point within the zone of proximal develop-
ment. As a result, learning process really becomes developmental, learning
leads development, learning goes ahead of development, which is the core
principle of ZPD. In such case there is no any logical gap in Vygotskys
considerations and this in example of how to approach to ZPD from the
theoretical perspective of the whole Vygotskys theory. ZPD is not just a defi-
nition, it is a concept and the concepts do not work alone. Their meaning
could become clear only within the whole theory. The other stories happen
with the concepts which are isolated and fragmented from their theoretical
contexts. Unfortunately, the concept of ZPD is an example of the victim
of such fragmentation. Simplification and fragmentation still dominates;
Bruners paradox of ZPD, which follows from simplified understanding of
this concept, seems to be completely accepted by modern Vygotskian com-
munity. The adapted and fragmented ZPD dissolves in educational prac-
tices that remain non-developmental despite using the label of ZPD as a
sort of methodologically empty label. It is not a surprise, therefore, that for
many educators and researchers ZPD serves as a beautiful metaphor, rather
than the scientific concept.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Human being is developing being and this is its fundamental characteris-
tic. Human mind is the result of onto- , micro- and phylo-genetic cultural
development, but it is also an instrument of development of human being.
Vygotskys word in psychology was not only opposed to depth psychol-
ogy as contemporary Vygotskians like to say.
Our word in psychology: away from superficial psychologyin consciousness,

being and phenomenon are not equal. But we also oppose depth psychology.
Our psychology is a peak psychology (does not determine the depths of the
personality but its peaks). (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 138)
I cannot share the opinion of Roth and Lee that Vygotskys legacy is ne-
glected legacy (Roth & Lee, 2007). I would rather agree with the question
of Elhammoumi (2001); lost or merely domesticated?
290 NIKOLAI VERESOV
The title of this paper is Forgotten Methodology: Vygotskys Case. What

is then forgotten and what is not? For many years, speaking of the cultural-
historical theory the emphasis is made on three main aspects:
social origins of mind;

sign mediation; and
zone of proximal development.
These ideas were domesticated and still considered to be a sort of call-

ing card of Vygotskys theory. Even more, all three are not originally Vy-
gotskys. At the same time, there is a number of methodological ideas in cul-
tural-historical psychology which remain outside the discourse, or at least,
on the periphery:
1. Emphasis on development of higher mental functions as a system of quali-

tative changes, which can be experimentally organized and investi-
gated, which makes it possible to understand the underlying mech-
anisms of development rather than just to describe the functions
which are already developed.
2. The idea of human development as a drama with emphasis to cat-
egory (dramatical collision-event) and experiencing (peresivanie)
as a dynamic unit of consciousness (according to general genetic
law of cultural development of higher mental functions).
3. Vygotskys alternative to superficial psychology with main emphasis to
case studies where the observation and measuring are only narrow
components of detecting developmental changes in subject under
study.
It is not my topic to discuss why these methodological ideas are still ne-
glected in the psychological community. Yet, one of the reasons seems to
be obvious: in order to introduce Vygotskys theory to world psychology
the Western Vygotskians simplified and adapted the whole picture to the
existing tradition. It is quite understandable when the task is to make the
difficult theory recognizable. What is bad is that the price was too high and
Vygotskian community keeps on doing it until now, with no attention that
the world psychology is different and simplified and fragmented picture
is not anymore relevant. Ten years passed since I published Undiscovered
Vygotsky (Veresov, 1999). So, discovering undiscovered Vygotsky is still the
task for future.
Is Vygotskys legacy totally lost or it can provide a fresh approach in three
senses in which there has been loss in psychologysubject matter, method,
and the mission (Bakan, 1996)that was the target of this Chapter.
NOTES
1. I would like to express my gratitutde to Katarina Rodina (University of Oslo,

Norway), Pentti Hakkarainen (University of Oulu, Finland) for their valuable
comments, and Aaro Toomela (Tallinn University, Estonia) for inspiring pro-
posals and patiency in working with one of the drafts of the paper.
2. For more details see extensive discussion on Yurevichs article in Doria (2009)
and Zittoun et al (2009)
3. I use the term developed in a sense of post-Galilean physics, according to
Einstein & Infeld (1976). More on this see Mikhailov (2003, 2006)
4. All translations from Russian in this article are mineNikolai Veresov
5. In the early 1930s, young Galperin was an active participant of the Kharkov
group led by Vygotsky and A. Leontev.
6. In this sense traditional classical quantitative methods are not valid and must
be replaced by qualitative ones.
7. The swerving of voluntary mediated functions as a result of internalisation is
discussed in A. Nazarov (2008)
8. Here Vygotsky uses the term moments in Russian original text that seems to
be more exact.
9. Here the sameseparate moments.
10. takes on an essentially different appearance (vid) in original text - Nikolai
Veresov
11. By Vygotskians I mostly mean Western representatives of this community.
Discussion of the approaches taken by Soviet/Russian Vygotskians is beyond
the scope of this Chapter.
12. Among many others two impressive books which summarise the current situ-
ation inside this community should be mentionedThe Cambridge handbook of
sociocultural psychology (2007) and The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky (2007).
13. For more details of discussion on differences inside the Vygotskian community
see for example Matusov (2008)
14. In fact this book was not the first at that time. Awfully translated and terribly
abbreviated version of Thinking and speech under the title Thought and language
appeared in 1962 (Vygotsky, 1962). In this respect I completely agree with the
opinion expressed by one of the reviewers that editors chose the best parts of
the book and then translated the rest into English.
15. We could find in Internet a lot of statements like: Vygotsky influenced mod-
ern constructivist thinking perhaps more than any other individual (http://
www.indiana.edu/~intell/vygotsky.html )
16. Brilliant analysis of destructive consequences of mixture of the levels and the
zone (distance) in ZPD is made in Zuckerman (2007) and Hakkarainen &
Bredikyte (2008)
17. This job have been brilliantly done by I. Verenikina (2004) and A. Stone
(1998)
18. There are many other indications of such dissipation and this definitely re-
quires special survey, which was partly made by I. Verenikina (2004).
292 NIKOLAI VERESOV
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gii, 6, 62-76.
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Volume III, Part 1: Problems of the Theory and Methods of Psychology (pp. 129138).
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opment. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 45(3), 3864.
CHAPTER 13
VYGOTSKYS
METHODOLOGICAL
APPROACH
A Blueprint for the
Future of Psychology
Holbrook Mahn
The editors of this volume pose an interesting and important challenge for
psychologydeveloping a methodological approach that takes psychology
beyond the dead end into which the emphasis on behaviorist approaches
has taken it. They suggest that looking back to the German-Austrian school
of the mid-1930s might illuminate a path for psychology in the 21st century,
and they highlight the manner in which this school looks at the mind as a
complex whole, including subjective experience as a phenomenon worthy
of study. In this chapter, I suggest that looking back to the German-Austrian
school through Vygotskys perspective would clarify that schools theoreti-
cal framework and its strengths and weaknesses. Subjective psychology was
basic or central in quite a number of systems, and we must understand why.
Now it loses its importance and again we must understand why (Vygotsky,
1997a, p. 237). A re-examination of this perspective also provides an op-
portunity to examine Vygotskys methodological approach unfettered by
preconceptions or preimposed lenses.

298 HOLBROOK MAHN
In looking at Vygotskys methodological approach it is important to rec-

ognize what he meant when he used the terms method and methodol-
ogy. He writes:
Zelenyj (1923) is right in pointing out that in Russia the word method
means two different things: (1) the research methods, the technology of the
experiment; and (2) the epistemological method, or methodology, which
determines the research goal, the place of the science, and its nature. In
psychology the epistemological method is subjective, although the research
methods may be partially objective. In physiology the epistemological method
is objective, although the research methods may be partially subjective as in
the physiology of the sense organs. Let us add that the experiment reformed
the research methods, but not the epistemological method. (1997a, p. 274)
This chapter focuses on three key components of Vygotskys method-

ological approach that have not received much attention or that have been
subject to misinterpretation; three interdependent components, which
combined constitute the path Vygotsky advocates as a way to develop psy-
chology as a science:
a. Marx and Engels dialectical materialist methodological approach;

b. the development of psychological materialisman intermediary
theorythat provides the means through which the general, uni-
versal, abstract tenets of a materialist dialectical approach can be
applied to the matter being studiedthe human psyche; and
c. the specific experimental methods/techniques that Vygotsky and
his colleagues use to investigate the human psyche as a system of
interconnected psychological/psychical processes with a focus on
the analytical approach Vygotsky developsanalysis into units
to study humanitys ability to construct meaning through sign use,
through symbolic representation.
THE CRISIS IN PSYCHOLOGY
Even though this chapter draws on Vygotskys work as a whole, it focuses

on The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology: A Methodological Investi-
gation (1997a), an important work that has not received the attention of
other major works and one particularly relevant to this volume, as in it Vy-
gotsky addresses the questions raised by the editors of this volume. In Crisis
he analyzes the pitfalls of the German-Austrian school along with those of
American and Russian objective behaviorism as a means of developing
his own blueprint for constructing an integrated, comprehensive science
of psychology. This work also critiques attempts to synthesize these two
Vygotskys Methodological Approach 299
schools into a third way such as seen in Gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis,

and personalism. In addition, Vygotsky critiques the way in which psychol-
ogy, purportedly based on Marxist principles, was being constructed in the
Soviet Union in the mid 1920s.
While Vygotsky applauds Gestalt psychologys critique of associative psy-
chology, he also highlights the inadequacy of its analysis of the relationship
between word and meaning:
The connection between the word and meaning is no longer thought of as an

associative connection. It is represented as a structural connection. Of course,
this is a step forward. However, if we carefully consider the foundations of this
new perspective, we quickly find that this step forward is an illusion, that we
remain in the rut laid down by associative psychology. (1987, p. 247)
In Crisis Vygotsky acknowledges the advances Gestalt psychology made in

looking at form perception as a process, but then using the work of Koffka,
Kohler, and Werthmeier, he describes the application of Gestalt theory to
other areas and its results.
It conquered animal psychology, and it turned out that the thinking of apes
is also a Gestalt process. It conquered the psychology of art and ethnic psy-
chology, and it turned out that the primitive conception of the world and the
creation of art are Gestalten as well. It conquered child psychology and psy-
chopathology and both child development and mental disease were covered
by the Gestalt. Finally, having turned into a world view, Gestalt psychology
discovered the Gestalt in physics and chemistry, in physiology and biology,
and the Gestalt, withered to a logical formula, appeared to be the basis of the
world. When God created the world he said: let there be Gestaltand there
was Gestalt everywhere. (1997a, p. 245)
Using critiques of these tendencies as a springboard, Vygotsky proposes a

fourth path for psychology. Key to understanding this fourth way is recog-
nizing the main concept and the main questions that Vygotsky investigates.
The central concept for investigation is the human psyche as an integrated
systema system of interrelated mental/psychical, natural, historical pro-
cessesthat is constituted by the unification of the brain and the mind, and
which is organized into internal systems that develop in interaction with
the sociocultural, socioeconomic, and ecological systems in which they are
situated and to which they are interconnected. In his quest to understand
the origins and development of human consciousness, Vygotsky examines
consciousness as a system of systems. Unlike other psychologists who ex-
amine mental entities by isolating them in their external manifestations or
by conceptualizing them separated from other mental entities, Vygotsky
analyzes the systemic relationships and connections between the childs
separate mental functions in development (1987, p. 323) and conceives
300 HOLBROOK MAHN
of the relationships between functions as a psychological system (1997a, p.

92). The questions he investigates include, among others: What are the
origins of psyche both for the human species and the individual? What is
the relationship between higher primates and humans cognitive develop-
ment? What forces bring the psyche into existence? What forces determine
its growth and development? What forces bring about qualitative transfor-
mations in its nature? What role does language play in the development of
the psyche? What is the nature of the internal structure/system that results
from sign operation? In developing a methodological approach to address
these questions, Vygotsky draws on others work, using this work to create a
unique methodological approach, one that addresses many of the concerns
raised in this volume.
Valsiner also echoes Vygotskys emphasis on analysis through systems:
The future of human sciences belongs to breakthroughs in psychologyyet

in ways that unites it with concerns in human genetics, cellular mechanisms
of development, neurosciences, evolutionary theories, andlast, but not
least cultural psychology, anthropology, and sociology. All these different
disciplines are united by their general concerns about the open systemic na-
ture of complex phenomena. (2007, p. 2)
Vygotsky adds economic and emotional/affective systems in his analysis

of the human psyche as a system. As an educator, I would add education
to Valsiners list of concerns, as educational psychology is central to Vy-
gotskys work, especially theories of teaching/learning (obuchenie) and the
relationship between learning and development.
Valsiner (2007) describes the need for an integrated approach to psy-
chology that includes analysis of the relationship of the organic and social:
Organic lifeincluding psychological and social phenomenaexists in com-

plex organisms where different levels of organizationgenetic, neuronal,
physiological, behavioral, psychological, sociocultural, political, and aesthet-
icoperate together. (p. 2)
The starting point for psychology to participate in the integration Valsiner

envisions is an analysis of the human psyche as a system, examining how it
comes into being and develops, and how it and its interconnections with
other systems change. To achieve this central goal, Vygotsky relies on a dia-
lectical approach to investigate the development of the human psyche as
a process. He focuses, in particular, on the interrelationships between psy-
chical processes, which play an important role in determining the charac-
ter of the human psyche.1 Vygotsky looks at the interrelationships between
mental functions and higher psychical processes, in particular, at times of
qualitative change using a functional systems approach, where: research
teaches us to admit that all of the history of development of higher mental
functions is nothing other than the change in initial interfunctional rela-

tions and connections and the appearance and development of new men-
tal, functional systems (1999, p. 65).
When this change results in qualitative transformations of relationships,
the system as a whole is changed, as Toomela (2000) details in his descrip-
tion of the nature of interrelationships in systems theory:
According to functional-systems theory, every object or phenomenon is a

complex hierarchical organization of elements into a qualitatively higher
level whole. Every component of such a system has a specific role in the orga-
nization of a whole. To understand how the whole functions, it is necessary
to describe its components and relations between those components. If some
components of a system are not identified, then the whole cannot be fully
understood. (p. 359)
Toomela (2007) points out that one of the advantages of German-Austri-

an methodology is that it was more systematic and it understood that every
aspect of mind studied is part of the complex whole, and that it looked
at a situation by seeing it in its necessary relationship to a larger whole
(p. 8). Vygotsky also takes a systems approach, but for him the complex
whole is not restricted to the mind, but also includes the unification of the
brain and the mind in the psyche in a system of processes that are consti-
tuted by and interconnected with organic and social processes organized
into systems. Toomela (2007) strikes another chord in his analysis of the
German-Austrian school that resonates with Vygotskys, when he criticizes
the isolated character of much of psychology. The number of fragmentary
facts collected in mainstream psychology over the last half of the century is
huge. And still there is no systematic theory trying to unite these fragments
into a theory of a person as a whole (p. 17). Fragmentary theories do not
allow us to create complex hypotheses about relationships between inter-
acting aspects of the human personality (p. 18).
THE HUMAN PSYCHE AS A UNIFICATION OF

BRAIN AND MIND
Vygotsky, in building a systematic theory of psychology that focuses on

the complex whole, develops a methodological approach that analyzes the
interconnections between the systems related to the brain and the systems
related to the mind and how the unification of these systems creates the
human psyche. These interconnections develop as processes and are im-
portant in determining the nature and laws of change and development of
the phenomenon being investigated. His approach, which includes socio-
cultural systems, is different from the German-Austrian school that looks
302 HOLBROOK MAHN
at the mind as a whole, but isolates it from the thinking body and its
sociocultural context. This contrast can be seen clearly in the ways Vygotsky
and this school and other contemporary theories viewed the relationship
between language processes and thinking processes:
First, none of these theories has grasped what is most basic and central to the
psychological nature of the word; none has grasped what makes the word a
word and without which it would no longer be one. All have overlooked the
generalization that is inherent in the word, this unique mode of reflecting
reality in consciousness. Second, these theories consistently analyze the word
and its meaning in isolation from development. (1987, pp. 248249)
Vygotsky is interested in the words mental nature and in clarifying the

functional role of verbal meaning in the act of thinking through an examination
of the process through which meanings function in the living process of verbal
thinking (1987, p. 249). Verbal thinkingthe entity created by the unifi-
cation of the previously distinct processes involved in thinking and those
involved with the acquisition and use of languageis the primary focus of
Vygotskys work.
In describing the application of his methodological approach to an
analysis of verbal thinking in Thinking and Speech, Vygotsky (1987) gives a
brief overview of his methodology; however, as Toomela notes above a full
appreciation of that work is not possible without a careful examination of
the foundation upon which it rises. A central focus for this chapter is ex-
amining the role that Marx and Engels methodological approach plays in
Vygotskys methodological and theoretical foundation.2
A clear understanding of Vygotskys methodological approach cannot
be achieved without an in-depth analysis of its relationship to Marx and En-
gels approach. The analysis offered here focuses on a number of key areas:
first, the nature of the methodological approach developed by Marx and
Engels, particularly as described in The German Ideology; second, the nature
of the society in which Vygotsky grew up and worked and the way in which
Marx and Engels works were presented and used in the Soviet Union from
1917 to 1934, which varied in the extremeknowing how Vygotsky re-
ceived and reacted to the ways in which Marx and Engels works were used
and misused in the Soviet Union is key to understanding the nature of his
methodological approach; and third, the concerted distortion of Marx and
Engels theory by the Western world, the United States, in particular, which
rivaled the ideological distortion of Marx and Engels works by the Soviet
Bureaucracy, though from a different perspective. The facile judgment that
the Soviet Union and especially the horrors of the Stalin dictatorship were
the direct result of the application of Marx and Engels theory has been
pervasive in the way that Marx is portrayed in educational institutions, the
media, in journals and books in the West. The massive witch hunt and sur-
veillance of those with Marxist ideas played a central role in quarantin-

ing the ideas of Marx and Engels. These distortions inevitably find their
way into discussions about the relationship between Vygotsky and Marx &
Engels. An additional complicating factor is that the density of the concepts
presented in these works is compounded by the fact that those who read
them only in English, do so through translation. In a number of key places
in Vygotskys work, translation issues have made a concept virtually inac-
cessible. For example, translation of the key Russian term znachenie slova
into word meaning considerably obfuscates one of his key concepts, as
described below.
Vygotsky spent a decade developing his overall methodological ap-
proach, one that is qualitatively distinct from the approaches he critiques
in Crisis, but one from which there has been a long detour since the time
of his death. The 60-year-long detour away from Vygotskys methodological
approach runs parallel to the last 60 years of research in psychology [that]
seems to have gone astray (p. 19) that Toomela (2007) attributes to a focus
on the accumulation of facts. A good starting place to see why there has
been such a long detour from Vygotskys methodological approach is to
look at Marx and Engels methodological approach upon which it is based,
but since the concept of the psyche is central for Vygotsky it might be better
first to briefly explore the concept of psyche.
THE HUMAN PSYCHE
As Valsiner and Rosa (2007) describe, the concept of a human psyche was
central to the Ancient Greeks philosophy, though Plato and Aristotle had
widely divergent views. The former developed the concept of the soul as an
entity of psyche that was eternal and could travel from body to body, and
thus began the bifurcation between mind and body that reached its highest
expression in Descartes and is still reflected in many psychological theories.
Aristotle, on the other hand, saw the psyche as something that gave life to a
thing, and that governed its change and motion. Valsiner and Rosa (2007)
point out that the notion of the psyche as an immortal entity that is separate
from the biological has run from Plato through medieval thinkers through
British empiricists to present day thinkers. Drawing on Diriwachter (2004)
they note that Wilhelm Wundt the experimental father of psychology, took
into account both profiles of Psyche: the biological and individual, and the
collective and socio-cultural-historical (p. 24). However, he did not explain
the unification of the brain and mind in psyche, something that is central
to Vygotskys (1997a) position on the unity between mental processes and
the brain. The brain substrate of the mental processes are not isolated
parts but complex systems of the whole brain apparatus (p. 105).
304 HOLBROOK MAHN
In his conception of brain and mind as a unity, Vygotsky draws on Spi-

nozas analysis of this relationship, which Ilyenkov (2009) paraphrases in a
chapter in Dialectical Logic entitled SpinozaThought as an Attribute of
Substance:
There are not two different and originally contrary objects of investigation
body and thought, but only one single object, which is the thinking body of
living, real man (or other analogous being, if such exists anywhere in the
Universe), only considered from two different and even opposing aspects or
points of view. Living, real thinking man, the sole thinking body with which
we are acquainted, does not consist of two Cartesian halves thought lacking
a body and a body lacking thought. In relation to real man both the one
and the other are equally fallacious abstractions, and one cannot in the end
model a real thinking man from two equally fallacious abstractions. That is
what constitutes the real keystone of the whole system, a very simple truth
that is easy, on the whole, to understand. [T]hought and extension are not
two special substances as Descartes taught, but only two attributes of one and
the same organ; not two special objects, capable of existing separately and
quite independently of each other, but only two different and even opposite
aspects under which one and the same thing appears, two different modes of
existence, two forms of the manifestation of some third thing.
Early in his career in the book Educational Psychology, Vygotsky gives an

example of the unification of the brain and mind in psyche using the en-
docrine system to show the identity of the mental and the organic, and
the falsity and impossibility of any division between the two (1997c, p. 45).
Marx and Engels in describing the relationship between language, con-
sciousness, and social formations note that the mind is from the outset
afflicted with the curse of being burdened with matter, which here makes
its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of
language (1976, pp. 4344). Vygotsky acknowledges Marx and Engels in-
fluence by quoting them at the end of Thinking and Speech on the role that
language plays in the development of consciousness and society:
Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical, real conscious-

ness that exists for other men as well, and only then does it also exist for
me; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity
of intercourse with other men. Consciousness is, therefore, from the very
beginning a social product and remains so as long as men exist at all. (Marx
& Engels, 1976, p. 44)
The quotation marks and the citation to Marx and Engels were removed
in the Russian editions of Myshlenie i rech after 1934, and consequently do
not appear in the English translations, the reasons for which are discussed
in the Long Detour section below.
A. Materialist Dialectics and Dialectical Materialism
Vygotsky also acknowledges Marx and Engels in the Preface to his final
major work, Thinking and Speech, where he writes that there were twists and
turns in his and his colleagues work over the previous decade but states
that the overall direction of our research developed steadily, on a founda-
tion that was basic to our work from the outset (1987, p. 40). Although
the extent to which Vygotsky relied on Marx and Engels has been a topic of
debate, it is clear from his work that he considered their dialectical method-
ological approachdialectical materialismto be the foundation for his
work.3 Although they investigated different but interrelated systems, both
Vygotsky and Marx & Engels made the investigation of interconnected sys-
tems a cornerstone of their approachesfor Marx and Engels the system
of human social formations and for Vygotsky the human psyche as a system.
Their methodological approach, based upon a dialectical logic, is complex
and is not easily accessible to those who rely on a way of thinking that cre-
ates categories that have immutable borders and that are frozen in time.
The best evidence of Vygotskys reliance on Marx and Engels is the way
that his overall methodological approach draws on and mirrors Marx and
Engels rather than on the number of quotes that he uses from Marx and
Engels, or from his own statements, or even from the remarks of his clos-
est collaborater, Alexander Luria, Vygotsky was also the leading Marxist
theoretician among us. In Vygotskys hands, Marxs methods of analysis
did serve a vital road in shaping our course (Cole, Levitin, & Luria, 2006,
p. 43).
One of Marx and Engels most significant contributions in developing
a methodological approach was grounding Hegels dialectical logic in the
material world. The dialectical laws that Hegel discovered did not spring
full-blown from his mind, rather they resulted from his extensive analysis of
movement and change in the natural world. It isfrom the history of na-
ture and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted (Engels,
1963, p. 26). Because all matter is in a state of motion and is consequently
part of a process, the dialectical laws that Hegel discovered reflected the
motion behind matter. Dialectical thinking helps to uncover the laws of
motion behind all matter as contrasted with undialectical thought that
wishes to content itself with motionless imprints of a reality which consists
of eternal motion (Trotsky, 1973, p. 50). Formal logic and the syllogisms
upon which it is based have led to important advances in human thinking,
but this logic does not reveal the essence of what is being studied.
Dialectics does not deny the syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms
in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the externally changing
reality. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into
quality, development through contradiction, conflict of content and form, in-
306 HOLBROOK MAHN
terruption of continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc. which are

just as important for theoretical thought as is the simple syllogism for more
elementary tasks. (Trotsky, 1973, p. 51)
Vygotsky argues that the way to use these laws to bring our understand-
ing closer to reality is by developing an intermediary theory that uses the
dialectical approach to study matter. Even though his investigation drew
from the material world, Hegels thinking evolved in an idealist direction,
resulting eventually with him positing the Absolute Idea as the motor force
behind reality. Marx and Engels drew upon Hegels dialectical laws and
Feuerbachs materialist approach to develop their materialistic dialectical
approach. Trotsky explained why this designation was used: We call our
dialectic, materialist, since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths
of our free will, but in objective reality, in nature. Consciousness grew out
of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the inorganic world out
of the organic, the solar system out of nebulae (Trotsky, 1973, p. 51). Marx
and Engels introduced materialism into Hegels dialecticsgrounded it in
the material world from whence it cameand infused dialectics into Feuer-
bachs materialism. As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal
with history, and as far as he considers history he is not a materialist (Marx
& Engels, 1976, p. 41).
In their first thesis on Feuerbach, Marx, and Engels note the limitation
of Feuerbachs materialism, The chief defect of all hitherto existing mate-
rialismthat of Feuerbach includedis that the thing, reality, sensuous-
ness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but
not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively (Marx & Engels,
1976, p. 6). Marx and Engels in examining human social formations under-
stood the role that human consciousness plays in their development and
how this changes human consciousness. While Marx and Engels did not
study the sensuous aspect of human activity in depth and instead focused
on the social formations constructed by human sensuous activity, they ac-
knowledge the central role that consciousness plays in the process and the
role language plays in the development of both consciousness and human
social formations. Their starting point is that there is a reality that existed
prior to human beings and the consciousness that reflects that reality.
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite
relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of produc-
tion appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces
of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the
economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal
and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social
consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the gen-
eral process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness
of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that deter-
mines their consciousness. (Marx, 1970, pp. 2021)
The goal of investigation is to discover the laws that govern the develop-
ment of that social existence and consciousness. While Marx and Engels
examine the laws of motion behind human social formations, Vygotsky
examines the laws behind the development of the human psyches defin-
ing characteristicthe ability to use symbolic representation including lan-
guage. For this investigation Vygotsky uses Marx and Engels methodologi-
cal approach, looking at the matter being investigated as a process, as a
system that comes into and passes out of existence and is interconnected
with other systems. Dialectics, which examines these systems and their in-
terconnectedness is the science of interconnections (Engels, 1963, p. 26).
Dialectics is the logic of movement, of evolution, of change. Reality is too full

of contradictions, too elusive, too manifold, too mutable to be snared in any
single form or formula or set of formulas. Each particular phase of reality has
its own laws and its own peculiar categories and constellation of categories
which are interwoven with those it shares with other phases of reality. These
laws and categories have to be discovered by direct investigation of the con-
crete whole; they cannot be excogitated by mind alone before the material
reality is analyzed. (Novack, 1969, p. 66)
Vygotsky, following Marx and Engels, argues that it is impossible to di-

rectly apply the general, universal laws of dialectical materialism to the mat-
ter being studied. The mistake lies in the fact that these [dialectical] laws
are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from
them (Engels, 1963, p. 26). Even though these dialectical laws that de-
scribe the processes through which matter comes into existence, develops,
and passes out of existence, were developed from an investigation of nature
and human history, once developed they could not just be applied as laws
of thought to an investigation of matter in all its varied manifestations. An
intermediary theory that develops concepts and categories from the matter
under investigation needs to be constructed. If an intermediary theory is
built upon dialectics it will have a different character than a theory based
on formal logic.
Vygotsky writes that an intermediary theory and methodology, such as
historical materialism which Marx and Engels developed to apply dialecti-
cal materialism to the study of the development of human social forma-
tions, is needed to study the human psyche.
[P]sychological materialism [is] an intermediary science which explains the

concrete application of the abstract theses of dialectical materialism. Dialec-
tics covers nature, thinking, historyit is the most general, maximally univer-
308 HOLBROOK MAHN
sal science. The theory of psychological materialism or dialectics of psychol-

ogy is what I call general psychology (Vygotsky, 1997a, p. 330.)4
The development of this intermediary theory and the concepts, catego-

ries, and systems that are derived from the application of this theory to
study of the psyche is a central component of Vygotskys approach to psy-
chology.
B. Psychological Materialism, An Intermediary Theory
In order to create such intermediate theoriesmethodologies, general sci-

enceswe must reveal the essence of the given area of phenomena, the laws of
their change, their qualitative and quantitative characteristics, their causality,
we must create categories and concepts appropriate to it (Vygotsky, 1997a,
p. 330)
The discovery of the essence of phenomena is another central component

of Marx and Engels methodological approach on which Vygotsky relies.
Not a single science is possible without separating direct experience from knowl-
edge. It is amazing: only the psychologist-introspectionist thinks that experi-
ence and knowledge coincide. If the essence of things and the form of their
appearance directly coincided, says Marx (1981, p. 825), all science would be
superfluous. (Vygotsky, 1997a, p. 325, italics in original)
Marx and Engels developed a methodological approach, historical materi-

alism, to analyze the essence of human social formations and Vygotsky uses
this approach to develop a methodological approach, psychological mate-
rialism, to analyze the human psyche as a system of interrelated processes.
Both Marx and Engels and Vygotsky use the power of abstraction to reveal
the essence of the processes that are behind what is being studiedits laws
of motion.
Abstraction facilitates the examination of the origins, interconnections,
processes, and change, and the discovery of laws that govern the phenom-
enon being studied. [E]ven the most immediate, empirical, raw, singular
natural scientific fact already contains a first abstraction (Vygotsky, 1997a,
p. 249). Marx, drawing on Hegel, describes as an aspect of analysis through
abstraction, the method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete is
simply the way in which thought assimilates the concrete, reproduces it as
a concrete mental category (Marx, 1970, p. 206). An entity exists in objec-
tive reality and has actual relations to that reality. Analysis of that objective
reality does not disclose the essence of what is being studied unless it looks
at its origins, its development, and its interconnections with other entities
in that reality. This analysis yields an understanding of the essence of what

is being studied, thus giving a more complete, a more concrete understand-
ing. Absent an analysis of its origins, its process of development, and its
interconnections, the conception of an entity in objective reality is more
abstract. The concrete concept is concrete because it is a synthesis of many
definitions, thus representing the unity of diverse aspects (Marx, 1970, p.
206).
Vygotsky uses abstraction to explore the human psyche as a system, to
investigate its origins and the forces behind its development, to focus in
particular on times of qualitative transformation, to see it as a process in a
constant state of change, to take an historical approach.
[H]istorical study simply means applying categories of development to the

study of phenomena. To study something historically means to study it in
motion. Precisely this is the basic requirement of the dialectical method.
To encompass in research the process of development of some thing in all
its phases and changesfrom the moment of its appearance to its death
means to reveal its nature, to know its essence, for only in movement does the
body exhibit that it is. (1997b, pp. 4243)
As Marx & Engels and Vygotsky build their intermediary theories of his-
torical materialism and psychological materialism, they conduct thorough
analyses of the widely accepted theories related to their area of investiga-
tion. Vygotsky uses these critiques as a starting point for developing psy-
chological materialism, a process he claims will take decades. Key to this
process is the interplay between the theory and the results of its application
in practice. The method in such cases is simultaneously a prerequisite and
product, a tool and a result of the research (1997b, p. 27).
As an important aspect of the process of developing an intermediary
theory, Vygotsky in Crisis, succinctly outlines his approach to other facts,
tendencies, and theories as an important part of the process of developing
an intermediary theory.
[W]e will proceed from an analysis of the facts, albeit facts of a highly general
and abstract nature, such as a particular psychological system and its type,
the tendencies and fate of different theories, various epistemological meth-
ods, scientific classifications and schemes, etc. We will examine these facts not
from the abstract-logical, purely philosophical side, but as particular facts in
the history of science, as concrete, vivid historical events in their tendency,
struggle, in their concrete context, of course, and in their epistemological-
theoretical essence, i.e., from the viewpoint of their correspondence to the
reality they are meant to cognize The methodological investigation utiliz-
es the historical examination of the concrete forms of the sciences and the
theoretical analysis of these forms in order to obtain generalized, verified
principles that are suitable for guidance. This is, in our opinion, the core of
310 HOLBROOK MAHN
this general psychology [psychological materialism] whose concept we will

attempt to clarify in this chapter [Crisis]. (1997a, pp. 23637)
The test for Vygotsky is whether a psychological fact or concept can fit
into the system of the human psyche, whether it can be interconnected with
other systems. If it cannot, it will grow further apart from the integrated
system that Vygotsky envisions and eventually operate with facts that are
not compatible with other schools. Vygotsky gives meaning to this concept
through his analysis of three different schools that have three different ar-
eas of study:
1. traditional subjective psychology looking at the mental and its

properties;
2. reflexology (behaviorism) examining behavior; and
3. psychoanalysis, the unconscious.
[A]s the science moves forward and gathers facts, we will successively get
three different generalizations, three different laws, three different classifi-
cations, three different systemsthree individual sciences which, the more
successfully they develop, the more remote they will be from each other and
from the common fact that unites them. (1997a, p. 238)
This describes the dilemma that this volume addressesis there any way to
create a cohesive and comprehensive science of psychology from the many
different schools? Vygotsky recognizes that there are numerous schools of
psychology; however, in essence he claims that:
Two psychologies exista natural scientific, materialistic one and a spiritualis-

tic one. This thesis expresses the meaning of the crisis more correctly than
the thesis about the existence of many psychologies. For psychologies we have
two, i.e., two different, irreconcilable types of science, two fundamentally dif-
ferent constructions of systems of knowledge. All the rest is a difference in
views, schools, hypotheses: individual, very complex, confused, mixed, blind,
chaotic combinations which are at times very difficult to understand. But the
real struggle only takes place between two tendencies which lie and operate
behind all of the struggling currents. (Vygotsky, 1997a, p. 300)
In spite of the fact that these two schools had two fundamentally differ-
ent constructions of systems of knowledge and were two different, irrec-
oncilable types of science attempts were made to reconcile them creating
a third way. Vygotsky argues that each of these attempts fails because they
pose the wrong questions at the beginning of the investigation.
A correct statement of a question is no less a matter of scientific creativity and

investigation than a correct answerand it is much more crucial. The vast
majority of contemporary psychological investigations write out the last deci-
mal point with great care and precision in answer to a question that is stated
fundamentally incorrectly. (1997a, p. 258)
The third way approaches that Vygotsky analyzesgestalt, personal-

ism, psychoanalysis, and Marxist do not address the central question that
he poses as crucial for psychological theory: What are the laws of motion,
what are the forces behind, the birth and development of the systems of
interconnected processes that form the human psyche? If the psychological
facts or concepts presented by different schools do not address the psyche
as a complex whole, interconnected to other systems, they are destined to
continue to spin off into increased isolation. The attempts to create a third
way by discovering common aspects of two schools and then joining them
on an abstract level fail to recognize the importance of addressing the sci-
entific reality of the human psyche as a system.
It is this feeling of a system, the sense of a [common] style, the understanding

that each particular statement is linked with and dependent upon the central
idea of the whole system of which it forms a part, which is absent in the essen-
tially eclectic attempts at combining the parts of two or more systems that are
heterogeneous and diverse in scientific origin and composition. (Vygotsky,
1997a, p. 259)
HIGHER PSYCHICAL PROCESSES
Vygotsky, in The History of the Development of Higher Mental [Psychical] Func-

tions (1997b), describes his colleagues and his work on building an inter-
mediary theory to study the human psyche as a system. Their examination
of the origins of the human psyche leads to the study of the origins of
the higher psychical processesthe qualitative transformations that take
place with the development of processes, particularly those involved with
language use, that distinguish humans from animals. The elementary men-
tal functionsinvoluntary attention, eidetic memory, perception, etc.are
closely tied to brain functions, instincts, and the chemical and electrical
mechanisms that play a central role in their development. In contrast to
psychologists who feel that the higher psychological processes are a direct
outgrowth from the elementary mental processes, Vygotsky argues that
there is a qualitative leap between the two. An important component of
Vygotskys psychological materialism is the analysis of the dialectical rela-
tionship between the higher psychical processes and the elementary mental
processes, a relationship in which the higher processes have a foundation
in the elementary mental functions, but transform them as they develop.
312 HOLBROOK MAHN
Vygotsky derived this understanding not by applying the tenets of dialec-

tical materialism directly to the study of the psyche, but rather through an
analysis of the origins and processes of development of the psyche, through
which he discovered the qualitative transformation that occurs between el-
ementary mental functions and higher psychical processes giving life to the
general abstract dialectical law of the qualitative transformation of quantity
into quality. Vygotsky finds the cause behind this qualitative transforma-
tion, its motor force, in humans ability to use signs to communicate mean-
ing. The analysis of the process of development of language use both by the
human species and by the individual and its influence on the development
of the system of the human psyche is key to Vygotskys psychological mate-
rialism.
As he studies the processes through which higher psychical processes
developed, Vygotsky focuses on the qualitative transformation that takes
place between signalization, which is common in the animal kingdom, and
signification, which entails the use of signs. The basic and most general
activity of man that differentiates man from animals in the first place, from
the aspect of psychology, is signification, that is creation and use of signs
(1997b, p. 55). Central to the development of sign use is the unification of
speaking and thinking processes into verbal thinking, which Vygotsky ana-
lyzes in depth in his last and his most significant work Thinking and Speech.
Through his experimental and theoretical analysis Vygotsky arrives at the
essential aspect that needs to be analyzedthe internal system of meaning
that is created through the unification of thinking and speaking processes.
METHODS AND TECHNIQUES

The examination of the way that humans construct a system of meaning
through language use and the relationship of this system to the development
of consciousness is the central focus of Vygotskys work. He analyzes human
sensuous activity that develops an internal system of mental/psychical pro-
cesses through interaction in and with the external world. Vygotsky examines
the role of the sign operation in shaping the human psyche on a number
of different levels and with a number of different means. On a theoretical
level these include, among others, analysis of predominant theories on the
relationship of thinking and speaking; phylogenetic analysis of the develop-
ment of thinking and speaking; examination of the structure of generaliza-
tion; analysis of the development of a system of concepts; and investigation
of the internalization of speech and the functional aspects of verbal thinking.
On a phylogenetic level he looks at the genetic roots of the relationship
between thinking and speaking by examining the studies of those who work
with primates; by examining studies of human social formations that are at
an earlier stage of development; by analyzing the origins and the process
of development and eventual fossilization of rudimentary functions, which
like rudimentary organs have no essential role in the behavior of a person

and are remnants of older behavioral systems (1997b, p. 42) but which
form the real nodal paths along which humanity at one time crossed the
boundaries of animal existence (1997b, p. 44).
On an ontogenetic level, he examines theories of: perception, memory,
attention, and will; language acquisition, development, and use; child de-
velopment and the qualitative transformation in the interconnections in
the psyche and their relationship to language development as in the dis-
cussion of periods of crisis in The Problem of Age (1998), which appears in
volume five of Vygotskys Collected Works; the development of conceptual
thinking from everyday concepts to academic concepts to thinking in con-
cepts at adolescence; the unification of thinking and speaking processes,
which helps the child create meaning through the sign operation; and the
development of the childs system of meaning.
On the experimental level Vygotsky and his colleagues investigate the
human psyche as a system. The challenge for genetic analysis is using ex-
perimentally elicited and artificially organized processes of behavior to pen-
etrate into how the real, natural process of development occurs (1997b, p.
94). Luria describes meetings he and Leontiev held once or twice a week at
Vygotskys apartment to plan their research.
We reviewed each of the major concepts in cognitive psychologypercep-

tion, memory, attention, speech, problem solving, and motor activity. Within
each of these areas we had to come up with new experimental arrangements
which would incorporate the notion that, as higher processes take shape, the
entire structure of behavior is changed. (Cole, Levitin, & Luria, 2006, p. 45)
Luria says, though, that Vygotsky cautioned that these experiments should
never be limited to sophisticated and laboratory models divorced from the
real world. The central problems of human existence as it is experienced
in school, at work, or in the clinic all served as the contexts within which
Vygotsky struggled to formulate a new kind of psychology (2006, p. 53).
Additionally, Luria points out that Vygotsky, in working with him on neu-
rological investigations into the cortical base of psychological functions,
insisted that these studies were not sufficient because the neurological evi-
dence was not closely linked to an adequate psychological theory (p. 54).
For Vygotsky, connecting all of the levels and means of investigation to a
theory of psychological materialism is the sine qua non for psychology.
Another essential aspect that Vygotsky explores through experimenta-
tion is the change in and development of the relationships between inter-
nal mental structures and functions.
Experimentation is the only path by which we can delve into the patterns of
higher processes in sufficient depth; specifically in an experiment, we can
elicit in a single artificially created process the most complex changes separat-
314 HOLBROOK MAHN
ed in time, frequently with years passing latently, which are never accessible
to observation in all their real totality in the natural genesis of the child and
cannot be comprehended directly in a single glance and correlated with each
other. (Vygotsky, 1999, p. 45)
Vygotsky argues, experimental research, however, must be supplemented

with theoretical and critical analysis[in order to] attempt to develop a
general theory of the genetic roots of thinking and speech a part of which
is conducting a critical analysis of the best contemporary theories of think-
ing and speech (1987, p. 39). His conclusion from that analysis is that
there are two basic deficiencies in these theories.
First, none of these theories has grasped what is most basic and central to the
psychological nature of the word [language]; none has grasped what makes
a word a word and without which it would no longer be one. All have over-
looked the generalization that is inherent in the word, this unique mode of
reflecting reality in consciousness. Second, these theories consistently analyze
the word [language] and its meaning in isolation from development. (1987,
pp. 248249)
In his examination of verbal thinking Vygotsky addresses both of these

deficiencies by using the concept of generalization to analyze the way chil-
dren acquire language and form concepts. The formation of the concept
and the acquisition of word meaning is the result of a complex activity (i.e.,
the activity of operating on the word or sign) in which all the basic intel-
lectual functions participate in unique combination (1987, pp. 130131).
Vygotsky emphasizes the importance of maintaining the integrity of the
wholeverbal thinkingwhen analyzing the unification of thinking and
speaking processes, yet he wants to have the aspect that is the focus of inves-
tigation be primary, basic, irreducible. What then is a unit that possesses
the characteristics inherent to the integral phenomenon verbal thinking
and that cannot be further decomposed? In our view, such a unit can be
found in [znachenie slova] the inner aspect of the word, its meaning (1987,
p. 47). This approach was in contrast to a psychology that decomposes
verbal thinking into its elements in an attempt to explain its characteris-
tics [and that] will search in vain for the unity that is characteristic of the
whole (1987, p. 45). In Vygotskys method of partitioning the whole into
a unit, the term unit designates a product of analysis that possesses all
the basic characteristics of the whole. The unit is a vital and irreducible part
of the whole (1987, p. 46) that is derived through analysis that examines
the concrete aspects and characteristics (1987, p. 244) that make up the
unit. Here, Vygotsky harkens back to the essence of his methodological
approach described in Crisis where he emphasizes the need to discover the
qualitative and quantitative characteristics and categories and concepts
(1997a, p. 330) of the phenomenon being analyzed. Vygotsky emphasizes
an often-overlooked pointthat the unit to be analyzed is itself a product

of analysis.
Considerable confusion about Vygotskys use of this unit has been intro-
duced by its translation into English as word meaning. The Russian znach-
enie means meaning and slova (slovo in its unmarked, nominative form),
means word, but as Kozulin (1990) points out, slovo is used as a synecdo-
che representing language as a whole. Meaning through language use or
meaning through the sign operation are more accurate, expanded rendi-
tions of znachenie slova. During a conference with his closest collaborators
near the end of his life, Vygotsky clarified the meaning of znachenie slova:
Meaning is not the sum of all of the psychological operations which stand
behind the word. Meaning is something more specificit is the internal
structure of the sign operation (1997a, p. 133). While the transcription
of his talk at this conference refers to an internal structure of meaning, Vy-
gotsky looks at the development of meaning as a process, a process that is
shaped by its systemic relationship with other psychological functions, pro-
cesses, structures, and systems, and, therefore, he examines znachenie slova
as an important component of the human psyche as a system.
Thinking processes tend not to be considered as fully in interpretations
of znachenie slova that focus on the external meanings of words and the
nature of language use rather than on the internal system of meaning. The
system of meaning, central to verbal thinking, is part of a larger system
human consciousness. The structure of meaning is determined by the sys-
temic structure of consciousness (1997a, p. 137), but Vygotskys specific
focus is on meaning that results from the unification of thinking and speak-
ing processes.
I have reviewed Vygotskys analysis of the crisis in psychology; his propos-
al that psychology develop a psychological materialism based on Marx and
Engels methodological approach; the development of such a theory; and
its application in practice, but the path that Vygotsky lays out has not been
followed. Aspects of his approach are being appropriated by various disci-
plines at an increasing rate, but they are isolated from the context of his
overall methodological approach and theoretical framework and are not
seen as a part of a system of interconnected psychical processes. Those who
appropriate Vygotskys theory in this manner do not follow the method that
he has developed. Some ways in which to recapture and follow that path are
described below, after a look at the reasons for the long detour.
THE LONG DETOUR

It could be argued that the long detour started when the Soviet bureau-
cracy headed by Stalin started consolidating power in 1924. It turned away
from basic Marxist principles and used Marx and Engels work more as a
shibboleth against opponents rather than as a guide for charting a course
316 HOLBROOK MAHN
in the interest of the international working class. One of the first deviations
from Marxism was Stalins proclamation of Socialism in One Country as
the guiding principle of the Soviet foreign policy. Workers and peasants
struggles around the world were to be subordinated to the needs of the
Soviet Bureaucracy. The bureaucracy used the social weight that the well-
to-do peasants had acquired in the soviets to wipe out the leadership of the
1917 revolution23 of the 24 members of the Central Committee of the
Bolshevik Party at the time of the October, 1917 revolution were executed,
exiled, or imprisoned by 1929 (Wyndham & King, 1972, p. 151). Increas-
ingly, the narrow interests of the bureaucracy began to dominate all aspects
of Soviet life including scientific endeavors. In place of Marx and Engels
methodological approach, quotes were yanked out of context and used to
justify the latest twists and turns by the bureaucracy. Vygotsky critiques this
approach in the Crisis, when discussing the way that Marxist psychologists
attempted to find a methodology ready-made in the haphazard psycho-
logical statements of the founders of Marxism (1997a, p. 312). He writes
that such an approach, of taking phrases out of context and using them
polemically yields nothing more than a pile of more or less accidental cita-
tions and their Talmudic interpretation. But citations, even when they have
been well ordered, never yield systems (1997a, p. 313).
Vygotsky may well have been shielded from attacks by the bureaucracy
because he worked in the Ministry of Education with Lenins widow, Nade-
zhda Krupskaya, but eventually his work too came under attack. One of the
complaints was that Vygotsky relied too heavily on Western thinkers when
he analyzed other psychological theories that addressed the problem of the
relationship between thinking and speaking. As Vygotsky and his collabora-
tors were coming under increasing attack from the Soviet rulers, Leontiev
and Vygotsky had a falling out, as detailed in a 1932 letter from Leontiev
(2005) to Vygotsky. Leontiev and several collaborators moved from Moscow
to Kharkov where they established an institute and began developing their
own theory.
Vygotskys work was banned in 1936 and special permission from the
KGB was needed to read it. Leontiev developed activity theory to distance
himself from Vygotsky and to make his ideas more palatable to the ruling
bureaucracy. However, when Vygotskys work was rehabilitated after Sta-
lins death and the Khrushchev revelations in 1956, Leontiev assumed the
mantle as the main interpreter of Vygotskys work, but he did so through
the lens of activity theory. Bakhurst underscores the irony of a theory that
was constructed to conform to the dictates of Stalins bureaucracy being
adopted as a central theory. Thus, it seems that the scholars responsible
for keeping Vygotskys thought alive through the Stalin period internalized
an image of his work which, paradoxically, had its origins in the Stalin-
ist attempts to suppress it (Bakhurst, 1996, p. 207). Leontievs interpreta-
tion of Vygotsky has played an important role in giving shape to the way in
which Vygotskys work has been introduced to the English-speaking world.
Bakhurst concludes, Thus, we find that our contemporary reading of Vy-
gotsky bears the mark of a critique forged in the political machinations of
the Stalin era (1996, p. 208).
One manifestation of that mark is the characterization of Vygotskys posi-
tion that language is key to the formation of the human psyche as unMarx-
ist. In order to maintain this line of criticism the quotation marks and
citation for the quote above on language and consciousness from Marx
and Engels, which are included in the 1934 original version, are removed
from subsequent versions of Thinking and Speech, because that quote gives
the lie to the Soviet bureaucracys claim that Vygotskys position on lan-
guage is unMarxist. This claim is echoed in Leontievs explanation of why
Vygotskys theory had to be extended by activity theory, a theory which
has played a significant role in the long detour, but a role that cannot be
fully described here. Toomela (2000) does make the claim, though, that
The analysis of an activity approach leads to serious doubts as to whether
it is able to lead us to an understanding or explanation of mind or any
specific psychological function (p. 353). Looking at the way that Leontiev
(1997) interprets and presents Vygotskys methodological approach in an
introductory piece to the volume of Collected Works in which Crisis appears
can provide an insight into how Leontiev deviates from and misrepresents
Vygotskys theory.
Leontiev (1997) writes that Vygotskys goal was to build a psychology of
consciousness and that the central category for it was human objective
activity. However, the central category for Vygotsky is Marx and Engels
human sensuous activity. Leontiev does admit that the term objective
activity does not appear in Vygotskys work. Vygotsky certainly subscribed
to Marx and Engels analysis of the origins of the human specieshumans
through their objective activity gained some control over nature, which in
turn changed humans. Irrigation and planning the planting of seeds gave
humans the ability to sustain larger communities, which led to a division
of labor and the increased need for language or intercourse as Marx and
Engels put it. The concepts of objective activity and the actual relations
in reality are cornerstones of Leontievs activity theory, but his concepts de-
viate from both Marx and Engels and Vygotskys, who look at objective real-
ity on two levelsappearance and essencewhich means abstracting from
objective reality to look at origins, interconnections, process, and change.
Leontiev (1997) goes on to say that a central concept in Vygotskys theo-
ry is the idea of the mediation of mental processes by psychological tools
by analogy with the way the material tools of labor mediate human practical
activity (p. 32). This way of presenting the analogy between physical and
psychological tools misrepresents Vygotskys position. In a passage that was
318 HOLBROOK MAHN
deleted in the more widely read Mind in Society, Vygotsky describes the lim-
ited utility of the diagram depicting the analogous relationship between
psychological and physical tools:
We must emphasize also that our diagram is intended to present the logical
relations of the concepts, but not the genetic or functional (on the whole,
real) relations of the phenomena. We would like to point to the relation of
the concepts, but not in any way to their origin or real root. (1997b, p. 62)
Throughout the description of the diagram, Vygotsky warns that this anal-
ogy should not be taken for more than it isan analogy that is used to illus-
trate the formal logical relationship of the use of signs and physical tools be-
cause both involve a type of mediation. This analogy, which Vygotsky clearly
rejects as shining any further light on sign use other than to highlight that
mediation occurs in both instances, is elevated by Leontiev to being a key
concept in Vygotskys theory. The center of Vygotskys work, however, is
examining how the mediation of signs contributes to and is related to the
development of an internal system of meaninga central process in the
system of the human psyche. The notion that the category of psychological
tools is central to Vygotskys work is now commonplace, despite Vygotskys
warning that such a notion does not help in the examination of the origin
or function, in essence the reality, of language use and its relationship to
the development of consciousness.
Contradicting the methodological approach Vygotsky advocates in Cri-
sis, Leontiev (1997) asserts that it was through the concept of psychological
tools that Vygotsky introduced the dialectical method into psychology and
elaborated his historical-genetic method in particular (p. 32). Vygotsky
provides a very detailed analysis about the relationship between the dialec-
tical method of Marx and Engels and psychology in Crisis, but it is nothing
like the caricature provided by Leontiev (1997). As explained above, the
dialectical method is not introduced into a field, rather the subject matter
of the field is examined to develop concepts and categories that become
part of the intermediary theory between dialectical materialism and the
subject matter of psychology, the human psyche. The concepts are then
incorporated into the intermediary theory, which is then used to exam-
ine the subject matter in more depth. There is an ongoing interplay be-
tween the intermediary theory and the investigations into the psyche and
the overarching approach governed by dialectical materialism. It is not a
matter of introducing dialectics into the subject matter. To take a concept
that Vygotsky has rejected as being of limited use to study the reality of sign
mediation, elevate it to the center of Vygotskys work, and then claim that
this concept is so central that it provides Vygotsky with a vehicle to intro-
duce dialectics into psychology misrepresents Vygotskys theory, methodol-
ogy, and practice. Leontiev (1997) uses the same misrepresentation of the
concept of psychological tools to attempt to tie activity theory to Vygotskys

theory using human objective activity as the bridge.
A similar confusion is evident in other interpretations of the relationship
between dialectical materialism and Vygotskys methodological approach.
As discussed above, a key aspect of Vygotskys methodological approach
is his notion that dialectical materialism cannot be directly applied to the
study of the psyche, or any other matter, since an intermediary theory cre-
ated from an analysis of the subject matter needs to be developed. If there
is not clarity on Vygotskys use of a dialectical materialist method, then the
whole notion of an intermediary theory is lost. Two of the key interpreta-
tions of Vygotskys work for the English-speaking world lack this clarity and
consequently obscure Vygotskys work developing the theory of psychologi-
cal materialism.
In the introduction to Thought and Language, Kozulin writes, [Vygotsky]
also emphasized that the dialectical method is quite different in biology,
history, and psychology, and that therefore there are no Marxist magic for-
mulas for solving the problems of psychology (1986, p. xxiii). It is not that
the dialectical method is different; it is that the general laws of dialectical
materialism cannot be directly applied to any particular field. Elsewhere,
Kozulin (1984) writes, [The Soviet leaders] were obviously shocked by
statements such as: A theory of dialectical materialism cannot be applied
to the problems of psychology (p. 116). This further distorts Vygotskys
position, as the quotation from Thought and Language is misquoted, remov-
ing it even further from Vygotskys actual position.
While Van der Veer and Valsiner (1991) make an important contribu-
tion connecting Vygotsky to other psychological trends and historical devel-
opments in Understanding Vygotsky, they do so without a clear explanation of
Vygotskys reliance on a dialectical materialist approach. Their description
of Vygotskys views on the relationship between dialectical materialism and
an intermediary theory does not clearly state his position either.
Furthermore, Vygotsky refused to apply the existing Marxist sociological

theory (historical materialism) to history or sociology, calling rather for the
development of a special theory of historical materialism that would link the
abstract laws of dialectics with concrete issues of the day (as opposed to a rhe-
torical mix of Marxist concepts with social-political issues of the day). (p. 139)
Vygotsky did not refuse to apply historical materialism to history and sociol-
ogy; he refused to directly apply dialectical materialism. The direct applica-
tion of the theory of dialectical materialism to the problems of natural science
and in particular to the group of biological sciences or psychology is impos-
sible, just as it is impossible to apply it directly to history and sociology (1997a,
p. 330). The intermediary theory to study history and sociology is historical
materialism. The problem is perhaps that Valsiner and Van der Veer are
320 HOLBROOK MAHN
referring to the Soviet bureaucracys use of historical materialism when re-

ferring to the existing Marxist sociological theory. Also, the notion of the
concrete issues of the day does not reflect Vygotskys admonition that the
intermediary theory look at the concepts and categories of the matter be-
ing investigated. The rhetorical mix of Marxist concepts being used as a
means to justify oft-changing political positions is an apt description of the
Soviet bureaucracy, but it does not help clarify Vygotskys position on the re-
lationship between dialectical materialism and psychological materialism.
THE FUTURE FOR VYGOTSKYS METHODOLOGY
A number of issues have been raised in this chapter on the full complex-
ity of Vygotskys methodological approach and theoretical framework and
how both illuminate a way forward for psychology. One is to compare the
analysis of the German-Austrian method in the chapters in this volume to
Vygotskys methodological approach. Another is an in-depth examination
of Vygotskys analysis of the crisis in psychology during his time in relation-
ship to the crisis that faces psychology today. The role of experimentation
and theoretical analysis in meeting this crisis is another area for further
exploration.
At the end of Thinking and Speech Vygotsky states that his analysis of ver-
bal thinking has barely begun, that he has shown the complexity of verbal
thinking but that he has not done a thorough analysis of it. Extending the
analysis of verbal thinking following Vygotskys methodological approach
would help both to deepen Vygotskys approach as well as to yield insights
about the relationship between verbal thinking and consciousness. This
would also develop his analysis of the development of the system of mean-
ing through the analytical approach of analysis into units, which would help
in understanding the relationship between znachenie slova and conscious-
ness.
Clarifying the relationship between Marx & Engels and Vygotskys meth-
odological approaches would help in understanding Vygotskys develop-
ment of psychological materialism and the target of its investigation, the
human psyche as a system of interrelated processes. An in-depth analysis
of the relationship between activity theory as developed by Leontiev and
Vygotskys theoretical framework, would also help clarify the relationship
between Vygotsky and Marx & Engels. Doing the above would help in un-
derstanding Vygotskys reliance on analysis of systems as fundamental to his
work. Boris Gindis (1995) describes Vygotsky as a voice from the future.
Listening to that voice may well help guide us in finding a way to build the
integrated approach to psychology that the editors of this volume promote,
one that includes analysis of the relationship of the organic and social and
uses an approach based on complex systems.
NOTES
1. While the word psychical is not used very often in English, I use it
in this chapter to underscore that it describes processes that lead to
and define the human psyche, processes that reflect the unification
of the brain and the mind, and processes, particularly those that
lead to and develop language use, that distinguish humans from
the animal world. The substitution of mental where Vygotsky uses
psychical diminishes the unification of the brain and mind. The
Russian title Razvitie Vysshikh Psikhicheskikh Funkstii is rendered into
English as Development of Higher Mental Functions (1997b).
2. I break with convention and use the ampersand with Marx and
Engels when appropriate as it is clearer in constructions like Marx
and Engels and Vygotsky when Marx and Engels are one item on
one side of an and and Vygotsky is on the other. It also recognizes
the central role played by Engels in the development of their meth-
odological approach. Engels and Marx collaborated equally in the
development of this approach but Engels willingly went to work so
that he could support Marxs application of this approach to the
study of late nineteenth-century capitalism in England.
3. Marx and Engels never used the term dialectical materialism,
and the term has come to be associated with its misuse by the Soviet
bureaucracy headed by Stalin. In spite of this, I use this term in this
chapter because it is the one Vygotsky uses.
4. While Vygotsky uses several terms to designate his intermediary
theory such as general psychology, psychology, psychology as sci-
ence, and psychological materialism I use psychological material-
ism to acknowledge its ties to Marx and Engels historical material-
ism. Because the term is not well known, what it designates can be
more clearly distinguished from other terms that have been used
to describe psychology in general and which have a variety of inter-
pretations.
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UK.
CHAPTER 14
GENERAL CONCLUSION
Have Sixty Years Really Gone Astray?
Back to the Future
Psychology entered 20th century as a promising young science, with new ex-
perimental laboratories being established and Freuds Interpretation of Dreams
instigating a new psychological culture. At the start of the 21st century, how-
ever, the science of psychology appears in a puzzling state, somehow empty of
radically new insights into the human situation.
Steinar Kvale, 2003, pp. 597598
A historical path of any science has never been smooth, there has been
no linear accumulation of understanding and knowledge about the world
science strives to achieve. Nevertheless, there is usually something to learn
from all past experiences, from mistakes and misunderstandings. Our book
here has brought out a rich set of such future possibilitiesand our task
here is to organize those into a reasonably coherent whole.
WHAT DID WE LEARN?
From oureditorsviewpoint we have not only learned much, but also

have discovered some leads for future development. Fundamentally, as

326 AARO TOOMELA & JAAN VALSINER
Ohlsson points out, psychology should understand its aim. Modern psy-
chology is aimed mostly either at testing hypotheses or creating superficial
descriptions of the studied phenomena. The attitude to test hypotheses is
detrimental; among other things, it just cannot lead to explanations. Study-
ing of patterns, which may be a way to understand and explain, is extremely
rare today. The aim of any science, including psychology, is expressed in
questions asked by scholars. Fundamental problems appear when questions
asked by scientific psychology are analyzed.
From the methodological point of view, there are four important ques-
tions that should be answered by a researcher:
1. What do I want to know, what is my research question?

2. Why I want to have an answer to this question?
3. With what specific research procedures (methodology in the strict
sense of the term) can I answer my question?
4. Are the answers to three first questions complementary, do they
make a coherent theoretically justified whole?
We found out that modern mainstream psychology fails to answer all of

them. Research questions that are usually asked are set up in the context
of narrow contribution to the literaturewhich is a conventional but not
substantive answer to the second question. From the substantial perspec-
tive, Ohlsson adds several examples of problems related to answering first
two of the mentioned questionshe brings evidence for the lack of truly
interesting and meaningful questions asked by modern psychology. Ques-
tions do not just come to mind, asking questions in science is guided by
principles that underlie scientific activities.
Ohlsson demonstrates that one reason for the abundance of meaning-
less questions asked by modern psychology can be attributed to the hypoth-
esis-testing attitude that leads researchers away from theoretically guided
studies. This is the result of systematic overlooking of the unity of theoreti-
cal and empirical inquiries over the past sixty years. The simple question
where do hypotheses come fromandwhat kinds of hypotheses are rea-
sonable to buildis usually not asked. And an unasked question cannot be
answered. Yet cohorts of students in many universities around the World
studying from introductory textbooks originating in North Americaare
directed towards setting up only one kind of hypotheses. That kind is of
statistical differences between common-sensically defined samplesit is
easy to set a hypothesis about gender differences and then test it by com-
paring samples of who seem to be (or self-declare) to be men or women.
The hypothesized differences, if found, are then interpreted as if they tell
us about the effect of gender on the particular outcome measure. That
is where the investigation usually ends. From the perspectives developed
in this book (if we were to take Wagoners and Sato et al contributions as
General Conclusion 327
examples for the future) such effects are artifactual, as they do not show
how any aspect of gender would enter into the dynamic process of being a
(wo)man. As Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out years ago:
The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling

it a young science The existence of the experimental method makes us
think we have the means of solving the problem which trouble us: though
problem and method pass another by (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 2321)
As to the research procedures that include ways for interpretation of

the data, Michell provides a thorough analysis of the quantitative approach
accepted by most modern academic psychologists. The main problem re-
lated to quantitative psychology Michell delineates, is that quantitatively
can be interpreted phenomena when there are reasonsreasons beyond
feelings and opinionsto suggest that the studied attributes actually are
quantitative. He demonstrates that, so far, there is no evidence whatsoever
to support this mainstream psychology assumption: There are no psycho-
logical attributes that are quantitative! Or, if put in a different wayall
quantitative derivations of psychological attributes are themselves qualitative in their
nature (Valsiner, 2005). Therefore it does not make any sense to analyze
data using quantitative data analysis procedures. Furthermoreall these
qualities are available to the knower in the course of irreversible time. The
very fundamental question about the role of time is discussed in the chap-
ter by Sato, Wakabayashi, Nameda, Yasuda, and Watanabe. From a slightly
different perspective, they reach the same conclusion reached by Michell
and Gillespie together with Zittounall kinds of quantitative data analysis
procedures, used in modern psychology, are inappropriate for understand-
ing a dynamic phenomenon, mind. They are not wrongbut rather the
axioms on which they are built do not fit the nature of the phenomena
(Maruyama, 1999, Schwarz, 2009, Watzlawik, 2009)
But the problem runs deeper than the mere technical question of what
kind of data can be analyzed in what ways. The root of the issue goes back
to the philosophical questions of quality and quantityand their relations.
Gillespie and Zittoun brought our attention backor forwardto the pro-
ductivity of dialogical thinking dating back to Georg Hegel in our recent
history of philosophy. Two important points followquantity belongs to
quality, and the dynamic changes in quantity within the given quality (but
not between different qualities!) may lead to a new quality. Acceptance of
noveltyand explanation of how novelty is being generatedhas histori-
cally been a difficult idea in the North American context, already beyond
psychology. Not surprisingly it has remained underdeveloped in psychology
cultivated in North Americawhile different trends in the German-Austri-
an tradition have tried (yet failed) to make use of the simple idea of sys-
temic unity of quality and quantity and its transformation into a new whole.
Michells analysis is corroborated by Dooremalen and Borsboom, who

draw attention to the way scientists think (this issue was also raised by
Toomela). Dooremalen and Borsboom discuss metaphors and how they
are used in science, particularly in psychology. Metaphors are wrong, is the
main message of this analysis. Related to it, they propose that the idea of
the quantitative measurement in psychology is also a metaphor, therefore
wrong.
Based on historical analysis Michell also shows how Anglo-American psy-
chology, which attitudes are leading modern psychology, became quantita-
tive far before Continental European psychology. The latter took a quan-
titative turn only after the WWII. According to him, one reason behind
nonquantitative worldview of Continental European preWWII psychology
can be philosophy. Namely, British empiricism created a ground for quanti-
tative thinking whereas German philosophy, especially Hegel and the whole
tradition of Naturphilosophie, protected against this view. The issues of philo-
sophical roots of two different kinds of thinking, one oriented to search for
static things and the other to understanding of the world as a developing
and changing system, in psychology are brought forward by Gillespie and
Zittoun. The static world-view is basically Cartesian and the dynamic view
Hegelian. In the modern psychology, Cartesian view is dominating. This
world-view, as Gillespie and Zittoun show, leads to quantitative, variable-
based psychology. In this way scientists hope to discover stable, not chang-
ing in time things. As the mind is not a stable thing, this Cartesian approach
turns out to be inappropriate.
The variables-focused psychology is rooted in extra-scientific context
of the given society. In North America the deeply religious organization
of local immigrant communities led to the social use of accepted fads as
truthrather than as tools for thought. As a result, belief in the quanti-
fication as a scientifically moral imperative overtook the sometimes real-
istic usefulness of quantifying some of the psychological phenomena some
of the time (Ziliak & McCloskey, 2008). Quantification in contemporary
psychology is a politically instituted moral imperative for psychologists to
look scientificrather than a rational choice (Porter, 1986, 1995). Math-
ematicians have pointed to the possibility that the use of real numbers to
characterize psychological phenomena is unlikely to be useful (Rudolph,
2006; Zeeman, 1962). Yet once a moral imperative is in place, rational argu-
ments fade and social cohesion processes guide a social science.
Paying attention to the philosophical background points to an issue of
fundamental importance: scientific thinking is deeply rooted in philoso-
phy. The ideas that we cannot analyze consciously, may direct our minds
without control. Without taking seriously and critically philosophy that un-
derlies one or the other kind of scientific thinking, scientists become blind
as to the roots of their thinking. It becomes easy to accept even the most
unjustifiable ideassuch as the idea that quantitative analysis requires attri-

butes that are also quantitativeblindly and without hope for getting away
from such ideas. Without taking philosophy seriously, modern mainstream
psychology demonstrates just another side of the same problem it suffers
from, historical blindness.
VALUE OF VOICES FROM THE PAST
Vygotsky, analyzing the situation that characterized psychology in his time,

acknowledged the contributions of the past (Vygotsky, 1982):
We are dialecticians, we do not think that the developmental path of science

goes as a direct line, and if there were zig-zags, turns back, loops, then we un-
derstand the historical meaning of them and we consider them to be inevitable
links in our chain, inevitable phases of our path. [...] We appreciate every step
in the direction of truth ever made by our science; we do not think that science
began with us. (p. 427, emphasis in original, here and all the following trans-
lations by AT)
This position was justified in the time this passage was writtenmore than
80 years ago. Science must develop; when we think it is ready, it dies. In this
book all the contributors are dissatisfied with the current theoretical situa-
tion in psychology and they propose new directions where to proceed. And
they are also aware of the importance of history in developing new ideas. In
general, such a situation should be normal for a science as scientists usually
acknowledge the fact that all theories of science can always be improved.
However, the situation in psychology is far from being normal in that sense.
Because, as contributions to this book also demonstrate, the sources for
future science are not only in the past, these sources are in the past that is
separated from today with 60 (or more) years of psychology. From last 60
years, the only useful ideas to discover seem to be obvious mistakes. Obvious,
of course, not to the modern mainstream psychology, but to psychology
that is not historically blind, that takes ideas of the past seriously.
If science develops so that we learn from both negative and positive ex-
periences, from both mistakes and achievements then mistakes in that pro-
cess have been, as also Vygotsky pointed out, inevitable already on rational
grounds. But, there are other grounds for mistakes as well:
Lawfulness in the change and development of ideas, appearance and perish-

ing of notions, even change in classifications, etc.all this can be scientifical-
ly explained on the basis of the connections of this science to 1) the general
social-cultural ground of the era, 2) the general conditions and laws of the
scientific cognition, 3) with these objective requirements that are presented
to the scientific cognition by the essence of the studied phenomena at that

particular stage of their study [...] (Vygotsky, 1982, p. 302)
If we do not learn from the past not because of rational-scientific reasons,

but only because of reasons grounded in the social-cultural factors outside
the science, then science has gone astray. In a way this movement astray has
not been scientific because the reasons for going in that particular direc-
tion have not been scientific themselves. We can say that in such situation
science has become non-science, just a game that appears to be science
superficially butby losing its critical rational character, as much as it could
possibly have on the basis of all past achievementsis essentially pretend-
play.
However, pretend play can be both productive and debilitating. Chil-
dren develop their own zone of proximal development through active pre-
tend playtrying out new options. In contrast, a pretend play that is fixed
in performance rituals of birthdays, weddings, funerals, and military pa-
rades leads to no new development. Many of keynote addresses and focus
on various scientific awards that psychologists emphasize in their discourses
are maintaining the status quo. The key is to turn to constructive play
finding new ways of experimenting and thinking.
WHERE CAN WE GOBASED ON HISTORY?
Several chapters in this book approach the same questionwhether

preWWII psychology could be ahead of the modern mainstream psychol-
ogyfrom another perspective. The ideas of psychologists of that time are
analyzed. Several main differences between the approaches of preWWII
Continental European psychologists on the one hand and preWWII Anglo-
American as well as the modern mainstream psychologists on the other
have been outlined by Watson (1934) and discussed in the modern con-
text by Toomela (2007, 2008, 2009). Shortly, compared to the pre-WWII
GermanAustrian psychology, modern mainstream psychology is more
concerned with accumulation of facts than with general theory. Further-
more, the focus on qualitative datain addition to quantitative datais
rarely visible. Only externalphysical or statisticalrather than psychologi-
cal controls are taken into account in empirical studies. Fragmentsrather
than wholesand relationshipsare studied, and single cases that contradict
group data are not analyzed. Instead of complex psychological types simple
trait differences are studied, and prediction is not followed by thorough
analysis of the whole situation. Last (but not least), data are not systemati-
cally related to complex theory.
Analyzing Bartletts approach to studying mind, especially memory, Wag-

oner shows the major shortcomings of the modern memory research. With
modern ways of statistical data aggregation together with a loss of asking
meaningful questions, modern memory research fails to understand that
mind is a whole that is in the constant interaction with the environment.
People are Agents, not computer-like recording machines, constantly look-
ing for and giving meaning to the world around. All such complexity of the
human memory disappears in the modern mainstream psychology. In this
context it is also noteworthy that lessons from the past are not completely
forgotten by the modern psychology. What has happened instead, as Wag-
oner shows in the discussion of Bartletts work, modern psychology has tried
to incorporate some fragments of what actually was meaningful only in the
whole theoretical context. Yet it is only a small step to restore the focus of
the originaland Wagoners own empirical modifications of Bartletts pro-
cedures constitute a good example for how easily one can break out of the
vicious cycle of quantified hypotheses testing.
Lamiell gives an interesting account on the contributions of William
Stern. He mentions that Sterns personalistic approach has been aban-
doned; together with it psychology ceased to study mind, which is only indi-
vidual, and started to study something ... what definitely is not an individual
mind. Again we see that philosophy has a very fundamental role to play in
scientific thought. Stern was, he shows, much more a philosopher that it is
usually acknowledged. Philosophical background justified Stern to take a
strong position against using methods of physics and chemistry in psychol-
ogy; every science has its own methods and these need to be used appropri-
ately. And the same issues as in Bartletts case, emerge again; modern psy-
chology has lost understanding that person is a self-activated goal-oriented
holistic being, not a thing. Sothe person who remembers (and forgets)
is not a Cartesian machine but rather a Hegelian complex dynamic being.
Lamiell also describes how he, not knowingly, reinvented some ideas that
already were invented by Stern. On the one hand, such reinventions (and
there are many more of them in the modern psychology, see Toomela, in
this book), demonstrate that modern mainstream psychology is really his-
torically blind. On the other hand, Lamiells contribution also shows what a
rich world opens when we go beyond this historical blindness.
The ways to go beyond quantitative research limitations, the ways to
build, again, qualitative developmental psychology, is discussed by Mey. He
builds his discussion on several great names of the pastWilliam and Clara
Stern, Marta Muchow, Charlotte Bhler, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Alexan-
der Luria. With this discussion again we see that even when the names of
these great scholars can be met in some modern histories of psychology, the
whole meaning of their theories is practically lost. And, again and again,
these great names remind ushumans are persons, they are not composed
of independent fragments thrown into a brain, humans are holistic, they

have history and past, they live and change in time. And human mind is
human, personal, not a group phenomenon that can be understood by ag-
gregating data.
It is very interesting that somemost obviousideas need to be repeat-
ed, otherwise their whole power is not evident. This can be said also with
the help of the Kreppners contribution to this volume. He discusses, tak-
ing as an example the use of film as a research tool, several outstanding
issues relevant for the modern psychology. He begins with delineating the
general philosophical background of his contribution. We can see, again,
that Continental European philosophers, Kant, for instance, and British
philosophers, such as Locke and Hume, gave rise to different approaches
to the study of mind. He goes on to the discussion of the use of film as a re-
search tool by eminent psychologists of the pre-WWII time, Arnold Gesell,
Charlotte Bhler, Rene Spitz, and Kurt Lewin. Not surprisingly, the ways
how the films were used, the questions that were answered by these studies,
can be opposed to many modern research practices. The same basic con-
cepts emerge again and again: wholes instead of fragments, dynamics and
process instead of mechanistic theories. And the way to the understanding
of the person as a whole, to the understanding of the human development
can go with the help of qualitative, but not quantitative research proce-
dures. It is not the material, what makes the difference; film or any other
kind of data, it is how conceptually researchers approach their studies. Most
interestingly, the enormous new technical capacities of contemporary video
and audio recording devices are used in contemporary psychology in very
limited waysArnold Gesells observations of infants that were carried out
with cumbersome and inflexible film technologies remain the main source
for understanding the dynamic complexity of infant behavioral develop-
ment. Modern video-cams are used in service of getting static slices of the
dynamic processes, classifying these into strict categories of sameness and
accumulating those losing their time features. The obviousfor dialecti-
cal thinkersidea that sameness is only a case of homogenized similarity
(Sovran, 1992) and that all categories of objects we observe are fuzzyor
very rarely crispbypasses the empirical researchers mind. The technol-
ogy has progressed very muchbut psychologists thinking has become
regressively rigidified!
The overlook of theory in favor of empiricistic accumulation of data
lead to attempts to fit some fragments from old theories into completely
inappropriate world-view of the modern psychology. That distortion, mis-
interpretation, lack of the ability to understand the role of the theoretical
context comes also forward in the discussions of the Fechners work by En-
gelmann and of the Vygotskys work by Veresov and by Mahn. Veresov shows
how superficial and primitive the analysis is of Vygotskys theory in modern
psychology. When Vygotsky was looking for explanation, the modern psy-
chology cannot go beyond superficial description. What are needed, are de-
velopmental studies, qualitative developmental studies. Mahn provides ad-
ditional points of fundamental importance. One of the central issues that
emerges again, is philosophy. Vygotsky relied substantially on philosophy
as most other eminent psychologists of his time. And a point also worthy to
mention, he had a very critical attitude towards the philosophical ideas he
was relying on. By doing so he, for instance, refused to apply ideas of dialec-
tical materialism to psychology directly. There must be some intermediate
theory, Vygotsky suggested, between general principles of dialectical mate-
rialism and particular field of science, such as history, biology, or psychol-
ogy. So, together with William Stern and many others, he was, in addition
to being a scientist, also a philosopher of science. His approach also shows
that every scientist should do the same. This is something that also is lost in
modern psychology. Researchers became more research-technicians who
apply cook-book type study-recipes to study hypotheses (see also Ohlsson,
this volume) rather than theoretically and philosophically thinking schol-
ars.
Both Veresov and Mahn point out what may be one of the most impor-
tant ideas missing in the modern psychology. We think, more or less explic-
itly, all the contributions to this volume have shown the same problem that
characterizes modern psychology: it does not have methodology. Vygotsky was
clear by telling us, what to mean by this term:
G. P. Zeljonyi points out correctly, that with the word method [metod] two
different things are understood by us: 1) method [metodika] of study, a techni-
cal action [prijom] and 2) methodology [metod] of cognition [poznanije], that
determines the aim of a study, the place of a science and its nature. (Vygotsky,
1982, p. 346)
In modern times we have hundreds, if not thousands, of textbooks on

methods, and almost none on methodology. The fundamental problem
is that method without methodology is inappropriate for science because
methods are always parts of theories. And the theories are built hierarchi-
cally so that particular theories about the studied phenomena are, in turn,
grounded with the abstract and generalphilosophicaltheories.
FUTURE ON THE HORIZON: RETURN TO NEW THEORIES
All chapters in this volume propose some ways how, with the help of theories
from the past, it would be possible to solve several fundamental problems of
modern psychology; how history would give psychology (back) direction so
urgently needed. There are suggestions at several different levels of analysis
from the relatively methodical to highly methodological. We are not go-

ing to repeat these suggestions here. But there is one issue that emerges
through the contributions: mind is holistic and should be studied accord-
ingly as a situated in the context whole (Valsiner, 2009a, 2009b).
A few points about the idea of the wholethe idea brought to us through
works of such giants in psychology as Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Kurt
Lewin, Lev Vygotsky, among several othersare in order. Wholes are not
undifferentiated masses, on the contrarywholes are organizations. Wholes
are composed of distinguishable (never separable!) interacting parts in
specific relationships. With the emergence of a whole a qualitatively novel
structure emerges. It is of fundamental importance that properties of the
elements of the whole, after becoming parts of a whole, change; the new
properties are determined by the qualitatively novel characteristics of a
whole. If psyche is a whole, and our science really aims to understand it,
then studies of different aspects of it must always be theoretically situated
in the theory of a whole. This theory is necessary to be able to distinguish
between characteristics of the part or aspect under a particular study from
the characteristics of the whole that pervades all expressions of the mind.
So, a general theory of a mind as a whole is urgently needed. This need
was most clearly expressed and justified, we believe, already by Vygotsky
(see also Mahn, this volume). First of all, how this need is expressed in psy-
chology? Vygotsky, based on works of Ebbinghaus, Lange, Brentano, among
others, suggested that psychology of his time was in crisis. In that respect
nothing has changed during 80 years since he wrote his Historical Mean-
ing of the Crisis in Psychology. A methodological Study. Obviously most modern
psychologists either do not think so or do not consider this situation to be
a problem, otherwise we would find directed efforts to deal with it. The
question whether modern psychology is in crisis or not depends also on
the definition of what crisis is in science. Vygotsky was clear here: a sci-
ence is in crisis when There is no generally accepted system of science.
(Vygotsky, 1982, p. 373), when there are still debates concerning the most
important questions of psychology, when there are many psychologies (p.
374) not one. Even though our modern mainstream psychology has man-
aged to push the discussions about the theoretical and philosophical issues
into the periphery of our science, the discussions are still there. Also, we
still can find very different, often completely independent theories about
the same phenomena, such as personality, intelligence, attitudes, values,
mental states, and cognitive processes. Psychology is not a whole, and there-
fore is in crisis.
Next question is, what this yet nonexisting general or unifying theory
should be about; what would be its main focus. As a general theory, it
should be a theory that determines the aim of a study, the place of a sci-
ence and its nature. This theory is methodology as Vygotsky understood the
term. Again, he was explicit in this aim:
What kind and when there will be this methodology, we do not know, but
psychology is not moving forward until it does not create a methodology; that
the first step forward is methodology, is clear beyond doubt. (pp. 422423, our
emphasis)
So, everybody is equally aware that crisis pulls towards creation of methodol-
ogy, that the battle is for the general psychology. Who tries to jump over this
problem, to jump over methodology, in order to build directly one or the
other particular science of psychology, he inevitably, jumps over the horse
when trying to sit on it. (p. 418)
Now the last question is: What more exactly psychology should look for in
order finally to come out of the crisis in which it is already for so long time,
as also follows from all contributions to this volume? Naturally, without this
general theory, we cannot know what this theory should be in essence. But
Vygotsky gave some insight as to what kind of theory it is that is so urgently
needed.
We saw that explanatory principle leads us out of the limits of a given science
and must give meaning to all field of united knowledge as a special category
or stage of being [...] In that respect a general science is philosophy of special
disciplines. (pp. 309310)
General psychology relates to special disciplines as algebra is related to arith-

metics (p. 323)
For creating this kind of intermediate theoriesmethodologies, general sci-

encesit is necessary to reveal the essence of the particular area of phenom-
ena, the laws of their change, qualitative and quantitative characteristics, their
causality, to create categories and notions specific to it ... (p. 420, emphasis
in original)
Altogether, the necessary general or unifying theory is not about psyche

directly, it is a theory about how to cognize, how to think scientifically about
psyche. This theory must be methodology, philosophy of special disciplines
of psychology. Yet this is not philosophy in the abstract and alienated sense.
There are already analogies to general theories, as Vygotsky pointed: what
is needed for psychology is analogous to what theory of relativity brought
for physics and theory of evolution brought for biology. It is also clear that
psychology does not need theory of evolution or theory of relativity for
itself; psychologyas also suggest contributions to this volumeneeds its
own special general theory. Without such a theory another 60 years may
easily go astray.
NOTE
1. In the original (ibid): Die Verwirrung und de der Psychologie ist nicht damit
zu erklren, dass sie eine junge Wissenschaft sei Das Bestehen der expe-
rimentellen Methode last uns glauben, wir htten das Mittel, die Probleme,
die uns beunruhigen, loszuwerden; obgleich Problem und Methode windschief
aneinander vorbei laufen
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CONTRIBUTORS
Denny Borsboom
Denny Borsboom obtained his PhD in 2003 from the University of Am-
sterdam. Borsbooms work has mostly focused on philosophical and con-
ceptual problems that arise from the application of psychometric models
in psychology; examples concern the theoretical status of latent variables,
the concept of validity, the definition of measurement in psychology, and
the relation between different test theoretic models. He has published on
these topics in journals such as Psychological Review, Psychological Methods,
and Psychometrika. In 2004, he published the monograph Measuring the
Mind: Conceptual Issues in Contemporary Psychometrics with Cambridge
University Press. Current research focuses on the relation between complex
systems theory and psychometric models, the application of graphical mod-
elling to psychopathology, and the analysis of test validity.
E-mail: d.borsboom@uva.nl
Hans Dooremalen
Hans Dooremalen (1967) is a Dutch philosopher, lecturing in philoso-
phy of science and philosophy of psychology at the Faculty of Social and Be-
havioral Sciences of the University of Amsterdam. In 2003 he got his PhD in
philosophy defending an evolutionary approach to the study of conscious-

340 CONTRIBUTORS
ness. The title of the dissertation is: Evolutions Shorthand, A Presentational

Theory of the Phenomenal Mind. In 2007 he co-authored with Herman de Regt
and Maurice Schouten Exploring Humans, An Introduction to the Philosophy of
the Social Sciences (Boom, Amsterdam) a handbook of philosophy of science
aimed especially at students of psychology, sociology and economics. Door-
emalen further takes a stance against pseudoscience, regularly criticizing in
the popular media those that unjustly claim the label scientific for their
views.
E-mail: A.J.P.W.Dooremalen@uva.nl
Arno Engelmann
Arno Engelmann, born in 1931 at Berlin, moved in 1941 to Brazil. He
studied Psychology, Philosophy and Medicine. In 1956 he made his first
contact with Gestalt Theory through Annita Cabral, who was a student of
Max Wertheimer. Until now he continues with a Gestalt outlook. Scientifi-
cally his perspective is always from upper Gestalten to the possible lower
part-processes. Since 1960 he has been working in Psychology in the Uni-
versity of So Paulo. To the undergraduates and to the graduates he taught
lessons on perception, emotion. consciousness, epistemology, and history
of psychology. Experimentally he has done works on conscious inside per-
ception of human individuals. He published in English or in Portuguese on
subjective states, the name that he christened this perception. Theoreti-
cally he has done works on subjective states as well as general psychologi-
cal outlook. He writes presently on a Present subjective States List.
E-mail: arno.engelmann@gmail.com
Alex Gillespie
Alex Gillespie is a lecturer in Social Psychology at the University of Stir-
ling. His main theoretical interest stems from the early American Prag-
matist philosophers and psychologists, such as Peirce, Dewey, James, and
Mead. His empirical research concerns dialogue, intersubjectivity, and the
dynamics of trust. He has recently published a monograph entitled Becom-
ing Other: From Social Interaction to Self-Reflection and co-edited a volume en-
titled Trust & Distrust: Sociocultural Perspectives.
E-mail: alex.gillespie@stir.ac.uk
Kurt Kreppner
Kurt Kreppner, PhD, PD is a developmental psychologist who studied at
the Universities of Wrzburg and Hamburg. He did his diploma at the Uni-
versity of Hamburg and his PhD at the Technical University of Darmstadt.
Contributors 341
He was a Senior Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human
Development and Education in Berlin, where he conducted longitudinal
observational studies on early infancy and adolescence in the family, focus-
ing on family socialization processes and family development. As a lecturer
at the Free University in Berlin, he also was interested in the history of de-
velopmental psychology and the methodology of observation. He is retired
since 2003.
E-mail: kreppner@mpib-berlin.mpg.de
James T. Lamiell
James T. Lamiell earned his Ph.D. at Kansas State University in 1976, and
joined the Georgetown faculty in 1982. His current scholarly interests are
in the history and philosophy of psychology, and he has published exten-
sively on methodological issues pertaining to personality research and the
use of statistical methods more generally. His books include The Psychology
of Personality: An Epistemological Inquiry (Columbia University Press, 1987)
and Beyond Individual and Group Differences: Human Individuality, Scientific
Psychology, and William Sterns Critical Personalism (Sage, 2003). His current
work highlights the historical contributions to the psychology made by the
German psychologist and philosopher William Stern (18711938). Lamiell
has three times been a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Germany (Heidelberg,
1990; Leipzig, 1998; Hamburg, 2004). In Hamburg, Lamiell was also Ernst-
Cassirer-Visiting Professor for one semester of the 20032004 academic
year, during which he held a series of public lectures on the life and works
of Stern.
E-mail: lamiellj@georgetown.edu
Holbrook Mahn
Holbrook Mahn is an associate professor in Language, Literacy, & Socio-
cultural Studies at the University of New Mexico, specializing in Teaching
English to Speakers of Other Languages, with a focus on second language
literacy. Before coming to UNM, he taught English as a Second Language
in inner city Los Angeles schools. He is the principal investigator for a five-
year U.S. Department of Education sponsored professional development
grant designed to help secondary content area teachers learn how they
can facilitate the language and literacy development of English Language
Learners. He has written extensively on the work of Lev Vygotsky, focusing
on analysis of his original writings. Over the last decade, he has collabo-
rated with Vera John-Steiner.
E-mail: hmahn@unm.edu
342 CONTRIBUTORS
Gnter Mey
Gnter Mey is Professor for Developmental Psychology at the University
of Applied Sciences Magedeburg-Stendal, Germany. He is also director of
the Institute for Qualitative Research in the International Academy for Psy-
chology at Freie Universitt Berlin. His thematic topics are identity develop-
ment, childhood studies, intergenerational relations; his research focus in
on qualitative methodology and qualitative methods; he is the organizer of
the Annual Berlin Meeting on Qualitative Research and conduct work-
shops for different institutions/research centers (on interviewing, ground-
ed theory methodology, etc.). He is also the editor of Forum Qualitative So-
zialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research (FQS) and involved in some
other journals with a qualitative scope.
E-mail: mey@qualitative-forschung.de
Joel Michell
Joel Michell is an honorary member of the School of Psychology at the
University of Sydney, Australia, where he studied and taught psychometrics
and the history and philosophy of psychology for more than forty years.
He has published in psychology and philosophy journals, written books on
the history and philosophy of measurement in psychology, and composed
numerous articles for encyclopedias, handbooks and other collections. He
is currently investigating the history and philosophy of the distinctions be-
tween the categories of kind, degree, and measure.
Email: joelm@psych.usyd.edu.au
Akinobu Nameda
Akinobu Nameda is a doctoral student at Ritsumeikan University in Ja-
pan. His research interest is perception of fairness in the context of di-
viding family work. In his definition, the concept of family work includes
household work and paid work. His research focuses on both mens and
womens perspectives in order to clarify the reality of dividing and perform-
ing family work. He is trying to use not only a statistical approach to find out
the correlative factors to perceived fairness, but also descriptive approach
to understand the experience of perceiving fairness in dividing and per-
forming family work.
E-mail: a.nameda7@googlemail.com
Stellan Ohlsson
Stellan Ohlsson is Professor of Psychology and Adjunct Professor of
Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He re-
Contributors 343
ceived his PhD in psychology at the University of Stockholm in 1980. He

joined the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) in Pitts-
burgh in 1985 and was promoted to Senior Scientist in 1990. He moved to
his present position at UIC in 1996. Dr. Ohlsson has published extensively
on computational models of cognitive change, including creative insight,
cognitive skill acquisition and conceptual change. Dr. Ohlsson is currently
completing a book to be published by Cambridge University Press under
the title Deep Learning: How the Mind Overrides Experience. He has held grants
from the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation,
among other agencies, and he is Consulting Editor for Journal of Experimen-
tal Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
E-mail: stellan@uic.edu
Tatsuya Sato
Tatsuya Sato is a professor of psychology at the Department of Psychol-
ogy, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto Japan. His general interests are in the
history, theory and methodology of psychology. He is in the founding edi-
torial board (20002005) of the Japanese Journal of Qualitative Psychology (in
Japanese) and he has actively involved in Japanese Association of Qualitative
Psychology (JAQP). He is also in the editorial board of History of Psychology
and Psychology Studies (in Japanese), Japanese Journal of Law and Psychology
(in Japanese), The International Journal of Idiographic Science and Culture and
Psychology. In 1999 he was awarded the Best Article Prize of Japanese As-
sociation of Developmental Psychology and in 2009 he was also awarded
the Best Article Prize of Japanese Association of Qualitative Psychology.
E-mail: satot@lt.ritsumei.ac.jp
Aaro Toomela
Aaro Toomela is a Professor of Neuropsychology at Tallinn University, Es-
tonia. He received his MD from the University of Tartu in 1986. After spend-
ing seven years as a child neurologist in the Department of Neurorehabilita-
tion at the Tartu Childrens Clinic, he moved into psychology. From 1993 to
2000 he was a lecturer specializing in neuropsychology in the Department of
Psychology at the University of Tartu. He received his Ph.D. in 2000 from the
University of Tartu. To get acquainted with the applied aspects of psychology,
Aaro Toomela moved to the military world, where he was a head of the De-
partment of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the Academy of the Estonian
Defense Forces. In the last five years Aaro Toomela has been back to the
academic world working in the field of psychology at the University of Tallinn
and in the field of education in the University of Tartu.
E-mail: aaro.toomela@ut.ee
344 CONTRIBUTORS
Jaan Valsiner
Jaan Valsiner is a cultural psychologist with a developmental axiomatic
base that is brought to analyses of any psychological or social phenomena.
He is the founding editor (1995) of the Sage journal, Culture & Psychology
and Editor-in-Chief of Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences (Spring-
er, from 2007). In 1995 he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize
for his interdisciplinary work on human development.
E-mail: jvalsiner@clarku.edu
Nikolai Veresov
Nikolai Veresov was born in Russia. He made his first Ph.D. on child
development in Moscow State Pedagogical University in 1991. Second
Ph.D. he made in University of Oulu, Finland in 1998. In 1999 his book
Undiscovered Vygotsky was published by Peter Lang Publishers. Since 1998
he works as a researcher in Kajaani University Consortium (University of
Oulu, Finland). He also is full-time Professor at Moscow City Pedagogical
and Psychological University. In 2003 he was elected as the Full Member
(Academician) of the Academy of Pedagogical and Social Sciences. At the
moment as a leading researcher and scientific director he is involved in
various international research and educational projects and programs in
the area of child development, methodology and philosophy of psychol-
ogy in cooperation with various research and educational institutions in
Finland, Russia and USA.
E-mail: nveresov@yandex.ru
Brady Wagoner
Brady Wagoner is completing his Ph.D. in psychology at University of
Cambridge with the support of the Gates Cambridge Trust and the ORS
award. His interests include the history and philosophy of psychology, cul-
tural psychology, remembering, the self, existentialism, and the absurd pur-
suit of mountain summits. He is co-creator of the Sir Frederic Bartlett Internet
Archive [accessed at: www.ppsis.cam.ac.uk/bartlett/]. In addition, he is on
the editorial board of Culture & Psychology, Integrative Psychological and Behav-
ioral Science, International Journal of Dialogical Science, and Psychology and Soci-
ety) and is co-founding editor of Psychology & Society [accessed at: www.psy-
chologyandsociety.sps.cam.ac.uk]. His co-authored books include Symbolic
Transformation: the mind in movement through culture and society (Routledge, in
press) and Culture and Social Change: Transforming society through the power of
ideas (Information Age, in preparation).
E-mail: bw249@cam.ac.uk
Contributors 345
Kosuke Wakabayashi
Kosuke Wakabayashi is a student of graduate school, department of
psychology, Ritsumeikan University (Japan). His interests are a group dy-
namics and forensic psychology. Especially, he has an interest in the delib-
eration process in the trial of the lay judge (Saiban-in) system that started
recently in Japan.
E-mail: ls015018@lt.ritsumei.ac.jp
Yoshiyuki Watanabe
Yoshiyuki Watanabe is professor of psychology at the Center for Educa-
tional Affiairs, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veteinary Medicine,
Hokkaido Japan. His research interests are in theoretical and methodologi-
cal issues of personality psychology. He is the chief editor of Japanese Journal
of Personality, and is also a representative of Japanese Psychological Associa-
tion.
E-mail: ynabe@mac.com
Yuko Yasuda
Yuko Yasuda is an educational assistant at Graduate School of Education,
Kyoto University in Japan. Her majors are clinical psychology and life-span
developmental psychology. She is widely interested in experiences of crisis
situations and supports for them. Her present research theme is selections
and trajectories of infertile women. She especially focuses on the selection
of stopping infertility treatments and later their lives from the viewpoint of
life-span development.
E-mail: yuko-y@kcat.zaq.ne.jp
Tania Zittoun
Tania Zittoun is Professor at the Institute of Psychology & Education,
University of Neuchtel (Switzerland). She studies the dynamics whereby
persons and groups render events and activities intelligible. Her work exam-
ines development all life long, with a particular focus on ruptures and their
subsequent processes of transitions, and on peoples uses of artifactsfrom
poetry to evening classesas resources to guide their own change. She ex-
plores methodological strategies enabling to capture personal change in
dynamic and complex environments. She is Associate Editor of the Sage
Journal Culture & Psychology, and her last book is Transitions. Development
through Symbolic Resources (Infoage, 2006).
E-mail: tania.zittoun@unine.ch

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60 Years Gone Astray

Methodological Thinking in Psychology:

Living in Poverty: Developmental Poetics of Cultural Realities (2010)

Methodological Thinking in Psychology: 60 Years Gone Astray? (2010)

Relating to Environments: A New Look at Umwelt (2009)

Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically (2009)

Innovating Genesis: Microgenesis and the Constructive Mind in Action (2008)

Otherness in Question: Development of the Self (2007)

Semiotic Rotations: Modes of Meanings in Cultural Worlds (2007)

Trust and Distrust: Sociocultural Perspectives (2007)

Transitions: Symbolic Resources in Development (2006)

Becoming Other: From Social Interaction to Self-Reflection (2006)

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Methodological thinking in psychology : 60 years gone astray? / edited by

Cover Design by Soraya Jesus Salomo

Copyright 2010 Information Age Publishing Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

Printed in the United States of America

Preface ................................................................................................. vii

1. Modern Mainstream Psychology Is the Best? Noncumulative,

2. Questions, Patterns, and Explanations, Not Hypothesis

3. The Quantity/Quality Interchange: A Blind Spot on the

4. Studying the Movement of Thought ............................................. 69

5. Understanding a Personality as a Whole: Transcending the

6. Metaphors in Psychological Conceptualization

7. Remembering Methodology: Experimenting with Bartlett .........145

8. Reflections on Some Neglected Ideas About Psychological

9. Qualitative Developmental Psychology .......................................209

10. The Role of Observational Methodology and the Application

11. What Would Be Gustav Theodor Fechner Legacy For

12. Forgotten Methodology: Vygotskys Case ....................................267

13. Vygotskys Methodological Approach: A Blueprint for the

14. General Conclusion: Have Sixty Years Really Gone Astray?

This book is about progress in psychology. Ormaybeof its absence. Of

Methodological Thinking in Psychology: 60 Years Gone Astray?, pages viixii

technology, agriculture, church, philosophy, sciences, etc. In contrast, the

studied in single cases (replaced by large sample studies and statistical

1. Which of the historical or new principles should be introduced to

important category missing in mainstream psychology is time and all time-

Methodological Thinking in Psychology: 60 Years Gone Astray?, pages 126

CULTURAL-HISTORICAL APPROACH TO THE PSYCHOLOGY

There are important principles of cultural-historical psychology that can

Stages of Thinking Development

The main question to answer for understanding thinking is how knowl-

For example, scientific could mean, knowledge told by a scientist. At

Relations between Thinking, Planning, and Activity

Thinking, especially in science, cannot be detached from action.4 There

Relation of Thinking to the World Studied by a Scientist

There is more than one psychology of mind; several schools of psychol-

the ways psychological research is described in practically all mainstream

1. Does the attribute supposedly measured by a test really exist? and

There is no way to prove whether one or several different mechanisms un-

SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD

So, science is thinking, a special kind of thinking that involves simultaneous

General Questions that Underlie Scientific Method

As already suggested above, modern mainstream psychology in general

1. What do I want to know, what is my research question?

4. Are the answers to three first questions complementary, do they

Superficially, answering these questions would seem to be easy and

FOUR METHODOLOGICAL QUESTIONS: MODERN

What Do I Want to Know, What is My Research Question?

Every published research paper is an attempt to answer a certain sci-

The situation in the modern mainstream psychology has not changed