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The purpose of this paper is to show that both humanistic psychology and traditional psychology have essentially the same problem, namely, that of coming up with a sound metapsychology within which psychology proper can thrive and grow. In my own harsh terms, psychology has not as yet come up with an indigenous adequate paradigm and is still in an essentially preparadigmatic state of development with respect to an authentic paradigm. My motivation for insisting on this state of affairs is not to scold psychology for being so slow—historically I do not believe that it could be otherwise, since all sciences follow the same route, and the other human sciences are in the same boat—but rather to bring to awareness that the problem of the precise meaning of psychology is still before us so that the interests, behavior, and research programs of psychologists can be guided accordingly. In contrast, consider the attitude that the basic paradigmatic problems of psychology are settled and that the main issue before us is simply to collect more data rather than think through new approaches to problems. Some behaviorists, for example, believe the problem to be one of merely applying a completely known and articulated paradigm to successive human problem areas (e.g., education, therapy, linguistic expression, etc.). In opposition to these latter viewpoints, the position of this paper is that the discovery and articulation of the paradigm is part of the problem.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4684-1071-6_2

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