Psychological Epistemology: Epistemological Psychology

Abstract

In his 2010 book Being Human: Human Being, Rue Cromwell developed some key ideas for reforming psychology. These include resolving the conundrum of subject, object, and consciousness in science; sorting through the tangles of meaning in superficially similar but fundamentally different epistemologies; and reversing conflation of cultural, social, and economic values with those of science. This discussion applies those ideas to some particulars of clinical psychology, psychopathology and the treatment and rehabilitation of severe and disabling mental illness.

Notes

1. The computer scientist's “ontology” can be thought of as an operational definition of the philosopher's “ontology,” in the latter case an accounting of all that is real, but in the former case limited to a particular functional purpose.

2. Cromwell and others of his generation can be excused for not invoking my generation's cultural icon of this reality, the “Star Trek” episode in which the Enterprise crew encounters a parallel universe where Captain Kirk is a really bad guy but Spock is essentially the same.

3. Clinical psychologists eventually confront the political and economic dimensions of science itself, especially if they pursue research grants, but the confrontation in healthcare arguably comes sooner and to a larger proportion of them.