Psicologia e conoscenza: una prospettiva storico-antropologica

Scientific psychology is a discipline originated in the nineteenth century by two roots, philosophical and methodological, opposing and hardly tunable. The stated goal of scientific psychology is to get a know- ledge that is controlled, reliable and objective about subjective contents, qualities, all unclassifiable from a quantitative point of view. Historically, the conceptual standpoint is twofold, medical-biological and philosophical. The Hippocratic model was analogical, rationalistic and phenomenological, its current heirs are the bio-genetic, nativistic and psychophysiological models. From a methodological point of view, we are facing a naive empiricism and materialism in an implicit exclusion of research on the meaning and the origin or purpose of psychic functions. The philosophical model, which today is almost always denied or simply forgotten, has a kinship and relationship derived from the dualist model, te- leological and metaphysical of the classical philosophical tradition. This source is not, however, recog- nized, accepted nor declared and we can see how the statements in the current epistemological debate in psychology deny any ties or derivation from theology, moral philosophy or spiritualist and mentalistic position. In recent times this inability of psychology to really make speeches and studies on the psyche produced a progressive impoverishment in the research domain, which is now limited to a microtomic study of physiological processes parallel to actions, to behaviors or to sensory and motor activities. Con- cretely, the dismissing to find a way or an understanding of psychic reality has led to the simple expla- nation of the steps (behavioral and/or physiological) between the beginning and conclusion of a mental process. The current academic psychology fails, nor aspires to do, to build new explanations or theories on the psyche, because it has become philosophically decerebrated, materialist not by choice but by lack of understanding and awareness that the reality is not made only by objects that we can touch and measure, incapable of developing abstract and mental concepts. In this cultural climate, objectivist, em- pirical and conformist, there is no longer any room for innovative and revolutionary theoretical views or criticisms with respect to the bio-physiological domain, behaviourist and current culturalism.