Why Psychological Theorizing is a Dying Art

Reading the psychology books written thirty or more years ago, one is struck by the wealth of theorizing, and the rich development of personality and psychodynamic theory. Much of what we read in these books sounds anachronistic today, though, because the authors presented their ideas in a style of bold generalizations.

Today, the trend in psychoanalysis is to avoid over-arching theories and to focus instead on the client's subjective experience of his own inner reality.

But if the writers of that earlier time in psychology's history were sometimes guilty of broad generalizations that neglected individual nuance, in fact the writers of today seem to approach their subjects with a strange refusal to probe some important areas of understanding--sometimes even a fear of acknowledging the obvious.

For example, we hear many psychotherapists say, "Science has absolutely no idea what causes homosexuality." And they may add, "Besides, there's no need to know."

We see a similar situation in other fields of study. The authors of a recent book examining the contribution of Greek philosophy report the same situation in university Classics departments: today, there is broad, stubborn resistance to the development of any system of unified thought.

"Deeply suspicious of grand theories," academics now avoid understandings that are "general, broad and all-inclusive." In their departments, they often refuse any attempt to see the contribution of Greek thought as aggregate and sweeping. There is a tendency to reject a sound generalization if an opponent could possibly find one single exception to an otherwise useful and plausible theory.

Sensible theories are debunked as mere "vulgar over-simplifications" with the claim that they lack a sense of nuance and gradation. "The minute one mentions the Greeks," the authors say, "the [debunkers] descend to demand, 'Which Greeks? Whose Greeks? Greeks when, how and where?"

But in an academic climate devoted to fragmentation rather than unified understanding, these authors remark with sadness, one can expect to see few philosophers in the tradition of a Hegel or a Weber or a Toynbee, because all of those great thinkers were forced to rely on "bothersome 'assertions,' 'assumptions,' and 'generalizations'" to advance their civilization-changing philosophies.

Reference

Hanson, Victor and John Heath (1998) Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom. Free Press.