A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap (Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology)

In this incisive analysis of academic psychology, Gregg Henriques examines the fragmented nature of the discipline and explains why the field has had enormous difficulty specifying its subject matter and how this has limited its ability to advance our knowledge of the human condition. He traces the origins of the problem of psychology to a deep and profound gap in our knowledge systems that emerged in the context of the scientific Enlightenment. To address this problem, this book introduces a new vision for scientific psychology called mental behaviorism. The approach is anchored to a comprehensive metapsychological framework that integrates insights from physics and cosmic evolution, neuroscience, the cognitive and behavioral sciences, developmental and complex adaptive systems theory, attachment theory, phenomenology, and social constructionist perspectives and is well grounded in the philosophy of science. Building on more than twenty years of work in theoretical psychology and drawing on a wide range of literature, Professor Henriques shows how this new approach to scientific knowledge fills in the gaps of our current understanding of psychology and can allow us to develop a more holistic and sophisticated way to understand animal and human mental behavioral patterns. This work will especially appeal to students and scholars of general psychology and theoretical psychology, as well as to historians and philosophers of science.