Psychology's interpretive turn: The search for truth and agency in theoretical and philosophical psychology.

Held, Barbara S.

doi:10.1037/11588-000

Cited by 45 publications

(61 citation statements)

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“…Shweder, 1990;Shweder & Sullivan, 1993). The second shift concerns psychology's own 'interpretive turn' (Held, 2007;Tappan, 1997): its shift towards studying thought, feeling and action as discursively situated. The narrative psychology movement, as well as the emphasis on discourse analysis in European psychology (e.g.…”

Section: Conclusion: Historicising Psychological Theory and Methods Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative, psychology and the politics of sexual identity in the United States: from ‘sickness’ to ‘species’ to ‘subject’

Hammack

Mayers

Windell

2013

Psychology & Sexuality

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Since early legal, medical and scientific discussions of homosexuality, the discipline of psychology has assumed an instrumental role in both maintaining and challenging cultural and political perspectives on same-sex desire, identity and behaviour. This article presents a critical historical review of psychological research on same-sex desire in the United States, with a focus on the way in which studies reflect three master narratives on the nature and meaning of same-sex attraction: (1) a sickness script that dominated the majority of research from the late 1800s to the 1970s; (2) a species script that became popular with the removal of homosexuality as a diagnosable mental illness in 1973 and initiated several new lines of research; and (3) a subject script inspired by scholarly and cultural shifts beginning in the 1990s that challenged the taxonomy of sexual identity. We conclude with a discussion of the transformative potential of a narrative approach that integrates analysis of historical forces and individual psychological development.

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Section: Conclusion: Historicising Psychological Theory and Methods Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative, psychology and the politics of sexual identity in the United States: from ‘sickness’ to ‘species’ to ‘subject’

Hammack

Mayers

Windell

2013

Psychology & Sexuality

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“…He refers to that problem more explicitly in this next quotation: What does Stiles mean in saying that "descriptions of events are not given by those events but require acts of creation by the observer"? This could be interpreted to express some form of constructivist or social constructionist epistemology, in which knowers make "reality" (in language) rather than discover reality (see Held, 1995Held, , 2007.…”

Section: Theory Building Vs Theory Justificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because we cannot know the world directly, we construct and share descriptions and theories 4 about it based on our experience of it. (p. 17) Note in this last quotation that because our experience of the world is a product of cultural (as well as biological and psychological "makeup"), Stiles' epistemology seems not only to some degree anti-objectivist, but also to some degree relativist: that is, cultural context at the collective level (if not biological and psychological makeup at the individual level) presumably plays a role in the reality we experience or "construct" in language/description (rather than discover), in which case "truth" may be perspectival or relative to each knower's cultural (if not individual) context (see Held, 2007). This conclusion is reinforced by this next quotation:…”

Section: Theory Building Vs Theory Justificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But that does not mean that the event that is being observed or described is itself constructed in the act of observing, describing, or knowing it. See Held (1995Held ( , 2007 for elaboration regarding this radical constructionist thesis. 3 Indirect or mediated knowing, in which we require theory to access a reality that is not directly observable (e.g., the physics of the very large or very small, or causality in general), does not preclude an objectivist epistemology, in which the truth of a claim about the world does not depend on anyone's beliefs about its truth.…”

Section: Theory Building Vs Theory Justificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 Indirect or mediated knowing, in which we require theory to access a reality that is not directly observable (e.g., the physics of the very large or very small, or causality in general), does not preclude an objectivist epistemology, in which the truth of a claim about the world does not depend on anyone's beliefs about its truth. See Held (1995Held ( , 2007 for elaboration of the distinction between direct and indirect/mediated knowing, as well as the oft-missed distinction between the use of theory and the use of language in the knowing process. 4 Note that here Stiles seems to speak of descriptions and theories as if they are different kinds of entities, or at least are not synonymous.…”

Section: Theory Building Vs Theory Justificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Logic of Case-Study Methodology

Held¹

2009

PCSP

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The question of how we deploy logic in developing and justifying scientific theories of any sort is an important one. In this commentary, I consider William Stiles' (2009) arguments about the logical operations that are deployed especially in theory-building case-study research in psychotherapy. My commentary contains three sections, defined by three sets of distinctions: (a) the distinction between description and explanation in theory building, (b) the distinction between theory building and theory justification, and (c) the distinction between nomothetic and idiographic approaches to theory building in case-study methodology.Key words: descriptive theory; explanatory theory; causal explanation; theory justification; objectivist epistemology; perspectival epistemology; relativism; theoretical generalization ___________________________________________________________________________ The question of how we deploy logic in developing and justifying scientific theories of any sort is an important one, and so I am pleased to have this opportunity to comment on William Stiles' (2009) article. That Stiles addresses deduction, induction, and abduction in the context of "theory-building case studies" in psychotherapy is no small undertaking; he is therefore to be commended on that ambitious basis alone. In this commentary, I present my understanding of his central arguments, and I raise questions about some of those arguments. I structure my response by way of three sections that comprise this commentary: (a) the distinction between description and explanation in theory building, (b) the distinction between theory building and theory justification, and (c) the distinction between nomothetic and idiographic approaches to theory building in case-study methodology.

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Living Aggressively

Raskin¹

2009

Reflections in Personal Construct Theory

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Psychology's interpretive turn: The search for truth and agency in theoretical and philosophical psychology.

Cited by 45 publications

References 0 publications

Narrative, psychology and the politics of sexual identity in the United States: from ‘sickness’ to ‘species’ to ‘subject’

Narrative, psychology and the politics of sexual identity in the United States: from ‘sickness’ to ‘species’ to ‘subject’

The Logic of Case-Study Methodology

Living Aggressively

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