Why Revolutionaries Need a New Psychological Poetic: Reply to Valsiner

Abstract

Current critiques of developmental theory impugn all walks of cognitive and empirical psychology. They show that we must undergo a fundamental `renegotiation of our common language habits' as psychologists (Valsiner, p. 149). My difference with Valsiner is over how fundamental this renegotiation should be. He believes that psychologists simply `lack adequate concepts' to capture the phenomena that interest them. I argue that the deficiencies of contemporary psychology, illustrated in my critique of the `theory of mind' approach to children's thinking, must be righted by generating a new psychological poetic that refuses the aggrandizing consolations of the psychological sublime. Only this new poetic would realize the revolutionary destiny that Miller (1969) foresaw for our discipline.

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