Psychology

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers the claim that psychology is the study of the mind, and the countervailing claim that psychology is merely a fortuitous federation of interests and techniques with nothing important in common. It argues that psychology is not the study of the mind, but that it can be characterized as having a subject matter: being human. It traces the tangled history of psychology from Descartes to the modern day, including its unethical activities, social roles, and more positive changes with the development of the welfare state. Against a dominant historiographic tradition, it argues that ‘behaviourism’ is not a blip in the history of psychology not only because it is continuous with cognitive science but also because it is continuous with much nineteenth-century psychology.

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