Psychology is NOT a Coherent Science

Clinical psychology and its active arm of psychotherapy have indeed adopted the scientific posture. However, from a strictly scientific point of view they haven’t been able to meet the requirements. In attempting to evaluate the status of psychology, the American Psychological Association appointed Sigmund Koch to plan and direct a study that was subsidized by the National Science Foundation. This examination involved eighty eminent scholars in assessing the facts, theories, and methods of psychology. The results of this extensive endeavor were then published in a seven-volume series entitled Psychology: A Study of a Science.

Koch describes the delusion of people regarding psychology as a science: “The hope of a psychological science became indistinguishable from the fact of psychological science. The entire subsequent history of psychology can be seen as a ritualistic endeavor to emulate the forms of science in order to sustain the delusion that it already is a science” (italics his).

Koch says: “Throughout psychology’s history as ‘science,’ the hard knowledge it has deposited has been uniformly negative” (italics his). He contends that much of psychology is not a cumulative or progressive discipline in which knowledge is added to knowledge. Rather, what is discovered by one generation “typically disenfranchises the theoretical fictions of the past.” Instead of refining and specifying larger generalizations of the past, psychologists are busy replacing them. He adds, “I think it by this time utterly and finally clear that psychology cannot be a coherent science” (italics his). Koch suggests, “As the beginning of a therapeutic humility, we might re-christen psychology and speak instead of the psychological studies”

(italics his). And he would certainly criticize psychotherapy for living under “the delusion that it already is a science” when it is not.

Another reason why psychotherapy cannot legitimately be called a coherent science is because it attempts to deal with deep human complexities that can’t be directly observed or consistently predicted. Furthermore, the therapist and client are each individually unique, and their interaction lends an additional dimension of variability. When one adds time and changing circumstances, it’s no wonder that the therapeutic relationship escapes the rigors of science. In considering the dilemma between science and personal individuality, Dr. Gordon Allport says: “The Individual, whatever else he may be, is an internally consistent and unique organization of bodily and mental processes. But since he is unique, science finds him an embarrassment. Science, it is said, deals only with broad, preferably universal, laws….  Individuality cannot be studied by science, but only by history, art, or biography.”

Dr. Martin and Deidre Bobgan and T.A. McMahon, PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY (PART 1).