Feyerabend and Psychology—An Excursion with Speculations
摘要
Feyerabend's view of psychology became more differentiated over the decades. Some of his remarks are remarkably accurate, others rather superficial. During his studies in Vienna, he attended psychology courses at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s with Hubert RohracherRohracher, Hubert. Rohracher advocated a natural-scientific, experimental psychology. For him, the EEG was an important instrument for the “objective view into the mental life of others.” He rejected the “doctrine” of unconscious psychic processes. It is not far-fetched to assume that Rohracher's courses may have influenced Feyerabend's skepticism toward psychoanalysis as much as his later engagement with the mind-body problem. The perceptual psychology research of Edgar Tranekjaer-Rasmussen certainly also fostered Feyerabend's later doubts about the “theory of sense data” and the foundations of logical empiricism. In Feyerabend's later works, there are, among others, references to Jean PiagetPiaget, Jean, Jerome BrunerBruner, Jerome, Alexander R. LuriaLurija, Alexander R., David KatzKatz, David, Oswald Külpe, Muzafer SherifSherif, Muzafer, Leon FestingerFestinger, Leon, Albert Michotte, Paul Meehl, Ernst Mach and Lev Semionovich VygotskyWygotski, Lew S.. By the late 1980s, Paul Feyerabend is not only aware of the process of differentiation in psychology as a science; he perceives the disputes and narrow-minded attempts within and between psychological communities to either ignore or combat the diversity of methods and theories. And he sympathizes with (social) constructivism.