WHAT KIND OF DISCIPLINE IS PSYCHOLOGY - AUTONOMOUS OR DEPENDENT, HUMANISTIC OR SCIENTIFIC, BIOLOGICAL OR SOCIOLOGICAL

The main views on the status and place of psychology are examined, and a new view is proposed. The rejected opinions are that psychology is an autonomous discipline, a branch of the humanities, a component of cognitive science, a biological science, and a social science. It is suggested that, though not autonomous, psychology is a very special science dependent upon other disciplines. It overlaps partially with biology as well as with sociology. But it also has its peculiar concepts, theories, and methods. Consequently psychology is not fully reducible to other disciplines. Such incomplete epistemological reduction contrasts with the full ontological reduction of the mental to the neurophysiological. © 1990.