Realism and Psychology: Collected Essays

This book is a collection of new, published and revised essays on the place and value of scientific realism in psychology. Through critical analyses of contemporary psychology, essays argue that the realist requirements of a properly scientific psychology are often misunderstood even in the discipline’s putatively scientific heart, with profound conceptual and empirical consequences. Against this, and in answer to recent calls to demonstrate the relevance of realism, the essays sketch the elements of a realist program: they discuss the recent history, development and principal features of a distinctive, thoroughgoing, realism for psychology: its theories, concepts, methods and applications. It thus aims to extend realism from philosophy to psychology, articulate a realist metatheory, clarify realism’s relevance, and promote its discussion.

Nigel Mackay, D.Phil. (1982), University of Oxford, is Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Wollongong. He is the author of the monograph Motivation and Explanation (1989) on Freud’s philosophy of science, and various papers on theory and method.

Agnes Petocz, PhD. (1996) in Psychology, University of Sydney, is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Western Sydney. She has published on various topics in psychology and philosophy, and is author of Freud, Psychoanalysis and Symbolism (CUP, 1999).