The Two Cultures and Psychology´s Two Cultures

The usual affirmation that psychology is in crisis can be understood as the conflict

between two divergent conceptions whitin the discipline: the scientificist and the

comprehensive: Both of them coexist since the very origin of the psychological science, defining different objects of knowledge as well as methods. Nowadays they constitute antagonist cultures. Historiographic analysis shows that both cultures are the intradisciplinary expression of the broader anthropological dichotomy in occidental societies between the scientific culture and the literary-humanist culture. The analysis shows in addition that recognizing the multiple dimensions involved in

the complex object studied by the psychology afford the integration of both the

methodological precision of scientificist culture and the appropriated definition of

the object of knowledge characteristic of the comprehensive culture.