Psicologia como disciplina científica e discurso sobre a alma: problemas epistemológicos e ideológicos

Abstract

Psychology is usually defined as a science of the behavior, but it needs a revision of its foundations. There are difficulties in its own definition of behavior and it represents the prevalence of the neopositivist and materialist approaches. This led the disciplines or psychological schools that treated the subject to the extent of an introspective and subjective psychology (or the soul) to deviate, generating contradictions and emptiness that are present in the theoretical, professional, academic, scientific and formation fields. When ignoring the focus of the subjectivity and considering only the positive science as the psyche truth, psychology became prisoner of the myth or ideology of scientificism. It is necessary to recover the sense of psychology as a study of the soul or of the subjectivity, which needs a symbolic and subjective discourse complementing the objective and scientific discourse. The term ‘soul’ can be seen as a metaphor for the psyche and the several discourses or psychological disciplines would be explorations of this metaphor allowing to amplify its expression and comprehension.