What Could a Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject Be?

Abstract

There has been a lot of talk recently about a “renewal of psychology”, and the various proposals emerging under this rubric appear to have at least one thing in common: they are all dedicated to a scientific reaffirmation of the human subject, which has been largely neglected by traditional nomological psychology. This is not only expressed by the fact that we are now hearing about subject science, subject theory, subject orientation, subject development, and the like in strategically significant contexts. A reaffirmation of the subject is also more or less explicitly embodied in other basic concepts, such as “qualitative” research, “interpretative” paradigms, “hermeneutic” analyses, and “life-world”. Given such a consensus between different alternative psychologies, the question then arises of what this means for the individual approaches, i.e. what theoretical and methodological consequences this consensus entails. Evidently, simply invoking the subject does not necessarily lead to agreement in fundamental scientific thinking and research. Rather, the shared interest in the subject merely provides a basis for debate on the question of what kind of research is needed to develop a psychology appropriate to human subjectivity.