Phenomenological Critique of Psychological Systems   [Archived Catalog]
2017-2018 Academic Catalog and Student Handbook with Summer Addendum
   

EHTP 3140 - Phenomenological Critique of Psychological Systems


Modern mainstream psychology also developed amorphously, some 30 years after its beginnings it fractionated into various schools: Structuralism, Behaviorism, Psychoanalysis, Gestalt Theory, and Cognitive Psychology. Each of these schools helped to expand psychology from its narrow beginnings, but they also followed, in various degrees, the natural science criteria. The argument of the course is that with a different philosophical basis these newer developments might have given psychology a more adequate frame of reference and a more solid foundation for its work with human beings. Thus a foundational critique of these systems of psychology can throw light on alternative directions for psychology. This course when delivered by a phenomenologist adopts descriptive phenomenology as an alternative framework, but other professors might choose a different basis for the constructive alternative. 3 credit(s)