A Guided Science: History of Psychology in the Mirror of Its Making

Jaan Valsiner fills in the wide background of scholarship on the history of science, the recent focus on social studies of sciences, and the cultural and cognitive analyses of knowledge-making. The theoretical scheme Valsiner carries over to the phenomena of social guidance of science comes from his thinking about processes of development land the relations of human beings to their environments. For Valsiner, scientific knowledge is cultural at its core, and thus, he examines the slow, nonlinear progress of ideas in psychology as a science at the border of the natural and the social.

About the Author :
Jaan Valsiner is professor of psychology at the department of psychology, Clark University. He is the founding editor of the journal Culture & Psychology, and the author of several books, including The Guided Mind, Culture and Human Development, and Comparative Study of Human Cultural Development, and is editor of Thinking in Psychological Science.

Review :
"Professor Valsiner develops here an opus magnum. It is, at the same time, a richly documented study of history of psychology, a cross-culturally informed prospection of the future of the discipline, as well as an essay on historiography of science. Overcoming the myth of psychology's birth through Wundt's first laboratory, Professor Valsiner shows that psychology cannot be understood ignoring the impact of Napoleonic occupation or the philosophical reaction to Kant in nineteenth-century Germany. His wholehearted and clear writing turns into an adventure, an erudite examination which goes deep into the most essential questions of psychology. It is a must for everyone interested in finding a third way between the theory-phobic empiricism and the postmodernist 'anything goes'" --Carlos Cornejo, associate professor, Department of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile "This book is a discussion on the current making of psychology as it evolves from its past. It offers an unusual argument that gathers together elements of theory, sociology and anthropology of science with a critical examination of the constitutive moments of psychology as a liminal discipline. Avoiding a fossilized consideration of vestiges of the past, some often-neglected historical voices are presented as arising from their contemporary turmoils, and also brought into dialogue with current contributions and concerns voiced by newcomers from non-Western cultures. This is done by reflexively taking into account as much the unavoidable social guidance of knowledge construction, as the pledge to breaching the cultural blinders for developing a truly global psychology." --Alberto Rosa, professor, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Facultad de Psicologia