The intent of this chapter is to make clear the importance of the scientific psychologist's "detachment" from everyday life. This is seen as a necessary condition for a psychology primarily interested in a scientific method, rather than in engagement in the various possible actions of daily life.

We shall outline the development of two different objects; the worlds of knowledge in everyday life on the one hand, and the knowledge of scientific psychology, on the other. Two approaches will be presented: a phenomenological position that discusses the possibility of reducing this "detachment", and the position of constructive realism interested in maintaining the notion of "detachment" with a view to the constructive aspects of science.

There are common as well as different aspects in the approaches to psychology by a constructive realism and phenomenology. Both are concerned with detachment, but attribute it a different function: phenomenology tries to remove the detachment, while for constructive realism this has the character of reflection. Also, where phenomenology discusses the Lebenswelt as the recognized world in everyday life, constructive realism stresses the difference between the given and the constructed worlds.⁽¹⁾

Undoubtedly, psychology seems to withdraw more and more from its subject, and vice versa the subject withdraws from it. Several obvious signs of this "detachment" have drawn little attention among scientific psychologists. We shall attempt to show that "detachment" is necessary for psychology as a science. In that context we shall sketch also the problem of a different approach which attempts to reduce "detachment" in order, in Husserl's words, to reach "the things themselves".⁽²⁾

MOMENTS OF DETACHMENT

To what extent do scientific statements about man differ from man's statements about himself? There are several ways of looking at this problem:

(a) With regard to content, a scientific statement differs clearly from a statement in everyday life. The intention to formulate a scientific statement is in itself a withdrawal from its subject; in other words, the psychologist's statements about his or her human subject differ from the statements man makes about himself. As such, this attempt shows the psychologist's detachment from his subject. Yet, this problem seems soluble inasmuch as this detachment can be done away with by communication.

(b) With regard to language, a scientific statement is formulated mostly in a more complicated manner than a statement made in daily life and thus often is unintelligible for an "ordinary person". Scientific language is full of specially developed, technical and mathematical terms, and requires a considerable effort to be understood. A language developed specifically for a scientific purpose turns out to be an obstacle. It is very rarely that psychologists try to translate theories into "ordinary" language, and the few attempts generally represent science in a distorted way. "Ordinary man", in order to understand scientific statements about himself, has to learn a new vocabulary and new mathematical terms. This cannot be compared to learning a foreign language, which signifies the same or almost the same objects as in another tongue. To learn a scientific vocabulary is to learn complete theories and to open new fields in the object. This is not only a problem of learning another language, but primarily of learning a new reality, for the reality signified by scientific statements is different from the one we daily regard as our "Wirklichkeit" (environment, world we live in).⁽³⁾

In other words, translation is a question not only of language, but also of "experience": how would something be expressed in everyday life or by a phenomenologist? For the "ordinary" man taking part in an experiment, the experimental task normally is the only psychological reality to which he has access. The experimental situation as such is not intelligible for him; he is unaware of the range of variables and the experimental plan, of the theories and hypotheses of the experimenters and of their reduction of the amount of information.

(c) In their claim to truth scientific statements differ from everyday statements. Starting from the presumption that "ordinary" knowledge is insufficient as knowledge about man, a scientific approach would formulate criteria of objectivity, validity and reliability which do not correspond with everyday life.

How did it come about that scientific psychologists prefer the experiment over the "Lebenswelt"?⁽⁴⁾ The psychologist's answer is simple: everyday situations cannot be controlled in a way that would enable an observer to make exact, i.e., reliable and objective, statements. Research corresponding to the criteria of science is not possible in such situations.

Clearly defined, i.e., controlled, situations are essential in order to make scientific statements. These conditions can be set up identically again and again. The experiment can thus be repeated and the psychological law reexamined. In daily life such a systematic manipulation of the conditions is impossible.

(d) Scientific statements refer mostly to experimental situations, whereas statements of the "ordinary" man about himself nearly always relate to non-experimental situations of daily life. The circumstance has to be simplified in such a way that the supposedly relevant variables can be isolated and thus repeated and/or eliminated. Only a controlled inserting and/or eliminating of variables facilitates a definite causal interpretation. The psychologist, in a certain way, creates a new world; this "microworld",⁽⁵⁾ as we shall call it, replaces the Lebenswelt. The experimental situation of independent variables is nothing but a microworld. Statements of scientific psychology refer to the microworld and not to the Lebenswelt.

A scientific psychologist's aim is to analyze the complexity of the everyday world and thus to obtain simplified structures. The higher the complexity, the more and smaller the microworlds will be. The intention of simplifying the Lebenswelt produces more complexity in the microworld that represents the scientific reality.

(e) Scientific statements about man are mostly specific but at the same time general. Man, in everyday life, is interested in statements about his own subjective life: neither specific nor general, but subject-specific and integral.

The splitting up of the Lebenswelt into microworlds is particularly problematic when carried out because men regard themselves as individuals, or at least try to. The object of our interest, i.e., man, no matter what his function in research, is suitable for scientific statements only if these are comparable; that is, scientific statements about man make sense only if he is subjected to the same conditions as the total experimental situation (part of which he is), and thus subject to the scientist's control.

It is obvious that man differs from other--non-human--variables in that he cannot be inserted and/or eliminated at will. Yet, psychologists arrive at general statements about man, which they do by abstraction: they ignore all the differences of their subjects in order to concentrate upon those categories that can be abstracted from individuality, e.g., sex, age, profession and other "objective" attributes. It becomes more difficult when verbal utterances, behavior or subtly differentiated aspects of action are compared; such complex categories cannot be isolated objectively, but often are "spelled out" in one way or another.

What was meant to be a simplification turns out to be unsatisfactory. Details taken out of a common context of action cannot be added to a whole object. Thereby they lose their function as a detail and become closed and independent microworlds, of interest only to a small group of scientists; they have nothing in common with their "first" object. They were taken out of the context of common knowledge in response to the scientific interest of constructing a situation corresponding to the conditions of science, not as a way of solving problems of everyday action.

Thus, the question arises whether, given the constructed situation and the removal of individuality, statements in daily life and scientific statements even refer to the same subject. The answer is not as simple as it may seem at first. For how can we test whether various statements refer to the same subject, and who can or shall do the testing? To what should basic statements refer? Is it the subject of science or is it the subject of everyday life from which science originally started out?

THE COMMON REFERENT

If we agree that the basic subject is that of daily life, the answer to our questions depends first upon the extent to which the experimental situation parallels and coincides with the everyday situation, thus making possible "transference"; and second, whether the levelling of individuality has changed the subject into something different from man's initial way of seeing himself.

There will be transferability between the experimental and the everyday situation only if scientific laws are used for prediction about everyday life. But there is a basic problem. Even if such predictions were possible, one would still have to demonstrate that the situation described is subject to the laws of science. This demonstration is impossible as long as the conditions of daily life differ from those of the experimental situation. But if there were no difference between the two, there would be no need for an experiment.

Without abstractions--i.e., constructions⁽⁶⁾--we could not compare experimental structures to those of everyday life. We could merely rely on the usefulness of the laws and suppose that the structures of experimental and everyday life situations are similar. Whenever our forecasts turn out to be successful, we would insist on the structural similarity. We want to stress that the fact that laws prove themselves worthwhile does not result from the structural similarity, but only from the "success" and our consequent reliance upon them.

If we derive the similarity of structures from the "success" of laws, we must not infer that structures in scientific statements represent the structures of everyday life. If it is true that structural similarity is derived from the usefulness, and scientific statements contain something new and different from "ordinary" statements, this means that "similarity" can only be asserted when new possibilities of action are opened up in the Lebenswelt⁽⁷⁾, for only in regard to new actions can scientific statements be proved. Scientific knowledge does not represent Lebenswelt (the recognizable in everyday life) because it has changed the subject and its situation.

No "ordinary man" would assert that human persons are totally individual and incomparable to others. We can also rule out that they are interested in as many things as a scientific psychologist, for what is developed by psychologists is partly irrelevant to man. Correspondingly, on his part, his own individuality is not adequately respected by science, and its general statements seem of little use. It may sound strange, but most people are unaware of the scientific results about themselves. They neither know them nor wish to know them; instead, they are preoccupied with psychological literature of a type dismissed by scientific psychologists who are scientific in the above sense.

These psychologists trying to explain this "strange" attitude would refer to a certain tendency towards irrationalism or the fear of being overtaxed, but only rarely to the fact that science cannot satisfy human needs. Literature which responds to human needs, regardless of the "qualities" evaluated by scientists, evokes in the reader the feeling that it is about him and concerns him, whereas their responses to scientific literature are clearly different.

But we are not interested primarily in emotions. It is in the formulation of questions that the scientific psychologist has withdrawn from the individual, not only because of the nomothetical conditions of objectivity, but because it is the scientist who asks the questions and not the individual. Accepting scientifically formulated statements only, the psychologist rules out individuality. Thus, the problem in the levelling of individuality is first of all not a difference in the description of the subject, but a difference in interest; the difference in description is a consequent.

Let us return to the problem of a common referent. Whether psychological statements and ordinary statements refer to the same subject depends on the parallelism between experimental structures and those of everyday situations. The parallelism depends on the success of the experimental law in forecasting everyday situations; this predictability, in turn, depends upon the ordinary man's readiness to rely on scientific laws and results. The exclusion of individuality in scientific statements has its manifestation not in a neglect of one among the many aspects of human life, but in the decreasing tendency to rely on scientific laws.

Do scientific statements and ordinary statements refer to the same subject? On the basis of our analysis, the question is pointless as long as "referring to a subject" means to represent it.⁽⁸⁾ However, the question does make sense if we look at it in view of new possibilities of action.⁽⁹⁾ If such possibilities are opened up in everyday life, we can conclude pragmatically that there are parallel structures between the scientific reality and everyday reality (Lebenswelt). Possibilities of action are essential in order to assume a possible comparison. If this is not the case, we have to argue for different subjective fields between science and daily life. The scientist's detachment from daily life consists not in inadequate representation, but in the failure to open up enough useful possibilities of action at a time when life is changing even more rapidly. A psychology aimed at the things themselves (in a phenomenological sense) has to start with the problems and tasks of every day and the difference between reality and Wirklichkeit (hard facts).⁽¹⁰⁾

SUGGESTIONS FOR A CONSTRUCTIVE REALISM

A constructive realism would not want to destroy or relativize any scientific theory or to disturb scientific work in any way. But it reflects the conviction that the scientific structuring of the world, i.e., the elaboration of constructs of reality, is not completed by the realization of the scientific construct, but that these constructs must be made understandable. This is possible only by means of reflection, which, in turn, constructs. This is done by changing the contextual of a proposition system with a view to drawing out its implicit presuppositions. Under new and strange contextual conditions the "tacit knowledge"⁽¹¹⁾ of the proposition system will emerge. This procedure avoids the logical analysis of proposition systems because the really important aspects of such systems cannot be ruled out outside of the connections between the propositions and their special life forms. By seeing the implicit presuppositions of scientific constructs we are able to understand their connections and their differences from everyday life.

In this kind of reflection, by varying the contexts we become aware of the prejudices of various scientific theories. But this is not the main aim, for two or three kinds of worlds may be able to exist together: Wirklichkeit, or environment, is the world we live with before any reflection; Lebenswelt is the world of everyday life and reflects the process of "surviving"; while Realitat, or reality, is the world of scientific constructs needed for the work of scientific psychology.

University of Vienna

Vienna, Austria