American Psychologist
American Psychologist
5 years ago

Unified clinical science, or paradigm diversity? Comment on Melchert (2016).

Jackson MR
Drawing on Kuhn's (1970) analysis, Melchert (2016) argued that current professional psychology exists in a preparadigmatic state and that a transition to a unified clinical science based on the paradigm of the behavioral and neurosciences is now possible. But Melchert's analysis makes questionable assumptions about reducibility and neglects several crucial aspects of Kuhn's analysis. A close examination of psychological work on problems such as violence against women indicates that different research paradigms and their associated exemplars identify strengths and weaknesses of specific treatment resources that cannot be entirely encompassed within a single paradigmatic perspective (Jackson, 2015b) and additionally suggests that psychological knowledge is governed by at least 3 overarching research paradigms, as well as a variety of subparadigms encompassing applied and mixed methods research and many current orientations to professional psychology (Jackson, 2015a). (PsycINFO Database Record

Publisher URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28481588

DOI: PubMed:28481588

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.