Self-reflexivity, Recessivity and the Evolution of Psychology

Abstract

This paper supports the idea that the epistemology of Psychology had a fairly progressive line of development, and it was not only an incessant swing between the primacy of two opposing perspectives: from out-side in and from in-side out. Although the recessive dynamics of these two metaphysical principles of Person Constructs Reality and Reality Constructs Person (Buss, 1978) was the critical marker of any major paradigm change from the history of Psychology, the development of psychological thinking has presupposed, in addition, a general evolutive path. I will demonstrate that these combined movements of alternation and progression form a unique complex sense of epistemological development of Psychology accompanying the corresponding development of human personality level of self-reflection. In contrast to pessimistic viewpoints suggesting that the reflexivity inherent in this dual paradigm shift consigns the field of Psychology to an eternal return, it actually elevates the evolution of human self-reflective consciousness to a collective plane of self-reflexivity. The final considerations are made about the current mainstream of psychological research and unreflexively practices detrimental to the substantiation of a Humanistic Psychological Science, which become vital in the Age of artificial intelligence.