THINKING PSYCHOLOGY BEYOND THE MIND AND THE BRAIN: A TRANS-THEORETICAL APPROACH

Despite its buoyant expansion, psychology is still also buoyant in the sense that it is floating without a clear definition regarding the science of what it is exactly. The landscape of psychology remains strikingly fragmented. Its most cherished conception as a science of mind and behavior leads to more problems than it solves, among them the dualism that it was thought to overcome. On the other hand, cognitive neuroscience, far from being a solution, seems itself to be a factory of dualistic explanations with its personification of the brain attributing the psychological functions to it. As an alternative, we present five conceptions of current psychology that are neither dualistic nor brain-centric, as proof that dualism and brain-centrism are not inevitable. Faced with the plurality of approaches, a trans-theoretical conception of psychology is proposed as the science of the subject and behavior, beyond the mind and the brain.