Coordinates of psychology: analytic methods applied to the forms of psychological theory

This paper is an attempt to outline an analytical frame of reference for psychology, indicating the general criteria or coordinates for clarification of psychological problems, and the main presuppositions of present-day psychological thinking. The author's basic assumptions are: that psychology is concerned with living phenomena, with experience, and with options, and that it is a separate discipline. His points of reference are: function, the individual, purpose, and method of investigation. The general coordinates of analysis are: abstraction, scope, data, and generalization, the discussion of which represents the body of the paper. The treatment emphasizes "the limitations to the use of abstraction for description, the variation of scope of treatment . . . , the range of data which may be comprehended, and the uses of generalization in theory." The final section "comprises a resynthesis in terms of the psychological subject matter and the general analysis." A comparison of present-day psychological systems on the basis of this frame-work should indicate a growing region of agreement among them.