The problem of interpretation in psychology
Yáñez Cortés, R.
Acta Psiquiatrica y Psicologica de America Latina 21(2): 84-89
1975
ISSN/ISBN: 0001-6896 PMID: 1189952 Document Number: 82868
It is essential to all of the so-called "Sciences of Man" the way in which the problem of method is approached but it is most specifically important in Psychology. Psychology in its several schools has been and still is the discipline which mostly uses as a method to understand its own goal. As a matter of fact, the scientific basis of Psychology lies on the possibility of being able to determine and establish the object of interpretation. Starting from the description of interpretation we propose the following stages: a) The given data understood at a perceptive or imaginative level. b) Doxic characteristics, or characteristics of belief. c) Symbolic level, and d) Significance. The four stages integrate in the search (in the ideal sense at which we aim, according to Kant) of a totality as near to apodicticity as possible, that is to say, as adequate as possible to its object. Obviously the base-line on which interpretation is built up is ambiguity, that is the "impossibility" of a perfect adequacy of interpretation to the object being interpreted. This "impossibility" is the limit of interpretation as far as the search for perfect adequacy is concerned; this limit, on the other hand, is the atmosphere of the relationship between "Siences of Man" and ideologies. That is, the clarification of the method of interpretation depends on the historic and concrete explanation of the relationship between "Sciences of Man" and ideologies, meaning on the one hand, the truly scientific discoveries and, on the other hand, the illicit extension of those discoveries (ideologic extension). Furthermore, in a general sense the possibility of constituting the so-called "Sciences of Man" relies precisely on the everchanging relationship between science and ideology, because they are historic and stem from facts.