Modern psychology has been characterized by the period wherein psychology became an applied science. Psychology as accepted by most scholars and practitioners was the science of the study of human behavior and mental processes have ceased to be just a conceptual and theoretical field but rather an applied science and discipline. Psychology had always claimed to be loyal to the scientific tradition, it is within this context that psychology placed great emphasis and importance to experimentation, researches and studies and the theoretical construction of psychological concepts (Bem & de Jong, 1997).Modern psychology enjoyed the vast amount of research that validated and debunked the claims of the earlier psychological systems. It is also within this period that psychology has become more aware of its role in society as the areas of testing and assessment, industrial and organizational development and cultural and social themes became widely studied and debated. The science of modern psychology has emphasized the need to maintain scientific methods of discovery and logical explanations of psychological phenomena.
There was a lot of conceptualizing and development of different theories on the areas of intelligence, language development, social behavior, relationships, mental disorders, learning and training. I believe that modern psychology was a very fruitful period and it has contributed to a greater part of what we know about psychology. Although the psychology of this time adhered strongly to one schools of thought, and often spurned great debate among psychologists as to its authenticity and correctness.But since interest groups, educational reformers, human rights advocates and even child and adolescent social workers have come to believe in the teachings of psychology as carved into stone.
New theories was met with skepticism and there was the predisposition to favor the old and tested, authority and power in the field was given to the pioneers and their proteges and this was backed up by years of research and animal experimentation.With the rapid development in our society and technology, as well as the new knowledge that psychologists have discovered, there came a realization that modern views on psychology were false and needed to be refined and reformulated to mirror the present and really find the truth of such concepts. Postmodern psychology however is a relatively new concept, one that is met with confusion and raised eyebrows. Postmodern psychology roughly started in the second half of the century but to what it is clearly attributed to is difficult to define.
The postmodern psychology was perhaps a reaction to modern psychology or it is simply part of the normal progression of the development of psychology as a science of the study of man and his behavior and intellect (Kvale 1992). Clearly, man has evolved from prehistoric period to the present and as part of the evolutionary process, man has now become more intelligent and in control of his/her environment. And since psychology is the study of man, then it also has to evolve in accordance with the changes in man’s behavior and mental processing.If modern psychology as a science was identified by its inherent property to be applied to different aspects of human life, I think postmodern psychology started when man and psychologists have discovered that the old and conventional ways of thinking are not always true, that scientific objectivity and logic does not always account for the correctness of an argument or a concept and that one has to acknowledge and make use of several perspectives that would completely present a picture of a certain behavior or concept.Moreover, the psychologists no longer adhered to a single perspective or approach but rather used an eclectic approach and thus also begun to make use of multidisciplinary approaches to studying behavior and cognition.
The postmodern psychology of science to me represents man’s nature to continuously improve and discover more ways of looking at the truth (Rychlak, 2003).In this kind of science, the strict adherence to objective and empirical data have been debunked, it is now recognized that traditional beliefs and common sense arguments can be useful mirrors of man’s social culture and that this should be included in the study of human interaction.Postmodern psychology argues that adhering to a single perspective is too narrow and hence false, it also says that using experiments and controlled studies to study the human psyche is futile since it can never depict the true experience, most of all, they say that a psychology that does not search for the truth behind every human action, emotion or thought and subscribing only to one system of study and promoting this as the truth and generalizing it to every person in this planet is not only preposterous but also impossible to accomplish.To demonstrate the difference between modern psychological perspective and post-modern perspective, let us take a look at the problems of aging.
Aging refers to the period wherein man reaches old age, where he/she is past his/her prime and the peak of his/her youth. Aging has been a sore topic for most people, since it signified the uselessness and loneliness of being old in this society. This meant being placed in an elderly home or institution, where the elderly become dependent on others and entirely be a far replica of his/her previous personality.With the premium on youth and vitality in our society, aging is considered to be similar to a life sentence.
The modern psychology views aging as a part of the developmental stage of man, as man matures, he/she must undergo or pass through several stages that have different characteristics and developmental tasks, it meant that aging is a normal part of life and that except for dying before one hits 70 years old, then everyone of us will definitely experience aging. To the modern psychologist, aging defined and studied in terms of its effect to the individual, to the one who is aging.This was necessary to build the knowledge and research on aging since very few people who are in this stage agree to psychological experiments. The modern psychology suggests that aging is considered a problem because it diminishes the ability of the elderly to function in his/her daily life. The postmodern view on aging says that it is both a natural process that everyone has to go through as well as serving biological implications to the survival of man in this world.
Moreover, different biological and chemical changes are going through the person’s body which would cause the body’s aging process and it also recognizes that aging can have profound impact to the elderly who have spent all their life working and earning. To the postmodern psychology, the focus with aging is on how it occurs, why it occurs, the consequences brought about by this aging, the way society is affected by an increasing aging population and how culture and social norms contribute to how the elderly are treated and revered.The postmodern psychology may use a variety of approaches to discover the truth about aging; this may be biological, social, psychological and even spiritual. At present postmodern psychology have made it known that aging can be a product of biological changes or one can become old in heart and spirit but not physically. Since, postmodern psychology is multidisciplinary; it has borrowed from math and physics the chaos theory to explain aging.
It means that aging is a random and impossible to control natural event, however as the number of aging people continue to rise, at a certain point it becomes erratic and hence become chaotic (Douglas & Elliott, 1997). Thus, at a certain period in time it is probable to predict the increase in the number of aging individuals, but in some point in time, it will become haywire and cause much disturbance which normally will resume to the usual rate of increase.Another way of looking at it is that chaos theory explains the variations of aging individuals in a particular community or even society, that the body after a normal rate of development from infancy to adulthood continue at a stable and regular pace while after adulthood, the body goes haywire and race to the aging period as indicated by the chaos theory. Although chaos theory has been developed in the strictest mathematical atmosphere and that it has also been able to simulate a number of real-life situations but I am not that confident to say that it can adequately explain aging.It is easy to see that behavior, movement, increase and development of something is somehow governed by invincible forces and at a certain time it reaches a point when one cannot understand and cope with the rapid changes. Aging is still a very human experience, one that is stripped of its importance because it would be defined as freak occurrence of nature in space and time.
