»No one asked me to cumulatively produce scientific miniatures in a standard format«

Jürgen Straub in Conversation with Aglaja Przyborski

Abstract

Aglaja Przyborski’s interview with Jürgen Straub starts with the development of interpretative action and cultural psychology: Based on his career, he explains aspects of the discipline of psychology in the German-speaking world. Straub identifies niches for alternatives, but also a narrowing in favor of the dominant, scientistic-nomological view of science and, in recent decades, a turning away from neighboring disciplines such as sociology, ethnology and philosophy. He emphasizes that psychology, which has a strong biological-neuroscientific orientation, is no more involved in interdisciplinary research and study programs in the social and cultural sciences than it is in theory and method developments in qualitative research – to the detriment of the discipline. In the conversation, a plea is made for real diversity in psychology, oriented towards genuinely scientific claims and thus asserting itself against economic pressure, populist exploitation and pseudo-democratic »participation programs for all«. Finally, the importance of a psychotherapeutic empiricism as well as the desire for optimization in applied psychology are discussed.