The differentiation of psychology, the proliferation of professional practice areas, the addition of new areas and subdisciplines of psychology, diverse methodological critiques and the internationalization and globalization of psychology have both undermined and necessitated the project of a general psychology. Specialization, embodied in the educational practices of many programs in psychology and a research model that has been focused on understanding details of the psychological, have made it difficult to support the idea of a general psychology. More recent intellectual trends have contributed towards a skepticism towards generality.
We understand the historical transformation of general psychology not only as a problem but as an opportunity. We are convinced that the particularization of the psychological necessitates, from a scientific or intellectual point of view, the project of a general psychology that provides an integrated or comprehensive understanding of large bodies of research, mental life and its analyses and applications. General psychology itself is a topic of reflexivity and research. We suggest that such psychological trends require a re-envisioning of general Psychology. We believe the time has come to open the debate about what general psychology means, targets or covers, the assumptions it is based upon and to identify the conditions for its possibility as a topic or subdiscipline. Under our editorship, manuscripts may be based on the psychological sciences or draw from the psychological humanities, including interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies.
The target audience for Review of General Psychology are psychologists, scientists and scholars from any field who are interested in innovative conceptual, theoretical, “big” empirical or methodological debates regarding the psychological, whether in academia, professional practice and/or the larger culture, particularly those drawing upon diverse traditions, Western or non-Western.
Although a special issue on the topic is planned, we invite submissions on the topic throughout the years of 2019 and 2020. All manuscripts go through peer-review in accordance with APA and Sage policies. Authors should prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Submit manuscripts online.
For questions, please contact Co-Editors Wade Pickren or Thomas Teo.
Be sure to check out the current Special Issue: Authenticity: Novel Insights into a Valued, Yet Elusive, Concept, with guest editors Joshua A. Hicks, George E. Newman and Rebecca J. Schlegel.