R. G. Collingwood and the idea of a historical psychology

R.G. Collingwood's antagonism to scientific psychology is notorious. As a p hilosopher, especially an Oxford philosopher, such antagonism was hardly ex ceptional. Yet, in fact, Collingwood's attitude to the new science of psych ology was remarkably ambivalent. He showed a keen interest in developments in the new science, regarded Freud as one of the greatest living scientists , and indeed himself pursued a full course of analysis. Nevertheless, Colli ngwood's criticisms of scientific psychology were searching, and involved a variety of distinct (though largely complementary) arguments. In relation to particular theorists, he objected to self-contradictions, pursuit of 're d herrings' arising from prevarication in the use of established terms, and 'plagiarism': More fundamentally, he rejected the 'covert scepticism' of p sychology In its adoption of a purely empirical, 'non-criteriological', app roach to the study of thinking, an approach he regarded as appropriate sole ly to a science of 'feeling'. Closely linked to this was his other main cri ticism of psychology, its presumption that the objects of study are transhi storical universals. In The Idea of History, however, Collingwood raised, t hough hardly elaborated, an alternative conception for a scientific psychol ogy, as an essentially historical study, whose aim 'would be to detect type s or patterns of activity, repeated over and over again in history itself' (Collingwood, 1946, p. 224). Collingwood's historical conception of psychol ogy is explored in the light of his objections to scientific psychology.