Kenneth Gergen has a thought provoking piece titled "Psychological Science
in a Postmodern Context" in the October _American Psychologist_
"Postmodern scholarship poses significant challenges to pivotal assumptions
of individual knowledge, objectivity, and truth. In their place, an emphasis
on the communal construction of knowledge, objectivity as a relational
achievement and language as a pragmatic medium through which local truths
are constituted. Although these developments in understanding may seem
opposed to psychological science, they are not. Rather, they invite a new
range of questions about the potentials of traditional research. These
questions are vitally concerned with the significance of such inquiry in
cultural life. More importantly, this emerging view of psychological science
opens new and exciting vistas of theoretical, methodological and practical
significance. Increasing manifestations of movement in these directions
suggest the possibility of profound change in the profession."
djc
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