Editing Postmodernism (section)

=== Psychology ===
{{Main article|Postmodern psychology}}
In 1992, the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' reported on "a group of increasingly influential psychologists – postmodern psychologists seems to be the name that is sticking", who had come to the conclusion that "the American conception of an isolated, unified self" does not exist. People are composed of many different selves, constructed for different situations.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Stephens |first=Mitchell |date=Aug 23, 1992 |title=A New Breed of Psychologists Says There's No One Answer to the Question 'Who Am I?' |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-08-23-tm-7343-story.html |access-date=Dec 3, 2024 |website=[[Los Angeles Times]]}}</ref> In this way, postmodernism challenges the [[modernist]] view of psychology as the science of the individual,<ref>S. Kvale ed., ''Psychology and Postmodernism'' (1992) p. 40</ref> in favor of seeing humans as a cultural/communal product, dominated by language rather than by an inner self.<ref>L. Holtzman/J. R. Moss eds., ''Postmodern Psychologies, Societal Practice and Political Life'' (2000) p. 179</ref> 

In 2001, [[Kenneth J. Gergen|Kenneth Gergen]], a pioneer in postmodern psychological theory,&nbsp;identified "emphasis on the individual mind, an objectively knowable world, and language as carrier of truth" as the cornerstones of traditional modernist psychology. He noted criticism of these assumptions coming from "every quarter of the humanities and the sciences", and the emergence of a psychology in which "colonialist universalism is replaced by a global conversation among equals". He also considered the "strong critical reservation", including the realist argument that a socially constructed world cannot negate a clearly observable objective reality; the claim of incoherence, wherein postmodernism denies truth and objectivity while simultaneously making truth claims; and its moral relativism, which fails to take a principled ethical stand. Ultimately, he concluded that psychology's future is "hanging in the balance".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gergen |first=Kenneth J. |date=2001 |title=Psychological science in a postmodern context. |url=http://doi.apa.org/getdoi.cfm?doi=10.1037/0003-066X.56.10.803 |journal=American Psychologist |language=en |volume=56 |issue=10 |pages=803–813 |doi=10.1037/0003-066X.56.10.803 |pmid=11675987 |issn=0003-066X}}</ref>

In 2021, psychologist [[Jan Smedslund]] discussed how psychology tried for decades to emulate the [[Natural science|natural sciences]] and address unpredictable individual behavior. He described how the dominant methodology came to rely exclusively on statistical analysis of group-level data and average findings, whereby it "lost contact with the psychological processes going on in individual persons." He advocated for abandoning the natural science approach that had "led into a clearly discernible blind alley."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Smedslund |first=Jan |date=2021-04-01 |title=From statistics to trust: Psychology in transition |journal=New Ideas in Psychology |volume=61 |pages=100848 |doi=10.1016/j.newideapsych.2020.100848 |issn=0732-118X|doi-access=free }}</ref>

In 2024, American psychology professor Edwin Gantt wrote that psychology remains in a state of continual struggle "to decide whether its true intellectual home is to be found among the humanities, especially philosophy and literature, or among the STEM disciplines." He finds psychology "a key site where the intellectual tug-of-war between modernism and postmodernism plays itself out in academia."{{Sfn|Gantt|2024}}