Reactions to the Reactions

Abstract

Reactions are directed to the comments of Mancuso (1976) and Sechrest (1976) on Rychlak's (1976) paper "Personality Theory: Its Nature, Past, Present and--Future?" The reactions are organ ized around six themes: (1) Rychlak's (1976) concern with frag mentation of data is mainly with the underlying mentality of re searchers which leads to such narrow busywork. (2) Rigorous re search is necessary, but our present mechanistic language does not allow us the needed theoretical freedom. (3) Sechrest (1976) is incorrect that psychology has tried and discarded "time worn" hu manistic conceptions. In truth, psychology never gave humanistic orientations a chance to develop conceptual roots. (4) The neces sity for an absolute distinction between method and theory is not merely a semantic problem; without such a distinction, method will dictate the type of theories which are possible, and the type of epistemology underlying such theories. (5) The clear distinction between method and theory can provide the basis for a viable empir ical humanism, and will in this way provide the competitive theo retical arena which Sechrest (1976) desires. (6) Rychlak (1976) did not propose his own version of a humanistic theory in that ar ticle, but has done so in a forthcoming volume. The theoretical approach is called logical learning theory.