In Search for a Dialectical Methodology in Neuropsychology: Approaching Psychic Processes Through Their Phylogenetic History of Rising in Contradictions

Abstract

Neuroscience is increasingly assuming a leading role within modern psychology (Maiers, 2008). By establishing a monist materialist worldview it overcomes the historically predominant idealism of psychoanalysis (Vygotsky, 1986, p. 225). However, many neuropsychological approaches come along with different methodological setbacks, including the widespread assumption of mechanism (Nigrini et al., 2025). Some lines of investigation adopt a dialectical approach to materialism (e.g., Holzkamp, 1985; Tolman, 1994; Vygotsky, 1997a). Part of their theoretical potential lies in an understanding of psychic processes as a unity of contradicting organism and environmental poles (e.g. Del Río & Álvarez, 2017; Vygotsky, 1999). However, adoption of dialectical approaches in certain disciplines such as neuropsychology and comparative psychology is still sparse. To address this gap, we derive different dialectical methods to investigate the phylogeny of complex psychic processes from existing dialectical approaches such as Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach and Holzkamp’s science of the subject. We thereby propose to understand psychic processes as environment-organism unities that are constantly changing (Papini, 2021, p. 80), with natural selection describing the dissolution of their contradicting poles into new unities (Haldane, 1937; Levins & Lewontin, 2009, p. 38). Dialectical principles like the transformation of quantitative into qualitative development and the superseding of contradictions within new unities are discussed with reference to evolutionary processes such as pre-adaptation.