Ernst E. Boesch at 80: Reflections from a Student on the Culture of Psychology

Abstract

Using recollections of Ernst Boesch as a teacher, the author summarizes Boesch's impact on his own thinking but also on psychology in general and cultural psychology in particular. Special attention is paid to the methodological and theoretical frame which Boesch espouses, including systematic methodological pluralism, functionalism, action theory, contextualism and the powerful application of introspective and hermeneutic methods. Achieving an intellectual coalitionof ideas generated by different schools of thought (most notably Janet, Rey, Lewin and Piaget), Boesch proffers in his work an original and integrative view on mind and human behavior. In his approach, cultural psychology is not identical with cross-cultural psychology but treated as an endeavor which highlights the cultural and contextual in any aspect of human functioning.