Open Access

What determines the territories of psychology? How have the boundaries of psychological research and practice been developed in history, and how might or should they be changed nowadays? This volume presents new approaches to these questions, resulting from a three-year collaboration among internationally known psychologists, neuroscientists, social scientists and historians and philosophers of science from Germany and the United States under the auspices of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The authors reflect critically on traditional and current views of psychology on the basis of focused historical and contemporary case studies of three broad topic areas: How have psychological concepts been used in disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, or neuroscience, as well as in daily life? Has the use of instruments in psychological research expanded or restricted the discipline’s reach? And how have applications of psychological thinking and research worked in practical contexts? The volume thus presents essays that investigate the separations as well as the interactions between psychology and its neighboring disciplines and, moreover, essays that try to overcome disciplinary distinctions in exemplary ways. The contributions aim to make historical and philosophical studies of psychology relevant to contemporary concerns, and to show how psychology can profit from better interdisciplinary cooperation, thus improving mutual understanding between different scientific cultures.