This book brings together the central tenets of William Stern's critical personalism. Presented for the first time for an English-speaking audience, this selection of original translations and essays encapsulates the critical framework of Stern's personalistic psychology. The selected works highlight the philosophical basis of Stern's personalistic views, illustrate their relevance in domains of theoretical and practical importance in psychology, and reveal Stern's critical stance on certain methodological trends that were gaining favor within psychology during his lifetime. Lamiell's own chapters contextualise the translations by providing an overview of the most basic tenets of critical personalism, and offering a commentary on paradigmatic commitments within scientific psychology's mainstream that began to impede Stern's efforts prior to his death, and that remain obstacles to personalistic thinking in the discipline today. Largely ignored by his contemporaries, this work forms part of an emerging body of scholarship that seeks to reintroduce Stern's thinking into contemporary psychology. The book is intended for academically oriented scholars with interests in historical, theoretical and philosophical issues in psychology.

"James Lamiell is a creative, sophisticated, and careful thinker, one whose ideas are deserving of broad attention?.The book should be of interest to scholars and practitioners, along with advanced graduate students."

--Kenneth J. Gergen, Swarthmore College

Beyond Individual and Group Differences: Human Individuality, Scientific Psychology, and William Stern's Critical Personalism examines the history of psychology?s effort to come to terms with human individuality, from the time of Wundt to present day. With a primary emphasis on the contributions of German psychologist William Stern, this book generates a wider appreciation for Stern?s perspective on human individuality and for the proper place of personalitic thinking within scientific psychology. The author presents an alternative approach to the logical positivism that permeates traditional psychological thought and methodology making this an innovative, ground-breaking work.

• Provides book-length treatment of the concept of human individuality in twentieth century scientific psychology, highlighting the historical contributions made by the German psychologist and philosopher William Stern (1871-1938).

• Critically appraises contemporary thinking about personality in light of historical and methodological considerations.
• Challenges readers to rethink the problem of human individuality with research that mounts a direct empirical challenge to the long-standing belief that it is meaningless to characterize individuals without comparing them with one another.
• Concludes with a general discussion of the potential of personalistic thinking both as a foundation for personality theory and as a framework for social thought.

Beyond Individual and Group Differences is a dynamic book for academics and scholars in the areas of personality psychology, individual differences, and the history of psychology.

This book brings together the central tenets of William Stern's critical personalism. Presented for the first time for an English-speaking audience, this selection of original translations and essays encapsulates the critical framework of Stern's personalistic psychology. The selected works highlight the philosophical basis of Stern's personalistic views, illustrate their relevance in domains of theoretical and practical importance in psychology, and reveal Stern's critical stance on certain methodological trends that were gaining favor within psychology during his lifetime. Lamiell's own chapters contextualise the translations by providing an overview of the most basic tenets of critical personalism, and offering a commentary on paradigmatic commitments within scientific psychology's mainstream that began to impede Stern's efforts prior to his death, and that remain obstacles to personalistic thinking in the discipline today. Largely ignored by his contemporaries, this work forms part of an emerging body of scholarship that seeks to reintroduce Stern's thinking into contemporary psychology. The book is intended for academically oriented scholars with interests in historical, theoretical and philosophical issues in psychology.

This book is a strenuous critique of the misinterpretation of statistical knowledge of populations in mainstream psychology, exploring the implications of assuming that those statistics constitute scientific knowledge of individuals. It investigates the essential nature and historical roots of this interpretive practice, and documents the lack of change in mainstream thinking despite previous critiques of the practice. The author contends that prevailing interpretive traditions result in bad science, in that invalid claims are made to knowledge of individuals. He also discusses the socio-ethical problems resulting from this misinterpretation of statistics, where psychological practitioners unjustifiably endorse interventions in the lives of individuals. Lamiell urges psychologists to abandon the aggregate statistical methods which he argues have transformed the field into 'psycho-demography,' and to embrace instead alternative research methods that are logically suited to gaining scientific knowledge about the psychological functioning of individuals. This book concludes by highlighting some of the currently available methodological alternatives, as well as discussing some enduring conceptual impediments to the serious consideration of those alternatives.