The Case for Pragmatic Psychology

By D. Fishman. 2020

324 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Web Site The interested reader is urged to contact the author and join a Pragmatic Psychology Dialogue Group at the following web site: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~dfishman/ "At long last, a tightly reasoned, thoroughly grounded treatise showing that complex social programs can be understood far more profoundly and usefully than past mindsets have allowed." --Lisbeth B. Schorr, author of Common Purpose: Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild America "Fishman creates a new paradigm for advancing clinical science. Every mental health professional aspiring to be accountable and a scientist practitioner in their work should be aware of the ideas in this readable and entertaining book." --David H. Barlow, editor of Clinical Handbook of Psychological Disorders "Daniel Fishman cuts through rhetoric with clear writing and a razor-sharp wit. The chapter on education is like the welcome beam of a lighthouse in a fog." --Maurice J. Elias, coauthor of Social Problem Solving: Interventions in the Schools "Fishman makes the case for a pragmatic psychology in unusually lucid and forceful prose. This book should be read not only by professional psychologists but by anyone interested in the future of mind-related science." --John Horgan, author of The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age "Fishman's liberating insights will free his readers to set aside the intellectual quandaries that plague philosophers and psychologists at the end of the 20th century, and turn back with confidence to the practice of their work." --Stephen Toulmin, author of Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity "As we try to steer a course through the public policy debates of the 21st century, Fishman's pragmatic psychology for enhancing human services provides a far-reaching new resource for meeting this challenge." --Pat Schroeder, President and CEO, Association of American Publishers. Former Congresswoman from Colorado. About the Book A cursory survey of the field of psychology reveals raging debate among psychologists about the methods, goals, and significance of the discipline, psychology's own version of the science wars. The turn-of-the-century unification of the discipline has given way to a proliferation of competing approaches, a postmodern carnival of theories and methods that calls into question the positivist psychological tradition. Bridging the gap between the traditional and the novel, Daniel B. Fishman proposes an invigorated, hybrid model for the practice of psychology-a radical, pragmatic reinvention of psychology based on databases of rigorous, solution-focused case studies. In The Case for Pragmatic Psychology, Fishman demonstrates how pragmatism returns psychology to a focus on contextualized knowledge about particular individuals, groups, organizations, and communities in specific situations, sensitive to the complexities and ambiguities of the real world. Fishman fleshes out his theory by applying pragmatic psychology to two contemporary psychosocial dilemmas -the controversies surrounding the "psychotherapy crisis" generated by the growth of managed care, and the heated culture wars over educational reform. Moving with ease from the theoretical to the nuts and bolts of actual psychological intervention programs, Fishman proffers a strong argument for a new kind of psychology with far-reaching implications for enhancing human services and restructuring public policy.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Qualitative Inquiry in the History of Psychology (2014, methodology): “…approached midcentury, largely dominated by the positivistic philosophy of behaviorism, the privileging of hypotheticodeductive science led to a loss of confidence and assertive development of these methods, although they continued to be practiced and to yield significant psychological knowledge.”
The Client Is the Most Important Common Factor: Clients' Self-Healing Capacities and Psychotherapy (2000, background): “Fishman (1999), citing Beutler (1986), notes that despite the fact that research shows that specific techniques and approaches do not contribute that significantly to outcome, over 80% of research is devoted to specific techniques and procedures.”
Patient-Focused Psychotherapy Research and Individual Treatment Progress as Scientific Groundwork for an Empirically Based Clinical Practice (2002, background): “Both the clinician and the researcher can benefit from this endeavor: The clinician gains the possibility of integrating research information into everyday clinical life, and the researcher gains a large research database of treated cases (Fishman, 1999).”
How to Do Case Study Research (2009, background): “Fishman (1999) describes such standards, outlining quality of knowledge issues across three paradigms: the positivist model, the pragmatic model and the hermeneutic model.”
Editor's Introduction to PCSP - From Single Case to Database: A New Method for Enhancing Psychotherapy Practice (2004, methodology): “In my book (Fishman, 1999a, pp. 237-244) I have organized, summarized, and explained the case of Cindy in terms of the components in Figure 2, to show how such a case study can fit very nicely into the pragmatic case study model.”
Recommendations for Designing and Reviewing Qualitative Research in Psychology: Promoting Methodological Integrity (2017, unknown): “The pragmatic approach, which may use multiple methods to achieve practical aims, is focused on solving problems that may be defined by multiple stakeholders in order to yield consequences that serve human interests in complex institutions from education to business to psychotherapy (Fishman, 1999; ”
Pragmatic solutions to offender profiling and behavioural investigative advice (2010, unknown): “In research driven by pragmatic principles (see Fishman, 1999), several studies (see Alison, 2005, for a review) have focused on the psychological mechanisms (including attention, encoding, and problem solving) that influence the ways in which the content of profiles is understood (and…”
Evidence-Based Practice: Beyond Empirically Supported Treatments (2004, background): “Fishman (1999, 2001) described each of these sections in considerable detail, although the specifics of the method are still evolving to accommodate diverse theoretical approaches to case write-ups.”
Developing Evidence-Based Practice: The Role of Case-Based Research. (2004, background): “In principle, the process is the same as the development of what Fishman (1999) terms “pragmatic psychology” and Strauss and Corbin (1994) call "grounded theory".”
The Negative Side of Positive Psychology (2004, background): “As Fishman (1999) says about the pragmatic philosophy he propounds,”
The Psychoanalytic Interview as inspiration for qualitative research (2001, background): “There are today scholars, who take practitioners’ knowledge serious in its own right, often as inspired by postmodern and pragmatic philosophy (e.g. Fishman, 1999; Gergen, 1994; Polkinghorne, 1992; Schön, 1987).”
Comparing Corporate Reputations: League Tables, Quotients, Benchmarks, or Case Studies? (2002, background): “Fishman (1999) Page 46 describes what a case law approach would imply for professional clinical psychology.”