The Fragmented Object: Building Disciplinary Coherence through a Contextual Unit of Analysis

Abstract

I argue that fragmentation has long been written into the core of the psychological disciplines through the acceptance of an objectivist unit of psychological analysis. Remedies to this fragmentation, including arguments for reductionist unification, problem-focused pluralism, and disciplinary specialization, are discussed but found inadequate to the basic problem. I contend that any hope for a coherent approach to psychological knowledge must begin with a move toward a more contextual way of framing psychological phenomena—toward an acknowledgment that the socially and morally embedded dynamics of knowledge production constitute our most basic and indivisible phenomenon. I discuss work in critical psychology as an exemplar of a whole family of traditions that have demonstrated the promise of such a contextual unit of analysis. Finally, I issue a call to take up the intergenerational labor of developing a unit of analysis more local, more organic, more indigenous, and more appropriate to the embedded complexity of psychological phenomena.