Editorial (in Russian)

Abstract

We offer to the reader Counterview — the special issue comprising various polemical articles, essays, and notes, in which the authors may express their views concerning the fundamental problems of psychology, and prospects of its development in the field of culture and social life. The materials of discussions have been placed in our journal before. But today, these publications seem to us particularly relevant as these days in favor of a “single” ideology (whether humanism, pragmatism or positivism) the diversity is increasingly sacrificed inherent in psychology as a science at all times, while controversy essential for the development is quietly leaving the pages of journals (it seems that political differences affect us far more than all the rest, including science). That is why we believe it appropriate to raise the status of discussions and debate (even if they may bring discomfort).Where to begin? Possibly to make ourselves the target to open fire at, by starting with publishing materials challenging one of the areas previously supported the journal? Thus this issue contains an article in the editorial portfolio written by A.Orlov and N.Orlova. It is a criticism of the previously published paper by V.Petrovskiy and E.Starovoytenko Science of the Person: Four Projects of General Personology (2012). Unprecedented in its appraisal, the article by A.Orlov and N.Orlova sparked the interest of the editorial staff, in particular, as an excuse to maintain the current debate on the methodological problems of psychology. The criticism concerns the possibility of General Personology as a special section of the psychology of personality, combining academic, cultural, historical and practical-oriented developments.We shall remind the reader that one of the columns of the journal and a special theme of the issue revealed the essence and specific research in this area. Where better than here, in the pages of the journal protecting the idea of the importance of personology as a special unity of methodology and theory, hermeneutics and counselling, should materials offering an alternative view be published? Moreover, general personology, as intended by those who are develop it, contains a call to debate giving researchers a space to correlate their values and attitudes.At the suggestion of the editor in chief, we publish the polemical article by the two authors and a response to it without any substantive changes or cuts (as the saying goes, “uncut”). After all, one of the objects criticized is the editor in chief himself, whose ‘second job’ is as the author of the criticized developments.