On Methodology and Method in Acmeist Psychology

This article asks what kind of science psychology should be and what new readings of Vygotsky can contribute to answering this question. Methodology and method are key to constituting psychology as a science. Hence, the focus is on three major methodologic-methodic approaches to what Vygotsky referred to in his Notebooks towards the end of his life as his and his colleagues’ “acmeist psychology” – the objective-analytical, the method of double stimulation and the semic method. Each will be discussed in its own right, followed by a discussion of the interrelatedness of the three in order to provide stimulation for future possibilities. These possibilities – it will be argued – lie in decisively re-orienting psychology as a science that brings single cases and complex semiotic analyses to the fore and thereby also rethinks psychology’s relation towards the arts, especially literature.