- From experimenter-subject to person-person.
Let us focus on those scenes in which I play experimenter and you play subject. George Kelly points out the discrepancy in psychology textbooks between the model of the person-as-experimenter, creating and testing hypotheses, and the model of person-as-subject (obviously a much less-endowed organism) being conditioned by stimuli [Kelly, 1955]. I can not consider you only as a mere extra in my mind movie but must recognise that you have a mind movie playing too in which I am a mere extra. The relationship between the experimenter and the subject is a process of communication. Enter communication. Since I cannot not communicate - Paul Watzlawick's first principle - then I can not be an objective observer [Watzlawick et al, 1968]. In the sociosphere, observer effects must be considered as an intrinsic aspect of the experimenter-subject communication.
The axioms above about the person apply equally well to the experimenter and to the subject. Thus I must consider your behaviour and your experience and my behaviour and my experience. This is the whole elephant. The introspectionist considered only my experience and the behaviourist considered only your behaviour. There are further complexities facing those foolhardy enough to study the nervous system. Not only can the subject and the object of study be viewed from the inside as well as from the outside, but the subject and the object are the same. One nervous system is studying another nervous system. Further the process by which it is studied is the same as the process studied. One nervous system is thinking about another nervous system thinking. Thus we get tied up in infinite regresses (I think that you think that he thinks that she thinks ---) and in eternal shuttles (I think that you think that I think that you think ---). Psychology must thus explore chaos theory, fractal geometry and other tools for studying complex systems to help untie such conceptual knots.
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