Guided Intervention

In this chapter we will investigate the possibility of generating general psychological knowledge through an ideographic approach. Our approach builds on Wilhelm Windelband’s original ideas of ideographic and nomothetic approaches in research, which by no means follow the current conceptual dichotomization of the unique and the general that tends to split the enterprise of psychology into two different directions. The purpose of our investigation is to understand the basis of general psychological knowledge and its relation to the applied field of psychology. We pursue this matter through an empirical case of action research within the field of public management of daycare service. Analysis of managerial systems as new public management have shown strong tendencies to narrow down the richness and diversity of perspectives and standpoints within the daycare organization, and to outright silence specific groups of actors. The price to be paid for such managerial practice is tacit resistance or opportunistic performative “fitting in” (Lima & Hviid, 2011). Based on this knowledge the research project developed and explored methods for generating resonance to the multi-voicedness within the system. Through an analysis of one of the project interventions—The Childhood-Memory Lab—the relation between general knowledge of psychological phenomena and psychological interventions is discussed. We conclude that intervention based on ideographic principles outlines a goal-generative methodology that places the “aliveness” of the subjects and the unfolding historical event in the heart of its practice. What is this? This is the basic question in science and nevertheless it seems insufficient for the developmental and applied branches of psychology. For both branches, the static (ontological) assumption behind the question— that the object exists in a static and time free state—blocks investigation of the very dynamics that the one branch has as its object of investigation and the other has as its object of intervention (Valsiner, 2008). The concept of idiographic science addresses exactly this paradox and highlights the necessity of adapting a dynamic approach to the production of knowledge about the human world. In this paper we will investigate the concept of idiographic science and its ability to generate general knowledge concerning psychological phenomena. The purpose of such an investigation will be to understand the basis of general knowledge in psychology and its relation to the applied field, in this case action research within the field of public management and care in daycare children.