Quo Vadis, Cultural Psychology? Time to Become Psychology. Again.

In this paper it is argued that cultural psychology today requires a fundamental reorganization. Based on the theories formulated by Anokhin, Vygotsky, and Luria, a program for cultural psychology to become a true psychology is formulated. Several steps, all discussed in some details in this paper, are needed to come up with a coherent set of ideas how to proceed with cultural psychology. First, it is necessary to define the object of studies, culture, psyche, and cultural psyche. Next, there are different epistemologies applied in psychology today. The best justified structural-systemic epistemology must be selected to proceed. This allows, third, to create methodology, a science of methods, which does not exist in mainstream psychology today. Fourth, it must be understood that psyche is a very complex unitary phenomenon. Cultural psychological theories must be built on the basis of multiple approaches to the study of psyche, among them comparative psychology, developmental psychology, educational psychology, cognitive psychology, cultural psychology, anthropology and ethnography, clinical and neuropsychology, social psychology. Unitary theory must be created that allows to understand how results of studies from different approaches consistently complement one another. Theories that are not supported from multiple perspectives are incomplete or wrong. Fifth, the progress of any science is grounded with discovering questions necessary to answer. How to ask questions and how to discover what questions should be answered, is another important theme to be developed. Finally, cultural psychology may become a most practical science if the essence of cultural psyche is scientifically explained.