In former posts we saw that the so-called personalist and phenomenological paradigms are actually umbrella terms under which shelter many approaches and theories, many of which might be considered sub-paradigms. This will also be the case with the psychological paradigm. Here we have to do with an ombrellone covering a vast range of psychological theories and practices. There is no question of attempting an overview of these positions in a single blog. What seems possible, albeit in a suggestive rather than an apodictic manner, is to identify some of the contours of the umbrella itself, that is to say the very idea of psychology. To this end a famous statement of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) comes to mind: “Wo Es war soll Ich werden” which is often rendered into English, somewhat inadequately, as “Where the Id was the Ego shall be”. (The translation loses the force of Freud’s play on the first person singular pronoun Ich.) This statement was made at the end of an attempt to explain the purpose of psychoanalysis but it can serve us here as a way of identifying some key characteristics of any would-be psychological paradigm, meaning as always by paradigm “a comprehensive, prescriptive model for…