Open complementarity in cultural psychology

Original draft of the final chapter published in Culture Psychology and Its Future, page 77-91, Information Age Publishing, incorporated, 2014 Open comple mentarity in cultural psychology

Luca Tateo & Giuseppina Marsico

Introduction In his lecture, Jaan Vasiner stresses the notion of complementarity from the point of view of the epistemological implications for the future of psychological science. He clearly argues that the use of complementarity notion is nor a simple translation or reception from quantum mechanics to a different domain of knowledge. “The complementarity argument deals with our conditions for description and is therefore a statement of epistemology” (Favrholdt, 1999, p. XXIV). Valsiner’s notion of Inclusive Separation (Valsiner, 1987) aptly depicts how this complementary relation is made possible, overcoming the paradoxicality of mutual excluded parts of a jointly whole and reaching, in such a way a “dialectical leap” from the relationship of the two opposites. Further developing Bohr’s theorization, Valsiner (in this volume) traces the intellectual plan of contemporary cultural psychology in applying the Principle of Complementarity to the complex case of an open-system. Complementarity is not just a simple metaphor that can foster reflection about the study of psychological processes. The unquestionable charm of the idea, as elaborated by Bohr, requires a reflection on the affordances and limits of using it in psychology. We will not engage in a detailed reconstruction of how Bohr elaborated his concept with respect to human sciences and psychology in particular, through Rubin and James. Other contributors, also in this volume, accomplished this task (Favrholdt, 1999; Katsumori, 2011; Markova, in this volume; Valsiner, in this volume). If complementarity shall bear the same meaning across disciplines it would not be much more than a metaphor. How ought we reach a specific definition in psychology? It is worth starting from this question in order to avoid the fate of other umbrella terms, sometimes drawn from different disciplines, that ended up assuming a general, vague, contradictory and ill-defined meaning in psychology, thus becoming useless, such as the terms “context” or “representation”.

What is Comple mentarity in Psychology? There are at least four implications of adapting the epistemological notion of complementarity to psychological sciences, including the recognition of the object of study as a whole; the 1

establishment of a dialogical relationship between the subject and the object; the critical use of the language of description; and, finally, the epistemological attitude of dealing with inclusive concepts, such as continuity and discontinuity, evolution and adaptation. 1. Wholeness is the object of study First, it implies the redefinition of the object of study of the discipline. As Valsiner (in this volume) points out, what we study is not the person or the single psychological phenomenon occurring in a vacuum or in a neutral context. Persons, psychological processes and contexts are in a relationship, in the sense of being part of a whole that we can call the phenomenon. Here we have the first dimension of the definition of complementarity in psychology: the relationship between the parts of a whole (see also Harré, this volume). This is a very crucial point to the extent that “a reductionistic approach to science involves an abstraction from wholeness and a focus on smaller and smaller parts, until encountering a part that appears manageable” (Piechocinska, 2005, p. 2). This is the way psychology has generally been pursued since the 19th Century, by for instance treating memory, perception, language, and emotions as separate processes. Probably, the sharp distinction between lower and higher mental processes, distinguished by the use of symbolic capability and introduced since the first experimental psychology, contributed to speed up the fragmentation of psychological science (Cole, 1996; Valsiner 2012; Wundt, 1916). According to the quotation attributed to Heisenberg: “There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality” (Piechocinska, 2005, p. 3). The idea of complementarity introduces a new look at the epistemological stance in social sciences. It helps us to overcome the distinction between scientific and humanistic psychology (Cole, 1996). Such a way to look at the history of the discipline helped the cultural endeavor of “rehabilitating” those approaches that focused on the realm of meaning, context and wholeness of psyche, for a long time neglected. Nevertheless, the idea of complementarity in psychology tell us that alternative views of psychological life (e.g. neurobiology and cultural psychology, experimental and idiographic approaches, etc.) can be valid from the epistemological point of view. “The term ‘complementarity’ thus comes to mean – perhaps itself complementarily – both joint completion and mutual exclusion” (Katsumori, 2011, p. 18). 2. Subject-Object relations Second, the principle of complementarity has to do with the subject-object relationship. “The idea of complementarity is suited to characterize the situation, which bears a deep- going analogy to the 2

general difficulty in the formation of human ideas, inherent in the distinction between subject and object” (NBCW, 6:158). As documented, the source of this topic in Bohr’s thought is William James’ psychology (Favrholdt, 1999). The continuous feature of consciousness makes difficult to arbitrarily segment it into discrete events or entities, which is apparently the requirement for a scientific study of mental processes (James, 1950). Bohr was deeply convinced that studying living systems implies a different way to understand the subject-object relationship. “In contrast to open systems in biology, psychology, and social sciences at large— physicists do not need to be assume that their phenomena may “absent-mindedly” ignore, or intentionally neutralize, or even purposefully counter-act-- the scientists’ efforts. Nor would we need to assume that these particles would willfully deceive the researchers. All these possibilities of answerability are there when we start to consider living systems, from viruses upwards to the social systems created by human beings. The basic issues of vitality and intentionality cannot be ignored at higher levels of organization of the living matter and its emergent reflexivity of the psyche” ( Valsiner, in this volume, p. 8). In particular, any experimental intervention that aims at observing the functioning of the brain “will bring an essential alteration in the awareness of volition” (NBCW1 , 6:216-217). This reflection appears awfully timeliness with respect to the attempt of studying mental processes just starting by their neurological and physiological basis. Besides, this principle is valid also for less invasive kinds of studies, such as psychological testing and interviews, as we will argue in the following section. The observation relationship is thus a form of implication between a subject and an object, that in the case of psychological processes makes trickier the distinction between the two. Besides, when Bohr himself discusses the possible epistemological implications of complementarity in psychology, he argues that the relationship between the observer and the person observed is not unidirectional, as the most part of experimental psychology presupposes. It is rather establishing a bidirectional relationship between minds, even if mediated by the most aseptic experimental device. “For describing our mental activity, we require, on the one hand, an objectively given content to be placed in opposition to a perceiving subject, while, on the other hand, as is already implied in such an assertion, on sharp separation between object and subject can be maintained, since the perceiving subject also belongs to our mental content” (NBCW, 6:212). Then, we build up research procedures that mark the distance between the researcher and the person observed as a prerequisite of 1

NBCW refers to Niels Bohr Collected Works and PWNB refers to The Philosophical Writings of

Niels Bohr. The first number indicates the volume, the second number the pages. 3

objectivity, disregarding the fact that such procedures establish a mediated relationship between the partners of a research interaction, rather than distancing them (Tateo, 2013). Thus, subject and objects are inclusively separated in an epistemological whole which constitutes the object of cultural psychology. This what Marková calls “interactional epistemology” (in this volume, p. 9). A naive form of realism would claim that when carrying out a psychological experiment, we are applying a given research procedure to a psychological phenomenon and that every time we want to study or to confirm that observation we can replicate the experiment on the same phenomenon, that exists and persists independently from the experimental conditions (Marsico, 2013a). On the contrary, Bohr had a very different conception of phenomenon, “related to the whole experimental arrangement” (Shomar, 2008, p. 335). Indeed, Bohr “considers the entire experiment from preparation to detection to be a single phenomenon” (Folse, 1993, p. 132). The point of view and the theoretical and technical apparatus we choose to observe any event is part of the phenomenon itself, to the extent that the observation co-creates the phenomenon. “The study of nature is a study of artifacts that appear during an engagement between the scientist and the world in which he finds himself. And these artifacts themselves are seen through the lens of theory. Thus, different experimental conditions give different views of ‘nature’” (Holton, 1973, p. 156). The apparatus is also a way to choose between different possible descriptions of the event, thus it implies a selection of certain aspects, sometimes called variables, rather than others. It does not mean, according to Bohr, that alternative descriptions must be wrong, to the extent that they are complementary. The second dimension is thus the unit of analysis in psychological processes: not the single subject, but the whole situation of observation, his ontogenesis, development and follow up. If our ability to collect data about psychological experiences and to draw inferences depended only upon the formal logical structure of inference processes and the correctness of the methods –namely inductive and experimental procedures-, the region of experience in which we could reasonably apply our conclusions would take the shape of an illuminated circle with us as the centre, surrounded by the darkness of ignorance. In other words, we would be able, to reach conclusions about the psyche just applying the right reasoning and the right methodology, no matter which is the context or the content of investigation. It would be like we have on the top of our heads the light of science, able to illuminate the same perfectly round area in the direction of our sight. But our inferences are context and content dependent, implying that the knowledge a nd the force of our conclusions vary with respect to different phenomena. As Bohm pointed out: “Ego-centeredness is not individuality at all” (Weber, 1983, p. 30). There are things we are more sure of and things we are less sure of; thus our the portion of experience we are able to illuminate by the light of our 4

intellect probably has a very irregular shape. We then turn to others in order to strengthen our knowledge about the different parts of the portion of universe, involving the socially organized form of intersubjectivity and interobjectivity called scientific inquiry. We have access to a different portion of the universe, whose area is partly overlapping with another subject or a measurement instrument. The increasing number of subjects sharing the same portion makes the conclusions about its characteristics more dense, with the consequence that the overlapping area of knowledge becomes the candidate for generalizing new knowledge. “We generalize from one situation to another not because we cannot tell the difference between the two situations but because we judge that they are likely to belong to a set of situations having the same consequence” (Shepard, 1987, p. 1322). The intersubjective relationship is not to be understood as only a matter of sharing knowledge and practices between researchers. The process also applies to the relationship between the researcher and the participant(s). As in the case of interaction between researchers, in the researcher participant interaction an overlapping of knowledge about portions of the discourse universe is achieved, this shared knowledge constructs a “dense” area in which conclusions can be candidate to generalization. This process of intersubjective generalization is not formal logic, but rather semiotic. It is not just some formal propriety that makes an inference valid -whether it is the result of a mix of induction, deduction or abduction- but rather the fact that this process makes sense. 3. The problem of language The third point concerns the problem of language. In several publications, Bohr stressed that the language used to describe the observation and to formulate the theory is never neutral and cannot escape the features of every language, that is to be more or less polysemic, ambiguous, conventional and attached to a certain cultural tradition of use. The concepts and labels we use to define a psychological process or a trait inevitably lead to a specific universe of discourse. “The relative meaning of every concept, or rather of every word, the meaning depending upon our arbitrary choice of view point” (PWNB, 1:96). By its nature, language is doomed to the reification and ontologization of words. The solution is not creating a specific formal language to describe phenomena, pretending that this is the hard science’s way. We cannot avoid the use of common language in description, thus we cannot completely leave out common sense knowledge from psychological discourse. It is not yet clear why psychology is instead trying to do that since the end of 19th century. The linguistic dimension of complementarity is that different linguistic descriptions of a phenomenon, even mathematical descriptions, are complementary and we should take advantage of them, rather than trying to create new words that soon loose their apparent neutrality 5

to reveal their being attached to a specific ideological background. A property of language is that we are “in” it, and we can’t escape the cultural framework it provides. “We are, so to speak, suspended in language, as Bohr loved to say” (Favrholdt, 1999, p. XXXIX). At the same time, language has a generative and creative property that makes possible to enlarge the framework. We use descriptive language, even formal one, as an instantiation of a cultural framework from which we start to understand the phenomena. As Valsiner pointed out in his lecture, “this is the process of creating new knowledge through what we know already” (p. 2). Despite “all knowledge presents itself within a conceptual framework adapted to account for previous experience”, “any such a frame may prove too narrow to comprehend new experience” (Favrholdt, 1999, p. XXXVIII). Thus the inner tension of science is that of dealing with a language of description that is the starting point of knowledge creation, but at the same time is doomed to be overcome if we are authentically looking for new knowledge. This implies an epistemological paradox: “we must apply our concepts in a definite way in order to think and speak unambiguously. Even if we tried to imagine a descriptive language different from ours in which all concepts were applied in quite a new manner, we would not be able to understand this ‘language’. It would not be translatable into our language and therefore we would not be able to characterize it as a language” (Favrholdt, 1999, p. XXXIX). This paradox is the dead-end of any attempt to formalize and to specialize scientific language in psychology; it leads to increasing incommunicability between the different psychological sub-areas and between psychology and other disciplines. 4. Ontogenesis and time The fourth point concerns ontogenesis and time. One common feature of quantum mechanics and psychology is that they deal with unique phenomena. One of the reasons for the impossibility to describe a sub-atomic phenomenon in both wave or particle terms, is due to the fact that the atom under observation will only once manifest that specific behaviour under the influence of the apparatus. When the experimental situation ends, its complementarity no longer exists. Either because the single atom has been destroyed in the experiment or because it will be in a different condition. Thus, there is a history of the phenomenon, its genesis and end. This is a concept of closed complementarity, because physical objects do not have memory. When we move to living systems, instead, complementarity can be considered as an open concept. In fact, any physical knowledge of a living organism “involves an unavoidable interaction with the organism in question” (Katsumori, 2011, p. 20). It means that the organism changes because of such interaction, and will adapt and remember the story of this adaptation. In this sense, complementarity with respect to any living system is open and processual, leaving a trace until the death of the organism 6

itself. It is worth thinking about the well-known Milgram’s experiment on obedience (Milgram,1995) or Zimbardo’s experiment on prison, in which groups of participants were randomly assigned to either guards or prisoners groups in a simulated jail under the researchers supervision (Haney, Banks & Zimbardo, 1972). They are both examples of experiments in which the research interaction had an high impact on all the people involved. It is quite trivial to say that the complementary relationship between researchers and participants did not stopped when they exit the experimental situation. In terms of effects and implications, as a matter of fact, it forever changed their lives. Yet psychology often operates as if the experimental situation has no history. Valsiner points out that psychology deals with processes in irreversible time (Valsiner, 2011; Valsiner in this volume, p. 11). This implies that every psychological event is unique, but it is treated and described as repeating in a similar way. The last dimension of complementarity in psychology is thus that phenomena are characterized by both continuity and discontinuity, evolution and adaptation. This occurs in a “context, for instance the whole experimental set-up that irreducibly influences the behaviour of a particular part” (Piechocinska, 2005, p. 11). As Bohm (1957) pointed out in his interpretation of quantum mechanics, the properties of observed things and “their very existence as the things they appear to be is intimately dependent on the surroundings” (p. 146). The context is thus co-constitutive of the thing itself and when the context changes, so will the thing (Piechocinska, 2005). As we will show in the next section, any observation situation in psychology is never a static context; it is rather a research interaction, an evolving process implying a before and an after. Thus it makes no sense to look for the static properties of a psychological event at all times. We will argue that the above mentioned dimensions of complementarity concept in psychology lead to the elaboration of the concept of open complementarity, rather than the closed concept that emerges from the simple introduction of Bohr’s concept in our discipline. In particular, we will focus on the subject-object relationship and the reciprocity of this form of complementarity, that has profound implications for reflexivity in psychology.

From closed to open comple mentarity In order to use the notion of complementarity as part of the future project of Cultural Psychology, we argued that is worth stressing some dimensions of its definition in the discipline. As Valsiner pointed out in his Lecture, ”The unity of the complementary opposites in Bohr’s principle can be safely declared as involving exclusive separation of the opposites— despite the acceptance of the joint completion notion. Bohr came close to overcoming the Kantian dualism between the 7

mechanical and teleological sides of functioning of natural systems— he tried to turn the dualism into a duality. In that he succeeded—the Complementarity Principle is a perfect example of duality in theoretical thinking of scientists. Yet he failed to take the next step— elaborating the various forms of such duality” (p. 8). We suggest that step further in the elaboration of complementarity as a dialogical epistemological principle should include the relationship between the parts of a whole, the whole situation of observation, its ontogenesis, development and follow up, the different linguistic description of a phenomenon as a way to create new knowledge and the focus on the dialogicality between continuity and discontinuity, evolution and adaptation. So the question here become: What form does—or can—this dialogicality take? This pressing question in contemporary cultural psychology leads to the very core of Valsiner’s lecture: how complementarity is built up in psychology and in the social sciences at large. We argue in this section that complementarity is not established “de facto” for the simple copresence of researcher and object under investigation, rather it is a result of an ongoing process of mutual adaptation that shapes the “complementation process” focused by Valsiner (in this volume, p.24). It is always ambivalent in its fluidity as it faces the double interwoven “agency” of the researcher and of the object along the irreversible time. Surprisingly, this basic assumption which seems very trivial today in quantum mechanics is still a controversial point in mainstream psychology due to its naïve idea of the “omnipotence” of the researcher himself. The so-called exact sciences of our age have become conscious and incorporated in their conceptualization the idea that the picture of nature is basically a picture of our relationship with nature and that the researcher, the method and object can no longer be separated since all the scientific apparatus (i.e. theoretical framework and methods used) shapes the object of investigation in itself. Is not our intention to enter here into the debate on the historical reasons that make psychology blind -or at least quite myopic- to its own limitations in searching for an independent reality “out there”. Our attempt, instead, is to provide some exemplification of the inherent and microgenetically constructed duality of the complementation process in psychological research that leads to an open complementarity as outcome beyond the temporal boundaries of the research interaction. We will provide an example of the complementation process using some meaningful excerpts from the preliminary analysis of data of a not yet published study that Pina Marsico is carrying out at the University of Salerno. This is part of a wider research project on “Make-up and its cultural implications”. Its aim is to explore the immediate feeling emerging in using different lipstick and their interconnections with the culturally guided construction of identity in young woman. The 8

participants (40 female university students aged 19-24 years old) were invited by appointment in a university Lab where they met the researcher (who was their former professor of Psychology). They were enrolled in the study at the end of Spring Semester. In the first step, during a psychology lesson, participants were asked to select four lipstick colors among a palette of 33 different nuances. In the second phase of the psychology Lab, participants were asked to sit in front of a mirror, having at their disposal the four chosen lipsticks. A video-recorded semi-structured interview was carried out in which each young woman was asked to wear each lipstick and describe her immediate feelings and thoughts. The research setting was composed by several elements (the mirror, the videocamera, the participant and the researcher) that create an articulated configuration of “seeing” and “to be seen” as well as of direct or mediated interactions as shown in the figure 1.

Figure 1. An example of the research setting Option 1

Mirror Researcher

Girl

Videocamera

What here reported was only one of the five options adopted along the 40 interviews where the researcher modified her position in the space sitting next to the mirror (as in the figure 1), or between participant and mirror, or between participant and videocamera, standing beyond the videocamera or occupying all the positions over the same interview. Each option creates a relevant modification of the interaction among the elements and different configurations in the same microspace. This complicated research design was built up in order to achieve the second metalevel goal, that was exactly to understand the impact of the researcher in the research setting or, in other words, the sensitiveness of the researcher and his/her work -a variational sensitivity- on the phenomena investigated.

9

Excerpt #1 shows the interconnectedness of all the elements in place and the complementation process between the persons (both researcher and participant), the psychological process under investigation and the actual contextual dimensions, including the concrete apparatus used (e.g. the mirror and the videocamera). Excerpt 1 Interview # 3 (researcher sitting next the mirror, the participant is in front of the mirror) Researcher: How do you feel? Participant: To tell the truth ill at ease to look myself at the mirror Researcher: Yes? P: Yes R: Because it’s the mirror? P: Because I feel uncomfortable to put on make-up before other people (.) not my friends (0.5) a kind of trying something in a shop (.) and they look at me (.) yes (.) I do that but feel a bit uncomfortable R: If had been beyond the camera you would have felt more at ease? P: No (.) think even worst (.) because you were far (.) like this instead is more::: is already different (.) for instance in the classroom you were over there::: now you are close (.) is already different (.) but if I wouldn’t knew that you are the teacher it would have been different R: Better or worst? P: Mhhh::: yet it is also good for me to see you closer

The uncomfortable comfortable dynamic is the very issue here showing how a specific feeling emergences form the articulation of “to see” and “being seen” by other eyes -the mirror, the videocamera, the researcher- while putting up the lip-stick, and how it is modulated by the proximity to the researcher. It makes evident that the researcher cannot jump from the picture. He/she cannot exclude him/herself from the analysis. He/she is a component part of psychological phenomena under investigation which exists thanks to his/her active participation in the research interaction. Bohr’s postulate of the bidirectional relation between “observer and observed” (even if mediated by all the technical apparatus, such as mirror, videocamera, lip-stick) is well depicted here. All the mentioned aspects form a whole of jointly distinguished parts in a mutual relation. Such a relationship might be properly conceptualized in terms of “inclusive separation” (Valsiner, 1987; in this volume) based on a complementation process. As Markova (in this volume) pointed 10

out, only by virtue of recognizing this wholeness is it possible to achieve scientific knowledge about both the subject and object. Moreover, Excerpt 1 elucidates the role played by some specific preliminary aspects such us the previous acquaintance between researcher and participant - formerly in a teacher/student relationship- that works in supporting the interaction. The previous history of interaction between the teacher and the student acts like a fluidization of the complementarity. It seems in line with the Bohr’s definition of the phenomena that include all the experimental arrangements, from preparation to follow up. This question leads to another core topic in the Valsiner’s lecture (in this volume, p. 24) concerning the connection between Complementarity Principle and irreversible time. As any other kind of human interaction, the research situation is not suspended in time, rather happens in a present moment that implies a “before” and “after” along the fixed border of irreversible time (Marsico, 2013b). It means that the complementation process is never complete and does not create a closed loop; instead, it can have reverberations or practical effects in the future as shown in the Excerpt 2. Excerpt 2 Interview #35(researcher sitting between the camera and the participant who is in front of the mirror) Researcher: Let’s put on the purple Participant: Pretty::: ((combing her hair)) R: let’s give a touch to the hair::: P: Here you are (.) I like that! R: Ok (.) want to add something before leaving? P: A peculiar experience (.) maybe I never talked about the make-up (.) how I make- up (.) about why I don’t make-up myself (.) I never gave so many answers (.) but maybe it helped me (.) I found a new lipstick R: That looks important actually (.) not minor P: Eh yes::: pretty (.) I like it! R: All right (.) thank you very much!

The dialogical construction of the research interaction built up a unique experience between researcher and participant. The latter here seems to find not only a concrete resource (e.g. a new 11

lipstick) in her daily routine, but also a new form of self-consciousness that could be a symbolic resource for the next step of her identity construction. This is a new argument supporting the idea of open complementarity, in the sense that the research interaction is source of change and adaptation for both researchers and participants. Implicitly, psychological science recognizes this characteristic, by building some devices to deal with it such as the follow-up or the restitution procedures.

Conclusion Once complementarity is introduced in cultural psychology as an epistemological stance it unveils a number of open issues in the psychological science at large. It radically redefines the borders of the phenomena under study and the role of the researcher. We first argued that complementarity needs further elaborations before being assumed as an axiom of our discipline. The definition of complementarity in psychology implies the recognition of the relationship between the parts of a whole, the unit of analysis in psychological processes as the whole situation of observation, his ontogenesis, development and follow- up. It makes us understand that the research interaction implies the establishment of a dialogical relationship between the subject and the object. Only this relationship, which comprehends the persons involved in a whole, makes possible the creation of new knowledge about the subject and the object as distinct but always related entities. It also implies that new psychological knowledge is at the same time new ethical knowledge and new operational knowledge: “Observation gives way to participation” (Zittoun & Gillesp ie, this volume, p. 9). The linguistic dimension of complementarity entails that whatever form of description we choose, even statistical description, is a different point of view about qualities that belong to the phenomenon. And the choice of the language of description is attached to a specific frame of reference and ideological background. Psychological processes in irreversible time are characterized by both continuity and discontinuity, evolution and adaptation, implying a “before” and an “after”. Thus it makes no sense looking for the static properties of a psychological event once at all times. Piaget, discussing the relationship between psychology and physics, argued that the lesson learnt is that we should not understand observables as static entities or “Kantian noumena, because the apparent object of intuition keeps changing into new phenomena as it is studied experimentally” (1979, p. 8). It can be paradoxically said that the knowledge about psychological processes starts with respect to the development of the phenomenon itself during and after the research interaction. Bringing this statement to its extreme consequence, it can be said that scientific psychological knowledge is always oriented to future 12

development, rather than then knowledge about past similar situations, which is nevertheless the necessary condition for the establishment of a reference framework that, according to Bohr, the subject cannot escape. In this sense, the complementation process is a turning po int in the research interaction, to the extent that when the preparation of the observation starts, the researcher is constructing a new wholeness, which will pave the ground for a new phenomenon that will constitute, from that moment on, the observable reality. “Explanation begins only when the operations are not simply applied but are ‘attributed’ to objects in the sense tha t these then become ‘operators’ and this permits one to understand how they interact” (Piaget, 1979, p. 8). Thus, phenomena are the whole of the conditions that the subject sets up in order to build a research interaction with the object. We, as psychologists, are building playgrounds and establishing the rules of the game. Thus, we must be aware of it and of the fact that people are accepting or rejecting our game and that they can even “cheat”. But from that moment on, we become playmates. Finally, applying the Complementarity Principle to the field of psychology calls for a theoretical revisiting of some of its basic assumptions, such as closeness and temporal limitation of the complementation process in favor of an idea of open complementarity towards the future that seems heuristically more able to grasp the peculiar complexity of humans in interactions.

Acknowledge ments This work has been funded by the Marie Curie IEF-2012 grant “EPICS. Epistemology in psychological science, the heritage of Giambattista Vico and the cultural psychology”.

References Bohm, D. (1957). Causality and Chance in Modern Physics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Cole M., (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and a future discipline, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. Favrholdt, D. (1999). General introduction. Complementarity beyond physics, pp. XXIII- XLIX. In NBCW, 10. Folse, H. (1993). Bohr's framework of complementarity and the realism debate. In J. Faye & H. Folse (Eds.), Niels Bohr and contemporary philosophy, pp. 119-139. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Haney, C., Banks, C. Zimbardo, P. G. (1972). Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison. Stanford: Defense Technical Information Center. Holton, G. (1973). The roots of complementarity. In G. Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought (pp. 151-197). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 13

Katsumori, M. (2011). Niels Bohr’s Complementarity. Boston & Dordrecht: Springer. James, W. (1950). The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Marsico, G. (2013a). Idiographic Science. Its polyphonic arena and need for reflexivity. In S. Salvatore, A. Gennaro, and J. Valsiner (Eds.), Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness. The Emerging System of Idiographic Science. Yearbook of Idiographic Science Volume 4 (pp. 133-146). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Marsico, G. (2013b, accepted). Developing with time: Defining a Temporal Mereotopology. In L.M. Simão, D. S. Guimarães and J. Valsiner (Eds.). Temporality: Culture in the Flow of Human Experience. Charlotte, N.C. USA.: Information. Milgram, S. (1995). Obedience to authority: an experimental view. New York: Harper Perennial. NBCW, (1972–2007). Niels Bohr Collected Works, 12 vols. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company. Piaget, J. (1979). Relations between psychology and other sciences. Ann. Rev. Psychol., 30, 1-8. Piechocinska, B. (2005). Physics from Wholeness: Dynamical Totality as a Conceptual Foundation for Physical Theories. Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science & Technology, 63. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet. PWNB, (1987–1998). The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, 4 vols. Woodbridge, Conn.: Ox Bow Press. Shepard, R. N. (1987). Toward a Universal Law of Generalization for Psychological Science. Science, 237, 1317-1323. Shomar, T. (2008). Bohr as a Phenomenological Realist. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 39 (2), 321-349. Tateo, L. (2013). Differently inside. Political Psychology and Lay Thinking. In T. Magioglu (Ed), Culture and Political Psychology (pp.75–83). Charlotte, N.C.: InfoAge Publishing. Valsiner, J. (1987). Culture and the development of children’s action. Chichester: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (2011). Constructing the vanishing present between the future and the past. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 34 (2), 141-150 Valsiner, J. (2012). A Guided Science: History of Psychology in the Mirror of its Making. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Weber, R. (1986). Dialogues with Scientists and Sages: The Search for Unity. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul Wundt, W. (1916). Elements of folk psychology: Outlines of a psychological history of the development of mankind. New York: The Macmillan Company. 14