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Title:: Stern’s Personalistic Descriptive Psychology:A Development of Dilthey’s Descriptive Psychology

Keywords:: Stern; descriptive psychology; personalism; holism; human science

Abstract:: The personalistic descriptive psychology, proposed by famous German psychologist Stern, inherits and develops the romantic tradition in descriptive psychology inaugurated by Dilthey. Influenced by Dilthey and Ebbinghaus, Stern insisted on the unifications between: humanism and experimentalism; descriptive psychology and explanatory psychology; descriptive method and explanatory method. He also advocated that we should study man’s mental phenomena from multiple and comprehensive angles. On the philosophical basis of personalism, he held that descriptive, understanding and explanatory methods should be adopted to truly grasp the uniqueness, purpose, value and significance of integral personality and its internal structure. Stern’s personalistic descriptive psychology, in line with Dilthey’s descriptive psychology, develops and surpasses the latter on some concrete issues.