关于心理学作为科学的观念或理想普遍兴起于19世纪下半叶，正是对这个观念或理想的百余年历史的追求和实践，塑造了现代意义上的科学心理学及其历史作为整体的基本面貌，并决定了科学心理学观念的两种范畴含义及其差异，具体表现为在心理学作为科学的整体背景中它的现象学传统或道路与它的科学主义传统或道路之间的对峙关系。历史分析表明，对科学心理学观念的范畴含义的理解和实现，与关于科学观念的范畴含义的探索和理解是密切关联、相互制约的。以人类思维的理论形态的历史转换为背景，我们发现，关于心理学作为科学的观念，只有实现为现象学意义上的科学，才能真正实现它自身；但主流的科学主义传统则要把心理学实现为自然科学，由此实现的科学心理学，只能是对心理学作为科学的观念的异化。

The idea of psychology as a science emerged during the middle of the nineteenth century as an intellectual result of the social influence of the historical achievements of natural sciences, and has ever been growing thereafter. In a sense, the modern history of psychology evolved mainly by the motive to promote psychology to the state of a science. However, at the time when the idea emerged, it was not clear as to both what science is and what psychology is. Thus, it was neither clear as to the theoretical contents and the categorical meaning of the idea of a scientific psychology. It was the actual historical pursuits of psychology as a science that provided us the theoretical contents to the idea of a scientific psychology, and the theoretical contents, in turn, cultivated the categorical meanings of the idea. Now, with the advantage of historical perspectives, we find that our understanding of the idea of a scientific psychology is closely related to, and reciprocally determined by, our understanding of the idea of science. The idea of science has its historical prototype in the natural sciences. Historically, there formed two different modes of understanding concerning the relationship between the idea of science and natural sciences as its historical prototype, thus determined two different ways of conceiving and realizing the idea of a scientific psychology, resulting in two different categorical meanings of the idea. With the actual history of modern psychology as a framework of reference, we might call the two different ways phenomenological and scientistic approaches to scientific psychology, respectively. The nature of the difference of the above mentioned two modes of understanding or ways of conceiving is not, however, of the kind in which the two modes or ways might be accepted indifferently as equally effective. Rather, they suggested and determined two historically opposite and logically antagonistic orientations for practicing and realizing the idea of psychology as a science. In the phenomenological approach, science means the logically necessary steps of the mental operations of consciousness, and the category of natural sciences becomes a special case of the mental operations in consciousness. This sense of science is not only logically necessary but also in harmony with the idea of psychology. So, only in the phenomenological sense of science can the idea of a scientific psychology realize itself. On the other hand, in the scientistic approach, science is identified with natural science. Historical analysis reveals that this sense of (natural) science can only be effective in the background of early-modern dualistic mode of thinking. In the dualistic mode of thinking, however, (natural) science established itself exclusively for the material world, while psychology established itself exclusively for the spiritual world. Thus psychology and (natural) science formed two contrasting, if not antagonistic, kingdom of human knowledge. So, in the sense of (natural) science, the realization of the idea of a scientific psychology can only be a self-alienation for psychology proper.