Zagaria et al. (2020) have aptly suggested that as a discipline, psychology is a giant with feet of clay. Drawing on the content of introductory textbooks, the authors show that there is little coherence and consensus about the meaning of key psychological terms – including such terms as psychology, mind, behavior. Drawing on evidence marking psychology is a “soft” science, the authors suggest that psychology can profit by adopting the “hard” foundation of evolutionary psychology as its metatheory. While Zagaria et al.’s characterization of psychology’s fractious foundation has deep merit, their desire to erect a psychological metatheory on evolutionary psychology is unlikely to solve the problem they so aptly identify. At the least, I suggest a unified metatheory must: (a) establish a shared psychological lexicon; (b) elaborate a methodology that coordinates first-, second- and third-person modes of inquiry, and (c) develop a process model that describes psychological functioning at the biological, psychological and socio-cultural levels of analysis. To illustrate, I describe how contemporary relational and systems frameworks provide a framework that can move us in these directions.

Zagaria等。（2020）恰当地建议，作为一门学科，心理学是一双拥有泥土的巨人。作者通过介绍性教科书的内容显示，对于关键心理学术语（包括心理学，心理，行为等术语）的含义几乎没有一致性和共识。。作者利用标记心理学的证据是一门“软”科学，作者认为，心理学可以通过采用进化心理学的“硬”基础作为其元理论而受益。尽管Zagaria等人对心理学的脆弱基础进行了刻画，但他们希望在进化心理学上建立心理学元理论的愿望不太可能解决他们如此恰当地发现的问题。至少，我建议一个统一的元理论必须：（a）建立一个共享的心理词典；（二）制定一个方法，即坐标一线，调查第二和第三人称模式，以及（c）开发过程模型它描述了在生物学，心理和社会文化层面上的心理功能。为了说明这一点，我描述了当代的关系和系统框架如何提供可以使我们朝这些方向发展的框架。