Meehl argued in 1978 that theories in psychology come and go, with little cumulative progress. We believe that this assessment still holds, as also evidenced by increasingly common claims that psychology is facing a “theory crisis” and that psychologists should invest more in theory building. In this article, we argue that the root cause of the theory crisis is that developing good psychological theories is extremely difficult and that understanding the reasons why it is so difficult is crucial for moving forward in the theory crisis. We discuss three key reasons based on philosophy of science for why developing good psychological theories is so hard: the relative lack of robust phenomena that impose constraints on possible theories, problems of validity of psychological constructs, and obstacles to discovering causal relationships between psychological variables. We conclude with recommendations on how to move past the theory crisis.

Meehl 在 1978 年认为心理学理论来来去去，几乎没有累积进展。我们认为这种评估仍然成立，越来越普遍的说法也证明了这一点，即心理学正面临“理论危机”，心理学家应该在理论建设上投入更多。在本文中，我们认为理论危机的根本原因是发展好的心理学理论极其困难，而理解为什么如此困难的原因对于在理论危机中前进至关重要。我们基于科学哲学讨论了为什么发展好的心理学理论如此困难的三个关键原因：相对缺乏对可能的理论施加约束的稳健现象，心理结构的有效性问题，以及发现心理变量之间因果关系的障碍。最后，我们提出了如何克服理论危机的建议。