Chapter 10: Tea as a Proposal for Translation Between an Idiographic Approach and Nomothetic Approach

How can we treat the “existential” in psychology? This may be a severe question. The reason for this severity stems from modern psychology being regarded as the “nomothetic” approach to science. Because cotemporary psychologists are well disciplined and have captured such a trend voluntarily, the situation is never restituted. However, from the perspective of the history of psychology, the idea of “psychology as a natural science based on a nomothetic approach” is a rather new trend, and it is not always useful or valid. Therefore, we should try to transform the view of psychology by reconstructing the history of psychology. Thus, we could “translate”¹ the nomothetic to “idiographic.” After looking back the history of psychology, I will introduce the Trajectory Equifinality Approach (TEA) as a method to translate between the Idiographic and Nomothetic approaches to the discipline of psychology. TEA is a qualitative methodology embedded in semiotic cultural psychology. It regards human being as not the sample from abstract population but the invitee for the research. It focuses on the experience of real person and delineate the existential nature of human living.