Abstract
Background. The evolution of teachings and concepts, which formed a single professional and research field, took place against the background of the constitution of several legal and psychological paradigms starting from the end of the 19th century. However, most of them received a new impetus for explicit scientific positioning during the second half of the 20th century. Thus, the problem of determining of gnoseological basis for historical periodization of legal psychology remains relevant.
Objective. To periodize the time intervals, that are characterized by the phenomenon of «paradigm shifts» in legal psychology and, based on this, to highlight the main stages of the development of legal psychology.
Methods. Historical-comparative method was used in the study to describe the evolution of legal and psychological knowledge, considering the chronology of their acceptance by the scientific community and using historical-comparative and structural-functional methods. The work examines the works of Guillermo Gulotta, Franz Boas, Carl Rogers, Victor Frankl, Patricia Patrisi and Eugenio de Gregorio, which characterize the main trends in the development of legal psychology from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 21st century.
Results. The article is devoted to the periodical systematization of legal psychology development using a paradigmatic approach to the study of the history of science, popularized by Thomas Samuel Kuhn. The phenomenon of «paradigm shifts» in the context of legal-psychological issues is characterized by clinician conditioning, because it was the medical-psychiatric paradigm in the psychology of law that developed first. The very process of evolution of legal and psychological knowledge is characterized by its interdisciplinarity, that is, the synthesis of ideas and trends in the field of criminology, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, socio-cultural and physical anthropology.
Conclusions. A six-stage periodization of the development of legal psychology is defined, which includes clinical (1876-1914), anthropological (1914-1950), behaviorist (1950-1970), cognitive (1970-1985), existential-humanistic (1985-2000) and socio-contextual paradigms (2000-2015) with time limits corresponding to each stage. The very process of changing paradigms in legal psychology is characterized by its unevenness and evolutionary nature, meaning that new paradigm has better chances for a longtime existence, if it appeals on the theoretic basic of the previous one.
Key words: legal psychology, paradigm, clinical paradigm, anthropological paradigm, paradigm shift, periodization.
Received: May 4, 2025
Accepted: June 25, 2025
Published: July 30, 2025
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