This book has two main themes. One argues the need to reverse the traditional priorities of psychology, arguing that the discipline's primary goal must be ethical and political: the practical promotion of human welfare and social justice. It is this practical priority that should guide the subject's scientific activities, its aim to advance our understanding of the mind. And it is this priority that best justifies psychologists' need to base their knowledge of the psyche upon experience, particularly the experiences of others. This is my first theme, one that sets psychology apart from the ‘pure’ sciences that have for a century provided its models, and requires psychologists to do something other than mimic the ideals and methods of biology or physics when they set out the conceptual justification for their inquiries. Hence we arrive at the book's second theme, the need to reconsider the concept most fundamental to the development of a genuinely empirical psychology: experience. The fruit of this reconsideration has been a picture of the mind that markedly differs from the way the psyche is usually drawn in psychology and most common sense.

Psychologists have long held the view that their job is to unravel what ‘lies behind’ or ‘underpins’ everyday experience.