In the last two decades much effort in mainstream applied psychology has been invested in the change of fashion from behavioural to cognitive‐behavioural, and in incursions into new fields such as health. This activity has distracted researchers and practitioners from the task of addressing and resolving contradictions that have become embedded in the production of the discipline. There has been a pretence of continuous advancement while in reality the behavioural paradigm has collapsed and has not been replaced by an acceptable alternative. Urgent attention must be given to the resolution of these pervasive conceptual problems. It is the contention of this paper that the production of a well‐formed and applicable discipline requires detailed understanding and explicit utilisation of both positivist and interpretative methodolog