The article discusses the methodological problem of scientific explanation in psychology. Insufficient coverage of this problem in the national scientific literature is noted. The authors refer to the results of foreign research on the problem of scientific explanation. The following areas of research in this area are highlighted: conceptualization and definition of this concept, its place in the system of methodology of science and psychology, description of cases of application; various models, approaches, explanation schemes (based on means and results; phenomenological, non-component, mechanistic and functional; reductionism, mechanistic analysis, explanatory pluralism, dynamical systems theory, information theory) of psychological phenomena, facts, research results; methods and techniques of explanation (instantiation, deductive-nomological method, inference method (Nai)the best explanation, reification, functional abstraction, functionalization, a schematic proof, an explanatory appeal, the theory of explanatory coherence); correlation and comparison of the two leading types of explanation in psychology – mechanistic and functional, determining their specifics, as well as the areas in which they are most applicable and effective; analysis of the problem of explanation in various fields of psychology (behaviorism, evolutionary psychology, social psychology); discussion of the problem of pluralism of explanatory models in psychology as recognition of the complexity of the psyche and mental phenomena. The authors note that foreign psychological research deals with specific issues of theoretical and applied problems, but does not deal with the theoretical and methodological restructuring of the entire system of psychology. The importance of discussing the scientific explanation in relation to its potential for solving actual methodological problems of psychology is proved.