Toward a Process Approach in Psychology. Paul van Geert & Naomi de Ruiter.

Authors: Paul van Geert, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands & Naomi de Ruiter, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
Date Published: July 2022
Availability: Available
Format: Hardback / E-book
ISBN: 9781108490900

Psychological science constructs much of the knowledge that we consume in our everyday lives. This book is a systematic analysis of this process, and of the nature of the knowledge it produces. The authors show how mainstream scientific activity treats psychological properties as being fundamentally stable, universal, and isolable. They then challenge this status quo by inviting readers to recognize that dynamics, context-specificity, interconnectedness, and uncertainty, are a natural and exciting part of human psychology – these are not things to be avoided and feared, but instead embraced. This requires a shift toward a process-based approach that recognizes the situated, time-dependent, and fundamentally processual nature of psychological phenomena. With complex dynamic systems as a framework, this book sketches out how we might move toward a process-based praxis that is more suitable and effective for understanding human functioning.