Existential-phenomenological perspectives in psychology : exploring the breadth of human experience : with a special section on transpersonal psychology

When I began to study psychology a half century ago, it was defined as "the study of behavior and experience." By the time I completed my doctorate, shortly after the end of World War II, the last two words were fading rapidly. In one of my first graduate classes, a course in statistics, the professor announced on the first day, "Whatever exists, exists in some number." We dutifully wrote that into our notes and did not pause to recognize that thereby all that makes life meaningful was being consigned to oblivion. This bland restructuring-perhaps more accurately, destruction-of the world was typical of its time, 1940. The influence of a narrow scientistic attitude was already spreading throughout the learned disciplines. In the next two decades it would invade and tyrannize the "social sciences," education, and even philosophy. To be sure, quantification is a powerful tool, selectively employed, but too often it has been made into an executioner's axe to deny actuality to all that does not yield to its procrustean demands. Front Matter....Pages i-xix Front Matter....Pages 1-1 An Introduction to Existential-Phenomenological Thought in Psychology....Pages 3-16 Psychology and the Attitude of Science....Pages 17-39 Phenomenological Research Methods....Pages 41-60 Front Matter....Pages 61-61 Brain, Body, and World Body Image and the Psychology of the Body....Pages 63-82 Approaches to Perception in Phenomenological Psychology: The Alienation and Recovery of Perception in Modern Culture....Pages 83-97 Learning and Memory from the Perspective of Phenomenological Psychology....Pages 99-112 Front Matter....Pages 113-113 A Phenomenological Approach to Child Development....Pages 115-126 An Empirical-Phenomenological Investigation of Being Anxious....Pages 127-136 The Social Psychology of Person Perception and the Experience of Valued Relationships....Pages 137-154 Front Matter....Pages 155-155 Personality and Assessment....Pages 157-178 Demystifying Psychopathology Understanding Disturbed Persons....Pages 179-192 Psychotherapy and Human Experience....Pages 193-213 Front Matter....Pages 215-215 Transformation of the Passions Psychoanalytic and Phenomenological Perspectives....Pages 217-231 The Psychology of Forgiving Another....Pages 233-244 Aesthetic Consciousness....Pages 245-254 Front Matter....Pages 255-256 The Emergence of Transpersonal Psychology....Pages 257-268 Basic Postulates for a Transpersonal Psychotherapy....Pages 269-287 Transpersonal Psychology Promise and Prospects....Pages 289-309 The Imagery in Movement Method....Pages 311-327 States of Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology....Pages 329-338 Back Matter....Pages 339-355 I Introduction and Foundational Issues.- 1 An Introduction to Existential-Phenomenological Thought in Psychology.- 2 Psychology and the Attitude of Science.- 3 Phenomenological Research Methods.- II Classical Topics in Psychology.- 4 Brain, Body, and World: Body Image and the Psychology of the Body.- 5 Approaches to Perception in Phenomenological Psychology: The Alienation and Recovery of Perception in Modern Culture.- 6 Learning and Memory from the Perspective of Phenomenological Psychology.- III Development, Emotion, and Social Psychology.- 7 A Phenomenological Approach to Child Development Edited By Ronald S. Valle And Steen Halling ; With A Foreword By James F.t. Bugental. Includes Bibliographies And Indexes. THE textbook for aspiring EP psychotherapists.