Innovating Genesis: Microgenesis and the Constructive Mind in Action (Advances in Cultural Psychology)

Cultural psychology is currently in a phase of rapid growth. Innovating Genesis is an example of how the most central aspect of any science and its methodology, undergoes revolutionary transformation. Yet in this book we see careful continuity with the past of the discipline. The orientation to study processes of emergence was well prepared by the Ganzheitspsychologie tradition in early twentieth century. If we all have learned something about the world since then it is the inevitable quality of the whole that transcends its parts. Scientists have tried to grasp the general notion of such wholes, yet recurrently regressing to the easy illusion that one can reduce the complexities of the in vivo events to the scrutinizes in vitro. By looking to the history of how holistic ideas might help our present investigations, this book demonstrates how contemporary science has something to learn from its own history.

The editors of this volume have managed to bring together a creative international team of scholars whom they have guided to be on target of the content matter of the book―innovating the genesis of the methods for the study of psychological emergence.

Emily Abbey is assistant professor of developmental psychology at Ramapo College. Her teaching interests include exploring theories of development and relating such theories to phenomenon. Her work has appeared in Culture & Psychology, Anthropological Psychology, and the European Journal of School Psychology.