Toward a Process Approach in Psychology

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.

Paul van Geert is Emeritus Professor of developmental psychology at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is considered a pioneer in the application of the (complex) dynamic systems approach to a broad range of developmental areas, including cognitive and early language development, second language acquisition, learning-teaching processes, and educational processes.

Naomi de Ruiter is a developmental psychologist and an Assistant Professor at University College Groningen, the Netherlands. In her research, she applies a (complex) dynamic systems approach to the study of self and identity, and to classroom interactions.