Descriptive Psychology and the Person Concept maps the common ground of behavioral science. The absence of a shared foundation has given us fragmentation, a siloed state of psychological theory and practice. And the science? The integrity of choice, accountability, reason, and intention are necessary commitments at the cornerstone of civilization and any person-centered psychotherapy, but when taught along with a "scientific requirement for reductionism and determinism, reside in contradictory intellectual universes. Peter Ossorio developed the Person Concept to remedy these problems. This book is an introduction to his work and the community of scientists, scholars, and practitioners of Descriptive Psychology. Ossorio offered these maxims that capture the discipline's spirit: 1. The world makes sense, and so do people. They make sense to begin with. 2. It's one world. Everything fits together. Everything is related to everything else. 3. Things are what they are and not something else instead. 4. Don't count on the world being simpler than it has to be. The Person Concept is a single, coherent concept of interdependent component concepts: Individual Persons; Behavior as Intentional Action; Language and Verbal Behavior; Community and Culture; and World and Reality. Descriptive Psychology uses preempirical, theory-neutral formulations and methods, to make explicit the implicit structure of the behavioral sciences. The goal is a framework with a place for what is already known with room for what is yet to be found. - Provides a way to compare theories, coordinate empirical findings, and negotiate competent disagreement - Offers guidance for effective case formulation and integration of therapies - Explores the dilemmas of personhood and the complexities of human and nonhuman action, investigating "what is a person, and how can we be sure?" - Follows the implications of Hedonics, Prudence, Ethics, and Aesthetics as intrinsic perspectives and reasons for action - Applies these concepts to personality and social dynamics, consciousness, relationship change, emotional behavior, deliberation, and judgment - Provides a guide to establishing and restoring empathy--especially when it's difficult

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) is a key figure in the development of Twentieth Century thought. It was his work that set Husserl on to the road of phenomenology and intentionality, that inspired Meinong's theory of the object which influenced Bertrand Russell, and the entire Polish school of philosophy. ^Descriptive Psychology presents a series of lectures given by Brentano in 1887; they were the culmination of his work, and the clearest statement of his mature thought. It was this later period which proved to be so important in the work of his student, Husserl. This is the first English translation of his work. Benito Muller has added a concise introduction which places Brentano within the history of philosophy and psychology, and locates his influence in contemporary thought.

Perhaps no philosopher has so fully explored the nature and conditions of historical understanding as Wilhelm Dilthey. His work, conceived overall as a Critique of Historical Reason and developed through his well-known theory of the human studies, provides concepts and methods still fruitful for those concerned with analyzing the human condition. Despite the increasing recognition of Dilthey's contributions, relati vely few of his writings have as yet appeared in English translation. It is therefore both timely and useful to have available here two works drawn from different phases in the development of his philosophy. The "Ideas Concerning a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology" (1894), now translated into English for the first time, sets forth Dilthey's programma tic and methodological viewpoints through a descriptive psychology, while "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Expressions of Life" (ca. 1910) is representative of his later hermeneutic approach to historical understanding. DESCRIPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE HUMAN STUDIES Dilthey presented the first mature statement of his theory of the human studies in volume one of his Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (Introduction to the Human Studies), published in 1883. He argued there that for the proper study of man and history we must eschew the metaphysical speculation of the absolute idealists while at the same time avoiding the scientistic reduction of positivism.

This volume grew out of a discussion between the editors at the Society for Experimental Social Psychology meeting in Nashville in 1981. For many years the Society has played a leading role in encouraging rigorous and sophisticated research. Yet, our discussion that day was occupied with what seemed a major problem with this fmely honed tradition; namely, it was preoccupied with "accurate renderings of reality," while generally insensitive to the process by which such renderings are achieved. This tradition presumed that there were "brute facts" to be discovered about human interaction, with little consideration of the social processes through which "factuality" is established. To what degree are accounts of persons constrained by the social process of rendering as opposed to the features of those under scrutiny? This concern with the social process by which persons are constructed was hardly ours alone. In fact, within recent years such concerns have been voiced with steadily increasing clarity across a variety of disciplines. Ethno methodologists were among the first in the social sciences to puncture the taken-for-granted realities of life. Many sociologists of science have also turned their attention to the way social organizations of scientists create the facts necessary to sustain these organizations. Historians of science have entered a similar enterprise in elucidating the social, economic and ideological conditions enabling certain formulations to flourish in the sciences while others are suppressed. Many social anthropologists have also been intrigued by cross-cultural variations in the concept of the human being.

The aim of the book is to present side-by-side representative and cutting-edge samples of work in mathematical psychology and the analytic philosophy with prominent use of mathematical formalisms.

This comprehensive work from one of the leading thinkers in humanistic psychology provides a thorough discussion of the phenomenological foundations for qualitative research in psychology. Amedeo Giorgi's examination operates out of the intersection of phenomenological philosophy, science, and psychology; such a multidisciplinary approach allows him to challenge several long-standing assumptions about the practice of psychology. Giorgi asserts that empiricism is not the best philosophy for grounding the science of psychology--rather, the broader phenomenological theory of science permits more adequate psychological development. Giorgi draws from Husserl's philosophical principles the reasons for conducting research in psychology, and then offers practical steps for applying a phenomenological method and real examples of applications of the method. In fact, Giorgi proposes a method that is theoretically grounded in phenomenological philosophy and yet treats empirically derived data. This is a rigorous but open qualitative research method that is tolerant of pararational givens as well as one that is supportive of rational criteria. The analyses and methods presented in Phenomenological Method in Psychology will be attractive to psychologists, phenomenologists, and researchers involved in qualitative research throughout social and human science disciplines.