Toward a Holistic Developmental Psychology

by Seymour Wapner (editor), Bernard Kaplan (editor)

Originally published in 1983, the main aim of this volume was to suggest new ways of conceptualizing human development and new domains of theorizing and engaging in practice for those who were vitally concerned with the nature and value of human beings. Toward this goal, colleagues and students of the later Heinz Werner, believing that Werner provided the schema for such a vision, here present modifications, extensions, and elaborations of his insights concerning the nature of development. The Wernerian approach, in origin and aim, is concerned with the development of the whole human being. The papers here were intended only as a stimulus to provoke others as well as the contributors themselves to a new, yet old approach, to human experience, thought, and action. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

276 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

I’ll have to give this book a closer reading. On some days the very idea of embodying holistic psychology can be particularly challenging, as per my microfiction:

HOLISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
I woke up, head on my pillow but not anything else. I mean to say there wasn’t any body attached: I was only head, nothing but head.

I turned my head, my only me, and saw one of my arms, the left one, I think, on the bureau and my scrotum hanging on my clothes tree.

I turned my head the other way. My toes rested like ten pale Brazil nuts on the windowsill, the cheeks of my buttocks on the floor, a calf and knee poking out of the pants I threw over a chair last night.

I looked up at the ceiling. More of the same: my neck, another leg, thumbs, and yes, my penis, all dangle from the light cord.

By the time I gather myself together and I’m back in one piece, I’m really running late. I open my bedroom door and the rooms of my house and the rest of the neighborhood are scattered on a wide, grassy plain. Now I know I’m really going to be late.