The Collected Works of Peter G. Ossorio. A series which will make available the entire body of work from the founder of Descriptive Psychology.
- Volume II: Essays on Clinical Topics. 1997.
- Volume IV: "What Actually Happens": The Representation of Real World Phenomena. 2005.
- Volume V: The Behavior of Persons. 2006.
Advances in Descriptive Psychology. A collection of articles advancing the conceptual framework or the application of Descriptive Psychology.
- Advances in Descriptive Psychology, Vol. 5. Anthony O. Putman, Keith E. Davis (Editors), 1990.
- Advances in Descriptive Psychology, Vol. 6. Clinical Topics: Contributions to the Conceptualization and Treatment of Adolescent-Family Problems, Bulimia, Chronic Mental Illness, and Mania. Mary Kathleen Roberts, Raymond M. Bergner (Editors), 1991.
- Advances in Descriptive Psychology, Vol. 7. H. Joel Jeffrey, Raymond M. Bergner (Editors), 1998.
- Advances in Descriptive Psychology, Vol. 8. Keith E. Davis, Raymond M. Bergner (Editors), 2006.
Monographs. Definitive treatments of topics of particular significance, as seen from the perspective of Descriptive Psychology, by a premier authority on the subject.
- Spirituality: An Approach through Descriptive Psychology. Mary McDermott Shideler, 1992.
- Studies in Psychopathology: The Descriptive Psychology Approach. Raymond M. Bergner, 1993.
Advances in Descriptive Psychology, Vol. 5
Two themes are explored in this volume: (1) the nature of organizations and conceptual tools for enhancing organizational effectiveness and (2) the nature of appraisals and their role in life and in therapeutic applications. Putman’s "Organizations" provides an alternative to general systems theories and shows how a Descriptive Psychology formulation of organizations allows one to understand the three perspectives on organizational worlds – machine, financial, and person – that develop in almost any organization. He identifies organizational interventions to clarify and renew organizational mission, and to enhance productivity and job satisfaction. Other chapters focus on culture change and technology transfer and on various aspects of person-machine and person-software interactions. These provide insights into the difficulties encountered in effective software engineering, and into the importance of a sophisticated conception of artificial intelligence.
In the second section, seven chapters address the concept of appraisal and its implications in a variety of setting. Ossorio’s "Appraisal" reviews the various uses of the concept within Descriptive Psychology and shows the coherence and interrelatedness of the uses of the concept. Holt makes it clear why appraisals are an essential part of the development of moral judgment and behavior. Sapin and Forward develop the implications of the insight that everyday concerns about "masculinity" and "femininity" are critic terms used to appraise behavior, not merely to describe it. Using the Descriptive Psychology distinctions between performative appraisals and significance appraisals of behavior, they show that persons operating at the performative level are more likely to stereotype persons along sex-role lines. Lathem is concerned with self-appraisals and self-criticism and how these are related to gender and to power. Bergner’s papers develop the direct clinical implications of appraisals. In the case of "impulsive persons," he shows that it is a mistake to think that they are defective in executive function. Rather their behaviors may be criticizable on ethical and prudential grounds. In "Father-Daughter Incest," he illuminates the power of the concept of status degradations in the kinds of negative self-appraisals that incest victims characteristically develop. Understanding these negative self-appraisals provides the starting point for therapeutic interventions likely to reduce the trauma and consequences of such incest. Overall, this is a very rich volume indeed. -- Keith E. Davis
Advances in Descriptive Psychology, Vol. 6
This volume develops two basic themes, both related to the practice of psychotherapy. The first of these sections focuses on some conceptual foundations for clinical practice, the second on more “how-to” applications of these foundations.
In the opening chapter of part one, Holmes’ elaborates Peter Ossorio’s cryptic statement that in therapy we should “treat persons as persons.” Holmes articulates precisely what it means to do so, and contrasts this with treating people as some sort of deterministic mechanism under the control of environment, biology, or other force. In the following chapter, Roberts relates some understandings gleaned from her clinical work with elderly widows and widowers who continued to “see” their deceased spouses, and who wished to make sense of this experience. The work explores the sense that these and other “companions of uncertain status” make, and provides understandings that permit a more informed and sensitive clinical approach to persons visited by such “companions.” In the ensuing chapter, Roberts tackles a wholly different topic, that of adolescence. Rather than taking a traditional stage approach, Roberts focuses on adolescence as a time in which a person develops from a child whose primary status is in the family into an adult who, having acquired adult competencies, can take his or her place in society. In the final chapter of part one, Bretscher and Bergner describe their research on the the factors that figure most prominently in selection of a life partner. In the chapter, they review previous research on the nature of love itself, and then report how the presence of the dimensions of love (e.g., mutual advocacy, intimacy, trust, respect, and exclusiveness) are far more predictive of mate selection than are the factors traditionally explored in the mainstream literature.
Part two of this volume, focused on clinical practice, begins with Bergner’s introduction of an integrative framework for psychopathology and psychotherapy. Built around the Descriptive definition of the concept of pathology, the work shows how all of the major extant approaches to psychotherapy relate to each other, and in the bargain presents an integrative approach to doing psychotherapy. In the second chapter of part two, Zeiger uses Agatha Christie’s famous detective, Miss Jane Marple, as the model for a particular approach to doing psychological assesment. The chapter demonstrates how this seemingly loose, intuitive, and informal aproach is supported by a formal conceptual system, and articulates some of the features of this system. In the following chapter, Bergner and Staggs present a new and comprehensive approach to the positive therapeutic relationship. This approach, incorporating but far more elaborated than Rogers’, is built around the assignment of nine distinct statuses to clients and the subsequent treatment of them as having these statuses. In the fourth chapter in this section, Wechsler, departing from the widespread view that mania is a wholly biological phenomenon, presents an interactive conception in which both psychology and biology play a role, and details some valuable psychological interventions for working with manic individuals. In the fifth chapter, Roberts, based on her earlier chapter on adolescence, articulates a therapeutic approach to doing psychotherapy with adolescents and their families. In chapter six, Marshall outlines both a new understanding of bulimia as a rebellion against a certain kind of alienating self-dictatorial regime, and the implications of this understanding for a wholly new approach to the clinical treatment of bulimics. In the seventh and final chapter, Orvik presents a redescription of chronically mentally ill persons as “dropped out” of their various communities and, built upon this, an approach to treatment that stresses changing these communities.
On the whole, this volume presents an extraordinarily rich tapestry of clinical understandings and interventions not found elsewhere in the clinical literature. -- Raymond M. Bergner
Advances in Descriptive Psychology, Vol. 8.
Advances in Descriptive Psychology, Vol. 8 takes on truly challenging intellectual issues—ones that are often treated as intractable or unspeakable within academic discourse.
The first section is devoted to addressing four fundamental questions:
- Just what is this strange, unique, and difficult to grasp entity that is “Descriptive Psychology?”
- Why, unlike many other sciences, has the science of psychology thus far been unable to arrive at a single, widely accepted, unifying framework, and thus remained in a highly fragmented state?
- Is it possible that one day the science of psychology will be replaced entirely by that of biology? Is it possible, in other words, that all of the phenomena that we currently explain by recourse to notions like “reason”, “belief”, and “emotion” will be better explained by ones like “synaptic event”, “action potential”, or whatever the then current biological construct system proffers?
- Where does our freedom lie? In what respects do we enjoy human freedom, and what are the limitations on this freedom?
In the second section, we have eight chapters that range in their focus from profound questions, such as “Where do thoughts come from?” “What implications do thoughts have for actors in life’s drama?” “How are the having of thoughts and one’s ability to engage in construction and reconstruction of one’s world related?” to more practical but equally important concerns. Among the latter are questions such as “How does one defend and justify therapeutic practices and interventions when one has not already engaged in the numerous empirical studies ‘required’ for their validation?” Or just how many types of stalkers are there and how should they be managed? -- Keith E. Davis
Spirituality: An Approach through Descriptive Psychology.
As a noted theologian and writer, Mary McDermott Shideler was frustrated by the lack of a developed language or conceptual schema for talking about spirituality. How can we share our spiritual experiences? Compare and contrast spiritual practices and communities? Indeed, how can we articulate anything about spirituality without a coherent conceptual system that is readily accessible to all who might want to join such a discussion? Spirituality: An Approach Through Descriptive Psychology was her response.
In this work, Ms. Shideler uses methods of reasoning more general than those of the physical sciences, yet broadly based in universal sensibility, to lay out a conceptual framework for describing the spiritual domain. She demonstrates how it works and then goes on to use it in articulating her own notions of spirituality. In the latter enterprise she does not lay claim to have the “right” answers, experiences or beliefs. Rather she offers hers as an example and a starting place for discussion and comparison of spiritual concepts and disciplines. In so doing, she also provides an entrée into understanding Descriptive Psychology as an intellectual resource.
Ms. Shideler (1917-2000) was a theologian, author of numerous books and articles, President of the Society for Descriptive Psychology, and President of the American Theological Society (Mid-Western Division). She received her B.S. from Swarthmore College and was ultimately granted an honorary doctor of theology by the same institution that in her youth had refused to admit her for advanced studies because she was a woman. -- Carolyn A. Zeiger
Studies in Psychopathology: The Descriptive Psychology Approach.
Psychiatry and psychology aspire some day to provide a diagnostic manual that will connect directly with treatment. This would put these disciplines on a par with medicine, where to a large degree physicians can consult their manuals and conclude, “Aha, this is a case of infection type X, and the scientifically established treatment is antibiotic Y.” Every practicing psychotherapist knows that there is nothing approaching this state of affairs in the mental health field. As an experienced psychotherapist once said: “DSM helps you to know when you’ve got one, but not what the hell to do with one.”
Why? One reason is that something important comes between a DSM diagnosis and a knowledge of how to treat any given disorder. This something is a general formulation of the intelligibility of the disorder. As a therapist, I cannot proceed directly from the simple knowledge that my client is bulimic to a knowledge of how to treat him or her. What I require is an account of what sense bulimia makes -- an answer to the question of “Why is this intelligent and accomplished young woman before me doing the utterly bewildering thing of starving herself?”
There are always individual factors involved in the answer to such questions, but there are also general factors -- factors that generalize over a wide number of cases. Studies in Psychopathology is a collection of such general formulations. It is designed to help practicing psychotherapists understand many different disorders, in a way that has very clear treatment implications. The book accomplishes this for the following disorders and problems: depression, mania, paranoia, impulsive disorders, bulimia, paraphilia, incest survivor syndrome, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, and histrionic personality disorder. Further chapters detail approaches (a) to modifying problematic emotional states in general (e.g., anxiety, jealousy, and anger), and (b) to undoing the results of clients having been subjected to highly degrading treatment at the hands of others.
All of the formulations and treatments explicated in this book are based on the general formulations of Peter Ossorio within Descriptive Psychology. Practitioners of many different schools will find insights in this collection of articles that are both practical and congruent with their own therapeutic approach.
Advances in Descriptive Psychology, Vol. 7.
The work of Peter Ossorio, beginning with the publication of Persons in the early 1960s, created a new discipline for the scientific study of persons: Descriptive Psychology. Just as physics is the discipline in which the core concepts are matter, energy, and physical movement, and the scientific work is carefully and precisely articulating the relationships among them, Descriptive Psychology is the discipline in which the core concepts are person, behavior, language, and the real world, and the scientific work is carefully and precisely articulating the relationships between persons, what they do, what they say, and the world in which these things take place. Ossorio of course is not the first person to address these topics, which have been the focus of philosophers and psychologists for millenia; he is the first to articulate a rigorous, precise, coherent conceptual framework for doing so.
A discipline that actually addresses something as fundamental as the nature of human behavior in the real world would be expected to have extraordinarily broad application, and that is exactly what the several volumes of work that comprise Advances in Descriptive Psychology show. Topics in which the concepts of Descriptive Psychology have been used to yield new insights, fundamental re-conceptualizations, and useful techniques include, among others, psychotherapy and psychopathology, information retrieval (including a recent patent on a search algorithm), artificial intelligence, spirituality, culture and identity, economics, and computer simulation of human organizations and cultures. This volume, the seventh in the Advances series, continues that pattern. The reader will find highly original work in three general areas: ontology and consciousness; being a member of a culture; and education and coaching.
The volume begins with Ossorio’s “What There Is, How Things Are,” a profound and unique treatment of the most basic of questions: what does it mean to say that a person exists, and can we articulate the facts about people without being forced into the intractable logical dilemma of reductionism and materialism? Following this, the reader will find work addressing in fundamentally different ways the central concepts of cognitive science and of consciousness; a unique analysis of the work by the famous film maker Akira Kurosawa; papers addressing some of the most important social and political issues of our day, namely membership and identity in cultures; the psychological and psychotherapeutic handling of self-criticism; techniques for the classroom teacher; and a thorough discussion of the central issues in coaching (in and out of sports): leadership, motivation, and teaching.
The payoff of having a solid foundation is that you can build higher without having the structure become unsound. Taken together, the work in Advances in Descriptive Psychology, Vol. VII, illustrates that payoff, in the form of analyses, conceptualizations, and techniques in a highly diverse range of subjects, that cannot be found anywhere else. -- H. Joel Jeffrey
