On Process Psychology

Process psychology is a interdiscipline of psychology and Whitehead’s process philosophy.It is a new psychological research orientation in the trend of Western postmodern multiculturalthought. Influenced by the traditional positivism philosophy, modern psychology has adoptedthe classical natural science’s basic assumptions about determinism,reductionism andmechanical materialism. Experimental quantitative method as the only scientific way,it rejectsthe use of other methods. Method as the center, over-reliance on the scientific technology andempirical research makes psychology go farther and farther on the road of the pursuit ofminutiae.Following natural science blindly resulted to the division and fragmentation situationin the modern western psychology. Psychological research divorced from people’s daily lives.Having an insight into the drawbacks of the modern western way of thinking, Whiteheadexplicitly opposed to the traditional mechanistic basis of the entity and the subject-objectdualistic ways of thinking, put forward the process philosophy, which also called the“philosophy of organism” or “organic philosophy”,“change” and “generation” as its basiccharacteristics. Different from the traditional entity realism, process realism is a newperspective and paradigm. It considers that the process is really, really is a process, and theworld is a whole with organisms interrelating, interacting and converting mutually,rather thanthe eternal entity. Whitehead’s organic philosophy provides new guidelines for the change anddevelopment of western psychology and psychological treatment. Process psychology thinksthe process as a theoretical basis for psychological research. Different from the mechanicalconfirmed and reductive stance of scientific psychology, process psychology reflects on modernpsychology’s rational stance,from an organic whole concept.With its diverse researchorientation and inclusive ideas, process psychology proposed new research ideas for modernpsychology to go out of the contemporary plight.This paper described process psychology’s background and development in detail,expatiated its philosophical foundation, analyzed and discussed its main theory viewpoint,including the ontology, epistemology, human nature hypothesis, the research object and task,and the research methodology, introduced its main research content, involving consciousness, ego, spirit, transpersonal psychology studies,and the psychological treatment field, prospectedits future development direction and foreground last.“Process psychology represents the constructive postmodernism direction of psychologystudy”. On the one hand, taking a process view of the world,believe that,what constitutes theworld’s ultimate reality is a bit of experience,so,people is also the presence of experience.Taking human and his mental life as a creative process,which generates continuously, thepresence of the relationship,this avoid avoid the mind and body dualism hypothesis, so as tobuild a more creative and inclusive architecture of human nature. Process philosophy’s organicholistic ideas established a new research orientation for psychology. On the other hand, Processthinking contains a deep ecological thinking,believing that all beings have their interests andvalues.Thinking that there is a dynamic equilibrium relationship between man and nature,promoting the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, this reflects the ecologicaldimension of a post-modernism, and is conducive to the mitigation of the ecological crisis andpeople’s spiritual crisis. However, we should also see the controversy and limitations of processpsychology. Many research models are only at the theoretical conception stage,can not to beproved or disproved,and its animists metaphysical color is being questioned. As a new researchorientation,process psychology is still at the fringes of mainstream psychology,and its influencealso appears to be negligible.