How to Rethink Psychology

Book excerpt: Based on the author’s forty years of experience in psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences, How to Rethink Psychology argues that to understand people we need to know more about their contexts than the dominant modes of thinking and research presently allow. Drawing upon insights from sources as diverse as Freud, CBT, quantum physics, and Zen philosophy, the book offers several fascinating new metaphors for thinking about people and, in doing so, endeavors to create a psychology for the future. The book begins by discussing the significance of the key metaphor underlying mainstream psychology today – the ‘particle’ or ‘causal’ metaphor – and explains the need for a shift towards new ‘wave’ or ‘contextual’ metaphors in order to appreciate how individual and social actions truly function. It explores new metaphors for thinking about the relationship between language and reality, and teaches the reader how they might reimagine the processes involved in the act of thinking itself. The book concludes with a consideration of how these new metaphors might be applied to practical methods of research and understanding change today. How to Rethink Psychology is important reading for upper-level and postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of social psychology, critical psychology, and the philosophy of psychology, and will especially appeal to those studying behavior analysis and radical behaviorism. It has also been written for the general reading public who enjoy exploring new ideas in science and thinking.