Casting a Wide Net

The goal of this chapter is to further consider how the theoretical framework presented in the book is applicable to so much of what people do, as well as to so many complex human issues and concerns. In this chapter, a wide net is cast to consider how the theoretical framework is applicable to eating, freedom, attitudes, extreme action, and art. By thinking about these topics in terms of action, readers can see how the book’s theoretical framework provides a common language for thinking systematically about a wide range of complex issues. The chapter shows how the book’s action perspective provides ways of thinking systematically about the complexities of action as people go about their lives in all corners of the world.

Psychological Processes

The goal of this chapter is to explain how action involves varied psychological processes, including thinking, feeling, self/identity, interacting, and sensing and perceiving. It is explained that different ways of acting involve different ways of structuring varied psychological processes. Moreover, different ways of structuring psychological processes emerge through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. In this chapter, thinking, feeling, self/identity, sensing and perceiving, and interacting are conceptualized as active processes that people do, and each process is explained in relation to individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Varied empirical and everyday examples are used to illustrate major concepts and claims.

Systems Theory and Introducing Action

The goals of this chapter are to summarize systems theory, which provides an overarching theoretical basis for the current work, and to introduce action as the key concept that will be conceptualized in more detail in subsequent chapters. Systems theory is the starting point for the current work because it is based on integrative and relational assumptions and because it offers a way of understanding complex phenomena in terms of multiple processes that mutually affect each other. In this chapter, systems theory is further summarized in terms of connections among parts and wholes, multiple kinds of causality, emergence, stability, and variability. Action is then identified as the wider whole or system that represents what people do. The chapter ends by acknowledging some of the values that inform how the author is thinking about action.

Implications for Thinking about Individuality and Variability

This chapter presents some implications and applications of the theoretical framework that is presented in Chapters 5, 6, and 7. It promotes thinking about action non-dichotomously by addressing how action is simultaneously general and individualized, as well as simultaneously stable and variable. It is argued that general or universal human processes can be played out in individualized ways of acting and in how individuals subjectively construct experience. The chapter then focuses on how the theoretical framework provides a basis for thinking about how action is both stable and variable. This chapter also considers issues pertaining to personality and what it means to know someone. It ends by using the theoretical framework to think non-dichotomously about how varied aspects of human action occur simultaneously.

Implications for Understanding Human Functioning Integratively and Actively

This chapter presents some implications and applications of the theoretical framework that is presented in Chapters 5, 6, and 7. It first focuses on how the theoretical framework provides a basis for thinking about action holistically. Thinking about action holistically provides an antidote to the fragmentation of conventional psychology, because it enables us to think about action processes as integral parts of a wider whole. The chapter then focuses on how the theoretical framework provides a basis for thinking about human functioning in terms of active processes that people do. The chapter ends with a consideration of some implications of the theoretical framework for thinking about mind–body connections holistically, rather than dualistically.

Complex and Empathic Understanding

This chapter ties varied strands of the book together by first considering how the theoretical framework can be used to address the complexities of human action identified in Chapter 1 (i.e., holism, dynamics, variability, multicausality, and individuality). The chapter also offers guidelines for using the theoretical framework to think systematically about what people do in varied circumstances. The book ends by considering the complex and empathic image of and vision for humanity that the theoretical framework reflects and hopefully promotes and promulgates. In doing so, the chapter raises varied issues regarding diversity and commonality, as well as openness to change.

Introducing Psychology

This chapter sets the stage for a new way of thinking about human functioning by identifying some complexities of human functioning—that is, holism, dynamics, variability, multicausality, and individuality. It also introduces a questioning stance that can lead psychology in new theoretical and empirical directions. The chapter traces some of the history of psychology and how it came to be defined largely in terms of research methods that are rooted in the natural sciences. It also describes contemporary conventional psychology in terms of fragmenting, objectifying, and aggregating practices, as well as deterministic conceptions of causality.

Constitutive Processes

The goal of this chapter is to explain how action is constituted by simultaneously occurring and interrelated individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Each process is taken to contribute 100% to action, and no process is taken to be prior or primary. Considering these constitutive processes provides a basis for understanding and explaining what a person is doing, why a person is doing what they are doing, and what a person’s action means. Each process is conceptualized more specifically, and varied empirical and everyday examples are used to illustrate how individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes play out as people act. The chapter also considers how these processes are systemically interrelated and how they can be structured in varied ways.

Evidence and Research Implications

This chapter addresses evidence for the theoretical framework presented in this book, and it considers implications of the theoretical framework for understanding research, as well as for conducting research. The chapter begins by explaining how the theoretical framework is based on and informed by empirical research. It then offers some guidelines for conducting research on human action based on the theoretical framework. Research guidelines focus on the structuring of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes for varied modes of action, within and across cultures. This chapter also explains how the theoretical framework can be used to make sense of existing research and to bring disparate findings about human functioning into coherence. The chapter ends by explaining how the theoretical framework can be used to critically analyze treatments of human functioning in psychology and other disciplines.

Implications for Pondering Some Complexities of Causality and Meaning

This chapter presents some implications and applications of the theoretical framework that is presented in Chapters 5, 6, and 7. It first shows that the theoretical framework provides a basis for thinking about how action involves varied kinds of causes. To go beyond conventional analyses of deterministic causality, this chapter explains how action is constituted by the structuring of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. It also considers how these constitutive processes may both enable and constrain action. The theoretical framework is used to think about context in terms of active processes that both shape and are shaped by what people do. The chapter then considers some implications of the theoretical framework for understanding the meaning of action in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes.