PSYCHOLOGY, A DISCIPLINE WITH A STRUCTURE-BASED HISTORY AND A PROCESS-BASED FUTURE

Knowledge about the nature of life as well as about the nature of huma n reality are essential to the study and practice of psychology and ps ychiatry. Body, mind, thought, and deed are inextricably entangled in a complex network of interconnections which, due to our human limitati ons, can never be fully understood (Capra, 1988; Chopra, 1989; Frankl, 1969; Gut, 1989; Hughes, 1974). In the development of psychology, muc h energy has been spent seeking scientifically acceptable concepts, la ws, and measurements which subscribe to the Cartesian image of the hum an being as a clockwork mechanism (Capra, 1988; von Bertalanffy, 1968) . To accommodate this mechanistic image, psychological theorists have largely borrowed and adapted concepts from physics, physiology, and ma thematics, with little consensus reached about the validity of their a ctions. The tendency to emulate ''hard'' science has contributed to th e failure of psychological theory and practice to relate comprehensive ly to the broad issues and problems of human existence (Jordaan & Jord aan, 1984; White, 1993a). The process-based systems view, which has it s origins in Heraclitus of Ephesus (Kahn, 1981; Kirk, Raven, & Schofie ld, 1983; Wheelwright, 1959), is a radical reversal of the mechanistic view and represents the human being as an ''active personality system ,'' in which individual uniqueness and creative potential are valued. The systems view of humanity raises issues largely ignored by a scient ific psychological view-such as aspects of creativity, self awareness, unpredictability, multivariable interaction, dynamic organization, se lf-maintenance, directiveness, etc. Process-based systems thinking doe s not disregard structural aspects of systems but regards them as the conceptual or material coherence of processes. It is a perspective in which process is ''foregrounded'' relative to structure. The relations hip of process to structure suggests a union of opposites (Sabelli, 19 91a,b) in which both empirical and interpretive outlooks are compatibl e (Messer, 1990), reflecting a healthy regard for methodological and t heoretical diversity. Process-based systems thinking promotes a shift from structure-based rigidity to a position which presents new challen ges and invites a fresh look at old issues in this postmodern (Gergen, 1992; Kvale, 1992) era of psychology. The premises of process-based s ystems thinking singled out for discussion in this article are: the pr ocess nature of life (and psychology), the approximate nature of syste ms, dynamic organization, the union of opposites, teleos, governance, and emergence in systems.