Would you like the opportunity to learn more about psychology? Whether you are: 1) a complete ‘beginner’ who would like to learn more about your own personal psychology or psychology in general; 2) a ‘psychology trainee’ who is perhaps training or thinking of training to use the study of psychology in some sort of career capacity; or 3) a ‘psychology professional’ who is already using the study of psychology in your career — I think that Gap Psychology (GP for short) may have something for you.
The aim here is to talk about psychology — the human mind (or ‘psyche’) in all of its realistic, idealistic, and pathological capabilities. We will talk about the capabilities of the human mind from the following three perspectives: 1) from a ‘cognitive-conceptual’ perspective, in which we will examine the nature of , and the connection between knowing, thinking, feeling, and doing; 2) from a ‘humanistic-existential’ perspective in which we will examine the nature of choosing, being, and becoming; and 3) from a ‘contact‘ perspective in which we will examine the nature of awareness, self and social contact, negotiation, and conflict resolution.
Publicly, Gap Psychology is a brand new, ‘multi-integrative’ school of psychology. Privately, it has been in an ongoing process of research and development for over 20 years.
Let me describe Gap Psychology in this manner. If you were to take ‘pieces’ of the ideas of Freud, Adler, Jung, Perls, Hegel, Korzybski, Melanie Klein, Fairbairn, Kohut, Berne, Fromm, Ellis, Beck, Maltz, Brandon, and an assortment of other psychological and philosophical thinkers who have influenced Gap’s still developing philosophical and conceptual base — put this combined smorgasbord of different ideas all into one big ‘intellectual salad bowl‘, add some of Gap’s own unique ingredients and ‘dressing’ to the mixture — and stir — you may start to get an overall conceptualization of what Gap Psychology is about. GP is a brand new multi-integrative school of psychology that has taken what I believe to be
many of the best psychological ideas of the 19th and 20th century... brought them together in one package combined with Gap’s own additions and extensions...integrated everything... and now is releasing to the public.
Call Gap Psychology a psychology ‘greatest hits’ package of sorts — but one that is holistically integrated in a way that the individual sets of ideas that may be partly or fully borrowed from other schools of psychology do not clash with each other; rather, they support and complement each other and add to the still growing ‘gestalt’ — the growing multi-integrative whole.
In the music industry, most greatest hits albums that I have ever bought have been lacking in the holistic integration department. Great individual songs can be imposed together in a way that they clash — they do not ‘fit’ together in close proximity to each other. In the same manner, two or more individual ‘sports star athletes’ may be brought together on an ‘all-star team’ or an ‘all-star line’ but the individual talents and/or personalities of the respective star athletes may be such that they don’t ‘mesh’ or ‘fit’ well together on the same team or line. The ‘holistic chemistry’ is not right. Getting the ‘chemistry right’ may involve removing a ‘star player’ and replacing him or her with a ‘plugger’, a ‘blue collar worker‘ — someone who would not perhaps normally be construed as a ‘star’ but who perhaps works in a manner that he or she brings the stars ‘together’, helps the stars fit together in way that allows the stars to be stars, making the ‘chemistry of the whole greater than the sum of the individual parts’. In such a manner, if everything works out right, when this Gap Project is sufficiently ‘finished’ enough on paper to be construed as a ‘systematic whole’ (I can only ‘guesstimate’ how long this will take — let us say tentatively that by this time next year I hope to have most of the main theoretical pieces in place), then perhaps you can view me as the ‘plugger’, the ‘blue collar worker’, the ‘co-ordinator’, or the ’chemist’ who perhaps has found a way to help the ‘stars’ of the philosophy and the psychology world — stars like Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sartre, Freud, Jung, Adler, Perls, and many others — to shine a little bit brighter when their respective ideas shine together in cohesion with each other rather than apart and in opposition to each other.
This is my ‘life-work goal’ — the goal of The Gap Project — the goal of Gap Psychology, the goal of Gap Philosophy, the goal of Gap Holistic Health, the goal of Gap Humanistic-Existentialism... These are all individual ‘pieces’ of ‘The Gap Whole’ — ‘The Gap Project’, ‘The Gap Puzzle’… And the construction is all going to start right here — piece by piece, volume by volume — in the contents of The Gap Psychology, Philosophy, and Holistic Health Forum.
‘Multi-integration’, ‘time-binding’, and ‘thought-binding’. Bringing together 200 years + of humanistic-existential thought — in one package, one school of thought — to be applied for the hopeful betterment of mankind, both individually and collectively.
So yes, I am putting together a greatest hits package of sorts, in which individual ideas or conceptual pieces are borrowed from other schools of psychology, modified, extended, deconstructed and reconstructed, brought into contact with opposing assumptions from other schools of psychology, synthesized in ways that other theorists might believe that no such synthesis could possibly exist...
In the end, I believe I have constructed a useful multi-integrative working model of: 1) the human psyche; 2) humanistic existential-idealism; 3) human psychopathology; and 4) humanistic-existential psychotherapy. But right now the ‘construction’ is only in my head. So let’s get it out on paper. That’s the goal. And fulfilling life-goals (the art of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’) is central to what GP is all about.
*DGBN, Mar. 3, 2001. dgbainsky@yahoo.com
*David Gordon Bain
*Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations
*Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
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