Human DevelopmentTranscending potential through academic and professional development

Details: Written by Brent A Duncan, PhD; Last Updated: 25 June 2021

Article Index

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Theory through the organismic lens

Theories developed through the organismic lens that will be covered in this section include:

Freud's Psychodynamic Theory
Goldstein's organismic theory
Piaget's Cognitive-Developmental Theory
Neo-Piagetian perspectives
Maslow's holistic dynamic hierarchy of needs theory

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Human Development Perspectives

The Human Machine

What makes people the way they are? The Mechanistic perspective sees humans as machines that passively react to internal and external forces over which they have no control.

Inner quality management

Why are people the way they are? The Organismic lens sees humans as an integrated wholes, organisms that actively makes choices about how they will react to and control the internal and external forces of their lives, and that have inherent growth potential.

The Human Context

What are people? The Contextualist lens sees humans as the historic events that shape their lives, culmination of how they experience and understand things that happen to them.

The Human Synthesis

Attempting to understand human behavior through a single philosophical lens results in methodological myopia through which researchers dismiss perspectives other than their own. Synthesizing perspectives will provide a more complete picture of the human experience.

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Human DevelopmentTranscending potential through academic and professional development

The human organism - Theory through the organismic lens

Article Index

Theory through the organismic lens

Features

Discovering Holistic-Dynamic Needs Beneath a Rigid Pyramid

Labouvie-Vief's theory of pragmatic thought and cognitive-emotional complexity sees adults as adaptable problem solvers

Lifespan developmental perspective shows how interaction between individual and environment drives change

The human context

The human machine

The human organism

Vygotsky's Cognitive-Mediation Theory shows learner as apprentice

Human Development Overview

The enduring mystery of consciousness

Behaviorism: Producing behavior change

Watson's behaviorism

Skinner's radical behaviorism

Bandura's social cognitive theory

Thorndike’s connectionism

Freud's Psychodynamic Theory

Goldstein's organismic theory

Human Development Perspectives

The Human Machine

The Human Organism

The Human Context

The Human Synthesis