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Descriptive psychology is primarily a conceptual framework for the science of psychology. Created in its original form by Peter G. Ossorio at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the mid-1960s, it has subsequently been applied to domains such as psychotherapy, artificial intelligence, organizational communities, spirituality, research methodology, and theory creation.

The nature of descriptive psychology

The original impulse for the creation of DP was dissatisfaction with mainstream approaches to the science of psychology, thinking that psychology had paid insufficient attention to the creation of a foundational conceptual framework such as other sciences possessed. Later authors noted that this lack of a conceptual scaffolding was responsible for the fragmentation of psychology; i.e. for its lack of any unifying, broadly accepted "standard model."

References

1. ^ Ossorio, P.G. (1995). Persons. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Descriptive Psychology Press. (Originally published in 1966).
2. Ossorio, P. G. (2006). The Behavior of Persons. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Descriptive Psychology Press.
3. Bergner R (2007). Status Dynamics: Creating New Paths to Therapeutic Change. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Burns Park Publishers.
4. Jeffrey, J. (1990). Knowledge engineering: Theory and practice. In A. Putman & K. Davis (Eds.), Advances in Descriptive Psychology (Vol. 5, pp. 105-122). Ann Arbor, Michigan: Descriptive Psychology Press.
5. Putman, A. (1990). Artificial persons. In A. Putman & K. Davis (Eds.), Advances in Descriptive Psychology (Vol. 5, pp. 81-104). Ann Arbor, Michigan: Descriptive Psychology Press.
6. Putman, A. (1990). Organizations. In A. Putman & K. Davis (Eds.), Advances in Descriptive Psychology (Vol. 5, pp. 11-46). Ann Arbor, Michigan: Descriptive Psychology Press.
7. Shideler, M. (1990). Spirituality: The Descriptive Psychology approach. In A. Putman & K. Davis (Eds.), Advances in Descriptive Psychology (Vol. 5, pp. 199-214). Ann Arbor, Michigan: Descriptive Psychology Press.
8. Ossorio, P.G. (1981). Representation, evaluation, and research. In K. Davis (Ed.), Advances in Descriptive Psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 105-138). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
9. Ossorio, P.G. (1981). Explanation, falsifiability, and rule-following. In K. Davis (Ed.), Advances in Descriptive Psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 37-56). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
10. Bergner R (2006). An open letter from Isaac Newton to the field of psychology. In K. Davis & R. Bergner (Eds.), Advances in Descriptive Psychology (Vol. 8, pp. 69-80). Ann Arbor, Michigan: Descriptive Psychology Press.

External links

• Society for Descriptive Psychology
• Dictionary of Psychology (archived)

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