Viewing Psychology As a Whole: The Integrative Science of William N. Dember

This collection in honour of William N. Dember provides a view of psychology as an integrated discipline instead of an ensemble of subspecialties. Dember's wide-ranging contributions to perception, attention, motivation and personality theory are rooted in the belief that, methodologically and conceptually, the whole of psychology is greater than the sum of its parts. The idea that perception could be an active process, subject to motivational and cognitive influences, had not been widely accepted until the publication of the text, "The Psychology of Perception" (1960). Dember is also well-known for adding the desire for complexity to the list of motivational forces, in what came to be called "The New Look" - the Dember-Earl theory of choice. Closely connected with psychology's "cognitive revolution", Dember is often given credit for coining the term. This book examines and extends Dember's theories about psychology in the light of contemporary developments.