"Schwartz’s Descriptive Psychology and the Person Concept makes me want to sing and dance for joy. A student of Ossorio’s has developed the presentational skills to communicate the power and beauty of The Person Concept in all its complexity and rigor. He writes as only a good teacher can with metaphors, case examples, and appreciation of the historical and philosophical antecedents of this wonderfully complex set of conceptual distinctions. Schwartz writes well because he uses the fitting story or example to make the concepts come alive.If one studies the system, it can change one’s life. It changed mine. As a well-trained experimental social psychologist, I arrived at the University of Colorado in 1961and shared an office with Ossorio. We would debate issues, and I came to see that he had something genuinely revolutionary to offer. My thinking about persons was no longer trapped in a causal-deterministic framework that did not do justice to persons and their behavior. I now had concepts that allowed a systematic analysis of personal agency and human freedom of choice. Enjoy this wonderful book!" —Keith Davis. Ph.D., Distinguished Professor Emeritus and former Chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of South Carolina
"A colleague of mine, when the subject of Descriptive Psychology ("DP") came up at a recent conference, informed me that a fellow attendee quipped that it was "psychology's best kept secret". Created by Peter Ossorio, and applied by him to topics as far ranging as artificial intelligence software for NASA, the nature of emotion, and the practice of psychotherapy, DP has somehow managed to escape the significant notice within psychology that this most innovative and ingenious approach deserves. Hopefully, Dr. Schwartz's book will serve to change this situation. Written by one of DP's foremost exponents, Descriptive Psychology and the Person Concept sets forth the key concepts of DP in an accessible and reader-friendly fashion. Along the way, Dr. Schwartz clarifies these concepts by providing numerous interesting applications (e.g., to topics of empathy, emotional competence, and theory of mind) that illustrate DP's many uses in an engaging way. I highly recommend this book to any person interested in exploring new, powerful, and different ideas in the fields of psychological science, psychopathology, and/or psychotherapy." —Raymond M. Bergner, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, author of: Pathological self-criticism: Assessment and treatment. (Springer Publishing)
"This is the "fresh start" that the father of DP had in mind and that Wynn Schwartz has brought to fruition in his new and important book. In it you will find the toolbox of parametric analysis, of paradigm case formulation, of maxims for behavior description. The methodological model of the actor observer critic for doing such work of description and a companion model of negotiation of differences in the descriptions generated by different observers are additional crucial tools of the work of behavioral science. These tools and models and many more await you in these pages and will serve as an induction or a training in the pre-empirical map psychologists could share to gain unity, homogeneity, and consistency in the research products generated. Nothing short of a rebirth of psychology is intimated here. Systematic and coherent, bringing the fundamental concepts of its subject matter to bear, this becomes the raison d’être of any of its empirical investigations and research. No longer just an armchair discipline still aligned with philosophy or the diverse scholarship of the liberal arts, nor an imitation of the natural sciences, a discipline aping experimental studies akin to chemistry or biology, psychology is the science of the observation and description of behavior. DP instead advocates for the observation and description of behavior in progress and makes this descriptive work the foundation of an autonomous and properly behavioral science. This is psychology finding and realizing itself and instituting what its research program really should be about. Knowing what’s in this book will empower all future psychologists in their future work whether clinical in nature or in research in an empirical vain. Without pretension or even a hint of grandiosity, Wynn Schwartz has brought us just such a new beginning. So humble and down to earth you just might miss how brilliant and what a truly remarkable work this book is. Do not let that happen. Everyone in our field should put it right at the top of their reading list." —(2021, December 20). Review of Descriptive Psychology and the Person Concept, Essential Attributes of Persons and Behavior. The Humanistic Psychologist. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hum0000264
