The Unicist Conceptual Psychology is a functional approach to psychology that explains its ultimate goals and describes the concepts that underlie these goals and make them possible. This is a synthetic presentation of the unicist ontology of psychology that explains the purpose sustained by conceptual psychology.
This work has been developed to understand psychology in order to adapt to the environment. It has no therapeutic uses; it provides the information to foster individual and social adaptiveness.
The Final Purpose of Psychology
The final purpose of psychology is to allow individuals to adapt consciously to an environment and evolve with it. Conceptual psychology deals with the functionality of conscious behavior and how it can be used and developed.
This intrapersonal intelligence implies going beyond dualistic thinking which, based on the use of disjunctions (OR) to simplify processes, hinders the apprehension of concepts which are double dialectical structures integrated by the conjunction “AND”.
This is the first step individuals must do in order to adapt to an environment. It provides the idea of the concept that will be finally confirmed or recycled through the feedback obtained from actions.
When this step has been done, individuals need to connect with the environment, which requires the use of their interpersonal intelligence that allows them to establish relationships with others.
The saying “the reach of one’s globalization, is given by the limits of the pronoun “WE” defines the limits of interpersonal intelligence of an individual.
Each person needs to become aware of who the people and environments they care about are in order to be able to adapt.
Beyond these limits, there is no possibility of using the interpersonal intelligence and an over-adaptive psychology prevails.
A Conscious adaptation becomes possible when the intrapersonal intelligence allowed the individual to define the structure of the idea of the concept s/he is developing and the interpersonal intelligence allowed the individual to establish complementary and supplementary relationships with the environment.
Adaptiveness is achieved after multiple recycling processes, based on the feedback from the environment, that allows refining the idea of the concept until the functional concept, or perhaps the essential concept, is found. This allows establishing structural stable and dynamic functional relationships with the environment.
The Unicist Ontology of Psychology
The purpose of an individual’s psychology is to achieve personal adaptiveness. This is the same purpose of human intelligence, which implies that intelligence is intrinsically imbricated in human psychology. This implies that individuals need to have a meaning for their lives and actions. They have to assume the responsibility for these actions and also need to obtain the necessary gratifications to sustain their efforts.
Responsibility assumption implies deciding what an individual wants and has to do, which implies knowing if it is possible to be done. Individuals cannot assume responsibilities that do not fit into their meaning of life or in fields where they do not have the knowledge to make things happen.
Assuming responsibilities implies a conscious decision in an environment where the uncertainty does not exist or has been solved.
Assuming responsibilities drives towards energy consuming actions that require a compensation that is given by the gratifications individuals obtain through them.
When this process is completed, the possibility of personal adaptiveness has been achieved, and the recycling of the process, based on the feedback from the environment, allows establishing a stable adaptive role in such environment.
The Ontogenetic Structure of Psychology
As it was described before, the final purpose of psychology is to foster the conscious adaptive behavior of individuals. It integrates the intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence in order to apprehend the concept of what is being done and make it happen in the environment.
After this has been achieved, individuals need to impose themselves, without external active influence, a mandate of what needs to be achieved. This mandate makes the responsibility tangible and allows individuals to monitor their actions through feedback until adaptiveness is made possible.
Assuming responsibilities implies changing something in the environment. That is why this process exceeds the preexisting boundaries of the environment and requires that the individuals need to be able to discriminate their inside from their outside in a conscious and responsible way.
To do that they need to “get rid” of their projections on the environment and be able to introject the external reality in order to apprehend its concept. This discrimination allows exerting influence on the environment to expand the preexisting boundaries.
To do so, individuals need to establish a complementation with the environment, which generates a “functional symbiosis” that builds a bridge between the individual, the goals s/he has decided to achieve and the external environment.
This functional symbiosis is the catalyst of the adaptation process. This means that the symbiosis needs to achieve the necessary threshold of functionality in order to work. If this is not the case, the lack of functional symbiosis works as an inhibitor and there is no possibility to adapt to the environment.
When the symbiosis is functional, the assumed goal can be achieved and the minimum strategy that provides the gratification to the individual can begin. This gratification allows the individual to “recharge” the energy consumed to make the adaptive process possible.
It requires that the individual be aware of the pleasure s/he collects that makes the effort of adapting meaningful. It requires that the individual discriminates personal needs from the needs of the environment and requires an essential symbiosis with it. This essential symbiosis with the environment allows the individual to accept the pleasant stimuli. The individual cannot accept the external pleasant stimuli if s/he is not essentially integrated with the environment
A conscious adaptive process becomes possible when both the self-imposed mandates are being achieved and the pleasant stimuli are assured.
Typologies of Psychology Driven Behavior
Psychological segmentation shows four segments in the adaptive relation of the individual with the environment:
This typology establishes emotional relationships with the environment. These relationships are naturally unstable. When “emotive” individuals are in the expansive cycle they establish pleasure-driven relations. When they are in the contractive cycle, they establish “child-child” relationships with the environment.
The affective typology seeks stable caring relations with the environment. There is an implicit fear of abandonment. They cannot let go. When they are in the expansive cycle, they establish interdependent relations. When they are in the contractive cycle, they establish “child-parent” relationships with the environment.
“Protective” individuals protect the elements of the environment. They care about them. When they are in the expansive cycle, they establish dominant relations. When they are in the contractive cycle, they establish a protective “mother-child” relation with the environment. They need to possess the entities of the environment they deal with so they can feel that they are in charge of them.
They deal with the environment functionally and carefully. They respect the identity of the entities they deal with. When they are in the expansive cycle, they establish functional relations. When they are in the contractive cycle, they establish a “father-child” relation with the environment. They move from an environment when they cannot adapt to it.