Process Psychology

Process psychology is a branch of psychotherapeutic psychology derived from the process philosophy developed by Alfred North Whitehead. It began at a conference sponsored by the Center for Process Studies in 1998, and in 2000 Michel Weber created the Whitehead Psychology Nexus, an open forum for examining Whitehead's process philosophy alongside various facets of contemporary psychology. The retired professor David Ray Griffin has also been instrumental in encouraging the field's development, and process psychology is closely aligned with process theology, with its practitioners frequently addressing spiritual concerns; John Buchanan has described it as a transpersonal psychology that provides an empirical basis for what has been called mystical experience. Other theorists connect the field to systems thinking and to Ludwig von Bertalanffy's concept of a system, which is compared to Whitehead's idea of the organism, and Carl Jung's influence is also cited, with Jung considered among the field's founding figures; the psychologist Jon Mills has proposed a version of process psychology he calls dialectical psychoanalysis, based in part on Hegelian philosophy.