Individual Psychosocial Competence

Abstract

People display patterns of coherence and continuity with respect to who they are and how they organize their lives. The belief that we have a capability to form and change these patterns rests on an assumption that we function as knowers and, consequently, that we contribute to defining and guiding ourselves and others. Such a belief has been part of human society for as long as history has been recorded. Western psychologists refer to the Greeks for psychological concepts that differentiated between the cause-and-effect nature of the inorganic world and the motivation and purpose characteristics of the organic world. Psychologists from other traditions refer to their own histories and traditions for comparable concepts. Linking the study of human psychology to empirical science is a more recent endeavor.