ABSTRACT
The close interrelations between brain, mind, and body are increasingly recognised in psychopathology (e.g., Damasio, 1994), but in developmental and social psychology a holistic approach, although having a long history, has been slower to gain respectability. There are a number of reasons for this, among the most important being the success achieved by the analysis of variables across individuals, and the difficulty of generalizing across individuals from studies of the relations between variables within an individual. Yet the facts that people both function as, and see themselves as, integrated wholes, and that each physiological-psychological process is related to others, albeit in an idiosyncratic way, suggest a person-centred, holistic approach (Magnusson & Törestad, 1993; Rogers, 1980). “Each aspect of the structures and processes (perceptions, cognitions, plans, values…) takes on meaning from the role it plays in the functioning of the individual” (Magnusson & Törestad, 1993, p. 436). Relations among variables and their way of functioning in the totality cannot be assumed to be the same in all individuals.
