ABSTRACT
Part I of this book mapped the development of ideas that shaped and informed our ‘whole-brain’ behaviour model. As described in Chapters 1-3, these ideas cross many discipline boundaries and encompass ancient wisdom through to cutting-edge research but, despite the diversity of their origins, their interconnectedness and compatibility are clearly intelligible. This idea of synergy, which is a central tenet of our model, opens up powerful new insights which can offer practitioners a more enduring philosophy on behaviour management, rather than relying on the collection of strategies and techniques that currently abound. We are not the first to comment on this exciting convergence of ideas. For example, Gerhardt (2004: 1) notes that ‘Something new and exciting is happening . . . we have in fact arrived at a moment in which different disciplines are converging to produce a new understanding of emotional life.’ We are suggesting, however, that this understanding could signal the way forward for behaviour management.
