ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an initial argument that concentric and diametric spatial systems are not simply heuristic explanatory devices but fundamental structures of experience. Experience is not simply an internal system of its own but also interacts with other systems. The mode of interaction between experiential systems and other system levels is a mediating condition to change causal trajectories. Even those such as Gottlieb who invoke experience for developmental cascades within an interactive understanding between genes and environment still remain within highly limited conceptions of experience as agency. Space and experience are key units of analysis for psychology and are integrally connected in systems terms. Against the backdrop of long-term statistical continuities in developmental cascades, search is for discontinuities in complex causal trajectories as dimensions of individual agency and wider system agency of early interventions. In contrast to Bronfenbrenner’s background of systems and a poststructuralist background of linguistic systems, current concern is with spatial systems as background to subject and object. Moving beyond Gestalt psychology, whereas developmental psychology tends to examine cognitions, representations, perceptions, emotions, behaviour, beliefs, values and attitudes, it is the precognitive frames for these in experiential spatial terms that are key for a cross-cultural, spatial-phenomenology in psychology.
