Construcciones en psicología compleja. Aportes y dilemas.

Abstract

A loop, says Douglas R. Hofstadter, "is nothing more than a way of finely representing an endless process" and I think the figure of the loop helps us to understand the processes we are experiencing in postgraduate studies. Of the multiple existing loops, I am going to allow myself to make a brief description of two of them with the aim of providing elements for the understanding of this book. 1. The first loop comprises the processes of the seminars designed for the training of therapists and consultants (including the internal seminar for teachers). I am reminded of Escher's lithograph entitled Hand with Reflective Balloon, in which he holds in his left hand a balloon that reflects him in his study. For me, this is the figure that best represents the "coming and going" loop of reference and self-reference of each actor in the training process, which implies talking about the intervention research that is part of our work approach. This process requires from all of us an important self-referential effort: we must continuously observe the way in which our frames of reference become capabilities that are deployed in each of our actions. The second loop, which is closely linked to the first and which would ultimately be a recursion, is "the endless" flow between the conception of research, culture, associated tools and position of the observant systems. The proposal that we are building, and of which we are appropriating -the understanding of the complexity of human psychological phenomena from the perspective of a complex psychology-, is, epistemologically speaking, strong in the sense that it understands these phenomena as socio-cultural and scientific constructs and as dimensions of reality, rather than as parts. I believe that the epistemology of complexity departs from other proposals in these two aspects: on the one hand, holism and, on the other, self-reference. The strong term means that the proposal does not admit of certain, if I may say so, comprehensive slips, since every epistemological system is a comprehensive operator that continuously subjects to its sieve all the organizing principles and operators of knowledge. In this process, an epistemological proposal plays its rigour, and its most beloved findings and constructions also depend on it. We could analyze a reflection of Hayward, but what I want to make present is that, in the middle of the loop, we have had to continuously be understanding the borders in which we move according to the diverse roles that we must assume: do we want to defend it, how do we defend it, why do we defend it, and what would happen if instead of defending it we make a map of the diverse relations that conform the horizon of understanding and, therefore, of action? These are the dilemmas that this book talks about.