The Post-Modern Psychology - Essay Example

We also get to a place where we design our interesting ideas of what the world looks like to us. I think that post-modern psychology encourages many movements that began throughout the ages because people began to ask themselves questions about who they were and their purpose in life. This meant that many of the self-help books and programs were created during this post-modern period.

Gergen (2000) suggests that modernists believe that the world is split into two areas – one where material things exist in the outer world and the other where the mind takes over the inner world. He suggests that we still have to see the total person, but they also have to understand how the world works. I think the two differ in the fact that the modernist period grew out of the Western world’s view of psychology. It assumed that all of the worlds looked the same as they did to Westerners. Of course, we know that this is not true and that there are many times when culture is important.

When looking at aging, I would think that we are still in the age of post-modern because we expect that as people get older and frailer, there will be others to take care of them if they cannot stay with their families. In many other cultures, the elderly are taken care of by the family until they die. Modernists would see aging as something to be observed and they would look at the possibilities of how they may help the elderly live a better life.

Heiby (1996) describes chaos theory as having an impact on people’s extreme behavior, such as mood swings. I would think that where this may help with the elderly when some start to develop dementia. In other words, the world of some older people becomes chaotic and this may lead to their having more problems with moods. Any time we are in situations where we are not comfortable or we do not understand it, we seem to have a more chaotic time of it until we understand what is going on. Read More