Developing the Whole Person

What is holistic development?

• Holistic development refers to human development that is meant to involve all the parts of a
person

• The key phrase in this chapter that you have to pay attention to is the whole person,
emphasizing the complete aspects of a person or his totality.

Dualism, Holism and Gestalt

 Dualism is the division of something conceptually into two opposed or contrasted aspects, or
the state of being so divided.
 Examples are: Yin-yang, Good-bad, racial purity, life-death, and other points of view where
things are taken in their absolutes or extremes.
 According to Rene Descate, Dualism is the concept that our mind is more than just our brain.
 Dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical-or mind and body or mind and brain-are,
in some sense, radically different kinds of thing.
 Rene Descartes thinks that he can doubt the existence of his physical being but not his mind.
 Leibniz’s law is typically understood to mean that no two objects have exactly the same
properties.
 In 1926, General Jan C. Smuts, a South African statesman, military leader, and philosopher,
wrote about holism in his book “Holism and Evolution”.
 He introduced the academic terminology for holism as “the tendency in nature to form wholes
which are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution.”
 Earlier in 1890,a German philosopher and psychologist,Christian von Ehrehfels, and later on
supported by psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler, introduced the
concept of gestalt.
 This is defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “something that is made of many parts and
yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts; broadly, the general
quality or character of something.”

The Various Aspects of Holistic Development of Persons

 When we consider a human person and what various aspects make up this complex organism,
five aspects come to mind:
o Physiological or the physical attributes including the five physical senses;
o Cognitive or the intellectual functions of the mind: thinking, recognizing, reasoning,
analyzing, projecting, synthesizing, recalling, and assessing;
o Psychological or how thinking, feeling, and behaving interact and happen in a person;
o Social or the manner by which an individual interacts with other individuals or groups of
individuals; and
 o Spiritual or the attribute of a person’s consciousness and beliefs, including the values
and virtues that guide and put meaning into a person’s life.

Basic Drives and Affect

 Psychologists often refer to basic human drives as those that are biologically related such as
hunger and thirst.
 Affect, on the other hand, is the various emotional experiences such as emotions, moods,
and affective traits (Feist and Rosenberg 2012).

Feelings and Emotions

 Feelings is an emotional state or reaction.

 Emotion is a temporary state of mind or feeling.
 Mood is a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or
relationships with others.
 Types of Emotions
o According to Paul Ekman of the University of California, there are six (6) types of
emotions:
 Happiness
 Sadness
 Fear
 Anger
 Surprise
 Disgust
o However, a recent study concluded that there are only four (4) basic emotions:
 Happiness
 Sadness
 Fear or surprise
 Anger or disgust
 Feeling arises from the brain as it interprets an emotion.

Attitudes and Behavior

 Attitudes are a person’s thoughts, feelings, and

emotions about another person, object, idea,
behavior, or situation.
 Attitude is a result of a person’s evaluation of an
experience with another person, object, idea, behavior,
or situation based on his or her values and belief
systems.
 Beliefs and certain values therefore, affect the attitude
of a person.
  Behavior is a manifestation or acting out of the attitudes an individual has.
 Behavior can change attitude.

Values and Virtues

 Values – a system of beliefs that adheres to the highest ideals of human existence.
 Virtues – the characteristic of a person which supports individual moral excellence and
collective well-being.
 Values can be set as goals, meanwhile virtues are what you need to reach those goals.
 Values are usually nouns, while virtues are adjectives that describe positive and desirable
qualities which usually mirror a value it represents.

Example:

Values Virtues
Peace Peaceful, calm
Integrity Reputable, responsible, believable, honest,
trustworthy.
Love Loving, caring, compassionate, gentle,
affectionate
Respect Respectful, civil
Balance Objective, fair, harmonious

 Another example of values, this time for corporations and organizations, is borrowed from
Robert L. Dilenschneider, founder of Dilenschneider Group. In an article he wrote for Huffington
Post titled “Five Core Values for the Workplace”, Dilenschneider listed the following corporate
values:
o Integrity
o Accountability
o Diligence
o Perseverance
o Discipline
 Shalom H. Schwartz, wrote a report,
“Basic Human Values: Theories,
Methods and Applications”, the findings
of his research, which identified the ten
basic values that can be
characterized by describing their central
motivational goals.
o Self-Direction – independent
thought and action; choosing,
creating, and exploring
o Stimulation – excitement,
novelty, and challenge in life
 o Hedonism – pleasure and sensuous gratification for oneself
o Achievement – personal success through demons- trating competence according to
social standards
o Power – social status and prestige, and control or dominance over people and resources
o Security – safety, harmony, and stability of society, of relationships, and of self
o Conformity – restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses that are likely to upset or
harm others and violate social expectations or norms
o Tradition – respect, commitment, and acceptance of thecustoms and ideas that
traditional culture or religion provide the self
o Benevolence – preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom one is in
frequent personal contact (the ‘in-group’)
o Universalism – understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of
all people and of nature
 The motivational goals that characterize the ten values he identified were:
o Openness to change;
o Self-transcendence;
o Self-enhancement;
o Conservation.