4. What is Holistic Development?
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.
In order to understand what it means to
perceive a person as a whole organism, we
will discuss philosophical theories such as
dualism and holism.
5. Mind and Body Dualism
Rene Descartes, one of the modern
philosophers of our time, influenced much of
mankind’s thinking with his theory of duality
or understanding the nature of things in a
simple, dual mode.
Hence, you are familiar with the separation of
body and spirit in western religion, and of the
mind and body in the study of human
sciences.
6. Mind and Body Dualism
More examples of these are the distinct
male-female gender categorization on the
yin and yang of eastern thought, although
western culture overemphasizes its either-
or, black-white characteristics.
This is contrary to what eastern
philosophers understand it to be- that there
is dynamism between two forces in nature,
and that each force is present in each other
and will never exist in its purest form.
7. Holism and Gestalt
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.
8. Holism and Gestalt
Earlier in 1890, a German philosopher and
psychologist, Christian von Ehrehfels, and later
on supported by psychologists Max Wertheimer,
Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler of the Berlin
School, introduced the concept of gestalt.
This is defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as
“something that is made of many parts and yet
somehow more than or different from the
combination of its parts…”
9. Holism and Gestalt
An example is evident in music. A
symphony cannot be defined as one of its
notes alone. Even the clusters or sums of
these different notes do not make up the
whole symphony nor characterize the
whole symphony.
A car is made up of hundreds of different
parts. Separately, these parts do not work
with each other, these parts produce a
new entity entirely different from its parts.
10. Holism and Gestalt
The parallelism between a symphony, a
car and humans in terms of being unified
entity follows the principle of holism. In
understanding humans, it is important to
see the person in his entirety and not just
his parts.
11. Various Aspects of Holistic Development of
Persons
Physiological or the physical attributes including the five
physical five senses;
Cognitive or the intellectual functions of the mind; thinking,
recognizing, reasoning, analyzing, protecting, synthesizing,
recalling and assessing;
Psychological or how thinking; feeling and behaving interact
and happen in a person;
Social or the manner by which an individual interacts with
other individuals or groups of individuals; and
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.
12. Feelings and Emotions
Feelings, moods and emotions do not exactly mean one
and the same. Paul Ekman of the University of California
identified six basic emotions that human beings
experience: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise
and disgust.
However, a recent research study (2014), conducted by
the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the
University of Glasgow and published in a journal, Current
Biology, has concluded that there are only four basic
emotions these are: happy, sad, afraid or surprised, and
angry or disgusted.
13. EMOTIONS
Emotions is taken from the Latin verb,
movare, which means to move or be upset
or agitated. It is defined by Smith (1973), as
a descriptive term referring to variations in
level of arousal, affective state or mood,
expressive movements and
attitudes(Sanchez, Abad and Jao 2012).
14. Feeling Our Emotions
Are feelings the same as emotions? In an online
article of Scientific American titled Feeling our
Emotions, the author interviewed noted neurologist,
Dr. Antonio R. Damasio (2005) about the distinction
between feelings and emotions.
According to Dr. Damasio, from a neuro-scientific
approach, feeling arises from the brain as it interprets
an emotion, which is usually casuedd by physical
sensations experienced by the body as a reaction to a
certain external stimulus. An example of this would be
the emotion of being afraid, which produces a feeling
of fear.
15. ATTITUDES
Attitudes are 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 system.
17. Values and Virtues
Shalom H. Schwartz, a psychologist and
cross-cultural researcher from the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, conducted a research
which covered many different people and
cultures to identify the ten common values
people have regardless of their racial and
cultural backgrounds.
18.
19. Values and Virtues
Values are usually reflected through these virtues, which in turn
become eminent in the attitude and behavior of a person.
Values Virtues
Peace Peaceful, calm
Integrity Reputable, responsible, believable, honest,
trustworthy
Love Loving, caring, compassionate, gentle,
affectionate
Respect Respectful, civil
Balance Objective, fair, harmonious
