Peter G. Ossorio

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Peter G. Ossorio
Born (1926-05-04)May 4, 1926
Los Angeles, California
Died April 24, 2007(2007-04-24) (aged 80)
Boulder, Colorado
School Descriptive psychology

Peter G. Ossorio (4 May 1926 – 24 April 2007) was an American-born psychologist best known for his development of Descriptive psychology, a pragmatic and theory neutral pre-empirial approach to the study of behavior.[1][2] Ossorio in his 2006 volume, The Behavior of Persons, explicated the concept of "Persons" by creating a conceptual map of the interdependent concepts of "Individual Person", "Language", "Action", and "Reality". He described persons as individuals whose history is, paradigmatically, a history of Deliberate Action in a dramaturgical pattern.

Contents

Background [edit]

Peter G. Ossorio served as the professor of psychology at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UCLA in 1961 and then joined the clinical psychology faculty in Boulder where he taught, supervised, mentored, wrote and conducted research for his entire academic career, and where he founded a discipline that came to be known as Descriptive psychology.[3]

Development of Descriptive Psychology [edit]

Persons, 1966 [edit]

Ossorio, in his book Persons (1966) addressed a prevailing idea in psychology at the time: that anything anyone says about persons or behavior must arise from or consist of theoretical assertions.[4][5][6] Ossorio contended that this is not a way which language operates and in order to theoretically assert anything a person must first have a description of it that reliably discriminates it from other things it has the possibility of being but is not. The task of describing accurately is necessary prior to creating theories – and “behavioral science” of the time had no place or method for describing behavior. Ossorio proceeded to articulate the conceptual structure within which descriptions of persons and behavior could be given, and in doing so demonstrated, in a vein similar to Wittgenstein[7] that the clear description of something leaves little more explanation needed.[8]

Major Publications [edit]

Selected Sole-Authored [edit]

  • Ossorio, P. G. (1966/1995). Persons. The collected works of Peter G. Ossorio, Vol. I. Ann Arbor, MI: Descriptive Psychology Press. (Original work published 1966 as LRI Report No. 3. Los Angeles, CA & Boulder, CO: Linguistic Research Institute.)
  • Ossorio, P. G. (1971/1975/1978/2005). “What actually happens”: The representation of real world phenomena. The collected works of Peter G. Ossorio, Vol. IV. Ann Arbor, MI: Descriptive Psychology Press. Also published Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1975, 1978. (Original work published 1971 as LRI Report No. 10a. Whittier, CA & Boulder, CO: Linguistic Research Institute.
  • Ossorio, P. G. (1986/1997). Three minute lectures on emotion. In Essays on clinical topics. The collected works of Peter G. Ossorio, Vol. II (pp. 99-128). Ann Arbor, MI: Descriptive Psychology Press. (Original work published 1986 as LRI Report No. 36a. Boulder, CO: Linguistic Research Institute.)
  • Ossorio, P. G. (1986/1997). More three minute lectures on emotion. In Essays on clinical topics. The collected works of Peter G. Ossorio, Vol. II (pp. 131–161). Ann Arbor, MI: Descriptive Psychology Press. (Original work published 1986 as LRI Report No. 36b. Boulder, CO: Linguistic Research Institute.)
  • Ossorio, P. G. (1997). Essays on clinical topics. The collected works of Peter G. Ossorio, Vol. II. Ann Arbor, MI: Descriptive Psychology Press.
  • Ossorio, P. G. (2006). The behavior of persons. The collected works of Peter G. Ossorio, Vol. V. Ann Arbor, MI: Descriptive Psychology Press.

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ The Ethnogenic Approach. (1998). The Handbook of social psychology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
  2. ^ Lane Lasater, Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, Janet E. Gustafson, . (2000). Recovery from compulsive behavior: how to transcend your troubled family . Los Angeles, CA: Wellness Institute, Inc..
  3. ^ Putman, A.O. Ph.D., Descriptivepsychologypress.com
  4. ^ Bergner, R. (2007). Status Dynamics: Creating New Paths to Therapeutic Change. Ann Arbor, MI: Burns Park Publishers.
  5. ^ Bergner, R. & Staggs, J. (1987). The positive therapeutic relationship as accreditation. Psychotherapy, 24, 315-320.
  6. ^ Bergner, R. (1995). Pathological self-criticism: Assessment and treatment. New York: Plenum Press.
  7. ^ de Ramírez, S.B.B. (2007). Native american life-history narratives: colonial and postcolonial navajo ... pg 222. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
  8. ^ Putman, A.O. Ph.D., Descriptivepsychologypress.com
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