In this discerning study, Raymond J. McCall offers a fresh approach to the systems and theory of contemporary psychology. Through a cross-disciplinary use of philosophy, the author argues that the existential phenomenology of the often undervalued thinker Martin Heidegger yields significant psycholog- ical insights and applications. Presenting a clear outline of Heldegger's major concepts, as delineated in his masterwork Sein und Zeit, McCall clarifies the nature of those applications and incorporates the philosopher's theories in a new statement of phenomenological psychology. The outcome is a challenge to current psychological doctrine, and an innovative perspective on the con- cepts underlying the practice of psychology both in the laboratory and the clinic, that will prove crucial for all students, scholars, and practitioners in the field.

In laying the foundations of his phenomenological psychology, McCall first establishes some historical background. A chronological guide to theories of human psychological functioning, from Plato and Aristotle to Brentano and Husserl, suggests a continuing "non-mechanistic, non-reductionist" tradition of thought. Heidegger, the heir to that tradition, significantly advanced it. How?

Collaborating with Medard Boss, the Swiss psychiatrist who applied the philosopher's thought to personality theory and psychotherapy, McCall offers a lucid overview, complete with a glossary of key terms, of Heideggers's vi- sion. Central to this vision is a sense of the irreducible human contribution to that "Being" which cannot be transcended and beyond which is nothing. If, as Heidegger claims, we can understand human existence only "by the unfailing adherence to what is given of it in direct experience," then external models and conceptual schemes of the human being prove useless. What are the psychological implications of Heidegger's theory? McCall