Paradigm of Unity as a Prospect for Research and Treatment in Psychology

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to show the methodological power and potentiality of the concept paradigm of unity introduced originally in the ceremony on the occasion of honoring Chiara Lubich with the doctor honoris causa title by the Catholic University of Lublin in 1996. Originally this conception was used to suggest the societal activity of Chiara Lubich in building, via the Focolari movement, psychosocial infrastructures for unity in various social domains, (for example in the economy of communion, in politics (politicians for unity project), in public media (journalists for unity), in ecumenism and inter-religious contacts (ecumenical and inter-religion Focolari Centers) This conception is a kind of a great inspiration (a kind of Copernican revolution in the social sciences) which would motivate the social sciences to build their own research paradigm of a type of mental and methodological power and potentiality which could give a new vision of social world (as Copernicus did in natural sciences (Biela, 1996, 2006)). Thomas Kuhn (1962) regarded the Copernician revolution as the one which, in the history of science, best illustrates the nature of scientific revolution. The essence of paradigm in a Kuhnian sense is a mentality change in its nature. Copernicus had to change the well-established geocentric system which functioned not only in the science of his day but also in culture, tradition, social perception, and even in the mentality of religious and political authorities. And he did it in a well prepared empirical, methodological and psychological way.

Keywords

• paradigm of unity
• psychology
• economy of communion