In summary

Abstract

The putting together of this book coincided with my moving to a Chair in Psychology at The University of Liverpool from Surrey University where I had been for 23 years. This return to my alma mater after 30 years provides both an opportunity for new developments as well as a curious feeling of completion and consolidation. Reading through and editing the material for this book, all originally written while I was at Surrey, I can see that a particular style of research and of psychological thinking did evolve through these many studies (and of course the many others not covered here). There is still the need to give as full and coherent an account of that approach as is possible rather than the demonstration by example which is currently the main way the approach has been explored. Of course, it is not a fixed framework. In particular it is now evolving rapidly through use with many colleagues in application to the emerging area of Investigative Psychology which I identified and named shortly before I left Surrey. This book thus can be taken both as a review of the past and a sketch plan for a future more elaborate examination of a particular approach to psychological research