Chapter 9: New Perspectives in Ecosystemic Psychology: Developmental Mereotopology

In this chapter we develop a dialogue between cultural psychology, developmental mereotopology and semiotics. Social sciences are still considering human beings as detached from their ecosystem, opposing individual and environment, biology and culture. Psychic life is neither the outcome of a genetic program nor the mere inner representation of the social world. Several attempts to build ecological psychology have not fully overcome the issue of environment as independent variable. Through the concept of developmental system, the chapter finally defines psychology as the study of ecosystems: the unique local configurations of humans and non-humans: the local cultural solution to general existential problems.