Perceptual transformation: An overlooked phenomenon within a model for intrapsychic phenomena.

Abstract

People change and transform psychologically all the time. But what exactly changes? This inquiry is too vast to address. It is plausible to claim all intrapsychic changes in the human mind fall into one or a combination of these three: Cognition, Emotion, and Perception, plus in the realms of Conscious and Unconscious. Behavior is excluded because this study focuses on inner experiences rather than external ones. This review intends to (1) propose a theoretical model for intrapsychic phenomena, and within that model (2) focus on Perception as a fundamental element in numerous kinds of psychological experience and transformation. It is essential to clarify that by transformation, we mean change in response to any new or opposing data or stimuli like social media, cinema, education, psychotherapeutic work, ideologies, and traumas as possible contexts of transformation. Hence, the present review provides a comprehensive analysis of how and how much perception is involved in psychological change, and to what extent transformations are perceptual and also a proposal for operationalization of the proposed concept.