Title: Holism: Definition and Examples
Headings: What Is Holism?
What Is Holism?
How psychologists use holism to understand behavior
Overview
Holism in Psychology
How It’s Used
Benefits
It Incorporates Many Factors
It Looks at the Big Picture
Drawbacks
It Tends to Be Non-Specific
It Can Be Overly Complex
Examples
Gestalt Psychology
Humanistic Psychology
Social Psychology
Holism vs. Reductionism
A Word From Verywell

Content: Essentially, holism suggests that people are more than simply the sum of their parts. In order to understand how people think, the holistic perspective stresses that you need to do more than simply focus on how each individual component functions in isolation. Instead, psychologists who take this approach believe that it is more important to look at how all the parts work together. 1 ﻿
Holism in Psychology
As an approach to understanding systems, holism is used in psychology as well as in other areas including medicine, philosophy, ecology, and economics. One key phrase that summarizes the key idea behind the holistic approach is that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.” The field of holistic medicine, for example, focuses on treating all aspects of a person's health including physical symptoms, psychological factors, and societal influences. 2 ﻿
In order to understand why people do the things they do and think the way they think, holism proposes that it is necessary to look at the entire person. Rather than focus on just one aspect of the problem, it is necessary to recognize that various factors interact and influence each other. One reason why it is so important to consider the entire being is that the whole may possess emergent properties. These are qualities or characteristics that are present in the whole but cannot be observed by looking at the individual pieces.