In summary

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.