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Kenneth Kaye (born January 24, 1946) is an American psychologist, writer, and business consultant whose research, books, and articles connect the fields of human development, family relationships and conflict resolution.

Although spanning several professional disciplines, the substantial body of Kaye’s work is characterized by family systems theory and by a search for observable, reproducible processes rather than stopping at generalizations, for example, about stages of mental or social development.

Kaye was educated at Harvard University (A.B. in English and American Literature, 1966; Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology and Education, 1970). Following a Visiting Fellowship at Kings College, Cambridge (UK), he taught at the University of Washington (1970-71) and the University of Chicago (Department of Education and Committee on Human Development, 1971-81). From 1982 to 2007 he was an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry, Northwestern University Medical School.

Research and principal publications

Early human development. Beginning with his doctoral dissertation and continuing through the University of Chicago years, 22 of Kaye's published articles addressed the fundamental question, What gives homo sapiens, uniquely among all other creatures, the ability to learn through imitation, language, and consciousness of a reflecting self? Elaborated most fully in his book The Mental and Social Life of Babies: How Parents Create Persons, the importance of this work is in its insistence that a theory of human development must:

-- be couched in terms of actual processes (what causes what in real time) rather than abstract constructs (for example, “sensorimotor skills give way to concrete operational thought”—which is merely a metaphorical description, not an explanation);

-- make sense in terms of what we know about the evolution of species: whatever is distinctive about human mind, behavior, social organization, and development came about through a process of natural selection of once-adaptive behavior and the brain structures that support such behavior;

-- take account of the fact that we are a highly social species, never more so than in the relationships between innate infant behavior and instinctive and cultural parental behavior;

-- integrate knowledge from the fields of psychology, neuropsychology, epistemology, and semiotics; and

-- test hypotheses systematically: speculate, but be clear which questions have been answered by experiment or statistical hypothesis testing, and which have yet to be answered in any convincing way.

The last of those points made Kaye a harsh critic of many other researchers in the burgeoning field of infancy research, reducing the number or praise of outside colleagues writing to Chicago in support of his tenure. The Mental and Social Life of Babies received few, though highly positive reviews[fns], and appeared in Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and German editions before going out of print in the U.S. Kaye's innovative microanalytic studies of parent-infant interaction in the 1970s have been discussed continuously to the present in hundreds of scholarly papers and books on diverse psychological topics, for example

The IQ controversy. In the mid-1970s, he published 6 articles and book reviews on the controversy triggered by Arthur Jensen's famous Harvard Educational Review article on the heritability of IQ. Kaye's message: "Educational revolution will not come until after educational psychology makes a paradigm shift. Psychology has sold society a dogmatic set of assumptions that preclude beliefs in the educability of children, the potential of curriculum, and the accountability of schools."

The science of human behavior. Mainly growing out of his research methods in the work on infancy, 6 publications dealt with methodological rigor and interpretive issues in the science of human behavior.

Family therapy and parenting. Upon leaving University of Chicago in 1982, Kaye took training in family therapy, passed the state licensing exam as a Clinical Psychologist, and got advanced training from Family Institute of Chicago, where he served on the faculty for several years. His private practice received a boost in 1984 from his book Family Rules: Raising Responsible Children, widely recommended by other therapists and reprinted in a mass market edition by St. Martin’s Press. Family Rules remained in print for 10 years; he published an updated edition in 2005.

Family business systems and conflict resolution. In 1986, Kaye began to specialize his practice in consulting to families who were in business together. He was among the first psychologists to do so, phasing out his general clinical practice by the mid-1990s. By 2009, his published articles in this field equalled in number those in his earlier, academic career. Kenneth Kaye's books in this field are Workplace Wars: Turning Personal Conflict to Productive Teamwork (1994) and The Dynamics of Family Business (2005).

Mentoring and monitoring young adults in their growth to financial responsibility. In 2009, Kaye published Trust Me: Helping Our Young Adults Financially, with his son, Nick, as co-author. A self-help book for parents or counselors, the book is essentially a sequel to Family Rules and similarly emphasizes the value of written expectations, no longer unilaterally imposed but now the "Deal" between learner and parent or coach. An associated website supplements the book with interactive tools.

Fiction and plays. Having written a number of unpublished novels, plays, and stories as his avocation, Kaye earned the Masters of Fine Arts degree from Bennington College in 2006, publishing the story collection Birds of Evanston the following year. Three of his novels are now in print.