Harry Kempen
In the 1990s, Kempen and Hubert Hermans developed a new approach in cultural psychology around the concept of the dialogical self. In 1993, they published the seminal work "The dialogical self: Meaning as movement", and published several articles in "American Psychologist", "Journal of Personality" and "Theory & Psychology". Despite their success Kempen suffered from depression. In 2000, he died in Nijmegen four days before his retirement from the Radboud University. At the university he is remembered by as the "personification of cultural psychology."Articles, a selection:
Dialogical self
Closely related to this gap, there is the lack of connection between dialogical self research and mainstream psychology. Although the theory and its applications have been published in mainstream journals like "Psychological Bulletin" and the "American Psychologist", it has not yet led to the adoption of the theory as a significant development in mainstream (American) psychology. Apart from the theory-research gap, one of the additional reasons for the lacking connection with mainstream research may be the fact that interest in the notion of dialogue, central in the history of philosophy since Plato, is largely neglected in psychology and other social sciences. Another disadvantage of the theory is that it lacks a research procedure that is sufficiently common to allow for the exchange of research data among investigators. Although different research tools have been developed (see the above review of assessment and research methods), none of them are used by a majority of researchers in the field.