Psyche as Postmodern Condition

Janus Head ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-91
Author(s):  
Rex Olson ◽  

This article examines James Hillman’s notion of psyche in relation to metaphor as the foundation for his archetypal psychology. In pushing Jung to his imaginal limits, Hillman provides an archetypal corrective to the Cartesianism inherent in modern scientific psychology in order to understand all aspects of contemporary psychological life. He proposes an ontological view of metaphor that locates psyche beyond language and mind to places in the world, thus seeking to establish a postmodern archetypal psychology. In the end his notion of psyche is not radical enough in its critique to advance archetypal psychology into acknowledging its postmodern condition.

Author(s):  
Sunil Bhatia

Decolonizing Psychology sheds light on the universalizing power and the colonizing dimensions of Euro-American psychology. The book integrates insights from postcolonial, narrative, and cultural psychology to ask how Euro-American scientific psychology becomes the standard-bearer of psychology throughout the world, whose stories get told, what knowledge is considered as legitimate, and whose lives are considered central to the future of psychology. Urban Indian youth represent one of the largest segments of the youth population across the world and yet remain so utterly invisible in the discipline of psychology. By using ethnographic and interview methods, this book draws a nuanced narrative portrait of how urban youth in Pune, India, who belong to the transnational elite, middle and working classes, reimagine their identities within the new structural and neoliberal cultural contexts of globalization and neoliberalization. The book examines how particular class identities shape youth narratives about globalization and “Indianness” generally, as well as specific stories about self and identity, social inequality, dignity, poverty, family, relationships, work, marriage, and practices of consumption. The book articulates an alternative vision of psychology in which questions of social justice and equality are seen as central to its mission, and it is argued that a psychology is needed that urgently and meaningfully speaks to the lives of the majority of the world’s population.


1998 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amedeo Giorgi

AbstractA description of the founding of the Journal of Phenomenological Psychology and some of its vicissitudes during its first 25 years are described. Some of the difficulties the journal experienced are correlated with the minority status of phenomenological psychology in the world of psychology at large. Several factors are hypothesized to be the basis of Phenomenology's little impact on mainstream psychology: intrinsic difficulties in comprehending phenomenological philosophy, the fact that phenomenological psychology has not yet sufficiently diflerentiated itself from phenomenological philosophy; and mainstream psychology's clear non-openness to approaches that seem different to its established values.


2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 342-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Berry

Purpose – Psychology, both as science and practice, has been largely developed in one cultural area of the world: Europe and North America. As a result, the discipline is culture-bound, limited in its origins, concepts, and empirical findings to only this small portion of the world. The discipline is also culture-blind, largely ignoring the influence of the role of culture in shaping the development and display of human behaviour. These limitations have resulted in the dominant position of a Western Academic Scientific Psychology (WASP) in relation to other cultural perspectives on human behaviour. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on concepts and strategies in psychology (particularly cross-cultural and intercultural psychology) to propose some remedies to problems arising from the dominant WASP position. For example, of what relevance is such a limited perspective to understanding human activity in other cultures; and how can such a limited understanding serve the purpose of effective intercultural interactions? Findings – The eventual goal is to achieve a global psychology that incorporates concepts and findings from societies and cultures from all parts of the world, one that will permit a valid understanding of people within their cultures, and permit effective intercultural across cultures. Originality/value – The paper presents some criticisms of the dominant western psychology (WASP), and proposes that the achievement of a more global psychology may be within reach if some concepts and methods now available in psychology from both the dominant western sources and from those working in the rest of the world are used.


Author(s):  
Paolo Mazzarello

The reflection on the nature of science and the investigation concerning the modalities of its development in a society, are at the center of the volume of Carlo Cattaneo Psicologia delle menti associate (Psychology of the associated minds). Introduced by Carlo Lacaita and organized by Barbara Boneschi, the work derivesabove all from the mosaic of lectures, linked by a unitary vision, held by the author atthe Istituto Lombardo between 1859 and 1866. This series of readings were an important moment of his intellectual elaboration, a space of investigation that went to theheart of his cultural interests, the scientific knowledge that involved all his voraciouscognitive tension. In this comment, particular emphasis will be given to two particularaspects of Cattaneo’s scientific psychology. On the one hand, the idea of scientificknowledge as a collective enterprise, therefore as a collaborative synthesis of several associated minds; on the other hand, the concept of science as a cognitive device thatmakes it possible to amplify the possibility of exploration and perception of the world.


Author(s):  
Jill Morawski

Reflexivity, a recursive process of turning back, occurs throughout science. Back-and-forth reflexive processes transpire when the scientist executes self-regard and whenever human science theory incorporates the researcher’s actions. Reflexive processes occur too in the myriad, unavoidable ways that observations of the world depend on scientists’ prior understandings of the world. The multiple forms and complexities of reflexivity pose challenges for all science, yet the challenges are especially pronounced in a science, like psychology, that generates knowledge about human nature. Confronting reflexivity is further impeded by psychology’s markedly scientific (not human scientific) goals to achieve objectivity and value neutrality, and to maintain naturalist assumptions about reality. Yet over the lifespan of scientific psychology some psychologists have faced these challenges and recommended means to acknowledge reflexivity. Their investigations have located, named, and analyzed a set of fallacies associated with disregarding reflexivity. The fallacies include assuming that the psychologist’s conception of cognitive processes are the same as their subject’s; that the psychologist can fully bracket their presuppositions from their observations; that psychological theories need not be relevant to their own scientific thoughts and behaviors; that psychology’s prescribed language for reporting findings accurately describes the phenomenon under investigation; and that psychological knowledge has no consequential effects on the world it predicts and explains. Addressing such fallacies and taking steps to remove them through sustained reflexive awareness is essential to attaining an empirically robust, veridical, and dynamic science. Taken together, the efforts of psychologists who have faced reflexivity and the fallacies related to its denial comprise a productive working template for developing a science that benefits from engaging with reflexive processes instead of disregarding them.


Psychology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saulo de Freitas Araujo

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (b. 1832―d. 1920) was a central figure in German culture between the second half of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century. Coming from a medical and neurophysiological background with a PhD in medicine, Wundt shifted his interest toward psychological and philosophical questions, becoming full professor of philosophy: first, at the University of Zurich in 1874; then, at the University of Leipzig in 1875. In the early 21st century, he is known worldwide as one of the founders of scientific psychology. In Leipzig, he founded in 1879 the Psychological Laboratory, which later became the first psychological institute in the world. Moreover, he founded the first journal for experimental psychology, which he called Philosophische Studien (Philosophical Studies), later Psychologische Studien (Psychological Studies). In so doing, he created the first international training center for psychologists, attracting to Leipzig students from all over the world. Wundt had a significant impact upon the development of scientific psychology in many countries, not least in the United States, where his former students founded psychological laboratories inspired by the Leipzig model. Apart from his contributions to psychology, Wundt also developed a philosophical system that is crucial to understanding his psychological program and methodology, but which has not received due attention among psychologists. Wundt’s writings have been published in different, mostly enlarged editions throughout his career. The great majority of these volumes have not yet been translated into English, and the same holds true for much of the relevant research literature.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Gantman ◽  
Robin Gomila ◽  
Joel E. Martinez ◽  
J. Nathan Matias ◽  
Elizabeth Levy Paluck ◽  
...  

AbstractA pragmatist philosophy of psychological science offers to the direct replication debate concrete recommendations and novel benefits that are not discussed in Zwaan et al. This philosophy guides our work as field experimentalists interested in behavioral measurement. Furthermore, all psychologists can relate to its ultimate aim set out by William James: to study mental processes that provide explanations for why people behave as they do in the world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lifshitz ◽  
T. M. Luhrmann

Abstract Culture shapes our basic sensory experience of the world. This is particularly striking in the study of religion and psychosis, where we and others have shown that cultural context determines both the structure and content of hallucination-like events. The cultural shaping of hallucinations may provide a rich case-study for linking cultural learning with emerging prediction-based models of perception.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazim Keven

Abstract Hoerl & McCormack argue that animals cannot represent past situations and subsume animals’ memory-like representations within a model of the world. I suggest calling these memory-like representations as what they are without beating around the bush. I refer to them as event memories and explain how they are different from episodic memory and how they can guide action in animal cognition.


1994 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 139-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Rybák ◽  
V. Rušin ◽  
M. Rybanský

AbstractFe XIV 530.3 nm coronal emission line observations have been used for the estimation of the green solar corona rotation. A homogeneous data set, created from measurements of the world-wide coronagraphic network, has been examined with a help of correlation analysis to reveal the averaged synodic rotation period as a function of latitude and time over the epoch from 1947 to 1991.The values of the synodic rotation period obtained for this epoch for the whole range of latitudes and a latitude band ±30° are 27.52±0.12 days and 26.95±0.21 days, resp. A differential rotation of green solar corona, with local period maxima around ±60° and minimum of the rotation period at the equator, was confirmed. No clear cyclic variation of the rotation has been found for examinated epoch but some monotonic trends for some time intervals are presented.A detailed investigation of the original data and their correlation functions has shown that an existence of sufficiently reliable tracers is not evident for the whole set of examinated data. This should be taken into account in future more precise estimations of the green corona rotation period.


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