1,721,355 research outputs found
Gergen, Kenneth J., Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge . New York: Springer-Verlag, 1982.
No full textPresents a view of transforming studies in social psychology to take into account personal meaning
Psychological Science: To Conserve Or Create?
No full textResponds to commentaries from W. W. Tryon, D. J. Kruger, B. D. Haig, E. A. Locke, T. Teo and A. R. Febbraro, T. L. Holdstock, J. I. Krueger, S. G. Hofmann, and H. Friedman (see records 2002-13736-017, -018, -019, -020, -021, -022, -023, -024, and -025, respectively) on the author\u27s article (see record 2001-18772-003) that discussed the merits and criticisms of postmodernism in psychology. The author focuses on three issues of substantive significance--the culture of psychological science, nihilism or enrichment, and the uses of history--in responding to the commentaries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved
Flight From The Quagmire
No full textReviews the book Identity, Youth and Crisis by Erik H. Erikson.
These essays, many previously published, were written over a twenty-one year period and offer little in the way of coolly reasoned dialectic. There is ample use made of materials gathered by author in his encounters with patients, and closely examined biographical writings. But for the great body of empirical literature on self-conception, self-definition, child development, and adolescence, he seems to hold a peculiar disdain. Little direct reference to any of this literature exists in his work. Where indirect references appear, such contributions are dismissed as if superficial products of graceless mechanization. This attitude is ultimately rendered ironic, as a full ten pages of the volume are spent in describing and drawing generalizations from an empirical study carried out by the author himself--a study that meets few of the ordinary requirements of rigor
The Rhetoric Of Basic Research And The Future Of Transactional Analysis
No full textComments on I. Altman\u27s (see record 1989-22306-001) proposal for an alternative conception of the distinction between applied and basic research. The present author disagrees with Altman\u27s conception of basic research and with his analysis of transactional inquiry in social psychology
Elaborating The Constructionist Thesis
No full textResponds to comments from G. Nettler (see record 1986-20944-001) and A. Kukla (see record 1986-20940-001) regarding the present author\u27s (see record 1986-00014-001) article on social constructionist theory by acknowledging potential ambiguities in the article and by clarifying and extending previous arguments related to empiricism, conventional constraints, and reductionism. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved
Review Of The Evolving Self: A Psychology For The Third Millennium By M. Csikszentmihalyi
No full textAn expansion and elaboration on the author\u27s broadly popular Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (CH, Sep\u2790). This is no mere gloss, however, but an elaborated array of grandly sweeping ideas--on history, genetics, self-illusion, social inequality, faith, and the creation of a utopian future--for which the experience of flow serves as the critical fulcrum. Csikszentmihalyi argues that we must become aware of our evolutionary-based urges in order to transcend their inimical effects on behavior; at the same time, he advocates submitting to what he believes is a genetically based proclivity toward increased complexity. And, by gaining cognizance of undesirable social forces-- parasites and oppressors --the indulgence in complexity will allow one to then join in a cooperative union with the social world. It is the immersion in complexity--an optimal balance between differentiation and integration--that permits the experience of flow. Through flow, the author believes, one will achieve greater harmony with the self, society, and the physical environment. In self-help style, each chapter is followed by questions designed to provoke the reader into states of generative consciousness. Lucid style, but the enormous ambition combined with lack of self-reflexivity will trouble most scholars. Community college; undergraduate; pre-professional; professional
Dr. Frankenstein\u27s Dilemma
No full textReviews the book, Varieties of Realism: A Rationale for the Natural Sciences by Rom Harré (1986). The present volume represents author\u27s response to his dilemma. The work is fascinating, not only as a biographical milestone but also as the attempt of a major intellectual to grapple with one of the critical debates of the era. It is my view that Harré\u27s critical point of vulnerability lies in his dependence on Gibsonian realism. Without Gibson\u27s assumptions, referential realism would be without ontological significance. And if referential realism falls, so does policy realism and the subsequent attempt to make trustworthy statements about the unseen
Psychology Without History And Society
No full textOriginally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1982, Vol 27(5), 360-361. Reviews the book, Psychology Misdirected by Seymour B. Sarason (1981). In this book, the author makes a vital contribution to the literature of dissent. It is a volume that will be welcomed by those concerned with transforming the discipline, that will generate lively interest within the applied sector, and that will probably be resisted by the committed traditionalist. At the outset, Sarason takes psychological inquiry to task for its virtually exclusive focus on individual psychological functioning. In its preoccupation with discovering fundamental laws of learning, cognition, motivation, and the like, psychology has blinded itself to both the historical and the societal context of human activity. In effect, argues Sarason, psychologists have generally failed to understand the extent to which human behavior is contingent on and enmeshed within existing institutions
Review Of The Morals And Politics Of Psychology: Psychological Discourse And The Status Quo By I. Prilleltensky
No full textCritique of the moral and political implications of psychological theory and practice has gathered force over recent decades. Prilleltensky performs an invaluable service in collecting and synthesizing some major strands of this work, identifying the genre and its significance, and pressing the dialogue forward in interesting ways. In part 1, he develops with care the rationale for reflexive appraisal of psychology\u27s role in societal life. Particular shortcomings of behaviorism, cognitivism, humanism, and various practice-oriented psychologies are examined in the second part, with special emphasis given to their support of the status quo. The final part, and perhaps the weakest, is the author\u27s attempt to develop foundations for an ethical practice of psychology. For upper-division undergraduates and above
Three Views Of \u3cem\u3eSocial Psychology\u3c/em\u3e: Two Sides Of Discipline
No full textThe present volume takes a cognitive focus and jettisons all reflections of the past in favor of a two page Preface on the importance of discovering and understanding the true laws of nature (p. vii). The chapters are all state-of-the art accounts of what are presumably the lawful principles (p. vii) governing social-psychological phenomenon. Where previous volumes have been concerned with a spectrum of methodological approaches, with rare exception, the present chapters are unquestioningly committed to the experimental testing of hypotheses. Most important, whereas previous volumes have featured a panoply of theoretical perspectives, the first 17 chapters of the present volume are robustly committed to a single, biocognitive model of human functioning. However, the author feels that the book does not address current topic and debates within the field. In addition, there is virtually no mention in this volume of the burgeoning literatures on discourse analysis, narratives, rhetoric, social representation, communal memory, social construction, ideology, power, or culture critique
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