Examines how a hermeneutic psychotherapy might be possible by adapting interpretive theory arising in the human sciences and in response to the critiques that continue to question hermeneutics proper. Based on the work of several noted researchers, including M. Foucault , M. Merleau-Ponty , and H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow , such topics as the relationship of psychoanalysis and phenomenology, the distinction of hermeneutics and interpretive analytics, hermeneutics and the deep self, and hermeneutics and psychoanalysis are discussed. 2012 APA, all (...) rights reserved). (shrink)

Proposes a new formulation of psychology as a human science that integrates 5 unique qualities of the human experience and behavior: symbolic communication, social focus and context, self-knowledge of intentional behavior, organization of behavior as "narratives" of intentional events, and the key "role of knowing self" in human comprehension and action. These qualities are integrated on the basis of scientific comprehension of lawful processes in the natural sciences and new developments in neuroscience, information, and cognitive science. 2012 APA, all rights (...) reserved). (shrink)

Examines the pervasive nature of metaphor in conceptual, rational, and narrative experience and demonstrates that conceptual and communicative meaning is dependent on metaphorical understandings. It is suggested that these understandings are primary and derived from embodied experience and cannot be understood outside of this experience. Metaphors are the expressions of preconceptual experiences that are organized into conceptual thought via image schemata. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Argues that social psychology should be considered a polyparadigmatic enterprise based on human science social psychology theories and discusses the nature of a paradigm and the social character of paradigm-construction as a knowledge-building industry. Four major approaches of human science social psychology are presented: existential-phenomenology, hermeneutical dialectics, dialogal existentialism, and critical emancipatory theory. These approaches are discussed in terms of the changing meanings of intentionality. "Way of Life Psychology" is presented as a discipline capable of integrating the contributions of the (...) various human science schools of thought in social psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Technology as symptom and dream by Robert D. Romanyshyn. This book is an empassioned call to reexamine the history of technology and to remember the desire that propelled it. Faced with the atom bomb and space flight, we can no longer ignore, Romanyshyn argues, the possibility of the final destruction of our planet. True to his vocation as a psychologist, Romanyshyn finds that the path toward preventing the suicide of mankind lies in re-examining, reflecting and retelling the (...) story of our past and in understanding how it shapes our present and our future. He offers us a shift in perspective: maybe we have misunderstood what technology is all about. "Perhaps technology has been part of the earth's long history of coming to know itself, and perhaps in that effort we have been its servant. On a dry African plain, in the silence of the early morning, one can still imagine technology as vocation, as the earth's call to become its agent and instrument of awakening. But in the shadows imagination falters and technology seems less the earth's way of coming to know itself and more the earth's way of coming to cleanse itself of us". Romanyshyn's book is biased, but biased in a positive way: he refuses the detached view of the uninvolved observer. The book speaks with passionate insight for the abandoned body and the repressed soul. Informed by the phenomenological critique of the scientific attitude, Romanyshyn attempts to recover the cultural history of consciousness and the lived body. He weaves a fascinating story that resonates with profound echoes from the past. He challenges the reader's presuppositions and our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing space, body and self. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Discusses the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, which maintains that nature be dissected along the lines laid down by native language. One characteristic of most modern languages is that subject–verb relationships can be expressed only in active and passive voices. Modern languages might force people into dichotomous thinking patterns, since human action is couched primarily in one voice or the other. Throughout history, several languages have possessed middle voices which allow for a more complex relationship between a subject and verb than can be (...) expressed by either the AV or PV alone. English does not have a commonly used MV. This deficit might condition human thinking to possess bipolar characteristics. Modern psychological theories of human agency help scientists, legal scholars, and philosophers to adapt thinking to better reflect the continuous characteristics of the world of human action. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the special issue of The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Challenging the therapeutic state: Critical perspectives on psychiatry and the mental health system, edited by D. Cohen. This special issue serves as an update on the critique of the medical model in psychiatry. In editing this volume, Cohen has assembled a collection of work from authors in many disciplines—including some laypersons—who are concerned with what they see as the frightening power of the "Therapeutic State." While the work of Thomas (...) Szasz is a guiding light for several of these authors, they certainly are not all associated with his work. In fact, some of them explicitly disavow what they see as Szasz's overly simple stance toward madness. Moreover, the ideas in this volume expand the critique of the medical model far beyond the range of Szasz's work. Disagreements among authors are for the most part confined to a few footnotes in this volume. The book's purpose is to expose the problem before exploring solutions to it. When the volume is at its best, the papers are united by their contention that the medical model in psychiatry is disastrous both for individuals who are victimized by its institutions and practices, and for the society that embraces its disempowering philosophy. There is little, if any, brand new material in this book. Virtually all of the articles contain research and ideas tat the authors have already published elsewhere. The virtue of the book is in bringing together a diversity of work across disciplines that would not ordinarily appear between the same two covers. The common element running through all of these articles is one that the authors almost never state in so many words, but it gives a cumulative force to their very different treatments of psychiatry's problems. Each of these papers, in its own way, reveals aspects of the irrationality implicit in psychiatric orthodoxy. Psychiatry stands at the fringe of medical science, and the fringe of any science is where the inadequacies of its paradigm are most obvious. The attempt to make the medical model fit the problem of madness has not succeeded, but orthodox psychiatry continues to pursue it. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the special issue of The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Challenging the therapeutic state: Critical perspectives on psychiatry and the mental health system, edited by D. Cohen . This special issue serves as an update on the critique of the medical model in psychiatry. In editing this volume, Cohen has assembled a collection of work from authors in many disciplines—including some laypersons—who are concerned with what they see as the frightening power of the "Therapeutic State." While the work of (...) Thomas Szasz is a guiding light for several of these authors, they certainly are not all associated with his work. In fact, some of them explicitly disavow what they see as Szasz's overly simple stance toward madness. Moreover, the ideas in this volume expand the critique of the medical model far beyond the range of Szasz's work. Disagreements among authors are for the most part confined to a few footnotes in this volume. The book's purpose is to expose the problem before exploring solutions to it. When the volume is at its best, the papers are united by their contention that the medical model in psychiatry is disastrous both for individuals who are victimized by its institutions and practices, and for the society that embraces its disempowering philosophy. There is little, if any, brand new material in this book. Virtually all of the articles contain research and ideas tat the authors have already published elsewhere. The virtue of the book is in bringing together a diversity of work across disciplines that would not ordinarily appear between the same two covers. The common element running through all of these articles is one that the authors almost never state in so many words, but it gives a cumulative force to their very different treatments of psychiatry's problems. Each of these papers, in its own way, reveals aspects of the irrationality implicit in psychiatric orthodoxy. Psychiatry stands at the fringe of medical science, and the fringe of any science is where the inadequacies of its paradigm are most obvious. The attempt to make the medical model fit the problem of madness has not succeeded, but orthodox psychiatry continues to pursue it. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Suggests that genuine discovery in the context of qualitative research implies a distance between what is seen in the phenomenological sense and what has already been described. The ingenuity of William James's descriptions of hitherto undescribed aspects of everyday experience are rooted in an openness to seeing that characterizes his "radical empiricism." James was a pathfinder and explorer who did introspection and discovered the phenomena of transitive consciousness. The concepts of seeing as the mode of discovery, problematics of the intentionality (...) principle, James's radical empiricism, reflection and postreflective seeing, objectless consciousness and insight, and transforming intentional consciousness are discussed. Buddhist meditative disciplines aimed at the development of insight, rather than altered states of consciousness, offer systematic methods for cultivating this openness and for the facilitation of genuine discovery. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Takes issue with the biological focus of traditional theories of sexuality, drawing on postmodern trends such as hermeneutics and social constructionism. It is argued that traditional theories are characterized by a reductionism that precludes meaningfulness and an individualism that precludes genuine intimacy. The theories thus offer an essentially barren account of what is otherwise a richly meaningful human activity. A more fruitful account of human sexuality begins with acknowledging that sexuality is a fundamentally social and meaningful phenomenon and that it (...) can only be understood in the social, historical, and moral context in which human beings live and act. If the linguistic aspect of sexuality were at the heart of theories, biological information could be given its proper place as context for understanding. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Comments on the article, "Levels of analysis and the received view-hermeneutics controversy," by E. Morgan. The absence of criteria with which to compare and evaluate the legitimacy of dissimilar clinical psychology theories has fueled the quest for a "superordinate epistemology." This paper addresses Morgan's use of a constructivist analysis to make claims regarding the constitutive nature of a superordinate epistemology. It is argued that constructivism, as a post-epistemological position, is inappropriate to the task Morgan sets. Also, it is held that (...) the notion of a superordinate epistemology is the spectre of an ill-founded allegiance to metaphysical realism. Further discussion is offered in light of Rorty's notions of solidarity and pragmatism. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Presents 3 hermeneutic answers to the problem of relativism. The 1st answer is drawn from L. Wittgenstein's anthropological hermeneutics. Wittgenstein went beyond relativism by making explicit universal anthropological categories that are specified differently in different cultures. The 2nd answer lies in H.-G. Gadamer's historical hermeneutics. By introducing the concepts of tradition and fusion of horizons, Gadamer evades both absolutism and relativism. The 3rd answer is developed by J. Habermas in his critical hermeneutics. By situating communicative action in the life-world, and (...) stressing the possibility of discussion and critique, Habermas can ascertain that there is no absolute truth without having to surrender to relativism. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)