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The aim of this paper is to present the project of cultural psychology formulated by Florian Znaniecki, a Polish philosopher, sociologist and pioneer of social psychology. His view of cultural psychology was connected with the concept of social psychology and was founded on the assumption of culturalism and the theory of cultural actions. Znaniecki's cultural psychology represents the antipositivistic turning in the social sciences and the humanities and is opposite to the naturalistically oriented psychology. His proposition is also an attempt to go beyond the individualistic or antiindividualistic perspective in the cultural psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guidelines on psychosocial interventions in postconflict areas commonly mention that interventions should be based on local needs and be built on culture-specific expertise. This paper is based on a dissociative cult, the Kiyang-yang (KYY), in Guinea Bissau. In a previous article, we used a refined definition of the concept of idiom of distress to analyze the dissociative behavior displayed in KYY as a symbolic language addressing politically dangerous truths. This paper uses the concept of “collective trauma processing” to analyze how the idiom offered the local population a pathway to mitigate the consequences of protracted and widespread political violence. The paper first argues that the field of psychotraumatology lacks a comprehensive ecological theory on trauma. Moreover, within clinical psychology and psychiatry, little attention is paid to local cultural healing mechanisms addressing traumatic stress. This paper is an effort to study such mechanisms in their own right. To compare trauma processing mechanisms across the globe, we propose to analyze trauma processing mechanisms with the help of a comprehensive model discerning five ontological dimensions that are considered to be involved in suffering and are addressed in healing approaches. Our paper describes similarities and differences between psychological healing traditions and collective trauma processing within the West African context of Guinea Bissau. We will illustrate how the KYY movement uses the idiom of dissociation as both a collective expression of distress and as a vehicle to process social suffering and traumatic stress as a circular phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the attempts of psychologists in South Africa to “Africanize” the discipline. Beginning with a brief history of psychology on the continent, it contextualizes the call for an African psychology by outlining the state of the broader discipline in post-apartheid South Africa as well as the emergence of Afrocentric psychology in the United States. The article interrogates further the notion of an “African worldview” and suggests that Afrocentric psychologists remain beholden to Eurocentric audiences—the result of their continued marginalization by a Eurocentric discipline. Drawing on Fanon’s image of a Manichean psychology, the paper argues that African psychology—instead of organizing itself around cultural questions—must commit itself to a psychological analysis of the violence that exemplifies life in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a psychology of individuation, drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of series, event, sense, and individuation to develop a way of thinking human experience that is non-reductionist and processual. Deleuze’s writing produces a conceptualization of life as multiple, novel, and yet inherently linked to the past. The desire for such an undertaking comes from the need to avoid capturing experience according to theories that prioritize one factor over others, and in doing so define psychological life as a set of intrinsic properties. Understanding individuals as the products of individuating processes introduces a philosophy of change that, although not entirely “pure,” can still be novel. A psychology of individuation potentially allows for the extraction of a virtual realm of sense that is “in between” forms of language and materiality, and which allows novelty to emerge in our social worlds. The paper concludes by discussing the potential moral benefits of conceptualizing psychological life as produced through processes of individuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of social representations is one of the most vigorous areas in social psychology. Far from constituting a homogeneous body of knowledge, the theory consists of several analytical perspectives, including the structural approach. In this paper I propose that most of the assumptions of the structural approach applied to social representations or the central core theory are grounded in traditional conceptions of social cognition and mental representations, which are at variance with the general theory. The fact that one can view the structural approach embedded within associative networks and schema models makes it similar to most theories of attitude structure. Since the structural approach has remained within a mentalist social cognition paradigm, this paper proposes to move it towards a theory of social cognition that reflects the sociocultural conditions of creation and transformation of thought, and then emphasizes the communicative and ideological components of social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore some of the tensions involved in the process of engaging with embodiment research. Although a significant volume of discursive work on “the body” and its role in social relations now exists, there is little in the way of empirical research that moves the focus away from discourse alone to concentrate on other modalities, such as embodied feelings, sensations, and engagements with the world. We begin by briefly reviewing the turn to embodiment across the social sciences and the manner in which this has been taken up in psychology. We then outline our attempts as a research collective to develop methodologies and research activities that can produce meaningful data on embodied experience. The outcomes of one of these tasks are then described in detail, along with reflections on the difficulties and limitations that emerged. Finally, we attempt to conceptualize the challenge of researching embodiment by returning to the late 19th century psychology of John Dewey, which, we argue, neatly summarizes some of the problems to be addressed by any researchers engaged in the “turn to the body.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I make the case that the notion of memory—the very idea that there is a particular capacity that enables us to remember, to store, and to recall experiences and knowledge, and that in doing so constitutes an essential part of our existence—is in the midst of dissolving. I explore this dissolution of 'memory' as an epistemological and cultural paradigm shift. This shift can be observed in a broad spectrum of scientific and scholarly developments and, moreover, in literary, artistic, and public discourses. What all of these have challenged is the idea of memory as storage, an archive. I review four areas of research whose results and debates have fuelled this 'memory crisis': the social and cultural, the technological, the literary and the artistic, and the biological and cognitive. At the same time, we find in all these fields emerging perspectives that reach beyond the idea of memory as an archive, offering visions of more open, fleeting, social and cultural practices of remembering and forgetting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper begins with a critique of orthodox renditions of the social unconscious which (a) retain divisions between a personal sphere and a social sphere, and (b) which are said to be in conflict with each other. The ways in which these are instituted in various psychoanalytic and group-analytic theorizations are briefly delineated. Next, the two versions of the social unconscious (an orthodox and a radical) that are found in Foulkes are described. Elias's notion of process reduction is then used to deconstruct the philosophical basis of the orthodox version of the social unconscious. The thoughts of Radical Foulkes are extended by drawing on Elias and Matte-Blanco, bringing the notion of power into the theoretical schema. This is followed by an examinantion of the impact of the notion of power on Foulkes's conception of the communicational field. Finally, the article describes the consequences of the impact of power on the construction of the psyches of individuals as well as interpersonal relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We chart our agreements and disagreements with Wallach and Wallach's (2001) arguments. After listing some areas of agreement, we then make four arguments that undermine the Wallachs' project. First, we argue the discovery of 'laws' is a goal neither of scientists nor of the discipline. Second, we suggest the Wallachs' claim that social psychological theories are infused with unfalsifiable theories about the nature of psychological variables misses the logical distinction between measurement models and conceptual hypotheses. Third, we look at the role that circularity plays in deductive logic and conclude that circularity is rarely a serious problem in practice. Fourth, we examine what effect bits of research have on scientific progress, and argue that 'non-progressive' papers do not hinder progress. The best response to the Wallachs' concerns about social psychology is provided by a glance at progress within the field today. The state is very good; circularities, tautologies and untested assumptions do not pose a significant threat to progress in the science of social psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While appreciating Kimble's (2001) praise of our paper (Wallach & Wallach, 2001), we argue against his reduction of mental states to behavioral dispositions. Crandall and Schaller (2001) make five points in criticism of our argument that much research in social psychology is plagued by circularity. We show that their first point is based on a misunderstanding, that their third point is irrelevant, and that their last two points do not attempt to answer our argument. This leaves their second point as Crandall and Schaller's only actual counterargument—namely that confidence in a measure for a construct is independent of confidence in the construct's relationships to other constructs. We show this claim of independence to be false. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream social/personality psychology, an essentially North American post-World War II construction, has remained wedded to a physical science metatheory in pursuit of behavioral universals, while treating cultural idiosyncrasies as epiphenomena. This project, pursued overwhelmingly within the context of capitalist economic constraints, has seldom led to findings of sufficient generality to justify the search, and is further undermined by increasing recognition that differences provided by sociohistorical contexts have ontological significance for human development. The context of the mainstream is examined and, as a hermeneutic alternative, Marxian/communal metatheory is proposed and shown to be in synchrony with positions taken by several prominent internal mainstream critics. The paper also questions the appropriateness of the modal personality projected by mainstream theorists to a world of shrinking natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]