Beyond the Mind

Cultural Dynamics of the Psyche

By:
Giuseppina Marsico, University of Salerno

A volume in the series: Advances in Cultural Psychology: Constructing Human Development. Editor(s): Jaan Valsiner, Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University.

Published 2018

This book Beyond the Mind: Cultural Dynamics of the Psyche is unusual in the content and it the format. That’s why it requires an unusual look. It has to do with a man, an intellectual journey and with uncountable travels across the world over the last two decades.

This man is Jaan Valsiner and here you will read of his restless effort of elaborating ideas while going in different places as invited keynote. This book is mainly about his intellectual trajectory, which touches several places and several and interconnected topics.

This book is about the “minutes” of his “bigger” and well organize works and also it is a collection of only apparently fragmented texts (mainly keynote lectures, unpublished or rejected papers) where the readers will see the “step- by-step” elaboration over the years of new ideas, theories, models and even schemas (which Jaan likes very much—maybe especially as he claims basic inability to draw anything).

CONTENTS
Introduction: Desire for Basic Science of Human Being, Giuseppina Marsico. SECTION I: Suffering for Science: Where Psychology Fails. Culture in Psychology: Towards the Study of Structured, Highly Variable, and Self-Regulatory Psychological Phenomena, Jaan Valsiner. Science of Psychology Today: Future Horizons, Jaan Valsiner. COFFEE BREAK 1: Is There any Reason for Suffering—for Science in Psychology? Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner. SECTION II: Understanding Dynamic Processes. Facing the Future—Making the Past: The Permanent Uncertainty of Living, Jaan Valsiner. Constructing Identity: A Theoretical Problem for Social Sciences, Jaan Valsiner. Reconstructing the Affordance Concept: Semiotic Mediation of Immediacy, Jaan Valsiner. The Concept of Attractor: How Dynamic Systems Theory Deals With Future, Jaan Valsiner. COFFEE BREAK 2: Why Are Dynamic Perspectives Hard to Take? Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner. SECTION III: Dialogical Nature of Being. The Promoter Sign: Developmental Transformation Within the Structure of Dialogical Self, Jaan Valsiner. Temporal Integration of Structures Within the Dialogical Self, Jaan Valsiner. COFFEE BREAK 3: Dialogical Semiosis in Irreversible Time—Why Make it So Complex? Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner. SECTION IV: Aesthetics of Infinities. The Raumaesthetik of Theodor Lipps as a Dialogical Research Program, Jaan Valsiner. The Bare Back: Dialogical Self in Action, Jaan Valsiner. Torturous Tension of the Real and the Unreal: Looking at Surrealist Paintings, Jaan Valsiner. Dialogical Relationship Between Open and Closed Infinities, Jaan Valsiner. The Flagellating Self, Jaan Valsiner. COFFEE BREAK 4: The Sublime Movement Between Infinities, Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner. SECTION V: Regulation in Societal and Interpersonal Processes. Culture Within Development: Similarities Behind Differences, Jaan Valsiner. How Can Psychology in Japan Become a Well-Behaving Rebel? Jaan Valsiner. Culture in Human Development: Theoretical and Methodological Directions, Jaan Valsiner. COFFEE BREAK 5: Why Developmental Science? Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner. SECTION VI: Cultural Processes Within Society. Civility of Basic Distrust: A Cultural-Psychological View on Persons-in-Society, Jaan Valsiner. Higher Education in Focus: Insights Through the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, Jaan Valsiner. Communication and Development: Breaking a Communion, Jaan Valsiner. The Clicking and Twitting Society: Beyond Entertainment to Education, Jaan Valsiner. COFFEE BREAK 6: Relating with Society—By Going Beyond the Practically Useful, Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner. SECTION VII: Constructing Basic Human Science: Idiographic, Dynamic, Phenomena-Focused. Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology: Constructions and Implications, Jaan Valsiner. Listening to the Screaming Knowledge: Pathways to Quietude, Jaan Valsiner. The Wissenschaft of Social Psychology: Paradoxes of Application of Science in a Society, Jaan Valsiner. Failure Through Success: Paradoxes of Epistemophilia, Jaan Valsiner. The Human Psyche on the Border of Irreversible Time: Forward-Oriented Semiosis, Jaan Valsiner. COFFEE BREAK 7: Why Do Social Sciences Need to Be Basic? Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner. Conclusion: Psyche as a Cultural Membrane, Giuseppina Marsico. Biographical Notes.