Learning With William Stern

Personology for Future

By:
Enno von Fircks, Sigmund Freud University

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 2024

William Stern was an important German psychologist. What remains rather preserved from his scientific heritage is centered around the notion of intelligence and differential psychology. Yet, Stern’s scientific work is more complex than that. For instance, William Stern has laid the groundwork for a philosophical system – called critical personology – being a groundwork for the psychological sciences in general.

This book tries to restore and expand Stern’s philosophical ideas of critical personology while showing pathways how to apply this expansion to applied fields of psychology such as career counselling, psychological mediation, psychotherapy, personnel selection among many other domains of psychology. With the present book, critical personology can become a theoretical, methodological and interventional tool with which psychologists of various disciplines might work in their related fields.

As such, the book will be rewarding for multiple audiences. First, scholars of the history of psychology might use the insights of the book in order to acknowledge Stern’s forgotten theories such as about Stern’s notion of the unconscious. Second, psychologists being interested in a wholistic approach towards psychology will gain useful knowledge and tools how to better understand the complexity and dynamic of the person (especially the person’s needs, drives, motives and so forth). Third, applied psychologists can use the various frameworks in order to diversify their methodological and interventional knowledge and help people to better understand themselves as well as to adjust to their environments.

CONTENTS
Introduction. Series Editor’s Preface. CHAPTER 1: The Life and History of William Stern: A German Psychologist on the Search for Meaning. CHAPTER 2: Stern’s Critical Personology and Its Major Concepts: Operationalizing Interrelated Definitions. CHAPTER 3: Psychoanalysis and Personology: An Ambivalent but Fruitful Relationship. CHAPTER 4: Explaining Stern’s Introception and Its Therapeutic Implications. CHAPTER 5: The Interconnectedness Between Richtungs- und Ru stungsdispositionen and their Impact Upon Career Counseling. CHAPTER 6: Neo-Sternian Model of Motivation and Volition and Its Application to Personnel Selection. CHAPTER 7: The Rehabilitation of Stern’s Psychology of Feelings and the Cognitive-Affective Need-Fulfilment Model (CAN Model) CHAPTER 8: The Linguistic Sign A Four-Fold Personological Model of Language and Though. CHAPTER 9: General Conclusion What Stern Teaches Us for Today’s Psychology. Psychology. References. About the Author.