Review of An invitation to social construction.

Reviews the book, An invitation to social construction by Kenneth Gergen (1999). Followers of Kenneth Gergen's work in social constructionism are likely to be disappointed by this most recent offering. Overall, little genuinely new ground is covered or defended. Many of the chapters simply reiterate arguments and insights already available elsewhere in the corpus of Gergen's work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relational being.

Reviews the book, Relational being: Beyond self and community by Kenneth J. Gergen (see record 2009-10534-000). In this book, Gergen develops and elaborates a theoretical framework for shifting the unit of analysis in psychology and other social sciences away from the individual toward relationships. The core arguments of the book revolve around claims that individuals (“bounded entities”) are social constructs that should be understood not as natural and self-evident phenomena but rather as emergent from relationships. By corollary, many of the properties traditionally associated with individuals (e.g., thoughts, feelings, beliefs) are argued to be better understood as relational accomplishments; that is, as arising from the larger context of the social fabric from which individuals are seen to be emergent. Significantly, Gergen also asserts that traditional individualist assumptions have negative impacts on our social world. He focuses on a number of specific domains to illustrate how a relational approach would lead to a more constructive, harmonious, and better existence. I found much value in the practical aspects of Gergen’s exposition of relational being, while feeling uncomfortable with the epistemological and ontological foundations provided in the book. The root of this ambiguity seems to lie in Gergen’s own contradictory stance, which oscillates between offering a relational approach as “just another perspective” (i.e., no more or less true than any other) and implying the moral and epistemic superiority of relational over individualist approaches. Although the former position seems to me sensible and appropriate, the latter (which dominates in the book) constitutes an unnecessary universalism that seems to run counter to the pluralistic spirit that is evident in parts of the book. Gergen’s own words, "Let us replace the Hobbesian dystopia of 'all against all,' with a vision of 'all with all'" (p. 403) for me sums up both the strengths and weaknesses of the book—the insights offered by the application of a relational perspective to specific practical contexts are a truly valuable contribution; but suggesting that this perspective is a panacea and needs to replace all individualistic accounts is counterproductive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selfhood at risk: Postmodern perils and the perils of postmodernism.

Various commentaries on the threats to personal well-being involved in contemporary Western middle-class life are examined, especially K. J. Gergen's (1991) treatment of the "saturated self." The version of postmodernism that Gergen advocated is criticized as representing an increasingly fashionable style of metatheory that reflects contemporary threats to selfhood but paralyzes endeavors to cope with them. A. Giddens's (1991) treatment of self and society in late modernity is selectively described as better fitted to a stance within which scientific and professional psychology can contribute to realistic hopefulness rather than to fin de siècle hopelessness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Pathology and the postmodern: Mental illness as discourse and experience.

Reviews the book, Pathology and the postmodern: Mental illness as discourse and experience by Dwight Fee (2000). This provocative collection of short essays, edited and assembled by Dwight Fee, constitutes yet another useful addition to SAGE Publications’ Inquiries in Social Construction series (series editors, Kenneth Gergen, John Shotter, and Sue Widdicombe). Including the work of such postmodern and social constructionist thinkers as Kenneth Gergen, Mark Freeman, Vivian Burr, Jane Ussher, Simon Gottschalk, Steven Sabat and Rom Harré, this anthology sets out to explore the relationship between mental distress and specific cultural, economic, and historical contexts and trends. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Becoming relational: From abstract systems to embodied relations.

Reviews the book, Relational being: Beyond self and community by Kenneth J. Gergen (see record 2009-10534-000). The primary plea of the book is that psychology consider a relational rather than individual (much less subindividual) conception of its phenomena. Gergen encourages us to "treat what we take to be the individual units as derivative of relational process" (xxi). This notion of a fundamentally relational subject is one that the reader is invited to explore and to test against other, more traditional, ways of constructing being. It is a proposition entertained and evaluated in terms of its implications but it is not presented as the real, true, or most factual account of human experience. Throughout the text, Gergen attempts to replace the individual or monological expositional style with a more dialogical, plural kind of textual negotiation. The book is constantly questioning and coming to terms with itself, its critics, and its limitations. The book is, as Bakhtin (1973) might have it, multivocal. Gergen invokes his own authorial voice, but also his voice as an embedded, historical being. Each chapter is peppered with anecdotes and personal reflections woven into the overall narrative as concrete counterpoint to the abstractions of theoretical argument. In the process, Gergen is surprisingly intimate, personal, and generous with his private life and history. The book also becomes something more human, narrative, and funny than is usual in theoretical exegesis. This style is quite inviting, partly because it is rooted in everyday life but also because it explicitly invites, and even voices, the critic, the question, and the doubt. Ultimately, what is compelling in the pages of Relational Being is what is fundamentally compelling about relationalism itself—namely, the way that it displaces abstract system as the core of meaning and replaces it with embodied relation. This displacement has the potential to redress some of the essential distortions at the heart of Enlightenment reason—particularly that venerable tradition of riding one’s chosen theoretical hobby horse into the face of concrete, lived experience (and into the face of the doubting, suffering, demanding other that stands in the way). Relational practice moves us away from the distortions that inevitably come when we make everything we encounter instrumental to some idea that we cherish (and, in the process, become blind to whatever lived truth first made that idea sing for us). Relational practice asks us, instead, to continually return to the lived relation and so continually rupture and remake the narratives by which we understand it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Postmodernism and the values of science.

Comments on the article by R. J. Sternberg and E. L. Grigorenko (see record 2001-10045-001), which described an approach to psychology ("unified psychology") that is a multiparadigmatic, multidisciplinary, and integrated study of psychological phenomena through converging operations. According to the present author, Sternberg and Grigorenko elucidated an important challenge to psychology by redirecting the signposts of the science and profession. The present author draws parallels between Sternberg and Grigorenko's call for unity with K. J. Gergen's (see records 1994-37275-001 and 2001-18772-003) optimistic evaluation of the possibility of a postmodern psychology. Gergen also addressed (2001) the promise of a proliferation of methodologies and paradigms. Under a unified psychology, the process of paradigm choice is to be guided by an attendance to utility. Whereas Gergen's understanding of what is useful is localized and communalized, Sternberg and Grigorenko fell short of elaborating how this is to be conceptualized under a unified psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reviews of Psychoanalyses/feminisms; That obscure subject of desire: Freud's female homosexual revisited; and Who's that girl? Who's that boy? Clinical practice meets postmodern gender theory.

Reviews the books, Psychoanalyses/feminisms by Peter L. Rudnytsky and Andrew M. Gordon (see record 1999-04403-000); That obscure subject of desire: Freud's female homosexual revisited by Ronnie C. Lesser and Erica Schoenberg (see record 1999-04164-000); and Who's that girl? Who's that boy? Clinical practice meets postmodern gender theory by Lynne Layton (1999). The three books reviewed herein are examples of these crosscurrents. The first, Psychoanalyses/Feminisms, comes out of literary studies, where feminism and psychoanalysis have found particularly fertile ground. Almost all the writers here are professors of English, and although without clinical experience or case material, their discussions of Freudian theory are knowledgeable and thought-provoking. Freud looked to literature for his insights, and he was himself a powerful story teller. All of these modern day theorists put his feet to the fire that he did not challenge sufficiently in his stories, the cultural biases and assumptions of the society in which he was immersed. The second book, That Obscure Subject of Desire: Freud's Female Homosexual Revisited, is a collection edited by Ronnie Lesser and Erica Schoenberg. Many of the contributors are gay and lesbian psychoanalysts. Established psychoanalysis has had difficulty in openly accepting homosexual psychoanalysts and in addressing fully their concerns about current psychoanalytic theory as it pertains to the treatment of persons with a homosexual orientation. The rage some of these writers feel toward established practice or toward Freud is evident; and hopefully, just as feminist rage helped to alter our psychoanalytic understanding of women, this will help to alter our understanding of homosexual development in our culture. The last book reviewed, Who's that girl? Who's that boy? Clinical practice meets postmodern gender theory, is by Lynne Layton and has aspects that are inspiring for their insights into a "postmodern" (to my mind, an unfortunate term) way of thinking about gender issues. The book—actually a collection of articles by Layton—deals both with analysis of aspects of modern culture as well as clinical material. What Layton wants most to show are the ways in which psychoanalysis has enshrined as "normal" in the very essence of its theories, from the Oedipus complex through concepts of masculinity and femininity to acceptable sexual practices, the tremendous biases of our culture. She wants to provide a bridge between deconstruction thinkers and psychoanalytic thinkers. These three books are compelling examples of the changes that are taking place so rapidly in contemporary psychoanalytic attempts to understand gender and sexuality within the matrix of our culture, and they are a testament to how psychoanalysis is vibrant, challenging, and very much alive today. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Attachment in psychotherapy.

Reviews the book, Attachment in psychotherapy by David J. Wallin (see record 2007-05421-000). This intellectual and clinical tour-de-force is what we have been waiting for: a book that is on the one hand a coherent, creative, thoughtful, and remarkably integrated view of contemporary psychoanalysis, with attachment, and attachment processes, at its core, and on the other a reflection on our daily, complex, work with patients. The book has three broad aims: first, to ground the reader in attachment theory and research, second, to broaden the reach of attachment theory by building bridges to other aspects of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and science, and third to apply this broader, deeply psychoanalytic, clinical attachment theory to understanding the dynamics of an individual patient and the dynamics of clinical work. This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary psychoanalysis. Few writers have the ability to write so directly and clearly about complex science and theory; his scholarship and reach are extraordinary. This book is also a book for therapists at all levels of experience. Throughout every section of the book, Wallin writes about his work with patients, about the therapeutic process, about the therapeutic situation, and about the therapeutic relationship, in all its complexity. In the end, he creates a truly contemporary vision of human development, affect regulation, and relational processes, grounded in the body and in the brain, and in the fundamental relationships that make us who we are, as therapists, as patients, and as human beings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Animal models of human psychology: Critique of science, ethics, and policy.

Reviews the book, Animal models of human psychology: Critique of science, ethics, and policy by Kenneth J. Shapiro (see record 1998-06437-000). The principle focus of most of this text is on the present-day use of animals in psychological research. In particular, Shapiro examines contemporary animal models of eating disorders, showing how psychology came to rely so heavily on animal models in the first place and how prevalent scientific attitudes about the use of animals in the laboratory have taken shape over the past several decades. In addition, he traces the recent rise of the animal rights movement and highlights the several philosophies upon which it is based. Drawing upon certain historical and empirical analyses, as well as certain themes in contemporary sociology of knowledge, Shapiro attempts to navigate his reader through the twin minefields of impassioned rhetoric and insufficiently examined conceptual commitment to a better understanding of the core issues surrounding the role of animals in scientific psychological investigation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The codification of research ethics: Views of a doubting Thomas: Comment.

The current author comments on the article by Gergen (see record 1974-11186-001). It is a basic contravention of human rights and human dignity to argue that we can set aside the possible effects of research procedures on humans until they are demonstrated to be harmful. If this attitude "reflects [in Gergen's words] only the historically dependent sentiments of but one segment of the plurality," so be it. Gergen is entitled to investigate in an ethical fashion whether or not various research practices do indeed have their purported effects. The outcomes of such experiments do not bear on the ethical question. Ethical principles and standards are not held on such a contingent basis. One has regard for the rights of others quite independently of whether they have regard for their own rights, or for one's own for that matter. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psychoanalytic participation: Action, interaction, and integration.

Reviews the book, Psychoanalytic participation: Action, interaction, and integration by Kenneth A. Frank (see record 1999-04095-000). Frank's book is an extremely timely, well-written, and scholarly book that integrates the recent developments within the two-person, relational perspective in contemporary psychoanalysis with an active, pragmatic approach that includes many cognitive and behavioral technical innovations. This book initially appears to be directed toward a psychoanalytic audience that is on the cusp of appreciating an expanding repertoire of active, cognitive, and behavioral approaches. However, Frank's presentation is so comprehensive and thoughtful that the book is also an excellent text for nonpsychoanalytic therapists (and students) to develop an understanding of the contemporary two-person, relational approaches to psychotherapy. Frank presents a deeply integrative approach that appears to be guided by a particular set of values that emphasize both a commitment to a pragmatic approach of helping patients reach their life goals and the therapist's self-understanding of the complexity, the interpersonal impact, and the meaning of all therapeutic events and interventions on both participants. This is an excellent book either for the psychoanalytic therapist who is ready to be more active and engaged with patients or for the cognitive and behavioral therapist who is ready to integrate a more dynamic, two-person approach to the transference-countertransference relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incarnate phenomenological reflection.

Reviews the book, Bodily reflective modes: A phenomenological method for psychology by Kenneth Joel Shapiro (1985). In this book Shapiro proposes an alternative to the Duquesne method for conducting phenomenological research, basing it on Merleau-Ponty's conception of human existence as incarnate subject. Psychological investigations based on the phenomenological perspective have relied mainly on a method developed at Duquesne University. In developing his method Shapiro first suggests steps for gaining access to the fleeting lived experiences of bodily generated meaning before it becomes an act, a concept, or an image. Next he offers procedures for analyzing this prelinguistic, nonobjective experience of meaning by bringing it to expression through schematic drawings, metaphor, and discursive language. Overall, in my view Shapiro draws too sharp a distinction between the structures of preobjective bodily experience and the structures of language, but I do agree that contemporary followers of Wittgenstein's language game theory have overstated their position. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Retelling a life: Narration and dialogue in psychoanalysis.

Reviews the book, Retelling a life: Narration and dialogue in psychoanalysis by Roy Schafer (see record 1992-97655-000). Although most of the chapters in Retelling a life have been printed previously, they have been edited so that the work reads seamlessly, even as it covers an extraordinary range of topics of interest to analysts: self-interest; female psychology; training analysis; theories of the "self; projective identification and enactment; Freud's legacy; the differences between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy; the desirability of talking directly to patients; and the larger issues of metapsychology, epistemology, and narration that give the book its title and backbone. It is always clearly written with useful clinical illustrations so that it may prove accessible to a lay reader looking to sample the work of a sophisticated, contemporary psychoanalyst. For the experienced therapist or analyst, the advantage of reading this book all the way through is that one ends up knowing pretty well how Schafer would approach a particular problem; he becomes a familiar voice in one's mind. Schafer's discussion of "the self" is well worth reading. Summarizing greatly, he thinks we do best to consider one "person" who narrates multiple self narratives. Order is brought to bear by reducing the narrative data to "storylines" so that particular narrations can be recognized as "versions of the same basic story" (e.g., of imprisonment, rebirth, odyssey, or oedipal rivalry). What Schafer is attempting to do--as before in A new language for psychoanalysis (1976)--is to provide a modern, philosophically correct basis for psychoanalytic practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The anatomy of psychotherapy.

Reviews the book, The anatomy of psychotherapy by Lawrence Friedman (see record 1988-97848-000). The authors' aim is to clarify the various theories of psychoanalysis from Freud to the current and to examine in depth the personal features of the analyst in the context of his/her work. With a knowledge of the entire range of psychoanalytic literature rare with most theorists or practitioners, the author reviews the philosophical developments of Freudian theory. He includes in this review some of the frictions, disputes and subtle disagreements within the classical analytic tradition. He then proceeds to describe the most significant of the contemporary deviations from classical theory (e.g., object relations, interpersonal theory, self psychology, action language) and compares and contrasts them with each other. Friedman has long been a commentator on contemporary psychoanalytic developments and he has adapted his many articles into this work. The book itself is organized into six sections, focusing on the personal and theoretical. It is well written but quite dense. Much concentration is needed. I believe that one must have an interest in psychoanalytic theory as well as a rather sophisticated appreciation of it to truly enjoy this book. It is long and detailed and I imagine difficult to get through without an intrinsic interest in the "anatomy" of psychoanalysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are there commonalties between modern and postmodern philosophies? An examination of the self and knowledge.

Postmodern theories as exemplified by the work of J. F. Lyotard (1984) and K. Gergen (1991) are contrasted with modern theories with regard to their impact on theories of knowledge and of the self. It is argued that while some postmodern theories and the modernists philosophy of individualism are based on assumptions concerning the origins of knowledge and the nature of the self, both result in a relativism of self and knowledge. The rationale for an alternative viewpoint of the relationship between the individual and society is explored. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Self-Relations in the Psychotherapy Process.

Reviews the book, Self-Relations in the Psychotherapy Process by J. Christopher Muran (see record 2000-16556-000). The self is alive and well and living in psychology, at least if the contributors to J. Christopher Muran's stimulating volume, Self-Relations in the Psychotherapy Process, are to be taken seriously. The self is a central construct in psychoanalytic, humanistic, and cognitive-behavioral theories, but nowadays even some radical behaviorists find the self to be an important concept. Thus, the present is a propitious time for a book that presents the major theoretical approaches to the self in psychotherapy and, fortunately for us, Muran, by gathering the views of leading psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive-behavioral, and radical behavioral thinkers, has assembled a volume of almost uniformly high quality. Inspired by postmodernism, especially by the growing popularity of dialogic and perspectival epistemologies, Muran has a constructed this book as a set of six dialogues among contributors of varying theoretical persuasions, and although I doubt that dialogic and perspectival epistemologies are necessarily postmodern, I nevertheless find that this volume's dialogic structure makes for interesting reading and adds to its intellectual contributions. Because Muran's contention, with which I agree, is that the self is not an isolated entity but rather part of a relational matrix, it is perhaps necessary for this book to be structured dialogically. Whether postmodern or not, this book is an important one, one that conveys a great deal about what it means to be human as we enter the 21st century. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Self and object in the postmodern world": Response to Gene Bocknek’s letter.

Responds to Gene Bocknek's comments (see record 2009-17405-001) on the author's original article "Self and object in the postmodern world" (see record 1997-04589-001). While acknowledging Bocknek's comments in regard to his original article, the author maintains the position that he cannot find any disagreement between their viewpoints on the features of ego and the self. However, he does acknowledge that there is real disagreement between them on the subject of the intrapsychic versus interpersonal school or the ongoing discussion as to whether psychotherapy concerns a one-person or a two-person psychology. After restating his position on this matter, the author concludes by extending his appreciation to Bocknek for his comments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ideology concealed? The politics of Philip Cushman.

Comments that in P. Cushman's (see record 1991-17982-001) critique of D. Stern's (1985) book on the interpersonal world of the human infant, although Cushman in his criticism of decontextualized psychology follows the postmodern dictum of refusing all transcendental and universally binding principles, Cushman's approach to social constructionism betrays a lack of reflexive understanding of the concept of contextuality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Jerome Bruner: Language, culture, self.

Reviews the book, Jerome Bruner: Language, culture, self by David Bakhurst and Stuart G. Shanker (2001). The subject of this fine collection of essays is Jerome Bruner’s contribution to our contemporary understanding of the mind. As the editors note, although Bruner has typically “concerned himself with concrete and practical issues, such as education and, most recently, the law, he has always been an intensely theoretical thinker, a man fascinated by ideas” (p. 1). It is for that reason that the editors and contributors to this volume have chosen to focus exclusively on Bruner’s work as a “philosophical psychologist and philosopher of psychology” (p. 1). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)