Review of Existential—phenomenological perspectives in psychology.

Reviews the book, Existential — phenomenological perspectives in psychology edited by Ronald S. Valle and Steen Hailing (1989). This collection shows careful selection and editing by the two editors. Each of the articles is well-written, admirably clear, and articulate. The authors have succeeded in making the tenants of phenomenology accessible to those who do not have prior knowledge, however, the content is also of interest to people who are already familiar with the basics, but who wish to see phenomenological research in action. As such, the book could well serve as a text for an undergraduate or graduate level course entitled "existential-phenomenological perspectives in psychology", or as an adjunct text for a course which looks more broadly at various theoretical and methodological positions within the discipline. The editors have thoughtfully compiled the index with a view to the use of the book as a reference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond the Psychology Fair.

Comments on the article by Benjamin et al (see record 1978-30211-001) which discussed the college psychology fair as a vehicle for providing the public with a view of experimental psychology, a view shared by and Perloff and Perloff (see record 1977-28555-001). The current author agrees that providing high school students with an insight into the science of psychology is important, but suggests that psychology departments and the APA need to encourage the teaching of a scientific attitude to undergraduates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The inadvertent emergence of a phenomenological perspective in the philosophy of cognitive psychology and psychoanalytic developmental psychology.

The phenomenological perspective described by M. Merleau-Ponty seems to be emerging in the context of contemporary developmental research, theories of communication, metaphor theory, and cognitive neuroscience. This emergence is not always accompanied by reference to Merleau-Ponty, however, or appropriate interpretation. On some cases, the emergence of the perspective seems rather inadvertent. The purpose of this essay is to ferret out some of the points which contemporary thinking has in common with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Though it may appear that the examples chosen for this essay might be scrutinized separately, the thread that ties them together is Merleau-Ponty's work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavior: Datum or abstraction.

The problem of defining and delimiting psychology's field of study is indicated. The "fundamental reason for the rejection of soul, mind, and consciousness [in the definition of psychology] was the fact that as conceptions abstracted from the raw data, they took on the status of entities, of obscure agencies determining behavior. And this sort of construct was out of harmony with the developing scientific temper of the time… . The term behavior refers to those activities which exhibit (a) spontaneity or autonomy… (b) persistence, (c) variability, and (d) docility… . My contention is that psychology's 'behavior' is analogous to the physicist's heat, that the psychologist uses the term to refer to a class of activities that possess certain characteristics, those referred to by the criteria outlined… . This means that 'behavior' is an abstraction, not a datum." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Image of a global village": Global theorizing and local knowledge.

'Globalization' provides an ambiguous cliché for psychology as the North American and European version of the discipline is being exported widely. After providing a brief history of globalization and the failure of its intended effects I discuss three episodes of psychology's place in a globalized marketplace of ideas; the pre-1900 development of psychology in Germany and North America, the failure of phenomenological psychology in Europe after World War II and the current state of the professionalization of psychology. Psychology has, thus far, largely followed the enthusiasms of the globalizers. While it is far too late to create 'indigenous psychologies,' theory remains a vehicle of questioning, coaxing, and resistance through which to engage the multiplicity of subjectivities that confront us. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Watching for light: Spiritual psychology beyond materialism.

Spiritual psychology is well poised to contribute to the field of psychology by extending a map of human experience beyond materialism. We can expand scientific inquiry to explore consciousness as it pertains to states other than matter. Several of our sibling fields in science have moved well beyond strict materialism, such as academic physics, which includes a branch of quantum physics reliant on consciousness. The great majority of people around the world express an awareness and dialogue with the powerful nonmaterial presence that surrounds us and is in us and view the nonmaterial presence as sacred. Understanding this more fully would seem to be our work as psychologists. In this special section, we consider the vast possibility of the science of psychology to explore, develop theories and models, and generate new methods beyond materialism. Three rigorous and innovative articles are presented by Len Sperry, Kari O’Grady and Scott Richards, and Bruce Greyson, all leading scholars and psychotherapists, who together offer fertile ground for starting to build a spiritual psychology beyond materialism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a truly international psychology: Beyond English only.

It is contended that the development of a truly international psychology is obstructed at this point by the massive disregard of contributions that are published in languages other than English. The role of English as a mutually agreed-on principal medium of international communication in psychology is endorsed. At the same time, 11 suggestions are presented to overcome the linguistic isolation from the communities of psychologists in which languages other than English are used to disseminate findings and conceptions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phenomenological Research Methods for Counseling Psychology.

This article familiarizes counseling psychologists with qualitative research methods in psychology developed in the tradition of European phenomenology. A brief history includes some of Edmund Husserl's basic methods and concepts, the adoption of existential-phenomenology among psychologists, and the development and formalization of qualitative research procedures in North America. The choice points and alternatives in phenomenological research in psychology are delineated. The approach is illustrated by a study of a recovery program for persons repeatedly hospitalized for chronic mental illness. Phenomenological research is compared with other qualitative methods, and some of its benefits for counseling psychology are identified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Epilogue: Watching for light: Spiritual psychology beyond materialism.

The special section and subsequent commentary on “Watching for Light: Spiritual Psychology Beyond Materialism” has initiated a discussion in our collective scholarly space predicated on the possibility that consciousness can exist independently from matter. Our contemporary colleagues in the physical sciences of physics, biology, and engineering have embraced this discussion to great theoretical benefit and enthusiasm within their fields. As theory and research in a spiritually oriented psychology builds outward from this discussion, we have ground to explore well beyond merely empirical proof of the premise; there exists an entirely new vista to emanate from this set of possibilities. The articles and commentaries over these two issues of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (PRS) propose a set of bearings for exploring new ground within research. Among the major themes to emerge are four sets of possibilities, which in this epilogue I offer as being among areas for creative exploration and innovative research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Franz Brentano--Much alive, though dead.

Discusses Franz Brentano's (1838-1917) works on various topics in psychology as well as concepts about the mind. For Brentano, experience revealed, not an inert context of sensations and their combination, but mental acts: sensations exist, but they are not per se mental. What is mental is the activity of seeing a color, smelling an odor, hearing a sound, etc. Brentano separated this active experiencing consciousness, for conceptual purposes largely (his overview tended in a holistic direction), into three aspects: (a) ideas or ideating, by which is meant largely sensing or imagining; (b) judging or judgment, which is not meant in an ethical or logical sense, but is perhaps closer to perception and attention; (c) feeling which develops out of a fundamental loving-hating axis as a point of departure. The author describes Brentano and the Würzberg School as one of the most influential systems of modern psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Logic and psychology": Erratum.

Reports an error in the article by Michael Polanyi (American Psychologist, 1968, 23[1], 27-43). The last sentence of the quotation from Whewell on page 28 should read as follows: "Before this, the facts are seen as detached, separate, lawless; afterwards, they are seen as connected, simple, regular; as parts of one general fact, and thereby possessing innumerable new relations before unseen." (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1990-55831-001). Surveys the nonstrict rules of inference, i.e., informal logic, on which science rests, and describes 3 nonstrict criteria: (1) all knowledge of reality is indeterminate, (2) knowledge of coherence is undefinable, and (3) many of the data on which knowledge rests are unspecifiable. This is termed tacit knowing or tacit inference. The latter is an integration which brings subsidiary elements to bear on the focus of our attention. Consciousness includes a tacit awareness of its subsidiaries. Tacit integration includes observation, discovery, and acquisition of skills. These are all irreducible to explicit processes of deduction. The knowledge of external objects, the body, and living beings are discussed in terms of tacit knowledge. It is felt that philosophy has been misguided by failing to recognize the process of tacit knowing. The process of visual perception and the pursuit of science are compared. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond Aristotle and Galileo: Toward a contextualized psychology of persons.

Psychologists of my generation will recognize the implicit reference in my title immediately: to Kurt Lewin's (1931) classic paper that introduced most of us to the excitement of his ideas when we read it as the initial chapter of A Dynamic Theory of Personality (Lewin, 1935). When Lewin wrote about "The Conflict Between Aristotelian and Galilean Modes of Thought in Contemporary Psychology" over a half a century ago, it was indeed a breath of fresh air. Along with a very few other books and papers, it stands out saliently in my memory as having had a large part in forming my enduring perspective in psychology. It surely played a similar role for many others, by no means just Lewinians. We cannot readily recall its content since we've absorbed it, and built it into the fabric of our thought. I turn back to Lewin's essay because it represents the psysicalist tradition in psychological theory at its best, free of many faults that tainted the behavioristic expressions of positivism. All the same, the hermeneutic and contextualist critique of positivism should leave us dissatisfied with Lewin's version of a Galilean strategy for psychology. In one respect, thus, I am using this occasion for my own "me-too" endorsement of post-positivist theorizing. My second concern here is to focus attention on the need for a culturally and historically contextualized approach in personality theory. Finally, this occasion lets me talk some sense about post-positivist perspectives in psychology. As usual, the conceptual innovators have not been very reasonable. If a contextualized psychology of persons is to be advanced, we need a more plausible version of contextualism than is being argued by the leading polemicists. This is also an effort, therefore, to domesticate a contextualized approach, to accommodate it to its prospective role of defining a new mainstream of theorizing at the softer, more human end of the psychological spectrum. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond initial attraction: Physical attractiveness in newlywed marriage.

Physical appearance plays a crucial role in shaping new relationships, but does it continue to affect established relationships, such as marriage? In the current study, the authors examined how observer ratings of each spouse's facial attractiveness and the difference between those ratings were associated with (a) observations of social support behavior and (b) reports of marital satisfaction. In contrast to the robust and almost universally positive effects of levels of attractiveness on new relationships, the only association between levels of attractiveness and the outcomes of these marriages was that attractive husbands were less satisfied. Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Alterations of Consciousness: An Empirical Analysis for Social Scientists.

Reviews the book by Baruss (see record 2003-02669-000), which reviews the experimental and phenomenological research on alterations of consciousness, ranging from sleep and dreaming to mystical and near-death experience. The reviewer suggests there is a clear agenda announced by the book's subtitle, "An Empirical Analysis for Social Scientists." In the view of Baruss, all too often in states of consciousness research a preoccupation with theory has kept investigators from full engagement with the actual data. The book provides readable and at times appropriately controversial discussions of empirical literature on dreaming and lucid dreams, daydreaming and fantasy proneness, hypnosis, dissociative identity disorder, shamanism and possession states, psychedelic drug research, parapsychology, trance-chanelling and mediumship, the alien abduction syndrome, classical mystical experience, out-of-body and near-death experiences, and recent attempts by MacDonald and others to assess individual differences in spirituality through multifactor questionnaires. However, the reviewer believes that the breadth of coverage of both recent and past research is too often highly selective, and that the author's rejection of theory is both questionable in itself and more illusion than reality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A journal of interest: Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry.

The Review was founded in 1961 to bring an existential and phenomenological approach to the understanding of human experience. With a primary focus on the psychotherapeutic endeavor, the Review publishes original essays and first translations from the fields of literature and philosophy, as well as from psychology and psychiatry proper. The Review has published essays by nearly every major figure in the world, including Viktor Frankl, Eugene Gendlin, Jacques Lacan, R.D. Laing, RolloMay, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacob Needleman, Carl Rogers, and Jean-Paul Sartre. In addition to continuing to publish original essays on a wide variety of general topics, in recent years the Review has published a series of special issues devoted to major figures in the field of existential psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Discovering existence with Husserl.

Reviews the book, Discovering existence with Husserl by Emmanuel Levinas, translated by Richard A. Cohen and Michael B. Smith (1998). The work of Emmanuel Levinas represents one of the most innovative and influential expositions of twentieth-century phenomenology. His thought represents a radically new interpretation of the phenomenological project, the meaning of ethics, and the role of ontology and metaphysics in our discussion of the Other and the Good. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Entering the sacred: Prologue to a theory of transcendent consciousness.

The thesis of this paper is that the established profane knowledge of psychology is proving inadequate to contemporary human experience (Grof, 1985), and that psychology now has no choice but to "enter the sacred" by acknowledging and investigating integrative experiences associated with states of transcendent consciousness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond stimulus cues and reinforcement signals: A new approach to animal metacognition.

Some metacognition paradigms for nonhuman animals encourage the alternative explanation that animals avoid difficult trials based only on reinforcement history and stimulus aversion. To explore this possibility, we placed humans and monkeys in successive uncertainty-monitoring tasks that were qualitatively different, eliminating many associative cues that might support transfer across tasks. In addition, task transfer occurred under conditions of deferred and rearranged feedback—both species completed blocks of trials followed by summary feedback. This ensured that animals received no trial-by-trial reinforcement. Despite distancing performance from associative cues, humans and monkeys still made adaptive uncertainty responses by declining the most difficult trials. These findings suggest that monkeys' uncertainty responses could represent a higher-level, decisional process of cognitive monitoring, though that process need not involve full self-awareness or consciousness. The dissociation of performance from reinforcement has theoretical implications concerning the status of reinforcement as the critical binding force in animal learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)