Freud's forgotten evolutionary project.

In the last decades psychoanalysis has tended to recast itself as a hermeneutic discipline geared at the retelling of human lives, and Freud is recast as a great writer in the humanist tradition rather than as the scientist as which he saw himself. Although this reconceptualization has good reasons, it tends to obscure the fact that Freud primarily saw himself as a theorist of human nature. One of Freud's deepest convictions was that psychopathology needs to be explained on the basis of evolutionary biology. This paper argues that this may have been one of Freud's greatest ideas. The reason it has been "repressed" by psychoanalysis is that Freud based it on Lamarckian principles. The current flourishing of evolutionary psychology and psychiatry may well turn Freud into one of the precursors of the psychology of the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A hermeneutics of exploration: The interpretive turn from binswanger to gadamer.

The interpretive turn in psychology is strongly indebted to the hermeneutic philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. What is less known is the degree to which the interpretive turn is already initiated in the 1920s by the Swiss psychiatrist, Ludwig Binswanger (1881–1965). For Binswanger, the objective of psychology and psychopathology is to understand how the person exists and relates to others in the world—and this can only be achieved through a situated understanding of the person in his or her life-world. Binswanger is one of the first to recognize and work out the contributions of Husserl's and Heidegger's philosophies for psychology. Using an approach that combines elements from phenomenology, hermeneutics and dialogical philosophy, Binswanger views the person not as an object, but as fundamentally immersed in a world of human relating. Yet Binswanger is not a Heideggerian, and does not identify his work as existential. Instead, he develops a dialogical perspective on human experience that parallels important aspects of Gadamer's hermeneutics. Drawing chiefly on untranslated texts, I maintain that Binswanger's hermeneutics of exploration forms an important, if relatively unknown chapter of the interpretive turn in psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud's relevance for contemporary psychoanalytic technique.

It is argued that Freud's influence on contemporary technique is best seen by separating Freud as a hermeneuticist from Freud as a natural scientist. Freud's hermeneutic work is elucidated by a depiction of his earliest model of technique and its application in The Interpretation of Dreams. The division of the latter work into the first 6 chapters as a hermeneutic and the last chapter as a metapsychology is used to show not only the split but the conflict in Freud between his hermeneutic of the mind and his attempt to found psychoanalysis as a natural science. It is shown that the shift in analytic thinking from the primacy of drives to the growth and transformation of the self has maintained interpretation as a necessary, although insufficient, condition for the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis and that interpretation continues to bear the stamp of Freud's hermeneutic of the mind. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Personology: Method and content in personality assessment and psychobiography.

Reviews the book, Personology: Method and content in personality assessment and psychobiography by Irving E. Alexander (see record 1990-97879-000). The subtitle accurately specifies the scope of this volume, and the title, Personology, identifies the book with the tradition of Henry A. Murray and the Harvard Psychological Clinic, which focused on idiographic, holistic, psychodynamic personality assessment. The book is relevant to modern psychoanalysis in two distinct ways. On one hand, it attempts, with unusual success, to systematize the principles of psychodynamic interpretation that are common to many versions of psychoanalysis ("method" in "personality assessment," in the book's title). On the other hand, it applies these principles to illuminate salient ways in which the inner lives of major contributors to psychoanalytic theory (Freud, Jung, and Sullivan) may have shaped their theoretical contributions (i.e., "content" and "psychobiography" in the title). The psychobiographical chapters should fascinate readers already familiar with biographical studies of these Olympian innovators, and because of the general familiarity of the terrain, the chapters serve very well the didactic purpose of illustrating how personological inference is done. Recent polemics have made much of the hermeneutic approach to human psychology, as alternative to scientistic positivism, but not very much is being written on how to do hermeneutics, and little has been produced to show that it is worth doing. Personology is therefore a rare contribution that deserves to be widely read and pondered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hermeneutic inquiry in the study of human contact.

Draws upon the work of M. Heidegger (1927 [1962]) to compare hermeneutics with the other major paradigms of inquiry and explanation in psychology—rationalism (cognitivism and structuralism) and empiricism (experimentalism and behaviorism). These paradigms are compared in terms of their view of the form and origin of knowledge, notions of the proper object of study, and the type of explanation each seeks. In the process, the 3 modes of engagement distinguished by Heidegger are described: the ready-to-hand, the unready-to-hand, and the present-at-hand. A study of moral conflicts, which developed between college students during a prisoner's dilemma game, is used as an example of the form a hermeneutic inquiry can take. Advantages of the interpretive nature of the hermeneutic approach are discussed. (59 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Entering the circle: Hermeneutic investigation in psychology.

Reviews the book, Entering the circle: Hermeneutic investigation in psychology edited by R.B. Addison and M.J. Packer (1989). Entering the Circle is highly recommended, if only to familiarize us with (or remind us of) the penetrating critique and contribution that hermeneutic thought offers psychology. In addition this book should be recommended because it contains, perhaps more so then other books of this genre, a diverse group of essays (dealing with developmental, clinical, social and educational psychology) that grapple with methodological and practical issues of hermeneutic psychology by reporting on research that is grounded, to a greater or lesser extent, in a hermeneutic approach. Also, another distinctive aspect of this book is that it is almost entirely devoted to the concerns of hermeneutics (the catchword "interpretive," often used in this book, I take to be interchangeable with "hermeneutic"), and thereby distinguishes itself from what has come to be known as existential or phenomenological psychologies—a distinction that for many purposes is unnecessary but may prove to be helpful in the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The diverging force of imitation: Integrating cognitive science and hermeneutics.

Recent research on infant and animal imitation and on mirror neuron systems has brought imitation back in focus in psychology and cognitive science. This topic has always been important for philosophical hermeneutics as well, focusing on theory and method of understanding. Unfortunately, relations between the scientific and the hermeneutic approaches to imitation and understanding have scarcely been investigated, to the loss of both disciplines. In contrast to the cognitive scientific emphasis on sharing and convergence of representations, the hermeneutic analysis emphasizes the indeterminacy and openness of action understanding due to preunderstanding, action configuration, and the processual nature of understanding. This article discusses empirical evidence in support of these aspects and concludes that hermeneutics can contribute to the scientific investigation of imitation and understanding. Since, conversely, some grounding--and constraining--aspects of hermeneutics may be derived from cognitive science, both should be integrated in a multilevel explanation of imitation and understanding. This holds also for explanations that are largely based on mirror neuron systems, since these appear to be sensitive to developmental and experiential factors, too. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Freud's case studies--Self-psychological perspectives.

Reviews the book, Freud's case studies--Self-psychological perspectives edited by Barry Magid (see record 1993-97398-000). The authors of the chapters demonstrate varying capacities to understand that all understanding is theory bound. The result is that some lean toward the position that self psychology offers us the true perspective through which we can understand a patient, whereas Freud was woefully lacking in any interest in immersing himself in the subjective experience of the patient. Empathy is seen by some authors as the exclusive domain of the self psychologists. By the end of this fascinating volume, one is newly excited by the depth psychology revealed via Freud's discoveries and by the possibilities of a continuing legacy of discovery. Familiar patients are revealed in new ways, giving evidence of the evolving nature of this complex science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Current dilemmas, hermeneutics, and power.

A key to the shortcomings and confusions afflicting 20th century social science seems to be problematic moral underpinnings or "disguised ideologies" that drive much of its research and theory. Philosophical hermeneutics shows great promise for diagnosing this condition and reorienting human science inquiry in helpful ways. However, it has been suggested by a number of thoughtful critics that hermeneutics has not yet taken the full measure of the kinds of "power" that can imbue and distort human communication, including social theory and research. This paper addresses several of these critiques, finds merit in them, but argues that such concerns about power may be able to be addressed more adequately by a hermeneutic approach than by the viewpoints from which they are raised. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

G. Stanley Hall's conception of mental development and some indications of its influence on developmental psychology.

Notes influences of Hall's thinking both in and out of psychology. Parallels are suggested between Hall and several leading developmental theorists, i.e., Freud, Jung, Werner, Vygotsky, and Piaget. Speculative reasons for Hall's obscurity included the theoretical importance which he attached to the scientifically unfashionable concepts of recapitulation and inheritance of acquired characteristics. It is suggested that Hall's ideas should be reexamined for their implications for most present-day developmental theories. (24 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality and psychopathology: A historical perspective.

The possible links between personality psychology and psychopathology are examined with the goal of understanding the constraints that set boundaries to the possible contributions of one to the other. The reciprocal nature of these contributions is described. The historical survey looks at the early concepts of the humors and temperament; at the concept of a general vulnerability to psychosis and deviance, represented by the 19th-century concept of degeneracy; and at later typologies arising from the work of H. J. Eysenck, Freud, E. Kretschmer, Pavlov, and W. H. Sheldon. The impact of current developments in neuropsychology and in cognitive psychology is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theory and Research on Practices, Theory and Research as Practices: Hermeneutics and Psychological Inquiry.

What are the implications for theory and research in psychology of a hermeneutic perspective that takes practices as its starting point notion? The author addresses this wide-ranging issue by considering a number of specific questions in turn, including, among others, whether the hermeneutic perspective leads to rejecting systematic, quantitative research methods; whether it leads to the conclusion that efforts at theory and research provide us with an understanding of human behavior that is arbitrary; and whether a practices-based perspective points to a way of pursuing inquiry in psychology that is better than proceeding along the lines of mainstream psychology. The answers to these questions include a number of surprises, especially regarding how the hermeneutic perspective contrasts with mainstream psychology and how it differs from social constructionism. The author also identifies challenging issues for adherents of the hermeneutic perspective, including, in particular, issues concerning the limits of what we can know about psychological phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hermeneutics and psychology: A review and dialectical model.

The authors encourage psychologists to transcend the simple but often made a contrast of quantitative and qualitative epistemologies by reissuing a call to consider a hermeneutical realist perspective. The authors recognize that such calls are not new and have largely gone unheeded in the past, perhaps because of how a more radical hermeneutical perspective has been conceptualized and communicated. Rooted in P. Ricoeur's (1981) philosophy of distanciation, the authors propose a dialectic of understanding and explanation that values both quantitative and qualitative methodologies by (a) tracing the philosophical development of hermeneutics as a paradigm for knowing, (b) demonstrating useful hermeneutical applications to psychology as a whole and to some specific subdisciplines, and (c) illustrating how a hermeneutic realist approach is beneficial to the multicultural study of virtue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Muzafer Sherif (1906–1988).

The death of Muzafer Sherif marked the passing of one of social psychology's most historically significant figures. The work of few individuals has shaped social psychology and kindred disciplines as much as the series of studies composed of Sherif's doctoral research on social norms and perception conducted at Columbia University in 1935, the Robbers Cave Experiment on intergroup relations in 1954, and his landmark work on reference groups, the self, social judgment, communication, and attitude formation and change. All of his research and writings—theoretical, empiricial, and methodological—probed in one way or another the extent to which attitudes, internalized norms, and other components of the self, under specified stimulus conditions, serve as the dominant anchorage within the total frame of reference and most heavily influence judgment and perception, conceived by him as prototypes of all cognitive functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anna Freud (1895–1982).

Presents an obituary for Anna Freud. No one would have been more surprised than Anna Freud herself to find a memorial tribute to her in the pages of the American Psychologist. She never took a course in psychology and always referred to her field as psychoanalysis, not psychology. It is perhaps a sign of the changing face of American psychology that this obituary has been requested. Anna Freud was born on December 3, 1895, and was the last of Sigmund Freud's six children and the third of his daughters. None of the other children went anywhere near the practice of analysis. With the death of Anna Freud on October 9, 1982, at the age of 86, the last direct link to the founder of psychoanalysis has disappeared. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on everyday psychopathology and narcissism.

Presents evidence in support of H. Kohut's (1971, 1977) psychology of the self that is derived from an examination of psychopathology of the self in everyday life. Themes considered include narcissistic disturbances stimulated by common situations, the need to be sustained by self objects and the idealization of sports or entertainment figures, the role of sports as a means to act out fantasies of omnipotence, and the effect of illness on narcissistic fantasies of invulnerability. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hermeneutics and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy

Psychic or psychosomatic disorders--symptoms as well as the structures on the basis of which symptoms usually develop--include substantial impairment of communication. Psychogenic symptoms often seem incomprehensible and strange. Psychotherapy then involves the figuring out of the meaning of a symptom and, at the same time, the effecting of change in the sense of an enhancement of communication. Here, philosophic hermeneutics can point the way for psychotherapeutic reflection. Hermeneutics, when applied to psychotherapy, is the art of understanding and of making understood when the means of understanding and agreement between persons is disturbed. The psychotherapeutic process itself is executed within a "hermeneutic circle." A short case presentation illustrates the hermeneutic technique.     

What is remembered about early childhood events?

Almost 100 years ago, Freud identified infantile or childhood amnesia, the difficulty that most adults have remembering events from their first years of life. Recent research in cognitive psychology has in fact demonstrated a paucity of verbal memories of early life experiences. Although Freud believed that childhood memories are repressed, modern explanations for childhood amnesia focus instead on cognitive and social developmental advances of the early preschool years. According to the social interaction hypothesis, a narrative sense of self emerges as a result of parent-child conversations about the past. Implications of autobiographical memory research for models of adult attachment and psychotherapy are discussed.