A New Fertile Psychology? A Practical Book Review Essay

Raising Questions with Lamiell about Future Research Directions of Critical Personalism: A Book Review Essay

The present article is a book review essay about James T. Lamiell's Primer in Critical Personalism: A Framework for Reviving Psychological Inquiry and for Grounding a Socio-cultural Ethos published in February 2024. In the beginning of the paper, I am outlining the core tenets of the book that is its separation into two major sections. In the first, Lamiell shows us the origins of psychological research in Germany in the laboratory of Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig and his peculiar notion of generalizing knowledge. Here, the American psychologist explains that Wundt and his assistants were far away of generalizing knowledge in the way mainstream psychology does today - that is on an aggregate, population-based knowledge. On the contrary, Wundt and his colleagues were generalizing knowledge more in a systemic manner - something which is also in line with the work of William Stern and his critical personalism. Lamiell applies the core tenets of critical personology - that originate in the notion of the adoption of self-purposes (values) which become then linked to foreign purposes/values and produces something higher over the course of that process. Lamiell expands this successfully to the domain of informal focus groups discussing racial issues and how psycho-demographic research comes to fixate individuals into categories that do not apply to the individual level. As such, the American psychologist accomplishes to show that inferential statistics is not only scientifically unsound for many research questions but that it also comes with moral and ethical concerns that should be addressed by scientists. At the end of the book review essay, I point out several pathways of future research - that is the link between critical personalism, phenomenology, existentialism and psychoanalysis as well as how Lamiell would construct and co-construct concrete interventions to facilitate introception to take place in his informal focus groups. I conclude the article by stressing the major highlight of Lamiell's book - that is the interpersonal benefits of adopting a critical personological perspective in science and in life.

Relating Cultural Psychology and Eco-phenomenology − Setting the Seeds for a Fertile Cooperation

In the present paper, I relate cultural psychology with eco-phenomenology. I am showing that both sciences draw on similar scientific underpinnings. Here, it is to note that cultural psychology as well as eco-phenomenology analyze a person’s relatedness towards an object. In phenomenology we speak of human landscapes whereas cultural psychology draws on the notion of action fields. Yet, both sciences only come into being while analyzing a person-environment-unit. Moreover, an action field (or landscape) develops between past and future, thus has a horizon of former and further experiences. However, this experience is shaped by other people’s experience, limited or expanded. Furthermore, it is only possible to analyze—in cultural psychology—as well as phenomenology—those meaningful environments by immerging into the action field of the social other. Statistical methods do bracket that environment. However, it is from cultural psychology that phenomenology can learn to incorporate a theory of activity, thus of psychic and physical energy. It is from phenomenology that cultural psychology might incorporate a complex theory of the phenomenological reduction with various opportunities for its application fields such as for the dialogical-self-theory. I end the article in appealing to path a way for a fertile cooperation.

Setting the Seeds for a Normative Expansion of Lewinian Field Theory for Cultural-Psychological Practitioners

In the present article, I am examining, expanding, and re-evaluating a Lewinian kind of cultural psychology for cultural-psychological informed practitioners. Originating from Lewinian field theory that behavior is a function of a person and environment, B(f) = P,E, I am introducing a specific equation wanting to illustrate Lewin’s theory about cultural psychology. A person is driven by specific needs and goals that develop while him relating to his very own environment. Yet, how these needs and goals are pursued and satisfied (I call that trajectories) depends to a large degree upon his social environment showing him not only which goals are worth pursuing but also which ways to choose in order to attain them. Culture is thus a function of a person’s needs and goals that develop while him relating to his environment and henceforth to the life space of the social other—such as to one’s family—but also implying a specific unique social situatedness within the environment that can alter the culturally accepted way how to reach a specific goal. It is within such a perspective that I deduce a normative appeal character of cultural psychology grounded within Lewinian field theory that can be made fertile for people identifying as cultural-psychological practitioners. In the second part of the article, I am comparing a Lewinian (normative) understanding of cultural psychology with other prominent theories such as the one of Boesch, Bruner, and Valsiner reaching the conclusion that such a Lewinian understanding of cultural psychology is in accordance with their theories.

Culture in the Seminar Room of Poetry: Poetic Insights for Cultural Psychology

Some relations between poetry and Cultural Psychology have been investigated in the past. Yet, the very nature of poetry and its fundamental links to Cultural Psychology remain uninvestigated. By outlining the essence of poetry – its rhythmic-melodic, linguistically pictorial character – I show how poetry is in deep accordance with Cultural Psychology of Semiotic Dynamics. Poetry is all about experiences and emotions; these emotive experiences explain the basic relatedness of a person towards an object and shed light onto the complex processes of sign construction. It is only while taking into account the genetic Gestalt, previous and subsequent elements within a specific rhythmic and pictorial form that we are able to unravel this specific relatedness. Different poetic texts might then treat the same object but the relatedness towards it might diverge drastically. Based on these poetic elements, I define culture as a poetic field. Referring to a fictitious example, I explain that researchers and practitioners need to take into account a person’s complex rhythmic actions, that are divided genetically into different forms to understand his/her complex experiences of the environment. Then this illuminative power of relatedness sheds light onto the dynamically complex structuring and re-structuring of culture.