The Indispensable Subject of Psychology: Theory, Subjectivity and the Specter of Inner Life

Kirschner, Suzanne R.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-16762-2_6

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…These theories and theorists are very diverse, but all take as a first premise that social relations and structures, as well as cultural symbols and rituals, form human experience and activity in irreducible ways. A corollary of this premise is that the phenomena psychologists study cannot be fully disentangled from those “contextual” elements (Kirschner, 2010, 2015, 2019b).…”

Section: Theory and Psychology For The Time Beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What Wrong asserted for social theory (and its implicit psychology), I believe is also true for psychology. Any social or sociocultural psychology that does not include these dimensions in how it theorizes and analyzes people’s motives, personalities, and actions, can certainly be useful and illuminating for some purposes, but it is not a “complete” psychology (James, 1902/1982; Kirschner, 2000, 2019b).…”

Section: Theory and Psychology For The Time Beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While I continue to appreciate the value and usefulness of these approaches for studying social life, I also remain concerned about the consequences, for psychological theory and inquiry, of totalizing two intertwined assumptions upon which nearly all of them seem to rest (Kirschner, 2010, 2015, 2019b). First, there is an assumption that individual personhood or subjectivity emerges entirely from social contexts (whether these are described as discursive, linguistic, relational, cultural, historical, and/or political–economic).…”

Section: Dissolving the Problem: The Subject As Sociality And Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most sociocultural theories acknowledge the existence of conflict (at interpersonal, intra-personal, and/or intergroup levels) and also offer accounts of agency and resistance, 2 but what I am referring to is something different from what they mean in their accounts of those phenomena. I am talking about the need to factor into human individuality the existence of counter-currents and undertows that in some (not necessarily temporal, and admittedly difficult to articulate) sense “precede” our socially constructed subjectivity or personhood (Kirschner, 2012, 2019a, 2019b), and can continue to pull the individual in divergent directions. 3…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 4. For several decades, psychosocial theorists working within broadly discursivist or critical psychology traditions have made valuable contributions (see, e.g., Frosh, 2003; Hollway & Jefferson, 2013; Layton, 2008; Hook as cited in Montagner, 2014; Walkerdine & Jimenez, 2012; Wetherell, 2003). Although in this essay I limit discussion of psychoanalytically oriented sociocultural psychology to person-centered ethnography, a fuller theoretical and methodological development of the present project must draw upon these and other psychosocial theorists’ important work (see also Kirschner, 2019b), as well as that of Cresswell (2013), Hanna (2013), and others. …”

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confidence: 99%

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Beyond the oversocialized conception of the subject in psychology: Desire, conflict, and the problem of social order

Kirschner

2020

Theory & Psychology

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The question of how individual human beings achieve stable and collaborative social relations, given that they also have diverging desires and interests, remains important for any psychology or psychological metatheory concerned with the study of individuals in social life. Yet, many influential sociocultural psychologies have, in effect, denied that question’s validity. Discursive, hermeneutic, relational, and some critical psychologies overemphasize the constitutive force of social interactivity and cultural meanings for individual subjectivity, emotion, and other putative psychological phenomena. Using the case of positioning theory, I argue that sociocultural approaches, while of great value, take those “oversocialized” assumptions too far and do not adequately account for the moral complexities and tragic existential realities of human individual and social life. Those dimensions can be more fully theorized and studied using a cultural psychology that retains cultural–phenomenological and symbolic interactionist elements but also includes a set of broadly psychodynamic assumptions and methods.

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Section: Theory and Psychology For The Time Beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theory and Psychology For The Time Beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Dissolving the Problem: The Subject As Sociality And Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond the oversocialized conception of the subject in psychology: Desire, conflict, and the problem of social order

Kirschner

2020

Theory & Psychology

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Defining Behavior and its Relationship to the Science of Psychology

Henriques

Michalski

2019

Integr. psych. behav.

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What does it mean to say science is gendered?

Kirschner

2020

Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology

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College of the Holy CrossQuestions about the relationship between gender and science have been explored from multiple angles, often in conjunction with the need to account for women's underrepresentation or marginalization in many scientific fields. The articles in this special issue target many kinds of scientific institutions and aspects of scientific inquiry and thus vary in what these articles mean when the term "science" is used. They also focus on a wide range of phenomena and processes in the discussions of what is gendered (i.e., associated with masculinity or femininity) about science and how those elements reflect and affect the situations of women in science and in society. As such work continues, it will be important to not lump together the many meanings of "gendering science" as if these meanings are all equally plausible and consequential. In particular, we should be cautious about reading into apparently gendered patterns of comportment a deeper set of differences between women's and men's ways of conducting or processing scientific (or any intellectual) inquiry. We should be similarly cautious regarding suggestions that there are inherently gendered aspects of scientific knowledge. Public Significance StatementThis commentary highlights the wide range of reasons offered for why women have been underrepresented or marginalized in many scientific fields. It explores how the articles in this special issue propose several different possible ways that scientific institutions and practices might be "gendered." It urges caution regarding suggestions of gender differences in ways of knowing, and also warns against claims that there are inherently gendered aspects of scientific knowledge.

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The Indispensable Subject of Psychology: Theory, Subjectivity and the Specter of Inner Life

Cited by 4 publications

References 38 publications

Beyond the oversocialized conception of the subject in psychology: Desire, conflict, and the problem of social order

Beyond the oversocialized conception of the subject in psychology: Desire, conflict, and the problem of social order

Defining Behavior and its Relationship to the Science of Psychology

What does it mean to say science is gendered?

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