Changing Conceptions of Psychological Life

Changing Conceptions of Psychological Life is an interdisciplinary look at personal constructions of self. This book is a product of the 30th Annual Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society. The contributing authors constitute the original cast invited to speak on the theme of how individuals come to construe psychological lives--their own and others. Their concerns are how our sense of ourselves emerges developmentally, culturally, and historically, and the implications such constructions have for personal, social, and political change. Together, the authors compose an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars well regarded for their work on topics as diverse as adolescence, language, aging, romance, and morality. Creating a level of discourse about selves and mind--and how they have been and should be studied--the volume is broken down into four parts; Part I includes work that is principally concerned with elevating the position of our experience of ourselves in constructing who we are. The next section focuses on the corrections presumed to exist between the conceptions of self and the conceptions of mental life. Each chapter offers additional information on the dynamics of temperament, attachment, personality, and regulation. Part III is concerned with cultural contexts that frame developing conceptions of self and mental life. Finally, the last section situates conceptions of mental life directly and dramatically in the social contexts of their making. Readers will find in these pages a programmatic effort variously attuned to selves and minds as dynamic and structured, present and represented, felt and known, non-languaged and storied, and embodied and theorized. The volume is suitable for certain upper-level undergraduate and graduate seminars dealing with clinical, cognitive, cultural, and developmental matters and sought out by active researchers and practitioners in the field.

Contents: Preface. Part I: Self as Known and as Experienced. A. Blasi, Neither Personality Nor Cognition: An Alternative Approach to the Nature of the Self. D. Polkinghorne, Ricoeur, Narrative, and Personal Identity. L. Nucci, The Promise and Limitations of the Moral Self Construct. Part II: Self and Mind. A. Demetriou, Unity and Modularity in the Mind and the Self: Towards a General Theory. D.M. Peterson, J.E. Marcia, J.I.M. Carpendale, Identity: Does Thinking Make It So? L.J. Moses, S.M. Carlson, Self-Regulation and Children's Theories of Mind. Part III: Self, Mind, and Culture. D. Holland, Self and Power in the World of Romance: Extending Sociogenic Theories. D. Moshman, Theories of Self and Theories as Selves: Identity in Rwanda. C. Lalonde, M. Chandler, Culture, Selves, and Time: Theories of Personal Persistence in Native and Non-Native Youth. Part IV: The Social Construction of Self. T.R. Sarbin, A Preface to the Epistemology of Identity. R. Harré, The Social Construction of Persons. A.O. Rorty, Improvisatory Accident-Prone Dramas of (What Passes for) a Person's Life.