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General Human Psychology

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Jaan Valsiner

    1. Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

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  • Provides a unique new view on human mind in its societal context
  • Breaks down the border of science and art—richly illustrated
  • Unites general psychology with cultural psychology

Part of the book series: Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences (THHSS)

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Table of contents (13 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvi
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  2. Phenomenology of the Psyche and Semiotic Foundations for Human Psychology

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Constructing and Destroying One’s Life: Phenomenology of the Human Life Course

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 3-24

    3. Signs in Minds: Semiotic Basis for the New General Psychology

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 25-50

    4. Mediating Mind: Making Values

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 51-74

  3. The Depth of Human Subjectivity

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 75-75
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    2. Silent Screaming: Voices Within the Self

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 77-97

    3. Disquieting Societies

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 99-123

  4. Societal Framing: Demand, Direction and Catalysis

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 125-125
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    2. Constructing Loyalties: Dialogues Between Rights and Duties

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 127-149

    3. Masked Morality: Theatrical Reality of Living

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 151-180

    4. Monuments and Memory: Imagination Amplified and Objectified

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 181-209

    5. Political Capture of the Human Minds: Escalations and Resistances

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 211-242

  5. Person in the Mirror of Oneself: Qualitative Structures in Dynamic Transformations

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 243-243
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    2. Desires for Beauty: The Making and Maintaining Affective Fields

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 245-257

    3. From Wanting to Acting: Pathways to Personal Desire

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 259-276

  6. Synthesis of Cultural Personology

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 277-277
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    2. How to Investigate Complex Personological Processes?

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 279-299

    3. Final Conclusions: General Principles of Cultural Personology

      • Jaan Valsiner
      Pages 301-313

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 315-321
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Keywords

About this book

The book includes a new theoretical synthesis of William Stern’s classic personology published in the 1930s with contemporary cultural psychology of semiotic mediation developed by the author over the last two decades. It looks at the human mind as it operates in its full complexity, starting from the most complex general levels of aesthetic and political participation in society and ending with individual willful actions in everyday life contexts.

 

Reviews

“Valsiner’s proposal for a new general psychology which grounds its foundation in semiotics and develops within an epistemological dynamic, integrational and dialogue-based framework is intriguing and challenging. Aspiring to move within fragmentations and towards such a theoretical synthesis, along with the adoption of a methodology allowing the creation of adequate methods and a research evaluation process, could represent the evolutionary change that has not been observed in psychology for too long.” (Raffaele Modugno, Human Arenas, Vol. 5 (4), 2022)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Jaan Valsiner

About the author

Jaan Valsiner is a cultural psychologist with a consistently developmental axiomatic base that is brought to analyses of any psychological or social phenomena. He is the founding editor (1995) of the Sage journal, Culture & Psychology. And Editor-in-Chief of Springer’s Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science. He has been Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark in 2013-2018 and Professeur invitee at University of Luxembourg (2013-2019).  He has published and edited around 50 books, the most pertinent of which are his monographs The guided mind (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1998),  Culture in minds and societies (New Delhi: Sage, 2007), and Ornamented Lives (Charlotte NC: Information Age, 2019).  He has been awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize of 1995 in Germany, and the Hans-Kilian-Preis of 2017, for his interdisciplinary work on human development, as well as Senior Fulbright Lecturing Award in Brazil 1995-1997. He has been a visiting professor in Brazil, Japan, Australia, Estonia. Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. 

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