[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] Constructionists operationalize a powerful notion they share with constructivists: individual learning is facilitated by building models of specific ideas, concepts, methods, objects, environments, feelings, dreams, memories and sounds using the learner’s current stock of knowledge. Constructionists do this by building models or artifacts that can be externally manipulated, interrogated by their builder, and verbally shared with others. Constructionists believe that new knowledge is created during these discussions. Constructionism is rich with heuristic methods (...) for both finding and constructing artifacts and for discussing these artifacts privately and publicly. Constructionists argue that both constructing and discussing are necessary for deep sense-making. This paper describes one specific constructionist learning method: visual modeling. It illustrates one educator’s approach, developed in the classroom over a 40-year period. It references the relevant literature; describes its pedagogic approach, materials and outcomes; and it offers a step-by-step example of one student’s thinking process. Finally, it presents – in appropriate narrative form – 15 arguments why the visual component extends the constructionist project and should be integrated into more educational programs. (shrink)

Though “dwelling” is more commonly associated with Heidegger’s philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, “being-at-home” is in fact integral to Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-Ponty’s more familiar notions of the “lived body” and the “level,” and, in particular, I consider how the unique intertwining of activity and passivity that characterizes our being-at-home is essential to our nature as free beings. I argue that while being-at-home is essentially an experience of passivity—i.e., one that (...) rests in the background of our experience and provides a support and structure for our life that goes largely unnoticed and that is significantly beyond our “conscious” control—being-at-home is also a way of being to which we attain . This analysis of home reveals important psychological insights into the nature of our freedom as well as into the nature of the development of our adult ways of coping and behaving. (shrink)

Cancer has long been a cultural touchstone: a metaphor of devastation and a spectre of social as well as bodily anomie and loss. Yet recent years have witnessed significant transformations in perceptions of cancer, particularly in perceptions of the cancer patient. This paper is concerned with the ‘struggles of subjectivity’ emergent in this transvalued cancer culture. Explored from the standpoint of the ‘bad patient’, and drawing on media and cultural methodologies, the paper will consider the convergence of medicine, morality and (...) popular iconography as they are embedded in the imageries, imaginaries and representational economies of the cancer culture industry. Of particular concern in this context are the (re)composures of the patient, as liminal figure, caught between clinical imperative and cultural fantasy. (shrink)

Yoga is a unique form of expert movement that promotes an increasingly subtle interpenetration of thought and movement. The mindful nature of its practice, even at expert levels, challenges the idea that thought and mind are inevitably disruptive to absorbed coping. Building on parallel phenomenological and ethnographic studies of skilful performance and embodied apprenticeship, we argue for the importance in yoga of mental access to embodied movement during skill execution by way of a case study of instruction and practice in (...) two related traditions, Iyengar and Anusara. Sharing a pose repertoire, they are based on distinctive philosophical systems with different teaching styles and metaphoric structures. To address relations between pedagogy and practice in embodied expertise, and to investigate the reciprocal influences of embodiment and thought, we explore in detail the linguistically mediated learning context where practitioners work with yoga teachers. Here, the mind/body problem comes to practical life. We demonstrate the effects of words on bodies, as knowledge is literally incorporated. We show why interpersonal influence on our movement capacities is sometimes needed to enhance expertise. We theorize and identify ‘signature patterns of tension’ among practitioners. These patterns have four sources: ghost gestures, innate differences in bodily form, functional fusing, and signature patterns of affective experience, modulation and expression. These patterns of tension produce ‘silent zones’, cognitively impenetrable actions, functional fusing of a skilful, compensatory form, and signature patterns of pain and damage. We show how instruction can disrupt these silent zones, enhancing mental and physical flexibility. (shrink)

Recent neuro-psychoanalytic literature has emphasized the view that our subjective identity rests on ancient subcortical neuro-psychic processes expressing unthinking forms of experience, which are “affectively intense without being known” (Solms and Panksepp, 2012). Devoid of internal representations, the emotional states of our “core-Self” (Panksepp, 1998b) are entirely “projected” towards the external world and tend to be discharged through instinctual action-patterns. However, due to the close connections between the subcortical and the cortical midline brain, the emotional drives may also find a (...) way to be reflected within an intrinsic self-referential processing, evident when the organism is not actively engaged with the external world. Thanks to such endogenous functioning, the core-Self emotional dispositions are not overtly executed, but they are organized within coherent dynamic mental structures, called “feeling-toned complexes” by C.G. Jung and “unconscious phantasies” by Melanie Klein. The intrinsic self-referential dynamism of the ‘brainmind’ originated from REM sleep arousal and then evolved in the resting-state activity of a complex of cortico-limbic midline brain structures (CMS), also called Default Mode Network (DMN). From our neuro-ethological perspective, it is sustained by an “introverted” SEEKING activity leading to the subjective exploration of internally constructed virtual scenarios. This “mind wandering” function, implicated in dreaming, fantasy processing, remembering and thinking, is the essence of the imaginative function and constitutes the first form of reflection, where intentions and drives gain a primordial form of conscious (but not self-conscious) representation. During postnatal development, this original (“archetypal”) imaginative function is slowly attuned in a relational “transitional” space and may be expressed first in non-verbal and eventually in abstract-verbal social communicative patterns. Our view has noticeable implications for psychotherapy. Instead of trying to directly modify interpersonal, extrinsic relationships (a top-down approach), dysfunctional emotional-relational patterns may be modified by a process in which the patient is helped to let-go of the perceived feeling-objects in favor of an immersion, via the actual feeling, from the superficial level of perception towards a void feeling-state, empty of images. Only starting from this “anoetic” feeling-state, the deep imaginal creative and re-structuring self-referential activity may be reactivated by a process of spontaneous imagination. (shrink)

The article explores the place of affect in community relations with respect to trauma following the closure of a steelworks for a working-class community in the South Wales valleys in 2002. A review of sociological approaches to community demonstrates the poor handling of relational and affective aspects which, it is argued, are central to the way in which community relations were formed and provided a safe and containing skin against the uncertainty of industrial production. Using psychoanalytic approaches to affect which (...) stress the importance of skin, particularly the work of Bick, Tustin, Winnicott and Anzieu, the article explores how a sense of a containing skin provides a feeling of ontological security for a community beset by uncertainty and insecurity. It is argued that, following the closure of the steelworks in 2002, this skin is ruptured and that it is difficult for the members of the community to find a way forward. Using examples taken from psychosocial interviews with community members, the case is made for a range of affective relations and practices through which the skin is created. The absence of these practices and relations creates a profound sense of lack of safety and fear of death within the inhabitants, which needs to be addressed, but is rarely discussed in approaches to community or regeneration. (shrink)

Aesthetic experience has been relativized and marginalized by recent social and cultural theory. As less attention has been paid to understanding the nature of aesthetic experience than mapping the distributed social correlates of tastes, its transformative potential and capacity to animate actors’ imaginations and actions goes unexplored. In this paper we draw upon a large number of in-depth interviews with performing arts audiences around Australia to investigate the language and discourse used to describe aesthetic experiences. In particular, we begin with (...) theorizations of the subject-object nexus within object-relations theory to consider the transformative potential of aesthetic experience. Using these literatures, and extending them to others within sociology of the arts and materiality, our focus is on the way aesthetic experience can fuse human subjects with aesthetic objects. We examine how viewers take an aesthetic object into themselves and in turn project themselves into the aesthetic object by various visual and imaginative techniques. Our theoretical and empirical analysis bears out the constructive and productive capacity of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

This thesis constructs a model of the material causes of the capacity of individuals to act at work, by using the ontology of scientific realism to facilitate a synthesis between Marx and Foucault. This synthetic model is submitted as a solution to the long-standing problem of Industrial Relations theory, now manifest in the deconstruction of the organon of 'control'. The problems of 'control' are rooted in the radical concept of power and traditional, base/superstructure, interpretations of Marx. Developing an alternative to (...) the last provides the means of transcending the limitations of the first and the second. A realist, chronological-bibliographic reading of Marx provides an alternative to traditional interpretations, by creating a novel concept of his object, his initial explicandum and his putative explicans. This reading identifies a fresh problem with his model of capital: it cannot explain how labour is organized into a productive power and subsumed to capital. Foucault provides the means of resolving these deficiencies of Marx's explicans. A realist interpretation turns Marx and Foucault around to face each other, renders them compatible and establishes points of contact between their work. Together they constitute a model of the operative logic of production relations capable of explaining the organization of labour, its subsumption to capital and the materialism of civil society and the idealism of the state. On this basis, the contemporary form of the problem of Industrial Relations theory is explained. (shrink)

This thesis explores how we might think the relation between psychoanalysis and the cultural field through Donald Winnicott’s concept of the environment, seeking to bring the concept into dialogue with more “classical” strands of psychoanalytic theorizing. A substantial introduction sets out the rationale behind the thesis by reading Freud and Winnicott in relation to the “classic” and the “romantic”, or the “negative” and “positive”, in psychoanalytic thought. It goes on to outline the value of bringing these tendencies together in order (...) to think the relationship between psychoanalysis, culture and change. The chapters which follow move from psychoanalysis as a “cultural cure” – a method and discourse drawing on and feeding into a broad conception of cultural life – towards a notion of “culture as cure” informed by Winnicott’s theory of the environment. Chapter one examines Freud’s refusal of the “culture”/ “civilization” distinction and considers what it means for the idea of a cultural cure. Chapter two considers whether Winnicott’s thinking about “culture” ultimately prioritises the aesthetic over the political. Chapter three uses Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to explore an analogy between totalitarianism, technology and maternal care. Chapter four turns to the series In Treatment to think about the intersections of therapy and technology in terms of reflection and recognition. Chapter five employs Ian McEwan’s Saturday as a means to reflect on the capacity of culture to cure. Ultimately, I suggest that social “cure” may require more than “good-enough” cultural forms and objects, but Winnicott’s “romantic” theorization of the aesthetic, coupled with a “classic” attention to structures of power and oppression may offer a means of thinking the relationship between psychoanalysis and culture in potentially transformative ways. (shrink)

My main concern in this article is the relevance of theoretically integrative approaches. I argue that such approaches are methodologically better equipped for the psychology of religion because they correspond with the inherent complexity of religiosity. In order to concretize this matter I critically evaluate the hypothesis proposed by some cognitive researchers that the attraction of counter-intuitive representations provides an explanation of religion. Irrelevant aspects are left out in this hypothesis. In contrast to this I rely on cognitive-analytic perspectives that (...) are based on a broader theoretical foundation. This generates a more complete picture that also connects to the tradition built on Otto's idea of the wholly other. From this perspective it is more plausible to assume that religious representations are trajectories of the early evolving tripartite sense of self, other and world and, further, formed by individual mentalization capacity. This can be conceptualized in terms of interplay between specific complex representational constellations rooted in different phases of early development. Integrative approaches that depict mental activity as a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon embedded in intersubjectivity are relevant for the psychology of religion. (shrink)