Mind as body moving in space - Bringing the body back into self-psychology

Journal/Book: Theor Psychol. 1996; 6: 2455 Teller Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Sage Publications Inc. 715-731.

Abstract: Critics of psychology's view on personality and self as western and ethnocentric and those with a growing interest in what is called the cultural self both tend to advocate social constructionism as the better paradigm. In social constructionism, however, the production of cultures and concomitant selves seems to start from an empty human biology. For a corrective to this Cartesian 'thinking above the body', I return to Vice's 'wholly corporeal imagination' as the starting-point of social constructions. If the human body is universal and if a selfing process is an evolutionary exigency, we may expect to find self-universals or tasks to be undertaken by anybody in any culture. Some five self-universals, each with its multiple options, are sketched. These universal self-variables can be regarded as a common genotypical matrix from which culturally specific, phenotypical selves are derived. A parallel is sought in the hypothesis of linguistic core notions. If the body is the source of universal self-features and if cultures put restrictions on the feature combinations, we can ask ourselves-countering cultural relativism-whether cultures and selves could be judged from what they do to human bodies.

Note: Article HJG Kempen, Univ Nijmegen, Psychol Lab, POB 9104, NL-6500 He Nijmegen, Netherlands

Keyword(s): body; cultural psychology; mind; self; social constructionism; CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY; INDIVIDUALISM; IDENTITY; MODEL

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