Between the modern and the postmodern - The possibility of self and progressive understanding in psychology

Author(s): Sugarman, J.

Journal/Book: Amer Psychol. 2000; 55: 750 First St NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242, USA. Amer Psychological Assoc. 397-406.

Abstract: Psychology assumes defensible notions of human subjectivity and understanding. Yet, some versions of postmodernism, including some of those currently influential within psychology, eschew the possibility of the kind of understanding-capable personhood on which modern psychology has depended. The authors argue for a skeptical, middle-ground position that might allow psychologists to resist a forced choice between modernism and postmodernism in their subject matter and understanding. The authors set up their argument with 2 stories of human development and change. These stories assume no fixed, essentialist foundations of the sort favored in classically modern psychologies, yet that maintain the possibility of both self and understanding within a real but contingent physical, biological, and sociocultural world. The authors then articulate a middle-ground position as one that avoids the fixed foundationalism, essentialism, and absolute certitude of modernity, without endorsing the radical arbitrariness, antisubjectivism, and anarchistic relativism of some versions of postmodernity.

Note: Article Martin J, Simon Fraser Univ, Fac Educ, 888 Univ Dr, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, CANADA

Keyword(s): PERILS; WORLD

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