Concept Creep: Psychology's Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology

Many of psychology's concepts have undergone semantic shifts in recent years. These conceptual changes follow a consistent trend. Concepts that refer to the negative aspects of human experience and behavior have expanded their meanings so that they now encompass a much broader range of phenomena than before. This expansion takes “horizontal” and “vertical” forms: concepts extend outward to capture qualitatively new phenomena and downward to capture quantitatively less extreme phenomena. The concepts of abuse, bullying, trauma, mental disorder, addiction, and prejudice are examined to illustrate these historical changes. In each case, the concept's boundary has stretched and its meaning has dilated. A variety of explanations for this pattern of “concept creep” are considered and its implications are explored. I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda. Its implications are ambivalent, however. Although conceptual change is inevitable and often well motivated, concept creep runs the risk of pathologizing everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood.     

Concept History and Religious Discourse

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) has made important contributions to the study of political and social thought, as well as to cultural history more generally. Reinhart Koselleck has argued that, during the eighteenth century, basic concept use in Europe experienced widespread trends of (1) democratization, (2) temporalization, (3) ideologization, and (4) politicization. This article will consider the possibility of a conceptual history of religious discourse. While conceptual history has thus far focused primarily on political and social concepts, some research has more recently turned to religious concepts. This work should be expanded and can be improved by the insight of theologians and ethicists who often have a better understanding of religious concept use than conceptual historians whose main focus is political thought. I will summarize how concept history could be applied to religious concepts, how theologians might make a contribution to the theory behind Koselleck's understanding of modern concept use, and offer a critique of a recent methodological introduction to religious concept history.     

Gadamer and Scholz on Solidarity: Disclosing,Avowing, and Performing Solidaristic Ties with Human and Natural Others

ABSTRACT

This essay is concerned with Gadamer’s reflections on solidarity and practice as found in several of his later writings. While Gadamer offers a robust explanation of practice, practical reason, and how both are operative in solidarities, his investigations of solidarity are in no way systematic. He does, however, distinguish two aspects of solidarity, viz. what one might call “natural solidarity” and “avowed solidarity”. In contrast to natural solidarities, avowed solidarities require an intentional decision and commitment to act with others for a common cause. Since Gadamer’s writings on solidarity are more sketches than detailed treatises, we will bring his work into dialogue with feminist and political philosopher Sally Scholz. Scholz has devoted significant research to the concept of political solidarity. Like Gadamer, Scholz too is concerned with how we engage natural others and how our present practices harm and exploit them. By bringing Scholz’s and Gadamer’s work into dialogue, we gain a better understanding of different facets and types of solidarity, how they interrelate and influence one other, and how their interrelations might help to effect positive social and political changes for all who inhabit this world.     

Saving Soul: Lesbian Anthropology,Ethics and Spirituality in a Post-World

Abstract

Differing theoretical understandings and political commitments among lesbians form the problematic addressed in this article. Anthropological research which takes place across the boundaries of ethnic difference and with an awareness of competing social visions cannot rely on simple assumptions of lesbian solidarity. Feminist, post-colonialist and queer theory offer divergent perspectives, all of which might offer significant insights to the researcher. However, they also make it difficult to operationalize significant over-arching concepts such as lesbian ethics'—other than by assuming a common struggle for justice. In this situation the researcher realizes her own specificity. The metaphor of the body as a vulnerable, sensitive, socially marked register of lived experience is helpful in provoking recognition that embodied differences also generate embodied knowledge.     

Political deviance and the assumption of responsibility

Political deviance is a broad concept, less frequently invoked than the concept of political crime. It can be perpetrated by those in power, in the name of the state or individually, or by those struggling to effect social change. The focus on the latter brings to the fore two types of movements, terrorism and civil disobedience, with their partial similarities in goals and their apparent dissimilarities in the means employed to achieve these goals. Both groups tend to assume responsibility for their acts, although for different reasons. The assumption of responsibility itself is a clouded and sometimes ambiguous notion, both linguistically and in its ramifications in the political arena.     

East–West European Project: Transforming and Shaping Research Through Collaboration

This article tells the story of the journey made by an international research group of social psychologists in their collaborative projects carried out over a number of years after the collapse of communism in Europe in 1989. The article explores some relations between the aims of research conducted during a period of rapid political, social and economic change in Central and Eastern Europe, and the ways these studies were shaped and transformed through collaboration. It shows how the collaboration of researchers in the team affected the development of theoretical concepts and methodological ideas over the years, as well as how the team learned from mistakes. Collaborative efforts cannot be viewed separately from the content of research. Moreover, this international collaborative research has shown that the relationships between institutional and cultural changes cannot be understood by means of comparing phenomena across different countries but by case studies in individual countries.

The Essentiality of “Culture” in the Study of Religion and Politics

This article reviews various theoretical approaches political scientists employ in the analysis of religion and politics and posits culture as a conceptual bridge between competing approaches. After coming to the study of religion slowly in comparison with other social science disciplines, political science finally has a theoretically diverse and thriving religion and politics subfield. However, political scientists’ contributions to the social scientific study of religion are hampered by a lack of agreement about whether endogenous or exogenous theoretical approaches ought to dominate our scholarship. I assert that the concept of culture—and more specifically, subculture—might help create more connections across theoretical research traditions. I emphasize how the concept of religion‐based subculture is inherent in psychological, social psychological, social movement, and contextual approaches to religion and politics scholarship, and I explore these theoretical connections using the example of religion‐based “us versus them” discourses in contemporary American politics.     

Information search activity: An overview

IntroductionThis article exposes a brief history of information search models, from general and behavioural models to cognitive ones and presents recent theoretical advances in this research field.Literature findingsSince the beginning of 1990s, many theoretical models have tried to describe and predict the human behaviours involved in the information search tasks, and specifically when this activity is performed in computer systems. Some of these models elaborated by psychologists have attempted to infer the cognitive processes involved.DiscussionInformation search can be considered as a complex cognitive activity that involves various individual (cognitive, affective), contextual and social factors.ConclusionWe also suggest research issues to be developed in order to increase our knowledge in this area and we plead for further research on specific concepts depending on future and/or recent areas of interest.     

Social Psychological Benefits of Gay Games Participation: A Social Identity Theory Explanation

Abstract

Research examining sexual orientation in sport settings has been limited in scope and lacked theoretical frameworks. To extend this body of research, the current study was framed within social identity theory and examined the impact of Gay Games participation on: (a) social identity, self-esteem, and collective esteem; and (b) expected subsequent social change activities following the Games. One hundred and twenty-five lesbian and bisexual athletes competing in Gay Games V participated in this investigation. The athletes completed a demographic profile and an open-ended questionnaire that asked about their Gay Games experience as well as expected social change activities after the Games. A content analysis of the responses revealed themes consistent with social identity theory. Specifically, these individuals identified the role of the Gay Games on social categorization, personal and social identity, and self and collective esteem. Additionally, these women revealed that following the Gay Games they felt more likely to work towards social change by becoming more out, educating others, and working through political channels.     

Self-compassion,social rank,and psychological distress in athletes of varying competitive levels

BackgroundSelf-Compassion may be seen as a concept contrary to the aims of athletes engaged in competitive sport. This could be accentuated at more elite levels, where athletes may view concepts like self-criticism and self-judgement as more important for improvement.ObjectivesThe current study aimed to better understand how athletes of different competitive levels (from social to international) relate to concepts of self-compassion. Further, we aimed to explore how factors relating to social rank and self-compassion contribute to psychological distress.DesignCross-sectional online survey.MethodAn online survey was distributed, including the following validated questionnaires: Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales, the Self-Compassion Scale, Fears of Compassion Scales, Social Comparison Scale, Forms of Self-Criticising/Attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale, and the Striving to Avoid Inferiority Scale.ResultsTwo hundred and fifty-three participants responded to the survey, including 115 recreational and 79 competitive athletes. There were no differences between groups on any measure of compassion or social rank. In a multiple linear regression model, lower self-compassion, higher fears of compassion (for self), and higher feelings of inadequacy predicted more pronounced psychological distress in athletes.ConclusionsContrary to expectation, the results suggest that even highly elite athletes may be open to using self-compassion. Given that reduced self-compassion and sense of social rank contributed to psychological distress in athletes, the results suggest that compassion-based approaches to treating psychological distress in this population may be valid.     

Towards trans-cultural histories of psychotherapies

Abstract

Psychotherapy is a regulated form of verbal interaction, which necessarily incorporates broader shared cultural assumptions and narrative templates. Like any form of verbal interaction, it is fluid, adaptable and malleable, particularly when it enters new cultural domains. The increasing global penetration of psychotherapeutic techniques calls for an analysis of the changes, modifications, and innovations of its techniques and accompanying theories. This will eventually allow scholars to view European and North American forms of psychotherapy as variations tied to specific locations and cultures. Tracing the trans-national and trans-cultural dissemination of psychotherapeutic theories and techniques allows historians to chart their inherent variability, test limits, and analyse the broader social and political uses of psychotherapy within different national and cultural contexts. In addition to investigating psychotherapy in its various manifestations, historians should continue to inquire about its personal, social and political uses.     

The Contribution of Empathy to Ethics

ABSTRACT

Empathy has been taken to play a crucial role in ethics at least since the Scottish Enlightenment. More recently, a revival of moral sentimentalism and empirical research on moral behavior has prompted a renewed interest in empathy and related concepts and on their contribution to moral reasoning and to moral behavior. Furthermore, empathy has recently entered our public discourse as having the power to ameliorate our social and political interactions with others.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which such a role can be actually granted. Before focusing on a positive assessment, I will delve into a few problems our ordinary concept of empathy and our commonsensical way of conceiving its connection to ethics will need to face. Specifically, I will show how an exaggerated reliance on the ordinary concept of empathy could lead to an underestimation of its biases and potential limitations (§ 2), how a naïve conception of its connection to morality can overlook relevant counterexamples (§ 3) and lead to forms of reductionism (§ 4). Overcoming this possible shortsightedness would pave the way for arguing in favor of an important – though not sufficient and possible neither necessary – role for empathy in ethics (§ 5).     

A Review of “The Relational Origins of Prejudice: A Convergence of Psychoanalytic and Social Cognitive Perspectives”

Abstract

Key concepts in social welfare and clinical social work - concepts such as person-in-environment, women's rights, prevention and outreach-had as precedents the pioneering theory and practice of Europe's free psychoanalytic clinics of the 1920s. Sex-Pol, a Viennese community-based clinical network created in 1927 by Wilhelm Reich, perhaps the most overtly political of the first psychoanalysts, was motivated by reformist social goals he shared with Sigmund Freud. This historical study of Sex-Pol draws on Reich's own words to explore his use of the term “social work” where clinical work is predicated on an activist ideology of human liberation.     

How is justice understood in classic Confucianism?

ABSTRACT

In Sinicized Asia, justice, conceptualized and institutionalized in its current form on a Western mold is part of a singular and ancient Confucian legal tradition.

In this paper, it will be argued that Confucians initially articulated the concept of justice in relation to their own explanation of the world and their ideal, which distinguishes and rewards men’s actions according to their merits and social condition.

It will be shown that Confucius’s thinking is primarily political and suggests ways of harmoniously organizing and reforming society in which justice is conceived both as a principle of government, a principle of social conduct and one of the essential virtues, or a ‘moral sense’ that everyone must possess, while, in practice, Confucian justice will put forward the imperatives of retributive justice. This, despite its philosophical aversion for sanctions and for what upsets harmony.     

The political theology of Fichte’s Staatslehre: immanence and transcendence

Given its use of religious concepts and language, it is tempting to class Fichte’s rarely discussed Staatslehre as a political theology. I argue that the Staatslehre can be classed as a political theology because of the way in which it can be understood in terms of the concepts of immanence and transcendence. The concept of immanence applies to Fichte’s account of history in particular. Fichte himself allows for a moment of transcendence at the very beginning of history. I argue that the concept of transcendence is also implicit in the Staatslehre in relation to some problems faced by Fichte’s own account of the role of the Zwingherr in the historical development and actualization of right and moral freedom, despite his attempt to avoid introducing theologically based explanations of political concepts at this stage of his Staatslehre.     

Processes of religious individualisation: stocktaking and issues for the future

Abstract

The paper spells out implications of a perspective on religious individualisation that is both comparative and analytical and discusses the various issues that this line of research has to confront. Arguing against notions of modern Western exceptionalism, it points to the selectivity of Western forms of (religious) individualisation and makes a case for the inclusion of additional forms of articulating individual agency and ‘selfhood'. The paper takes individualisation as an inter-subjective, social phenomenon and connects it to the concept of social imaginaries. Opposing standard concepts of modernisation the paper nevertheless brings processuality centre stage, emphasising contingency. The paper discusses the possibility of the convergence of contextual developmental trends and the question of transculturality of notions of self and agency. With reference to the dimension of critique included in visions of religious individualisation, the paper finally points to the effects processes of religious individualisation can have on human actors within, and beyond, the realm of spirituality, including the recognition of subjectivities and the strengthening of actors’ resilience.     

Not quite normal,but not really deviant: Some notes on the comparison of elite athletes and women political activists

Elite athletes and women political activists are compared to analyze the notion of “defiance.” First, it is established that each of these groups is perceived and defined as slightly deviant. It is then shown that traditional concepts of labeling fail to provide an adequate explanation for how deviant labels are applied to and used by these particular deviant actors. The elite athletes and women activists cultivate their marginality so as to appear not quite normal, but not really deviant. By straddling the boundary between deviance and normalcy, the members of each group gain a good vantage point from which to ideologically advance social change efforts.     

“The primary process”: The vicissitude of a concept

Abstract

During the first twenty years that Freud spent creating his theory, he assumed that most of the functions responsible for creating mental-thought structures were organized according to two different forms or principles of thought. He called these forms “primary process” and “secondary process”. The “secondary process” is identified with rational thinking and the ego, and it is easy to follow the changes that this concept underwent in the works of Freud that followed. The concept of “primary process”, on the other hand, disappeared from his later works with no explanation. This article traces the changes that the “primary process” underwent in Freud's thinking and examines the connection between his analytical technique and his research method. A close study of the changes that the “primary process” underwent reveals that Freud's developmental thought process included concepts whose directional changes may be termed “regressive”.     

The return of the trauma theory: Implications for hermeneutic psychotherapy

Abstract

Myth is a narrative that can preserve or alter social and political structures by its authoritative utterance under appropriate conditions. This kind of narrative shares the same normative rules as perlocutionary or performative speech acts. A performative is a category of speech act which, by its very pronouncement, can change a person's role, status or identity, or an object's significance or meaning. Speech acts have the performative power to change behavior if they are institutionalized and taken seriously by a community.     

Erich Fromm’s concept of reactive violence

Abstract

This paper explores the current relevance of Fromm’s concept of reactive violence for understanding particular patients and for generating hypotheses about the world we live in. In his discussion of reactive violence, Fromm gives us a nuanced approach to forms of aggression that can be employed in the service of life. According to Fromm, the aim of reactive violence is preservation, not destruction. It is rooted in fear and, he believes, is the most frequent form of violence. This paper traces the evolution of Fromm’s concept of reactive violence, and considers how it might apply to today’s social and political challenges.