The Self and the Integral Interface: Toward a New Understanding of the Whole Person

Of all psychology concepts, perhaps none has a more lengthy history or engendered more controversy and ambiguity than that of the self. Indeed, the self has come to mean so many things that it hardly means anything at all. Consequently, there is currently no single theory integrating all the various meanings of the self concept. Therefore, the primary purpose of this paper is to develop an overarching metapsychology by which all aspects of the self can be understood. To accomplish this purpose, this article engages in a hermeneutic analysis of the self as it appears in cognitive behavior psychology, the psychoanalytic theories of ego and self psychology, and humanistic–existential theories of the self. In so doing, it is possible to identify two principle concepts by which the various aspects of the self can be compared and classified: the conflation frame, the collapsing of entity, intellect, and identity into a single rendering of the self; and the integral interface, the overriding theoretical framework within which each of these aspects of self can be appropriately differentiated and subsumed.     

Toward a New Understanding of Nature, Reality, and the Sacred: A Syllabus

Adjustments in the understanding of the relation of religion and science since the Enlightenment require new considerations in epistemology and metaphysics. Constructionist theories of knowledge and process theories of metaphysics better provide the new paradigms needed both to preserve and to limit the significance of each field of human understanding. In a course taught at Moravian College, this perspective is applied to the concepts of nature, reality, and the sacred, with a view to showing how we might develop one such paradigm. Key resources for this task are to be found in the work of artist René Magritte; theologians Langdon Gilkey, Arthur Peacocke, and John Haught; philosophers and historians of science Alfred North Whitehead, Timothy Ferris, Ernan Mc Mullin, and Ian Barbour; philosopher of religion Paul Ricoeur; and historians of religion Rudolph Otto and Mircea Eliade. Such a new paradigm calls for an ecologically sensitive religious awareness which is both sacramental and holistic.     

Toward a critical theory of happiness: Philosophical background and methodological significance

Happiness is discussed in its development since the pragmatists' interpretation of the concept. From early psychological approaches onwards, the notion of happiness has existed in the tension between the normative “summum bonum” and the empirical — “subjective well-being”. Dialectical philosophy attempted to mediate between these two levels, with Hegel locating happiness in the sphere of reason, and Marx interpreting it as a consequence of social practice. Building upon this materialist notion and upon Freud's analysis of distorting forces, the Critical Theorists of the Frankfurt School warn against taking the subjective experience of well-being at face value. The appropriateness of their caveats is illustrated in the methodological debates over response bias in the social psychology literature. It would appear that it is quite unsatisfactory to define happiness operationally as that which is reflected directly in self-reports.     

Western and Russian Traditions of Big History: A Philosophical Insight

Summary  Big History – an integral conception of the past since the Big Bang until today – is a novel subject of cross-disciplinary interest. The concept was construed in the 1980–1990s simultaneously in different countries, after relevant premises had matured in the sciences and humanities.Various versions and traditions of Big History are considered in the article. Particularly, most of the Western authors emphasize the idea of equilibrium, and thus reduce cosmic, biological, and social evolution to the mass-energy processes; the informational parameter involving all mental and spiritual aspects are seen as epiphenomena of material structures” complication that do not play their own role in evolution. In Russian tradition ascending to A. Bogdanov, E. Bauer, I. Prigogine, and E. Jantsch, sustainable non-equilibrium patterns are used. This implies attention to the pan-material sources and evolution of mental capacities and spiritual culture (as basic anti-entropy instruments) and humans” growing intervention in the material processes on Earth and outside it.The non-equilibrium approach in the context of modern control and self-organization theories, alters the portrayal of the past, and still more dramatically, estimation of the civilization’s potential perspectives.     

Choosing a Place of Death: The Influence of Pain and of Attitude Toward Death1

This experimental study sought to verify if factors like pain or attitude toward death can determine the choice of a place of death. Using a questionnaire developed from Triandis’(1980) theory, the influence of pain on the intention of choosing a place of death was measured among 138 respondents. “Attitude toward death,” used as a control variable, was measured by means of the Death Attitude Profile. Variance analyses (p < .008) demonstrated the influence of pain on intention of choosing a place of death and on the cognitive component. Linear regression (p .002) highlighted 2 determinants of intention of choosing a place of death: moral norm and social role. As for attitude toward death, it seems to have no influence on the choice of a place of death.     

Between Addition and Difference: A Place for Religious Understanding in a World of Science

Among contemporary religious believers, some follow in the footsteps of Newton, allowing their religious understanding to fill in gaps left by the sciences. Others take a more Wittgensteinian approach, discretely separating religious from scientific ways of thinking. Because neither of these relatively irenic positions captures the important element of cultural reform that is prevalent in so much of the religious life of the past, George Lakoff's recent work in cognitive studies is used to suggest ways that religious ideas may be used to challenge and enrich scientific thought. A scrutiny of Richard Dawkins's biological analyses of human behavior reveals the distorting limitations of exclusively scientific understanding, thereby clearing conceptual space for genuinely religious values, actions, responsibilities, and forms of human life.     

The Rorschach and MMPI: Toward a More Scientifically Differentiated Understanding of Cross-Method Assessment

Reasons for Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and Rorschach disagreement at the nomothetic level are explored. Building on an understanding of measurement distinctions from other sciences, it is proposed that the Rorschach and MMPI procedures are differentially sensitive to unique manifestations of personality. By necessity, each method is then also recognized as having a limited scope of effectiveness, such that neither can provide a complete picture of personality in its full complexity. Drawing on the more extensive self-report literature, the idiosyncracies and limited scope of the self-report method are documented. Finally, an ideographically rooted, cross-method, configural model is proposed for validation research in personality assessment. Several examples consistent with this approach are drawn from the assessment literature and discussed.     

Development of Infant Action Systems and Exploratory Activity: A Tribute to Edward S. Reed

I use Edward S. Reed's work on action systems as a framework to discuss an ecological approach to the development of infant action. I use illustrations from infant action to argue that during development, infants make use of the intrinsic dynamics of their spontaneous motor activity, under a variety of task constraints, to create a small set of action systems. The paper focuses on dynamical systems that generate oscillations as the basis for observable rhythmic behaviors during infancy, such as rocking, shaking the arms, and babbling. Data are presented to illustrate the development of action systems for crawling, object manipulation, and speech. Particular underlying dynamical systems, under different task constraints, may transform body effectors into task-specific action systems: The leg becomes a "kicker," the arm holding a rattle becomes a "shaker," and the vocal tract a "talker."     

The Scientific Self: Reclaiming Its Place in the History of Research Ethics

How can the history of research ethics be expanded beyond the standard narrative of codification—a story that does not reach back beyond World War II—without becoming so broad as to lose all distinctiveness? This article proposes a history of research ethics focused on the “scientific self,” that is, the role-specific identity of scientists as typically described in terms of skills, competencies, qualities, or dispositions. Drawing on three agenda-setting texts from nineteenth-century history, biology, and sociology, the article argues that the “revolutions” these books sought to unleash were, among other things, revolts against inherited conceptions of scientific selfhood. They tried to redefine the scientific self in their respective fields of inquiry by advocating particular catalogs of virtues or character traits. These ideals of selfhood, their contested nature notwithstanding, translated into practice in so far as they influenced hiring and selection policies and found their way into educational systems. The project of reclaiming the scientific self as an important subject of study in the history of research ethics is not an antiquarian pursuit, but related to an ethical question faced by scientists today: How are their scientific selves being shaped by funding schemes, research evaluation protocols, and academic hiring policies?