[Xmca-l] Re: Sad news-- Jerry Bruner has died

[Leif Strandberg]

Bruner appeared to me in the late sixties. I read psychology at the University of Umeå, Sweden. It was not very funny, but one day we should read "The Course of Cogntive Growth" by J. S. Bruner. The article was in an antology from 1968 called Thinking and Reasoning. When I look at that Bruner-article today, I can see that I had underlined every word in it - yes, every word! He was (and still is) so important to me. And I of coruse remember his great speech at Iscrat in Denmark 1998.  Thanks for everything.

 Leif, Sweden


7 jun 2016 kl. 05:04 skrev David Preiss <preiss.xmca@gmail.com>:

> Dear Mike, Dear Xmca-ers,
> 
> 
> 
> I was very sad when I heard this today. Bruner's thinking gave me hope and
> lighted my soul when I was doing my PhD fifteen years ago. I saw my
> discipline of choice evolving to such anti-culturalist and anti-humanistic
> stance that I felt psychology was not the place where I wanted to be. And
> yet his writings kept me company during those years of my graduate
> education. They drove me, in part, to work in education and to shift my
> dissertation to the issue of folk pedagogy, which he had raised with David
> Olson a few years before.
> 
> 
> 
> I remember searching for and perusing his books at the Strand bookstore in
> New York, then getting them as special gems. Later on my commute back to
> New Haven, I kept reading Bruner in the train. I loved his ability to write
> essays that established a bridge between psychology and the literary world.
> So, here there was someone who could make these two areas to talk about the
> same because they were about the same.
> 
> 
> 
> At some point I decided I might try to contact him. He was about 85 years
> old, and I was just in my early thirties. Who knows, he might respond. And
> yes he did. He was very kind. I had the opportunity to invite him as a grad
> student to give a talk at Yale and he kindly accepted to come, although I
> had never been in contact with him before. He was such a figure in the
> field and he still took the time to attend and engage in conversation with
> young and unknown grad students. Later, I had the opportunity to visit him
> with a friend in New York one time or two and those one or two meetings
> remain as treasured memories in my heart. He was very gentle when I asked
> him to sign, well, all of the books that I have gotten in Strand during the
> years. He handled my admiration for him in a lovely manner.
> 
> 
> 
> His work is a fundamental reference for us psychologists in a time when our
> discipline has moved far away from those issues that mattered to him. Those
> of us who remain here, struggling during these apocalyptic and disgraceful
> times, have a responsibility, however our limitations, to take the torch
> and keep reminding that culture is the essential niche of human development
> and an everlasting source of psychological, educational and literary
> meaning.
> 
> 
> 
> Fond regards,
> 
> 
> 
> David
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 8:37 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> 
>> ​At the age of 100 it cannot be unexpected, but  I have just heard from a
>> colleague that Jerry Bruner​ has died.
>> Its difficult to lose a colleague and friend who had a fundamental
>> influence on my own life trajectory.
>> mike
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an object
>> that creates history. Ernst Boesch
>>