[Xmca-l] Re: Rogers day

Sun Aug 12 18:37:35 PDT 2018

Hello all,

I would like to respond to Annalisa's first post and hopefully get the conversation back to where it started. Please forgive any spelling or grammar mistakes. I am writing this in haste before my three-year old boy wakes up and asks me to play cars with him!

I come to Vygotsky as an experienced educator, but as a relatively new researcher, so I do not profess to be an expert on the matter. However, Vygotsky's ideas have informed a great deal of my thinking regarding education for minoritised students, so I will engage with Annalisa's dialogue through the lens of my take on Vygotsky!

One paragraph resonated with me particularly:

'I get that experiences coming from culture, language, environment, etc are perceptually received from the "outside" and then internalized but I realized there isn't really a discussion of "threat to self" in my readings by Vygotsky. There is conflict and struggle, but no thorough discussion of threat to self.'

I do not think that Vygotsky specifically dealt with 'threats to self' as such, but could not the notion of a perezhivanie not be understood as part of this dialectical process of a crisis which could also involve a threat to self? I have found Andy Blunden's take on this to be really useful in my work: a perezhivanie is a self-contained working over of a critical incident or moment in an individual's life that involves reflection, catharsis and finally integration.

I would also like to clarify that perezhvanie should be understood as both concept and psychological process. On the one hand, it exists as a concept via academic discourse; on the other, it is arguably a universal psychological process that helps to explain the meeting of mind and society.

To apply this to Vygotsky, I am reminded of the oft quoted incident of the three brothers from 'the problem of the environment'. However, while the youngest two children develop neurotic symptoms, the eldest adapts to the situation, adopting the guise of the father. In this respect, the oldest child experiences a crisis, a threat to self, but because of his development or perhaps because of the crisis is able to integrate it into his developing self. Crisis leads to development. The crisis need not be as dramatic as this: it can also take on the form of encountering a new world-view, discovering a new theory, that forces us to reevaluate our assumptions about the world.

Does Vygotsky discuss existential threats in the child? Forgive me that nothing is arising in my memory right now.

To return to problem of the environment, I would consider the children' experience of emotional and actual poverty to be existential in nature - in the sense that the children internalize an environment that leads to doubt, insecurity, etc which they then reflect back on the environment. This leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it were. I have developed my own interpretation of Moises' funds of identity concept using the same interpretation of perezhivanie - namely existential funds of identity: check out the article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2018.1434799: forgive the shameless plug!)

Finally, 'How does Vygostkian theory account for the unconscious, and also threats to self (as an internalized structure)?' This has really got me thinking. I don't think Vygotsky theory accounts for it. I am not sure if the two are even commensurate - perhaps a discussion for another thread. What do you think, Annalisa? As I am going through a discursive phase at the moment, I would say that the unconscious could be understood as a symbolic tool - in the sense that it exists as an academic discourse which individuals can utilize in order to mediate experience.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your ideas and inviting us newbies to add our voices to the community.

Cheers,

Adam

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
Sent: 05 August 2018 04:14:17
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Rogers day

Hello fellow Xmcars and venerable others,

It was a curious day yesterday, a day that I will call Rogers day.

I saw the documentary on Fred Rogers of Misteroger's Neighborhood fame (a public television children's show first produced in the 1960s, and I was the first-gen to imbibe my eyes and ears upon the greeting song, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?", sweaters, tennis shoes, and fish feeding).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers

It put me in a good mood, that gentle voice of his still resonates even though he left the earth in 2003, that's 15 years now! He is likely the only tolerable Republican that ever lived.

Then I learned (in Jungian fashion) about Carl Rogers and I read the wiki page on him here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rogers

I was surprised to learn he lived in La Jolla and did a lot of international work. But I had wondered if anyone on this list might discuss his theories of self, hidden personality, and positive regard and how these compare to Vygotskian theories (i.e, CHAT).

The theory about self seems to be heavily phenomenological. I could detect some overlap with Vygotskian theory, but what interested me had to do with the discussion of threat of self and protection of self as a concept about structure, that the self has a structure and I'm assuming this is the personality, and that as experiences and perceptions are internalized how they are integrated into the existing structure depends upon whether there is an existing threat or not to the self. I may not have read this correctly, but my question to the list would be:

How does Vygostkian theory account for the unconscious, and also threats to self (as an internalized structure)?

I get that experiences coming from culture, language, environment, etc are perceptually received from the "outside" and then internalized but I realized there isn't really a discussion of "threat to self" in my readings by Vygotsky. There is conflict and struggle, but no thorough discussion of threat to self.

Perhaps I am being dull and just not remembering correctly. So please edify me as long as your name doesn't conjure up cereal... I would like some fresh voices, that's all. 😊 Cabbages might be OK.

Is it possible that Vygotsky never got far enough to discuss threat-to-self because he didn't live long enough to evaluate adult minds? While I wrote that I considered that children's lives are full of threats, and it is a miracle that they can thrive despite them. Does Vygotsky discuss existential threats in the child? Forgive me that nothing is arising in my memory right now.

Carl Rogers indicates 19 propositions that inform his theory. In regard to #6 ("The organism has one basic tendency and striving—to actualize, maintain and enhance the experiencing organism.") echos Spinoza and also Darwin. There are others that resonate with CHAT.

There is also his concept of incongruence/congruence as a measure of self-actualization, whereby congruence is achieved when the real self and the ideal self are one and the same, and incongruence is the difference (and manifest tension) between real and ideal self. I can see that the notion of ideal self coming from social expectations being similar to the ideal as presented in Vygotskian theory (I'm wrangling with the notion of "ideal" right now).

Mr Fred Rogers seemed to be an adult who had positive regard to children and advocated for self-acceptance ("I like you just the way you are.") We see him doing it every time he is interacting with a child. I think he would call this advocacy for self-acceptance, nothing else but love. In the documentary he says (I paraphrase): "Children should feel special without the pressure of doing something sensational." Which some critics lambasted for creating attitudes of entitlement in children. I wondered about all this in contrast to the concept of perezhivanie.

Does Vygotsky discuss concepts of love?

OK, so that was my Rogers day, neighbor.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

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