[Xmca-l] Re: Rogers day

[Christopher Schuck]

 I have not followed the XMCA discussions all that much this past year
(sheer inability to keep up, as opposed to any discomfort with the venue
per se), but was glad to see this one since I'm interested in both anxiety
and humanistic psychology, and like Annalisa found myself comparing Mr.
Rogers to Carl Rogers while watching the movie. Meta-commentary aside, I'm
noticing a few different topics that may not be easily addressed at the
same time: 1) the nature of unconditional positive regard (or "love" as
broadly conceived by Fred Rogers) and its role in development; how
essential is it? 2) The role of anxiety in development (whether framed
positively or negatively), how does this relate to unconditional positive
regard? 3) Were Fred and Carl Rogers trying to do the same thing, and what
potentials do their projects hold for personal and social transformation?
4) What would Vygotsky have to say about any of these things, especially as
they relate to the "self" - and do some of them show up in the concept (or
psychological process) of perezhivanie? Just to pick out a few.

I can't speak much to LSV's prospective take on anxiety and/or existential
crisis. But there are different kinds of existential threats, and "threat
to self" could designate something quite broad (the very idea of
existential threat) or quite specific, depending on what we're talking
about. I wonder if one way to reconceive it could be as a threat to one's
ability to fully engage in social behavior or integrate into society in a
liberating way (e.g., if deprived of one's "funds of identity"). If we're
talking about perezhivanie, following Adam I would think that threat to
self is certainly a part of perezhivanie -- maybe one important stage --
but also not the whole part. I think to do justice to the notion of crisis
we must also account for despair, and the struggle to overcome or get
beyond that despair. Perhaps this too could be described as a threat
broadly speaking, but the two things feel different to me.

Charles writes that Vygotsky was interested in "how people could grow under
whatever set of conditions they experienced and how others could support
that growth." Perhaps one difference between him and psychologists like
Maslow and Rogers is that what counts as "growth" must also be understood
in terms of the richness of the very culture and history amidst which the
person is being supported for growth; that our positive potential most
specifically means our potential to take on culture and become part of
culture. From Charles's formulation and what others have said, it sounds
like he did not directly engage with the notion of unconditional positive
regard in the classic Rogerian sense (after all, he was not a
psychotherapist or preschool teacher). But perhaps there is a way to
reconceive the concept whereby it has less to do with valuing and accepting
the self "deep down," than with inclusion: the idea that everyone by virtue
of their human nature is worthy of active participation in society and
capable of mastering social tasks, which might require require being
assisted and supported toward this goal. One way to understand this
assisting and supporting of people -- the provision of tools -- could be
that it is often bound up in acts of love and fellowship. On Mr. Rogers,
when Lady Aberlin reassures Daniel the Tiger that "I like you just the way
you are" and they end up having that classic duet juxtaposing Daniel's
nebbishy ruminations with Lady Aberlin's steady unconditional affirmations
(really quite dialectical in its own way, when you think about it), she is
not just saying I like *you *just the way you are; she is saying I'm your
*friend *- that you are not alone and there is always a place for you in
the world, so even when you don't have the capacity to believe there is
someone else right here believing it for you. Or as Mr. Rogers liked to put
it, "Will you be my neighbor?" This can be read through the lens of
Christianity, but I like to think that maybe Vygotsky would have his own
version too: something involving provision of tools and community and
scaffolding and transformation and so forth. Perhaps this is a stretch and
I'm overanalyzing here.

But I also see tensions in the notion of unconditional positive regard,
when it comes to the necessary conditions for real growth and
transformation (I'll set aside the problems with essentialism about a "true
self" and what this means). What if someone says "I like you just the way
you are" at a moment when remaining the way you are would be intolerable,
and even toxic; is this affirming? Is positive regard so reflective of our
real nature? And then there's the question of how we know that the person
we approach with positive regard is actually showing us who they really
are, or is even aware of alternatives. Billy Joel likes you just the way
you are, but presumably this is partly because you still satisfy
traditional standards of feminine behavior.

There is a fascinating exchange between the existential psychologist Rollo
May and Carl Rogers from 1982, in which May (who still had great respect
for Rogers) accuses him of ignoring "the problem of evil" and neglecting
the vital dialectic between our positive and destructive tendencies that is
central to both psychological and spiritual health. Some time earlier,
Martin Buber responded to Roger's claim that "man is basically good" with,
"man is basically good - and evil." And we saw in the movie how Fred Rogers
struggled to find a response to the events of 9/11 that would make sense in
his universe. I'm not sure how much it has to do with Vygotsky or CHAT, but
the letter's worth reading (attached). May also had a lot to say about the
existential value and liberating potential of anxiety, even as it also
debilitates; his first book *Meaning of Anxiety *is basically an homage to
Kierkegaard's *Concept of Anxiety *and updates many of those insights.

Chris


On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 11:54 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@ils.uio.no>
wrote:

> Annalisa, I have to admit that I don't fully know the answers to your
> questions. I do however try to understand some of these issues and I can
> share some of the main headlines that tend to help me make sense around
> them.
>
>
> With respect to the issue of whether affect or cognition comes first, this
> seems to be the debate that Vygosky begun writing extensively about in his
> unfinished last work, and his critique, I read Vygotsky arguing that the
> two opposite positions (affect comes first, affect comes later) is based on
> a wrong dichotomy splitting psychological (meanings, ideas, cognition)
> from physiological (visceral, bodily, feelings). Arguing for a Spinozist
> monist position, Vygotsky seem to be pursuing a psycho-physiciological
> account in which both aspects are accounted for in their unity. A
> dialectical materialist position, which seeks to understand phenomena as
> objective and historical, that is, as having emerged in and through history
> and not prior to or apart from this history, further demands that this
> unity is accounted for as having emerged in history. Vygotsky took this
> genetic approach in all other areas of investigation and I would expect him
> to also pursue this here. That is why I was commenting on the assertion of
> affect before or after or without cognition, because I think that for
> Vygotsky, the interesting thing was to examine how the type of affect that
> characterizes humans, which is one in which such societal concepts as
> solitude, dignity, etc... determine emotions. How do emotions develop into
> this more complex societal phenomena? Leont'ev shows this type of genetic
> explanation in his analysis of how irritability and sensation (basic
> features of living beings) emerged from the most simple life forms
> (Leont'ev, Problems of development of the mind, 1981).
>
> Yes, Vygotsky did not succeed much in carrying forward this investigation
> on the affects, despite clear statements that this was his goal. I am very
> excited to see, however, how there is a raise of interest and awareness on
> this area, and there are a number of articles on this aspect coming up soon
> in MCA. We should definitely get to discuss some of them.
>
> Alfredo
> ------------------------------
> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
> *Sent:* 13 August 2018 09:27
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Rogers day
>
> Alfredo and venerable others,
>
> I hoped to respond to this:
>
> I had posted > "Was it the case that Vygotsky was interested in opening
> that up for examination (the "that" being positive regard), because it has
> to do with emotion and affect, and not cognition. Though sometimes it
> almost feels that he set emotion to the side to deal with later. Or am I
> wrong about that."
>
> Alfredo responded > To me Vygotsky was pursuing a Spinozist, dialectical
> materialist approach to the question of affect, and so I don't think your
> statement "has to do with emotion and affect, and not cognition" would have
> made any sense to him. What is the relation of affect to thinking and this
> relation changes would have been closer to the kind of question I would
> have attributed to Vygotky's line of thinking.
>
> Damasio, who was also inspired by Spinoza, found that affect occurs before
> cognition, and that we require affect in order to think. So Alfredo, does
> that then mean Vygotsky put thought before affect, if I am understanding
> you properly in terms of dialectical materialism, with affect arising after?
>
> Another way to consider what you say is that he considered the *relation*
> of affect to thinking, which then could include then that affect does
> impact thinking (because it happens beforehand), and we certainly can vouch
> for that when we react before thinking things through.
>
> Alfredo, I would appreciate if you might say more what you mean when
> stating "a Spinozist, dialectical materialist approach" I am not sure I
> understand what you mean. How Spinozist? How dialectical materialist?
>
> Remember this has to do in relation to positive regard, that Vygotsky was
> interested in positive regard BECAUSE OF affect, not because of cognition.
> I said what I did, perhaps not very clearly, because there is so much on
> thought and language in Vygotsky's work, but emotions and affect sem
> peripheral, they don't appear as prominently, and that is why I say it
> almost seems like something he put off for later.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Annalisa
>
>
>
>
>
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