[Xmca-l] Re: Rogers day

Mon Aug 13 19:22:32 PDT 2018

OK Chris,

I recall that pathology and its connection to evil is a theme for you. Evil is not a topic that interests me, largely because I find it solipsistic. There is no way out of evil, except to banish it or destroy it, like a fallen angel.

It is a Christian term and it is therefore religious, not scientific. It is also linked to the notion of original sin, which I do not find humanistic nor life affirming.

I realize the concept of evil is necessary for some as an explanation for social ills, but I don't find it apt to explain anything, it is a term for scapegoating.

Let's say there was a germ construct that could be identified as evil. We would want to find it sequester it, prod and poke it until we could find out its essence. The problem is that this does begin a bona fide witch hunt, identical to the Salem trials, The Devil's Hammer and all that jazz. Or, it becomes a pseudo science like phrenology. I might be wrong, but I'm not sure you will find much of an audience here when tossing about evil. It is a loaded term.

Whether we want to accept the nature of humans as good vs evil, it is the case that it is quite rare that pathology *generates* from positive regard. Likely because (I assert) that humans are essentially good, and so I share Carl Rogers's stance that people are good and that the culture is what creates the spectacle of pathology and its breakdowns in the human self and spirit. I started to read the letter by May and I had to stop because he said that culture is made up of people, as if to state then the evil is within us.

That makes no sense to me. Culture is something transcendent from its members, it doesn't reside IN people, it is something that exists between and among, and any single constituent could drop out (which does happen when generations die off), and the culture continues. True, there is a shift as members might leave, and new ones join, language use shifts, historical events make their mark. Culture is like an affordance, it is neither in the subject nor the environment, but present in both, in a dynamic way that activates when the circumstances are right.

Consider the door knob. It is a latent item until such time a human wants to open or close a door. Doorknobs are door culture for humans, but not for domestic pets who become obstructed and rely upon their masters to open the doors for them. I do not think that dogs and cats perceive human door culture as evil, even if they had the cognitive wherewithall for such thoughts, even though closed or slamming doors may create pathologies for them, such as caught tails or bursting bladders. But while human culture may create pathologies for pet animals, if we were to call doorknobs as the loci for evil, it would be a strange assignment to try to eradicate all doorknobs because they are evil to dogs and cats. After all there are such things as cat- and dog-doors, sans doorknobs, and voila evil and its requirement for identification and eradication disappears.

I also wanted to comment on something you had written about a "deep-down" self and inclusion. There must be an acceptance of self first before there can be inclusion. Inclusion is important, having been an indirect topic generated from this thread. But the positive regard in the unconditional ideal-sense, is what allows the child(or anyone really) to accept him or herself, and this relaxation into the self creates confidence and engenders curiosity which are necessary components for healthy social ties. Metaphorically it is like the map directory at shopping centers that say "You are here" to allow me a vantage point by which to orient to the environment.

If I do not accept myself, then I may think that I am not worthy to be included. If I do not accept myself, I might be inclined to compare myself to others and be more easily aggravated with jealousy or contempt which may provide me a cause to author anti-social behaviors that exclude myself or others.

This is why I like what Ellis said: "...he believed [patients] could, and had better, accept themselves and adopt unconditional positive regard of themselves whether or not their therapist or anyone else does." If one can't generate self acceptance in that light of positive regard, which is learned from a knowledgeable, caring other, then one will be caught in the webs of self-doubt and loathing for quite sometime.

Thank you for writing such a lot on this. I could only comment on a few and sundry items, but there is a lot in your post, I'll leave for others to comment upon.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Christopher Schuck <schuckcschuck@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2018 3:33:02 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Rogers day

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<mailto: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<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto: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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