Great question, Mike!
As we know, no psyche is possible outside of biological organism with its
phylogenesis in the biosphere, nor without a culture formed historically
and socially, nor without the ontogenesis of an individual human being. So
I feel it is untenable to think of a psychology worth its salt which does
not understand the psyche simultaneously formed in dynamic interaction at
all three levels. I have a concern (which may well be based on ignorance)
that too little attention is paid to the cultural formation of the psyche,
*not* as a finished process of human civilisation from the past, but as a
living process whose character and structure requires continual study and
intervention.
My other concern though, which may be also based on ignorance, is that
individual difference does not reflect "mionor variations" but is integral
to the formation of the psyche.
My *speculation* at the moment is that personality is first formed in
*play* and that at that stage in a person's psychological development,
choices are made in terms of the relation between the use of the
imagination and conception of the rules, relations with other participants
and perception of the objects of play, which may prove more or less
satisfactory in the child's experience, and that these early experiences
will then predispose a person to certain modes of relation between the
imagination and real external objects, between the rules and the objects of
the game, which have a certain stability throughout their cognitive
development.
On the other side, all those things which Carl mentioned which are
*obviously* of the gravest concern to every human being, cannot exist other
than through invidiual psyches and are possible in this modern world
precisely because we are *all* involved in a network of social rlations
mediated by a variety of global institutions, laws, media etc., but above
all exchange of labour in all cases worth mentioning *mediated by money*.
These *mass psychological phenomena* I take to mean those dramatic changes,
those psychoses, those specific ways of looking at things, which are common
to whole masses of people who share social relations at least at national
level.
So I see, possibly from ignorance, that there are two aspects of Activity
Theory which I, at least, need to know more about.
Andy
At 01:19 PM 1/21/01 -0800, you wrote:
>
>Andy/Carl-- what is a mass psychological phenomenon and how does it
>relate to non-mass phenomena?
>mike
>
**************************************************
* Andy Blunden, Teaching Space Support Team Leader
* University of Melbourne 9344 0312 W, 9380 9435 H
* Email ablunden@unimelb.edu.au W, andy@mira.net H
* http://www.ists.unimelb.edu.au - Work
* http://home.mira.net/~andy/ - Home
**************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 01 2001 - 14:24:55 PST