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Re: [xmca] guess who
The topic of the social construction and development of the self in Mead and the parallels with cultural historical theories of intersubjectivity is fascinating. I have just finished reading "Daniel Stern's book "The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life" He is a member of the "Boston Change Process Study Group" which is exploring the potential for change enacted in the moment to moment (2 to 10 second) intersubjective spaces created in enactements. This work is embedded in the larger focus on intersubjectivity being elaborated within "relational psychoanalysis". One of the historical roots of this approach comes from Harry Stack Sullivan and "interpersonal psychoanalysis" Sullivan's work was a conversation between Mead's theory of the relational self and psychoanalysis. This conversation is today transforming all branches of psychoanalytic theory and practice and there are many books and journal articles focusing on "intersubjectivity" and the quality of "mutual" recognition to facilitate change. This perspective can be applied to learning and developmental theory to emphasize Mead's project of the social self.
I work in school systems and try to use this intersubjective relational lens to deepen my understanding of "mediated learning" as a process of "implicit relational knowing" (see Daniel Stern) as well as explicit relational knowing and practices. Intersubjectivity as experienced in the moment to moment enactments that are elaborated within the interactions of mediated learning are grounded in affective attunement as foundational to cognitive learning.
I hesitate to bring "psychoanalytic" models to this website because of the reaction to traditional Freudian models of reified psychic structure and all that baggage. However I happen to be intrigued by both "mediated learning" and "intersubjectivity" as ways to look at the micro units of analysis.
As an aside Daniel Stern was one of the researches, with Jerome Bruner, and others who studied "baby talk" and the development of language in moment to moment transactions. Twenty years later Daniel Stern and the Boston Change Process Study Group are still working at this micro unit of the present moment and the creation of intersubjective spaces.
Stern (p.43 "The Present Moment") quoted William James as he described the stream of consciousness as like a bird's life made up of an alteration of flights and perchings. Stern's book elaborates the present moments are like the perchings. The flights are the spaces between moments of consciousness. These "flights" are inaccesible and ungraspable. "Consciousness is thus free to switch focus from one present moment to the next, and the sense of the self as experiencer is never felt to be interrupted, even though the perchings are discontinuous. These present moments are the stuff of subjectivity during ordianary mental states" (p.43)
Mediated learning in the ZPD can be enriched by exploring Mead's and Stern's and other scholars who are exploring intersubjectivity and the development of the self.
----- Original Message -----
From: Tony Whitson <twhitson@UDel.Edu>
Date: Saturday, October 31, 2009 7:12 pm
Subject: Re: [xmca] guess who
To: lchcmike@gmail.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Cc: Ben DeVane <ben.devane@gmail.com>
> Mead was also my first guess (and it really was a guess, since I
> haven't
> actually read Mead)
>
> But I thought the more interesting thing about the provocation
> is that
> even though it seemed like exactly what I would expect from
> Mead, I could
> not be certain, because there are a number of others we are
> interested in
> who could just as well have said the same. That's what I find
> most
> interesting in this.
>
> And I do think this is part of Hegel's legacy, such that even
> Lacan could
> have said much the same as this, although with somewhat
> differing
> implications.
>
> On Sat, 31 Oct 2009, mike cole wrote:
>
> > Got it first try. Mead got his PhD with Dilthey. My own guess
> is that this
> > goes back to at least Hegel, but others would know better.
> >
> > (Dishes done, snuck away)
> > mike
> >
> > On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 7:51 PM, Ben DeVane
> <ben.devane@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> We just got done reading Mead in our pragmatism reading group here,
> >> and it sounds very Meadish (Vygotsky crossed with Dewey), so
> that's my
> >> guess. Honest I didn't look it up on Google.
> >>
> >> I really enjoyed the Holland & Lachicotte, and Edwards
> chapters on the
> >> parallels between Mead and Vygotsky in the Cambridge
> handbook. Highly
> >> recommended for anyone unfamiliar with Mead's work.
> >>
> >> -Ben
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 8:09 PM, mike cole
> <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> In preparing for class just now i fell across this sentence.
> Obvious who
> >>> wrote it without looking it up on google?
> >>>
> >>> ?*The self is something which has a development*, it is not
> initially>> there
> >>> at birth, but arises in the process of social experiences
> and activity,
> >> that
> >>> is, develops in the given individual as a result of his
> relations to that
> >>> process as a whole and to other individuals within that process?
> >>>
> >>> My own relations are saying get the hell off the computer,
> the doorbell
> >> is
> >>> ringing and the goblins are on the move. So off i go.
> >>> mike
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> xmca mailing list
> >>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> ***********************
> >> Ben DeVane
> >> Ph.D Candidate
> >> Games+Learning+Society Research Group
> >> University of Wisconsin-Madison
> >> ***********************
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
>
> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK DE 19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> _______________________________
>
> "those who fail to reread
> are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
> -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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