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>Unscientific Psychology: Conversations With Other Voices
>A two day conference on progress and possibilities in creating a cultural,
>relational and performatory approach to understanding human life
>
>June 14-15, 1997
>Edith Macy Conference Center
>Briarcliff Manor, New York
>
>Sponsored by the Center for Developmental Learning of the East Side Institute
>for Short Term Psychotherapy
>
>With each passing day, psychology's inability to provide solutions to
>critical questions history has raised as we approach the 21st century becomes
>more apparent. Just about everyone -- theoreticians, practitioners, policy
>makers, consumers and the general public -- is growing more and more
>disillusioned with psychology, as it fails to understand or deal successfully
>with pressing issues such as the nature of human sociality and
>anti-socialness, emotional pain, violence, identity, sexuality, prejudice and
>bigotry, creativity, depression, learning and educational failure, memories
>false and true, to name just a few.
>
>>From the postmodern vantage point, the current crisis in psychology and the
>related fields of psychotherapy and education is rooted in misguided efforts
>to emulate the natural sciences: Human-social phenomena simply cannot be
>understood with the tools and conceptions that are used to study nature.
>
>Subjecting psychology to postmodern deconstruction, contemporary
>psychologists and philosophers find it to be a complex interweaving of the
>modern science paradigm with centuries- old philosophical presuppositions.
> Psychology's core conceptions -- such as development, behavior, the
>individual, the self, stages and patterns, rationality and irrationality,
>normality and abnormality -- are themselves rooted in
>philosophical-scientific assumptions about what it means to understand and to
>know. The challenge to psychology is equally a challenge to the modernist
>conception of understanding and knowing and its commitment to deeply-rooted
>methodological- philosophical biases, such as truth, objectivity, causality,
>duality and linearity. Understanding human life, some leading postmodern
>voices argue, demands a new epistology.
>
>Creating a new epistology -- an unscientific psychology -- is the activity of
>making new meaning. It is an emergent conversation created by and out of
>diverse voices who speak more poetically, culturally and historically than
>analytically and taxonomically. It is a conversation about persons (not
>minds), about relationships and relationality (not environmental influences
>on self-contained individuals), about human activity (not behavior), about
>narratives and stories (not Truth), about creating new forms of life (not
>adapting to forms of alienation). What is emerging is an approach to
>understanding human life as emergent, activisitic, relational and
>performatory.
>
>The invited presenters are leading voices in this conversation. The
>combination of rigor and creativity in their scholarship and practice is a
>provocative challenge to orthodox psychology.
>
> Erica Burman is Senior Lecturer in developmental and educational psychology
>at the Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, England. Her recent
>works are Deconstructing Developmental Psychology and the forthcoming
>Deconstructing Feminist Psychology. She is also editor of Feminists and
>Psychological Practice and co-editor (with Ian Parker) of Discourse Analytic
>Research.
>
> Lenora Fulani is on the faculty of the East Side Institute's Center for
>Developmental Learning and a therapist at the East Side Center for Social
>Therapy. As a developmental psychologist and political activist, she has
>been a key player in the movement for independent politics in the US. She
>introduces diverse audiences--from community activists to politicians to
>inner-city teens--to the postmodern challenge. She is editor of The
>Psychopathology of Everyday Racism and Sexism and a contributor to Erica
>Burman's forthcoming Deconstructing Feminist Psychology.
>
> Kenneth Gergen is the Mustin Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College
>in Swarthmore, PA. He is the author of three of the most influential
>postmodern discussions of the social sciences: Toward Transformation in
>Social Knowledge; The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary
>Life; and Realities and Relationships: Sounding in Social Construction.
>
> Mary Gergen is Associate Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at
>Pennsylvania State University. Her scholarship concerns postmodern and
>feminist theories. She is editor of Feminist Thought and the Structure of
>Knowledge; and co-author (with Sara Davis) of the forthcoming Conversations
>at the Crossroads: Social Constructionism and the Psychology of Gender.
>
> Lois Holzman was on the faculty of Empire State College, State University of
>New York for seventeen years. She is currently director of the Center for
>Developmental Learning and the Barbara Taylor School (a Vygotskian laboratory
>elementary school), both in New York City. She is author of Schooling for
>Development: Some Postmodern Possibilities (forthcoming), and co- author
>(with Fred Newman) of Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist and Unscientific
>Psychology: A Cultural-Performatory Approach to Understanding Human Life.
>
> John R. Morss is Senior Lecturer at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
> A leading critical developmental psychologist, he is the author of The
>Biologising of Childhood: Developmental Psychology and the Darwinian Myth;
>and Growing Critical: Alternatives to Developmental Psychology.
>
> Fred Newman is a practicig psychotherapist, Artistic Director of the
>Castillo Theatre, and Director of Clinical Training at the East Side
>Institute for Short Term Psychotherapy in New York City where social therapy,
>the performatory approach he founded, is practiced. His recent books include
>Let's Develop! and Performance of a Lifetime: A Practical-Philosophical Guide
>to a Joyous Life and (with Lois Holzman) Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary
>Scientist and Unscientific Psychology: A Cultural-Performatory Approach to
>Understanding Human Life.
>
> Ian Parker is Senior Lecturer in social and abnormal psychology at
>Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, England. Parker is the
>author of The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology--and How to End It,
>co-author of Deconstructing Psychopathology, and co- editor of Deconstructing
>Social Psychology, Psychology and Society: Radical Theory and Practice and
>Discourse Analystic Research.
>
> John Shotter is Professor of Communication at the University of New
>Hampshire. His most recent books -- Cultural Politics of Everyday Life:
>Social Constructionism, Rhetoric and Knowing of the Third Kind; and
>Conversational Realities: Studies in Social Constructionism -- explore the
>dialogic realities of the lifeworld.
>
>The conference is designed to be informal and in-depth, with ample
>opportunity for participants to explore issues with the presenters.
>
>Participants: The conference should be of interest to a wide range of people,
>including university faculty, graduate and undergraduate students;
>clinicians, social workers, educators, health and mental health workers.
>
>Costs: Conference registration: $100
>Accomodations and meals: $215 (double occupancy Saturday night, 3 meals on
>Saturday, 2 meals on Sunday)
>
>For information and/or to register, contact:
>East Side Institute
>500 Greenwich Street
>New York, New York 10013
>Phone: (212) 941-8906
>Fax: (212) 941-8340
>email: esiesc who-is-at aol.com
>On the Internet: www.castillo.org
>
>
NOTE MY NEW EMAIL ADDRESS!!!
Peter Smagorinsky
University of Oklahoma
College of Education
Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum
820 Van Vleet Oval
Norman, OK 73019-0260
office phone: (405)325-3533
fax: (405)325-4061
psmagorinsky who-is-at ou.edu
E-mail for Research in the Teaching of English: ou-rte who-is-at ou.edu