I am a phenomenologist and study the psychology of the child in its historical and existential dimensions, and investigate such philosophical themes as embodiment, co-existentiality, spatiality, temporality, and language in light of their appearance in early childhood. I am the author of the book The Child in the World: Embodiment, Time, and Language in Early Childhood (2008) and of numerous articles on childhood, Goethean phenomenology, Rilke’s existentialism, and eco-psychology and the psychology of place. My research and writing is grounded in the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Living on a ridge above the Monongahela River with my husband Michael and my children I try -- in daily practice -- to cultivate my perception and care for the natural world. Address: Duquesne University, Psychology Department
Pittsburgh, PA 15282
This qualitative research study explores the relationship between soldier and military working do... more This qualitative research study explores the relationship between soldier and military working dog during wartime service. Seven former military dog handlers were interviewed about what led up to, what happened during, and what followed a combat situation, which they experienced with their dog. Six of the men were former scout dog handlers. Their task was to support various infantry units, often walking point at the front of a patrol unit. One of the men was a former sentry dog handler, who worked as a sentry or guard around the perimeter of an airbase during the war. The qualitative empirical data consist of written protocols and transcribed interviews with veteran U.S. military dog handlers. The transcripts were interpreted using a psychological phenomenological method. The relationship between soldiers and dogs evolved through the development of mutual trust, reliance, and interdependence, eventually leading to the soldiers gaining greater confidence in their ability to function in the combat environment. They developed a sense of being accompanied and understood by another living being, which made it possible to relax following periods of intense anxiety. Through the dog, they experienced a pronounced awareness of the sensory landscape. The dog, as an extension of the handler's body, allowed for a deeper sense of the present time as it unfolded as well as of the future time as it was approaching. The dogs became a necessary tool in the performance of the soldiers' work, but were also experienced as living beings capable of engaging in a prolonged and varied relationship, which led the soldiers to a deep sense of responsibility and care for another living being, as well as for their own self. The military dog-handlers identified with their dogs and felt empowered to survive and save other lives because they and their dogs were a well attuned working team. When, after the Vietnam War, the dogs were decommissioned and destroyed, the soldiers experienced a profound sense of loss and bereavement regarding the fate of their dog. The U.S. military has traditionally viewed working dogs as basic equipment, a distinction which means that, like other ancillary military equipment, the dog can be destroyed at any time if and when the military deems it no longer useful. This tenet perpetuates the historical view of animals as machines that have little value beyond their means to perform a specific task. However, this limited perspective ignores the physical, psychological, and social implications that the experience of having a relationship with a working dog has for the human handler. This study provides an inside view of the complex psychological relationship between soldier and military working dog, and suggests a revision of military guidelines which takes the psychological nature of human/canine interaction into account.
This volume of Janus Head, edited by Eva Simms and Beata Stawarska, is dedicated to interdiscipli... more This volume of Janus Head, edited by Eva Simms and Beata Stawarska, is dedicated to interdisciplinary feminist phenomenology and contains a mix of conceptual work and qualitative research studies from philosophy, psychology, education, nursing, and social work. It can be found online and free at http://www.janushead.org
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One Milk and Flesh: Infancy and Coexistence
Ch... more Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One Milk and Flesh: Infancy and Coexistence
Chapter Two The World’s Skin ever Expanding: Spatiality and the Structures of Child Consciousness
Chapter Three About Hens, Hands and Old Fashioned Telephones: Gestural Bodies and Participatory Consciousness
Chapter Four The Child in the World of Things
Chapter Five Playing at the Edge: What we can Learn from Therapeutic Play
Chapter Six Because we are the Upsurge of time: Towards a Genetic Phenomenology of Lived Time
Chapter Seven Babble in the House of Being: Pointing, Grammar, and Metaphor in Early Language Acquisition
Chapter Eight The Invention of Childhood: Historical and Cultural Changes in Selfhood and Literacy
Notes
Bibliography
The Child in the World builds a bridge between continental philosophers, who tend to overlook child existence, and developmental psychologists, who often fail to consider the philosophical assumptions underlying their work. In this volume, author Eva M. Simms draws on both psychological and phenomenological research to investigate child existence in its cultural and historical context and explore the ways children interact with the world around them.
Simms examines key experiences of childhood with special attention to the non-dualistic nature of the child’s consciousness and the understanding that there is more to the child’s experiences than cognitive processes. In chapters that proceed from infancy to early childhood, Simms considers how children live their embodiment, coexist with others, experience the spaces and places of their neighborhoods, have deeply felt relations to things, grasp time intuitively and often in contradiction to adult clock-time, and are transformed by the mystery of the symbolic order of play and language.
Simms’s approach is particularly informed by the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which allows for a descriptive and grounded understanding of child experience as well as sophisticated and critical philosophical thinking about human existence in general.
By respecting and celebrating the magical non-dualistic relationship child consciousness has to the world, The Child in the World offers readers a unique opportunity to expand their understanding of human existence. Students and teachers of psychology and philosophy, early childhood educators, psychotherapists, as well as general readers who are parents of young children will enjoy this fascinating volume.
The intent of this chapter is to suspend the belief in the goodness of literacy -- our chirograph... more The intent of this chapter is to suspend the belief in the goodness of literacy -- our chirographic bias -- in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the engagement with texts structures human consciousness, and particularly the minds of children. In the following pages literacy (a term which in this chapter refers to the ability to read and produce written text) is discussed as a consciousness altering technology. A phenomenological analysis of the act of reading shows the child’s engagement with texts as a perceptual as well as a symbolic event that builds upon but also alters children’s speech acts. Speaking and reading are both forms of language use, but with different configurations of perceptual and symbolic qualities. Children’s literature uses textual technology and, intentionally or not, participates in structuring children’s pre-literate minds. Some of its forms, such as picture books and early readers, are directly intended to bridge the gap between the pre-literate listener and the literate reader and ease the transition into the literate state. It is my hope that the phenomenological analysis of the experiences of speaking and reading might help us understand more clearly how children’s literature impacts the minds of children. Such an analysis can awaken a critical awareness of the power that letters wield as they shape the reader’s psychological reality, and it can sharpen our sense of wonder about the metamorphosis of language from speaking to writing
Eyes on the Street is a therapeutic photovoice program which empowered 25 predominantly African A... more Eyes on the Street is a therapeutic photovoice program which empowered 25 predominantly African American children (ages 7-12) to use digital photography to express and process emotions about their neighborhood, the Hilltop South community of Pittsburgh. Many of the Hilltop South neighborhoods suffer from the effects of systemic sociopolitical disenfranchisement and trauma. This program implemented photovoice as a trauma-healing intervention to empower youth in the Hilltop South to recognize, utilize, and artistically express their emotional responses to the public places of their neighborhood. The program's objectives were to create activities and spaces where children can practice emotional agility by articulating their feelings as images, and to introduce children to a self-advocacy tool with which to assert the needs of their community. This paper lays out the principles of liberation psychotherapy, discusses how they have guided the program development for Eyes on the Street, and showcases the details of the trauma-healing photovoice curriculum.
The literature on sensory processing disorders in institutionalized infants highlights the impact... more The literature on sensory processing disorders in institutionalized infants highlights the impact of early deprivation on infant perception. Through a Merleau-Pontian, hyperdialectic analysis of the extraordinary development of infant perception under circumstances of severe deprivation the intimate link between environmental affordances and perceptual systems becomes apparent. This paper offers an updated reading of Merleau-Ponty’s late work as a philosophy of systems (“structures”, “forms”, “gestalts”, as he called them) and outlines some fertile philosophical concepts and methods developed by Merleau-Ponty in The visible and the Invisible. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the chiasm, understood from a systems perspective, and his method of the hyperdialectic are applied in a child case study of an infant who suffered severe neglect in a Romanian orphanage.
Van den Berg describes childhood as a historical invention of post-medieval Europe: childhood app... more Van den Berg describes childhood as a historical invention of post-medieval Europe: childhood appears in response to cultural changes in adult existence and consciousness. This essay supplements van den Berg’s argument by showing that the 12th century invention of literacy provides the textual technology to gradually effect these profound psychological changes in child and adult consciousness. A brief phenomenology reveals orality and literacy to be different forms of being in the world. As cultural practices they structure memory, knowledge, and identity in divergent ways.
This qualitative research study explores the relationship between soldier and military working do... more This qualitative research study explores the relationship between soldier and military working dog during wartime service. Seven former military dog handlers were interviewed about what led up to, what happened during, and what followed a combat situation, which they experienced with their dog. Six of the men were former scout dog handlers. Their task was to support various infantry units, often walking point at the front of a patrol unit. One of the men was a former sentry dog handler, who worked as a sentry or guard around the perimeter of an airbase during the war. The qualitative empirical data consist of written protocols and transcribed interviews with veteran U.S. military dog handlers. The transcripts were interpreted using a psychological phenomenological method. The relationship between soldiers and dogs evolved through the development of mutual trust, reliance, and interdependence, eventually leading to the soldiers gaining greater confidence in their ability to function in the combat environment. They developed a sense of being accompanied and understood by another living being, which made it possible to relax following periods of intense anxiety. Through the dog, they experienced a pronounced awareness of the sensory landscape. The dog, as an extension of the handler's body, allowed for a deeper sense of the present time as it unfolded as well as of the future time as it was approaching. The dogs became a necessary tool in the performance of the soldiers' work, but were also experienced as living beings capable of engaging in a prolonged and varied relationship, which led the soldiers to a deep sense of responsibility and care for another living being, as well as for their own self. The military dog-handlers identified with their dogs and felt empowered to survive and save other lives because they and their dogs were a well attuned working team. When, after the Vietnam War, the dogs were decommissioned and destroyed, the soldiers experienced a profound sense of loss and bereavement regarding the fate of their dog. The U.S. military has traditionally viewed working dogs as basic equipment, a distinction which means that, like other ancillary military equipment, the dog can be destroyed at any time if and when the military deems it no longer useful. This tenet perpetuates the historical view of animals as machines that have little value beyond their means to perform a specific task. However, this limited perspective ignores the physical, psychological, and social implications that the experience of having a relationship with a working dog has for the human handler. This study provides an inside view of the complex psychological relationship between soldier and military working dog, and suggests a revision of military guidelines which takes the psychological nature of human/canine interaction into account.
This volume of Janus Head, edited by Eva Simms and Beata Stawarska, is dedicated to interdiscipli... more This volume of Janus Head, edited by Eva Simms and Beata Stawarska, is dedicated to interdisciplinary feminist phenomenology and contains a mix of conceptual work and qualitative research studies from philosophy, psychology, education, nursing, and social work. It can be found online and free at http://www.janushead.org
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One Milk and Flesh: Infancy and Coexistence
Ch... more Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One Milk and Flesh: Infancy and Coexistence
Chapter Two The World’s Skin ever Expanding: Spatiality and the Structures of Child Consciousness
Chapter Three About Hens, Hands and Old Fashioned Telephones: Gestural Bodies and Participatory Consciousness
Chapter Four The Child in the World of Things
Chapter Five Playing at the Edge: What we can Learn from Therapeutic Play
Chapter Six Because we are the Upsurge of time: Towards a Genetic Phenomenology of Lived Time
Chapter Seven Babble in the House of Being: Pointing, Grammar, and Metaphor in Early Language Acquisition
Chapter Eight The Invention of Childhood: Historical and Cultural Changes in Selfhood and Literacy
Notes
Bibliography
The Child in the World builds a bridge between continental philosophers, who tend to overlook child existence, and developmental psychologists, who often fail to consider the philosophical assumptions underlying their work. In this volume, author Eva M. Simms draws on both psychological and phenomenological research to investigate child existence in its cultural and historical context and explore the ways children interact with the world around them.
Simms examines key experiences of childhood with special attention to the non-dualistic nature of the child’s consciousness and the understanding that there is more to the child’s experiences than cognitive processes. In chapters that proceed from infancy to early childhood, Simms considers how children live their embodiment, coexist with others, experience the spaces and places of their neighborhoods, have deeply felt relations to things, grasp time intuitively and often in contradiction to adult clock-time, and are transformed by the mystery of the symbolic order of play and language.
Simms’s approach is particularly informed by the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which allows for a descriptive and grounded understanding of child experience as well as sophisticated and critical philosophical thinking about human existence in general.
By respecting and celebrating the magical non-dualistic relationship child consciousness has to the world, The Child in the World offers readers a unique opportunity to expand their understanding of human existence. Students and teachers of psychology and philosophy, early childhood educators, psychotherapists, as well as general readers who are parents of young children will enjoy this fascinating volume.
The intent of this chapter is to suspend the belief in the goodness of literacy -- our chirograph... more The intent of this chapter is to suspend the belief in the goodness of literacy -- our chirographic bias -- in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the engagement with texts structures human consciousness, and particularly the minds of children. In the following pages literacy (a term which in this chapter refers to the ability to read and produce written text) is discussed as a consciousness altering technology. A phenomenological analysis of the act of reading shows the child’s engagement with texts as a perceptual as well as a symbolic event that builds upon but also alters children’s speech acts. Speaking and reading are both forms of language use, but with different configurations of perceptual and symbolic qualities. Children’s literature uses textual technology and, intentionally or not, participates in structuring children’s pre-literate minds. Some of its forms, such as picture books and early readers, are directly intended to bridge the gap between the pre-literate listener and the literate reader and ease the transition into the literate state. It is my hope that the phenomenological analysis of the experiences of speaking and reading might help us understand more clearly how children’s literature impacts the minds of children. Such an analysis can awaken a critical awareness of the power that letters wield as they shape the reader’s psychological reality, and it can sharpen our sense of wonder about the metamorphosis of language from speaking to writing
Eyes on the Street is a therapeutic photovoice program which empowered 25 predominantly African A... more Eyes on the Street is a therapeutic photovoice program which empowered 25 predominantly African American children (ages 7-12) to use digital photography to express and process emotions about their neighborhood, the Hilltop South community of Pittsburgh. Many of the Hilltop South neighborhoods suffer from the effects of systemic sociopolitical disenfranchisement and trauma. This program implemented photovoice as a trauma-healing intervention to empower youth in the Hilltop South to recognize, utilize, and artistically express their emotional responses to the public places of their neighborhood. The program's objectives were to create activities and spaces where children can practice emotional agility by articulating their feelings as images, and to introduce children to a self-advocacy tool with which to assert the needs of their community. This paper lays out the principles of liberation psychotherapy, discusses how they have guided the program development for Eyes on the Street, and showcases the details of the trauma-healing photovoice curriculum.
The literature on sensory processing disorders in institutionalized infants highlights the impact... more The literature on sensory processing disorders in institutionalized infants highlights the impact of early deprivation on infant perception. Through a Merleau-Pontian, hyperdialectic analysis of the extraordinary development of infant perception under circumstances of severe deprivation the intimate link between environmental affordances and perceptual systems becomes apparent. This paper offers an updated reading of Merleau-Ponty’s late work as a philosophy of systems (“structures”, “forms”, “gestalts”, as he called them) and outlines some fertile philosophical concepts and methods developed by Merleau-Ponty in The visible and the Invisible. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the chiasm, understood from a systems perspective, and his method of the hyperdialectic are applied in a child case study of an infant who suffered severe neglect in a Romanian orphanage.
Van den Berg describes childhood as a historical invention of post-medieval Europe: childhood app... more Van den Berg describes childhood as a historical invention of post-medieval Europe: childhood appears in response to cultural changes in adult existence and consciousness. This essay supplements van den Berg’s argument by showing that the 12th century invention of literacy provides the textual technology to gradually effect these profound psychological changes in child and adult consciousness. A brief phenomenology reveals orality and literacy to be different forms of being in the world. As cultural practices they structure memory, knowledge, and identity in divergent ways.
Page 1. E.mbodiment, Time, and Language in Early Childhood ,,,. s - Page 2. Page 3. THE CHILD IN ... more Page 1. E.mbodiment, Time, and Language in Early Childhood ,,,. s - Page 2. Page 3. THE CHILD IN THE WORLD Page 4. LANDSCAPES OF CHILDHOOD General Editor Elizabeth N. Goodenough, Residential College, University ...
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Books by Eva Simms
The qualitative empirical data consist of written protocols and transcribed interviews with veteran U.S. military dog handlers. The transcripts were interpreted using a psychological phenomenological method. The relationship between soldiers and dogs evolved through the development of mutual trust, reliance, and interdependence, eventually leading to the soldiers gaining greater confidence in their ability to function in the combat environment. They developed a sense of being accompanied and understood by another living being, which made it possible to relax following periods of intense anxiety. Through the dog, they experienced a pronounced awareness of the sensory landscape. The dog, as an extension of the handler's body, allowed for a deeper sense of the present time as it unfolded as well as of the future time as it was approaching. The dogs became a necessary tool in the performance of the soldiers' work, but were also experienced as living beings capable of engaging in a prolonged and varied relationship, which led the soldiers to a deep sense of responsibility and care for another living being, as well as for their own self. The military dog-handlers identified with their dogs and felt empowered to survive and save other lives because they and their dogs were a well attuned working team. When, after the Vietnam War, the dogs were decommissioned and destroyed, the soldiers experienced a profound sense of loss and bereavement regarding the fate of their dog.
The U.S. military has traditionally viewed working dogs as basic equipment, a distinction which means that, like other ancillary military equipment, the dog can be destroyed at any time if and when the military deems it no longer useful. This tenet perpetuates the historical view of animals as machines that have little value beyond their means to perform a specific task. However, this limited perspective ignores the physical, psychological, and social implications that the experience of having a relationship with a working dog has for the human handler. This study provides an inside view of the complex psychological relationship between soldier and military working dog, and suggests a revision of military guidelines which takes the psychological nature of human/canine interaction into account.
Introduction
Chapter One Milk and Flesh: Infancy and Coexistence
Chapter Two The World’s Skin ever Expanding: Spatiality and the Structures of Child Consciousness
Chapter Three About Hens, Hands and Old Fashioned Telephones: Gestural Bodies and Participatory Consciousness
Chapter Four The Child in the World of Things
Chapter Five Playing at the Edge: What we can Learn from Therapeutic Play
Chapter Six Because we are the Upsurge of time: Towards a Genetic Phenomenology of Lived Time
Chapter Seven Babble in the House of Being: Pointing, Grammar, and Metaphor in Early Language Acquisition
Chapter Eight The Invention of Childhood: Historical and Cultural Changes in Selfhood and Literacy
Notes
Bibliography
The Child in the World builds a bridge between continental philosophers, who tend to overlook child existence, and developmental psychologists, who often fail to consider the philosophical assumptions underlying their work. In this volume, author Eva M. Simms draws on both psychological and phenomenological research to investigate child existence in its cultural and historical context and explore the ways children interact with the world around them.
Simms examines key experiences of childhood with special attention to the non-dualistic nature of the child’s consciousness and the understanding that there is more to the child’s experiences than cognitive processes. In chapters that proceed from infancy to early childhood, Simms considers how children live their embodiment, coexist with others, experience the spaces and places of their neighborhoods, have deeply felt relations to things, grasp time intuitively and often in contradiction to adult clock-time, and are transformed by the mystery of the symbolic order of play and language.
Simms’s approach is particularly informed by the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which allows for a descriptive and grounded understanding of child experience as well as sophisticated and critical philosophical thinking about human existence in general.
By respecting and celebrating the magical non-dualistic relationship child consciousness has to the world, The Child in the World offers readers a unique opportunity to expand their understanding of human existence. Students and teachers of psychology and philosophy, early childhood educators, psychotherapists, as well as general readers who are parents of young children will enjoy this fascinating volume.
Papers by Eva Simms
The qualitative empirical data consist of written protocols and transcribed interviews with veteran U.S. military dog handlers. The transcripts were interpreted using a psychological phenomenological method. The relationship between soldiers and dogs evolved through the development of mutual trust, reliance, and interdependence, eventually leading to the soldiers gaining greater confidence in their ability to function in the combat environment. They developed a sense of being accompanied and understood by another living being, which made it possible to relax following periods of intense anxiety. Through the dog, they experienced a pronounced awareness of the sensory landscape. The dog, as an extension of the handler's body, allowed for a deeper sense of the present time as it unfolded as well as of the future time as it was approaching. The dogs became a necessary tool in the performance of the soldiers' work, but were also experienced as living beings capable of engaging in a prolonged and varied relationship, which led the soldiers to a deep sense of responsibility and care for another living being, as well as for their own self. The military dog-handlers identified with their dogs and felt empowered to survive and save other lives because they and their dogs were a well attuned working team. When, after the Vietnam War, the dogs were decommissioned and destroyed, the soldiers experienced a profound sense of loss and bereavement regarding the fate of their dog.
The U.S. military has traditionally viewed working dogs as basic equipment, a distinction which means that, like other ancillary military equipment, the dog can be destroyed at any time if and when the military deems it no longer useful. This tenet perpetuates the historical view of animals as machines that have little value beyond their means to perform a specific task. However, this limited perspective ignores the physical, psychological, and social implications that the experience of having a relationship with a working dog has for the human handler. This study provides an inside view of the complex psychological relationship between soldier and military working dog, and suggests a revision of military guidelines which takes the psychological nature of human/canine interaction into account.
Introduction
Chapter One Milk and Flesh: Infancy and Coexistence
Chapter Two The World’s Skin ever Expanding: Spatiality and the Structures of Child Consciousness
Chapter Three About Hens, Hands and Old Fashioned Telephones: Gestural Bodies and Participatory Consciousness
Chapter Four The Child in the World of Things
Chapter Five Playing at the Edge: What we can Learn from Therapeutic Play
Chapter Six Because we are the Upsurge of time: Towards a Genetic Phenomenology of Lived Time
Chapter Seven Babble in the House of Being: Pointing, Grammar, and Metaphor in Early Language Acquisition
Chapter Eight The Invention of Childhood: Historical and Cultural Changes in Selfhood and Literacy
Notes
Bibliography
The Child in the World builds a bridge between continental philosophers, who tend to overlook child existence, and developmental psychologists, who often fail to consider the philosophical assumptions underlying their work. In this volume, author Eva M. Simms draws on both psychological and phenomenological research to investigate child existence in its cultural and historical context and explore the ways children interact with the world around them.
Simms examines key experiences of childhood with special attention to the non-dualistic nature of the child’s consciousness and the understanding that there is more to the child’s experiences than cognitive processes. In chapters that proceed from infancy to early childhood, Simms considers how children live their embodiment, coexist with others, experience the spaces and places of their neighborhoods, have deeply felt relations to things, grasp time intuitively and often in contradiction to adult clock-time, and are transformed by the mystery of the symbolic order of play and language.
Simms’s approach is particularly informed by the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which allows for a descriptive and grounded understanding of child experience as well as sophisticated and critical philosophical thinking about human existence in general.
By respecting and celebrating the magical non-dualistic relationship child consciousness has to the world, The Child in the World offers readers a unique opportunity to expand their understanding of human existence. Students and teachers of psychology and philosophy, early childhood educators, psychotherapists, as well as general readers who are parents of young children will enjoy this fascinating volume.