Culture Psychology

The professional life of Vladimir Petrovich Zinchenko (1931–2014) is presented from an American perspective. Three themes are highlighted: a) an enduring quest to find some degree of freedom in human action, including his own, b) a deep appreciation of his intellectual genealogy, and c) an abiding generosity toward students and colleagues. Particular episodes of Zinchenko’s life as a scholar are examined from this perspective, with special emphasis given to some of the struggles he encountered in an intellectual atmosphere charged by Marxist-Leninist ideology during the Soviet years.

This article offers a comparative analysis of two ethnographic case studies on double bind interactions within the mother–child relationship. In-depth interviews with, as well as participant observation among Cape Verdean and Indo-Mozambican migrant families settled in Portugal provide insight into the way in which mothering double bind interactions influence the dynamics of change and resistance involved in the gendered identities of their adult sons and daughters. In the analysis, we draw upon Bateson’s dynamical theory about communication, as well as on theories of Psychological Anthropology that reiterate an intersecting dialectic of levels at which ambivalence exists and structures human experience. We argue that confusing or conflicting messages in the mother–child communication are an integral part of a differentiation process ( schismogenesis) structured by socio-cultural contradictions that are yet amplified in a context of migration.

The emotions of guilt and shame play a significant role in socialization, function as mechanisms of social control, and maintain the individual’s sense of personal identity. This article explores the emotions of guilt and shame in Mandarin. Specifically, Mandarin words for guilt (nei jiu, zui e gan and fan zui gan) and shame (diu lian, can kui, xiu kui and xiu chi) are examined. Information derived from ethnographic interviews with Taiwanese informants is used to draw inferences about these constructs. Cross-cultural comparison of guilt and shame in American and Chinese cultures is offered.

Abstract I offer an interpretation of Ernst E. Boesch's theory of symbolic action focusing on the usually overlooked phenomenological and existential aspects of this cultural-psychological approach. This interpretation raises the more general question about the role that ...

The dichotomy between ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ in relation to memory is difficult to clearly sustain. The veridicality of memory is typically established by drawing on the local, normative procedures that operate in a given setting (e.g. legal, clinical, social). Since all procedures are strictly relative, all memories are technically either ‘relatively falsified’ or ‘relatively as-yet-unfalsified’. False memory studies claim to be able explain the production of false memories, but do not offer criterion to effectively differentiate populations of so-called ‘true’ and ‘false’ victims. The narrative of the discovery of the ‘false memories’ themselves is inconsistent and demonstrates a significant level of imagination inflation and suggestibility to dominant narratives in post-war psychology. In attending to the setting specificity of memory, researchers may wish to consider how their work impacts on the experience–ecologies to which they contribute.

This article explores imagined selfhood, mobility and futurities through creative practice in ethnography. Globalisation allows people with varying socio-economic and geographical backgrounds to imagine themselves with more possibilities. How can creative practice such as improvisation in ethnofictions, storytelling and participatory animation be applied in ethnographic research to explore the imaginary realm of selfhood and expectations on being elsewhere? Drawing on fieldwork on migration from Africa to Europe, Brazilian transgender mobility and British youth in environmental transformation, the article will show how existential immobility inspires production of global horizons through imagination.

This article offers an analysis of the discursive practice of reconciliation occasioned in the accounts of former British prisoners of war of their captivity and of other related events of World War II during a reconciliation trip to Japan. The overall aim is to examine ways in which autobiographical accounts about the past, as produced in interviews, constitute relevant identities and membership within social relations. In telling narratives of post-war experiences of reconciliation, the participants account for changes in their lives. I use the term `narrative of redemption' to describe those narratives in which the participants address the moral sensibility of the problematic status of their wartime past and reconfigure and reformulate the significance of the past in relation to their present position of reconciliation. Adopting positioning theory as a guiding analytic concept, my analysis demonstrates how such talk shapes experiences of reconciliation with a problematic past...

National narratives are a key element in the process of history consumption and production. These master narratives have been analyzed in both theoretical and empirical studies as general schematic templates producing an essentialist and nationalist representation of the own past. The majority of studies examining historical representations of national narratives have used historical content of the students’ own nation. This study, on the other hand, analyzed the historical understanding of 34 Spanish university students concerning three dimensions of historical narratives about a nation other than their own. These dimensions were: the establishment of the historical subject, the moral judgment about the national group actions, and the legitimacy of the ownership of the territory. The distinction among three different dimensions is presented as providing a better both theoretical and empirical comprehension of master narratives as sociocultural devices. Our results indicated that pa...

Abstract This research adopts methodological relationalism as its conceptual framework. The Collection of Sages' Maxims (CSM) is used as the basic data to derive the cultural norms. Based on these norms, eight parameters (prs) are derived with 24 metaperception components ...

The dichotomy between ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ in relation to memory is difficult to clearly sustain. The veridicality of memory is typically established by drawing on the local, normative procedures that operate in a given setting (e.g. legal, clinical, social). Since all procedures are strictly relative, all memories are technically either ‘relatively falsified’ or ‘relatively as-yet-unfalsified’. False memory studies claim to be able explain the production of false memories, but do not offer criterion to effectively differentiate populations of so-called ‘true’ and ‘false’ victims. The narrative of the discovery of the ‘false memories’ themselves is inconsistent and demonstrates a significant level of imagination inflation and suggestibility to dominant narratives in post-war psychology. In attending to the setting specificity of memory, researchers may wish to consider how their work impacts on the experience–ecologies to which they contribute.

National narratives about the past play a central role in the construction of collective memory and national identity. Drawing on Wertsch’s notion of a schematic narrative template, the purpose of this article is to explore how Spanish university students’ narratives of the Conquest of America and the Latin American independence processes are informed by the ‘triumph over alien forces’ general scheme. The author proposes that this particular scheme mediates the misremembering of these foundational events while supporting key features of national narratives, such as the naturalized nature of the nation and national identity and the nation’s bond with a natural territory. Using a qualitative analysis, students’ narratives were confronted with the ‘triumph over alien forces’ plot. The results indicate that most students’ narratives conformed to the ‘triumph over alien forces’ scheme, misleading their understanding of the past. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications...

This commentary focuses on Cross’s (2010, this issue) work as an opportunity to elaborate upon how to study narrative-dialogical processes from the perspective of complexity. We start by elaborating on the notion that narrative development is a multidimensional activity that extends through several organizational levels and on the limitations of conventional research methods for narrative analysis. Following this, we focus on our experience of research on narrative change in psychotherapy in order to exemplify this point. From our perspective, clients’ problematic self-narratives can be challenged by the emergence of innovative ways of thinking and behaving that the client narrates during the therapeutic conversation (innovative moments or i-moments). Our results suggest that the reconstruction of a person’s self-narrative depends on the structure of relations between i-moments, rather than on the mere accumulation of i-moments. Therefore, we are particularly interested in looking at how clusters of i-moments create a pattern, which we call protonarrative. We are interested in the dynamic processes between former self-narrative, i-moments, protonarratives and new emergent self-narratives. Hence, we have developed a research strategy that allows tracking these different levels of narrative development in psychotherapy. In the remaining of our commentary we will briefly present our research strategy.