The Self

This paper provides an initial, multidimensional map of the complex relationships among consciousness, mind, brain and the external world in a way that follows both the contours of everyday experience and the findings of science. It then demonstrates how this reflexive monist map can be used to evaluate the utility and resolve some of the oppositions of the many other “isms” that currently populate consciousness studies. While no conventional, one-dimensional “ism” such as physicalism can do justice to this web of relationships, physicalism, functionalism, dualism, neutral monism, and dual-aspect monism can all be seen to provide useful ways of understanding different aspects of the relationships among consciousness, mind, brain and the external world when these are viewed in either a first- or a third-person way from within this web of relationships by sentient creatures such as ourselves. For example, physicalism and functionalism provide a useful understanding of consciousness, mind, brain and external world when viewed from a third-person perspective, while neutral monism provides a useful way of understanding first- versus third-person views of external phenomena. On the other hand, dual-aspect monism provides a useful way of understanding first- versus third-person views of mind, including Eastern versus Western views of mind.  Dual-aspect monism also provides a useful understanding of the “unconscious ground of being” that gives rise to, supports and embeds all these observable phenomena. For an integrated understanding one needs to understand how these phenomena and relationships combine into an integrated whole.

Identities, people’s subjectively construed understandings of who they were, are, and desire to become, are implicated in, and thus key to understanding and explaining, almost everything that happens  in and around organizations. The research contribution that this review paper makes is threefold. First, it analyses the often employed but rarely systematically explored concept identity work, and argues that it is one metaphor among many that may be useful in the analysis of professional and more generally work identities. Second, it focuses on five fundamental, inter-connected debates in contemporary identities research centred on notions of choice, stability, coherence, positivity, and authenticity. Third, it outlines the roles that the concept identity work may play in bridging levels of analysis and disciplinary boundaries, and sketches some possible future identities-focused ideas for further research. Under-specification has meant that ‘identity’ has not always fulfilled its analytical promise in either theoretical explorations of identities issues or in empirical studies of identities in practice; and it is to these ends that this paper seeks to contribute.

Asceticism is founded on the possibility that human beings can profoundly transform themselves through training and discipline. In particular, asceticism in the Eastern monastic tradition is based on the assumption that individuals are not slaves to the habitual and automatic but can be improved by ascetic practice and, with the cooperation of divine grace, transform their entire character and cultivate special powers and skills. Asceticism of the Mind explores the strategies that enabled Christian ascetics in the Egyptian, Gazan, and Sinaitic monastic traditions of late antiquity to cultivate a new form of existence. At the book's center is a particular model of ascetic discipline that involves a systematic effort to train the mind and purify attention. Drawing on contemporary cognitive and neuro-scientific research, this study underscores the beneficial potential and self-formative role of the monastic system of mental training, thereby confuting older views that emphasized the negative and repressive aspects of asceticism. At the same time, it sheds new light on the challenges that Christian ascetics encountered in their attempts to transform themselves, thereby lending insight into aspects of their daily lives that would otherwise remain inaccessible. Asceticism of the Mind brings rigorously historical and cognitive perspectives into conjunction across a range of themes, and in so doing opens up new ways of exploring ascet-icism and Christian monasticism. By working across the traditional divide between the humanities and the cognitive sciences, it offers new possibilities for a constructive dialogue across these fields.

Available now from Penn State University Press, with a foreword by Pat J. Gehrke. Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Metanoia-Rhetoric-Authenticity-Transformation-Self/dp/0271085924/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DL9ENJNF09HO&keywords=ellwanger+metanoia&qid=1581529316&sprefix=ellwanger%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1

Available now from Penn State University Press, with a foreword by Pat J. Gehrke.

Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Metanoia-Rhetoric-Authenticity-Transformation-Self/dp/0271085924/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DL9ENJNF09HO&keywords=ellwanger+metanoia&qid=1581529316&sprefix=ellwanger%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1

Heinz Kohut is a key figure for transpersonal psychology. Learning from the treatment of patients who suffered from pathological narcissism in his psychotherapy practice, Kohut developed a theoretical model of the self in which the development of a bi-polar self supplants drive conflict as the basis of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Like Freud, Kohut believed that measured narcissism is inherently healthy and basic to human psychology. Like Jung, Kohut believed that the self, rather than the ego, is primary to human psychology and that egoistic narcissism can be transcended later in life during the normal developmental process, through what he called ''cosmic narcissism.'' Although he does not consider Kohut directly, Ferrer believes that spirituality can take on a pathological narcissistic form. Kohut's ideas have the potential to bridge psychoanalytic, analytical and transpersonal theories and may assist in bringing about a more complete understanding of the ego, the self and narcissism.

The following is published on the www.takingtheescalator.com website but is also being made available on Academia.edu for review. It is designed for groups as an in-depth look at self esteem from a realistic perspective, with substance use issues in mind.

People abused by angry discipline as children, may tend to abuse or overly punish other people or themselves for perceived wrongs in their adult life. In some individuals, aggressive personality traits may be genetically inherited. The aggressive personality may feel weakened by having guidelines or boundaries for anger. Anger is a normal human emotion, and these guidelines can help express anger in a healthy way.

This paper sheds light on the reasons why conventional messages prove largely ineffective at fostering pro-environmental behaviors among individuals with high egoistic values. We conducted three experiments comparing the effectiveness of prevention-focused and promotion-focused messages at promoting pro-environmental behaviors. We found that egoistic individuals exposed to prevention-focused messages tended to perceive pro-environmental efforts as less worthy, compared to those exposed to promotion-focused messages. This effect, in turn, decreased their willingness to take environmental action. We also observed that the negative effect prevention -focused messages have on egoists is attributable to a defense mechanism. Egoistic people exposed to prevention-focused messages seem to deny the veracity of the message, which in turn decreases the perceived worthiness of the environmental effort and thus the intention to act. The findings highlight the best way to frame environmental communication to reach those who are least likely to adopt eco-responsible behavior, i.e., egoistic people.

Authenticity and the body are important issues in contemporary culture, and pop culture and new television series are no exceptions. By culturally, philosophically and ethically examining this important issue, this article discusses how authenticity is constructed through the human face and body. It focuses on some aspects of confessions by the main characters of the Homeland television series. The most important aspects are: how the body and the face are presented in acts of videotaped confession and the suicidal act of confession. This programme clearly shows authenticity as a social convention and a staged act. Depicting and preparing authenticity in a video recording is linked with blackmail in modern society and culture. Another issue considered in the article is how the body can be manipulated by the media and the individual to stage authenticity in a ‘truth tape’.

Science is a field of study based on the Newtonian paradigm of objective, measurable and provable facts pioneered by experts such as Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Francis Bacon, and others (Darity, Jr., 2008). Because of this experts of the scientific professions tend toward negating subjective evidence for truth that is not based on procedures that follow the scientific method. Spirituality, on the other hand, is a study of the non-linear, abstract and experiential reality of one’s existence. Practitioners within this field (e.g. spiritual counselors, yoga teachers, meditation guides, Chinese medicine) frequently provide articles and lectures of successful treatments of a variety of forms of disease as proof of evidence that practices, such as acupuncture, work (Stern, 2014) while others still continue to argue against its validity.

The purpose of this article is to provide explanations through consciousness research including reasons why spiritual and Eastern healing practices can never be “provable” in the context of evidence-based, or empirical research, though providing evidence in the form of validity experientially in numbers. It is the authors hope to provide sufficient explanations for the reader that he or she may begin to observe and witness for oneself the appropriateness of context in providing evidence as proof or validity for science and spirituality.

Keywords: consciousness, context, evidence-based, provability, science, spirituality, validity

The short title of this work: Autobiography, Time, and Narrative in Philosophy and Psychology, expresses the principal topics discussed. The temporal dispersion of an individual's actions throughout life, makes their unification and stability in purpose challenging, as such temporal separation of human actions makes it difficult to view the effects and significance of particular acts, and their long-term impact. Fortunately, narrative self-understanding and autobiographical thinking in orienting the whole human life, resolves the challenge posed by temporal dispersion. In this work, Ogunyemi explores the relationship between the anthropological theories of the dynamics of temporality with narrative self-understanding that are developed from an Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy, and recent theories in psychology and neurosciences, through her reading and interpretation of contemporary authors. She presents scientific observations related to habit formation and self-improvements that are congruent with philosophy. MacIntyre as well as other philosophers often analyzed the validity of psychology's methods and frameworks and Ogunyemi contributes to this dialogue by pointing out similarities between autobiographical temporality seen in disparate fields. She explores concepts of narrative philosophy from the first-person perspective, and makes a synthesis of elements of autobiographical temporality which could form an anthro-pological framework for observations made from research in different subspecialties of contemporary psychology and neurosciences. Her interdisciplinary approach highlights prospects of mutual enrichment between different fields. The need for interdisciplinary studies, such as this one, is ever increasing and urgent since the development of particular sciences, that promote human flourishing today, requires a deeper understanding of the human being in his totality. Omowumi Ogunyemi obtained her first degree in medicine and surgery. She has worked as a medical practitioner in various hospitals in Nigeria including The Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Lagos, where she managed patients with substance induced disorders. She holds a licentiate degree and a doctorate in philosophy from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome.

Este avance contiene parte del marco teórico-metodológico así como la estructura conceptual básica de la propuesta. El objetivo principal es examinar filosóficamente el modo pre-reflexivo de ser conscientes de sí (pre-reflective self-consciousness) en una continua interlocución interdisciplinaria con estudios empíricos.

.  The problems of irreducibility, untranslatability, non-generalized existence of language are there as there persists always something irreducible in the interactions between the self and the other. Considering the Bengali society, perspectivally deliberated through the intellectual lenses of the bourgeois, the self-culture predicates the normative paradigm that structures what should and what should not constitute the essential with regard to socio-political identity. The conflictual cultural implication opposes whatever is non-standard and heterogeneous. Even within the group, the notion of the ‘other-self’ segregates the cultural variants that are marginalized as non-standard and imperfect.

The present article argues that despite growing rates of single living worldwide, alternative representations of the single women who do not necessarily spend their life 'waiting for the one' are regularly absent from public view. By exploring the injunction as well as the option of non-waiting, this paper contributes to time studies by stressing how understandings of waiting inform hegemonic and alternative forms of temporal subjectivity and sociality. In the first part of this paper, I explore the ways in which the injunction to stop waiting is articulated in het-eronormative imagery. This call is regularly expressed with temporal urgency, and from this vantage point waiting comes to represent passivity and immobility. Accordingly, women are expected to 'move on' and be active in their own self-governance, which adapts to conventional norms of femininity. In the second part of this article, I demonstrate how the option of non-waiting dismantles and reworks heteronormative life scripts, and offers new subject positions for single women. These reflections propose alternative timetables that allow single women to reclaim their temporal agency and redefine their own temporal rhythms and life trajectories.

Where does the self stop and the rest of the world begin? Clark and Chalmers already paved the way for an application of the extended mind theory to the problem of selfhood and identity, when in their seminal paper they asked ‘What, finally, of the self? Does the extended mind imply an extended self? It seems so’ (2010: 39). However, how can the self persist in time if it is chiefly constituted by a series of constantly renewed couplings, enactions, and extensions? If the self does persist, what are the processes responsible for the temporal unification and synthesis of what enactivists call different ‘sensorimotor contingencies’ (O’Regan and Noë 2001)? If the self does not persist, what kind of phenomenology and new ontology underlies, or results from, this shift? This essay focuses on these questions as they relate to an extended and enactive view of the self in the space-time trajectory explored in Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way (2005) – the first volume of In Search of Lost Time. Proust’s work is regarded as the monumental literary research on temporality, self and memory. I will argue, however, that extended and enactive frameworks can provide important new insights on the key claims and findings of Proust’s literary endeavour.

Este trabalho teve como principal objetivo investigar como as relações estabelecidas na escola afetam a constituição do self dos sujeitos autistas. A partir disso foi possível descrever processos de escolarização no local de pesquisa de campo com foco em práticas inclusivas; investigar significações dos educadores sobre a subjetividade dos seus estudantes autistas e suas interações com seus colegas e com a comunidade escolar; e analisar como ocorre a dinâmica de posicionamentos de cada um dos sujeitos diante às práticas escolares. Fizemos um estudo de caso múltiplo com três crianças autistas de 7 a 14 anos matriculadas em uma escola da rede pública. No total, tivemos 11 participantes, dois professores, um coordenador, um monitor, 5 crianças autistas, além de mais duas crianças não autistas. Durante o período de 6 meses, foram feitas entrevistas com os adultos, observações naturalísticas das situações escolares (como sala de aula e recreio) e observação direta durante uma dinâmica com as crianças participantes. À luz das teorias de uma perspectiva dialógico-cultural, foi possível analisar nossas descobertas com base em um framework de I-positions, posições do eu, para cada sujeito participante. A partir da convergência de cada um dos posicionamentos possíveis de todos os sujeitos, chegamos a três eixos de relacionamento: Brincar, Ajudar e Cuidar, que permeiam também a tríade de significado Inclusivo v. Especial v. Regular. O eixo Brincar foca principalmente nas relações lúdicas e horizontais entre dois sujeitos; o eixo Ajudar foca nas relações baseadas em suporte e auxílio objetivo e direto, como atividades pedagógicas; e o eixo Cuidar foca nas relações afetivas e de carinho. O eixo Brincar é populado principalmente por relações criança-criança, sendo desfavorecido pelo papel dos educadores dentro da escola. O eixo Ajudar é observado nas relações com todos os perfis de sujeitos, sendo o que apresenta maior diversidade de posicionamentos; nesse eixo, observamos que a relação mais comum é um educador (monitor ou professor) ou um colega não autista que dá auxílio e suporte para uma criança autista. O eixo cuidar é estabelecido também em todos os sujeitos, mas toma formas diferentes de acordo com seu perfil e diferença de idade. Quando essa relação ocorre entre um educador e uma criança, ela se manifesta como um cuidado quase que maternal, enquanto ocorre entre duas crianças, ela se manifesta com preocupação e atenção ao outro. Após análise de cada um dos eixos e as relações que os compunham, foi possível estabelecer uma série de proposições para concluir este estudo de caso: 1) a inclusão, enquanto fenômeno cultural, é ao mesmo tempo individual e coletiva, pois é necessário atenção para as necessidades e diferenças individuais mas também é necessário uma mudança de estrutura e atitude da comunidade ao redor
15
desse individuo dado como diferente. 2) A palavra inclusão tem significados distintos para cada um dos sujeitos, mas perpassa os conceitos de igualdade, normalidade e diferença. Não há consenso sobre como tratar essa diferença, alguns optando por valorizá-la, pois todos são diferentes; e outros optando por ignorá-las, pois todos são normais. 3) A cultura escolar não favorece as relações do Brincar entre duas crianças quando uma delas é autista, impactando no desenvolvimento sociais destes envolvidos. Enquanto as crianças autistas não se conectarem com seus pares neurotípicos, estaremos perdendo também possibilidades de desenvolvimento dentro de uma relação lúdica. 4) Compreender as posições externas do eu não são suficientes para analisar a sensação de pertencimento na cultura escolar, mas nos ajuda a entender melhor como a estrutura da escola (não só física, mas de práticas, burocracias e relacionamentos) impacta no papel em que educadores, crianças autistas e crianças não autistas estabelecem dentro da comunidade escolar. A partir dessas quatro proposições, concluímos que a cultura escolar canaliza I-positions, principalmente pela criação coletiva de significados envolvendo os alunos chamados de especiais, incluídos ou regulares.

Der Ruf nach Selbstbestimmung war einst ein Aufbruchssignal der Frauenbewegung. Inzwischen ist die Forderung vielfältig kritisch reflektiert worden. In den Sozialwissenschaften wird die Vorstellung eines autonomen Selbst in den so genannten Gouvernementalitätsstudien auseinandergenommen. Wer kann hier von wem lernen?

Rather than with the study of behavior itself, I am concerned here with the study of how we talk about ourselves and our behavior, with the way in which in a moral world we make our conduct accountable. I shall not, however, propose any new theories: in fact, my approach will be an implicit argument for the repudiation of theories in any attempt to understand the workings of everyday social life, for theories too require accounts as to how they should be interpreted and applied; they are themselves products of accountable behavior. Thus, rather than a “empirical/theoretical” approach, I shall be taking an approach of a “practical/descriptive” kind (Shotter, 1984), an approach in which the major question I want to raise is: What as human beings, and as persons, are we to ourselves. And the answer that I shall give is: that we are to ourselves very much as we treat one another as being in our everyday life activities. Where the answer that question is, as Wittgenstein (1953) reminds us, “something that is already in plain view” (no.89), something that we continually ‘exhibit’ or ‘show’ in all our daily transactions with each other. But it all “slips quickly by, or something of the kind” (no.436), so it is not all easy to make it, so to speak, “surveyable” (no.92) – that task, is the task of a practical/descriptive approach.

Today, ‘the selfie’ has probably become the most prominent cultural artifact of our online sociality and subjectivity in the form of image driven, autobiographic ‘streams of the self’. At the same time, ‘the selfie’ is considered the indicator of the excessive, nearly pathological self-centeredness of a whole generation, and a sign for wider cultural decline. Nowhere is this stigma as evident as with the moral outrage caused by the ‘Auschwitz Selfie’ in 2014, which has issued concerns over the exploitation of a historic disaster for the means of narcissism, and the lack of digital decorum of the ‘me-generation’. However, selfies taken at concentration camps are widely distributed on social media platforms such as Instagram and assume highly diverse aesthetics. Particularly selfies, in which the photographed subject has chosen a position that complicates his/her definite identification via the turning away of the face, require a closer reading than provided by existing scholarly research ranging from Holocaust, Tourism and Media Studies. These anti-selfies are characterized by tropological constitution and multi-referentiality, thus pursuing an anti-narcissist agenda. Understanding photographs as texts, the conflation of Roland Barthes’ work on photography and Paul de Man’s concept of ‘defacement’ provides the theoretical framework to deconstruct the tropological constitution of the (photographed) self in selected anti-selfies. The troping of the self via de- and refacement, ‘the giving and taking away of the face’, into a non-essential, multi-referential silhouette along with a distinct abstraction of color and composition further function as an aesthetic strategy to respond to the traumatic sublime aura of Holocaust signifiers and the ‘trauma of interpretation’. As such, anti-selfies offer a self-reflexive engagement with the Holocaust for all actors of the specular trio (photographed, photographer, viewer) without decontextualizing or appropriating the traumatic ‘event’ itself and acknowledges its retrospective reconstruction in employing the aesthetics of the traumatic sublime.

L'affirmation de l'individu s'avère paradoxale chez Emerson car, qu'il cherche à s'affirmer esthétiquement ou éthiquement, l'individu se nie nécessairement. L'affirmation doit donc passer par la médiation d'un autre qui l'appelle à devenir unique et irremplaçable, c'est-à-dire un Individu. Chez Emerson, cet autre s'incarne chez le poète, cet hétéronyme d'Emerson. Or Emerson conçoit le poète comme un "dieu libérateur", un individu divin qui possède les mêmes attributs que Dieu. Cet article entend ainsi montrer comment Emerson construit, à l'épreuve du texte, une arche divine sous laquelle l'individu est appelé à mener son existence et l'affirmer. Cet habiter divin doit ainsi permettre à l'individu de procéder à la réforme d'une méthode métaphysique enlisée dans l'impasse logique de la pensée normative et de surmonter cette difficulté par le mouvement, non plus unilatéral mais bilatéral, de transcendance.

In this essay I examine the racial achievement gap in American education in terms of an impaired psychosocial developmental process. I argue that the well-documented academic underperformance of certain minority groups may stem from the unfavorable resolution of a key developmental crisis in constituent members’ early scholastic experience. I go on to suggest that individual educators can play an important role in eliminating the achievement gap by changing the way they teach in their own classrooms. In part, they may do so by adopting a "transcultural" pedagogy or teaching style, according to which both teachers and their minority students develop (at minimum) transcultural proficiencies and (at maximum) transcultural identities, as a promising way to achieve two important ends. First, the fostering of an academically-industrious self-concept in members of historically underachieving minority groups and hence, second, the closing of the achievement gap "from the bottom up"—one classroom at a time.

Each living creature exists as a unit, as self. Understanding the self, then should be a major goal of scientific research. This volume takes stock of current understanding of the self and its relation to the brain, and considers future directions for scientific research in a multidisciplinary context.

In Minimal Selfhood and the Origins of Consciousness, R.D.V. Glasgow seeks to ground the logical roots of consciousness in what he has previously called the ‘minimal self’. The idea is that elementary forms of consciousness are logically dependent not, as is commonly assumed, on ownership of an anatomical brain or nervous system, but on the intrinsic reflexivity that defines minimal selfhood. The aim of the book is to trace the logical pathway by which minimal selfhood gives rise to the possible appearance of consciousness. It is argued that in specific circumstances it thus makes sense to ascribe elementary consciousness to certain predatory single-celled organisms such as amoebae and dinoflagellates as well as to some of the simpler animals. Such an argument involves establishing exactly what those specific circumstances are and determining how elementary consciousness differs in nature and scope from its more complex manifestations.

In this article I will show that the problem of embodiment goes back to the question of the mind-body split, as this has been established and discussed by the philosophical tradition. With the digital turn and the advent of ubiquitous computing the problem of embodiment has taken new (and far more complicated) forms that have led scholars to introduce the notion of a “new digital Cartesianism.” Subjectivation processes within digital culture have mostly been explained by resorting to what I will call the “E-D-R scheme,” (embodiment-disembodiment-reembodiment scheme) which assumes that a real detachment between the body and the mind really occurs in digital processes. Since—as I will show—this is not actually the case, I will suggest replacing this epistemological scheme with a new one, which I will call the “double-embodiment scheme,” in order to acquire a more fitting epistemological account of the underlying digital ontology. Finally, I will discuss the distinction between bodily ...

The paper deals with the concepts of fragmentation and reconstruction in the field of portraiture. Taking a portrait as a large fragment of information, we look into ways in which it can be optimised and reduced such that it remains valid but becomes more efficient. The paper commences by exploring the concept of the fragment from various facets, including historically, especially from the modernist point of view, and goes forth to investigate various techniques from practices both adjunct and outside of the field of art in order to inform the portraiture process itself on how information can be collected, optimised and presented to the viewer.

George Herbert Mead's symbolic interactionalism provides a social behaviorist theory of the origin of role-playing. Being a perspective which stresses the inherent theatricality of human interaction and of the human mind, it is therefore, in an indirect way, a theory of the psychosocial roots of drama. Where we find the origin of language, and the origin of the human self, there we find, as well, the origin of drama. Besides, Mead's concept of self-interaction resulting from internalized interaction is crucial for an adequate understanding of the generative process which gives rise to the complexity of the human mind.

Keywords: George Herbert Mead, Dramatism, Social Psychology, Mind, Role-Playing, Internalization, Interactionism, Social Behaviorism, Drama, Self

What Do You Want Out Of Life, And What Makes You Happy?
“Think And Grow Rich Made Easy” offers a 14 Steps to Riches Guide, based on the achievements of others, and designed especially for people that are looking to succeed in achieving their personal goals.

Postmodern theory indicates that a self-reflexive voice is a valid expression of cultural and temporal influences on language and meaning making. Transpersonal theories propose that ‘self’ is multiple and layered, some aspects of consciousness are more easily accessed, others, deeply held and previously unconscious. Narrative is intricately embedded in human experience and is a potent means of shaping self-identity, imbuing meaning, facilitating insight and transforming awareness. The creative arts form a unique, evocative means of investigating and expressing emergent narratives, conveying meaning and facilitating individual and collective transformation. This creative, practice-led investigation explores the question: Who are we?  Utilising an embodied and transpersonal methodology, a woman, artist and depth psychologist investigates the nature of self. The creative findings include fine art, photography, life-writing, a short film, an art novel and an exhibition. The researcher’s auto-ethnographic reflections discuss the impact of making the works, conclusions regarding their ramifications for understanding the nature of self, and their transformational potential. Returning Home alludes to the sense of cultivating a state of awareness where it is possible to compassionately witness the narratives of many selves, as well as the personal and global implications of doing so.

Ce travail s'est effectué dans le cadre d'un échange avec un psychologue du service au sujet de son travail de recherche sur le développement des relations prototypiques chez les enfants avec TSA. D'où des ajouts en gris qui sont des commentaires personnels en lien avec son travail de recherche.

On voit dans les modèles contemporains du self l’intégration des données psychologiques et biologiques ; devoir expliquer ses origines en termes de complexités, de la psychologie développementale et des neurosciences du développement, donne lieu à un consensus grandissant. On pense à présent que l’ontogénèse de l’esprit humain implique davantage que l’émergence de cognitions progressivement plus complexes. Les processus affectifs apparaissent se lier au cœur même du self, et dus à la nature psychobiologique intrinsèque de ces modèles  récents du développement humain à type de phénomènes basés sur le corps, depuis l’enfance et tout au long de la vie, ils se déplacent vers des conceptualisations corps-esprit-cerveau. Ces modèles sont en train de redéfinir les caractéristiques de ce qui nous rend des humains uniques.

Contemporary feminist research is highly preoccupied with dismantling social categories and challenging binaries which have long underpinned social thinking. Surprisingly, such deliberations have left the nexus of age and singlehood resistant to deconstructive analysis. Addressing recent literature on age, feminist theory and singlehood we are concerned with re-evaluating the image of the old maid image alongside the omnipresence of age and ageism in current discourses on singlehood, family life and intimate relations. Drawing on a content based analysis we argue that single women are faced with a triple disfranchisement based on their age, gender and single status. We further argue that the aging process of single women should be viewed as a situated symbolic practice disguised as a natural imperative, and not as it is customarily grasped, as a given biological category. Thus, this paper is set to critically revisit the authority of age and ageist practices by offering a new conceptual lens through which a revised feminist sociology of singlehood and age could be developed.