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The concept of a relational self has been prominent in feminism, communitarianism, narrative self theories, and social network theories, and has been important to theorizing about practical dimensions of selfhood. However, it has been largely ignored in traditional philosophical theories of personal identity, which have been dominated by psychological and animal theories of the self. This book offers a systematic treatment of the notion of the self as constituted by social, cultural, political, and biological relations. The author’s account incorporates practical concerns and addresses how a relational self has agency, autonomy, responsibility, and continuity through time in the face of change and impairments. This cumulative network model (CNM) of the self incorporates concepts from work in the American pragmatist and naturalist tradition. The ultimate aim of the book is to bridge traditions that are often disconnected from one another—feminism, personal identity theory, and pragmatism—to develop a unified theory of the self.
That we owe duties to others is a commonplace, the subject of countless philosophical treatises and monographs. Morality is interpersonal and other-directed, many claim. But what of what we owe ourselves? In Duty to Self, Paul Schofield flips the paradigm of interpersonal morality by arguing that there are moral duties we owe ourselves, and that in light of this, philosophers need to significantly rethink many of their views about practical reason, moral psychology, politics, and moral emotions. Among these views is the idea that divisions within a person's life enable her to relate to herself second-personally--that is, as though she were relating to a distinct other person--in the way required by morality. Further, there exist political duties owed to the self, which the state may coerce persons to perform. This amounts to a novel argument for paternalistic law, which appeals to considerations of right, justice, and freedom in order to justify coercing a person for their own sake--a liberal justification for an idea typically thought to be deeply at odds with liberalism. Schofield untangles how this view would impact various issues in applied ethics and political philosophy, for example, financial prudence and risk, the pursuit of the good life, and medical ethics. Duty to Self is essential for anyone working in moral and political philosophy or political theory.
This volume is organized around the theme of the self as viewed through the lens of various subspecialities within the field of psychology. It is a collection of papers presented at a series of lectures given during the 1994-96 meetings of the Psychology Section of the New York Academy of Sciences. Subjects vary from the field of comparative behaviour (in particular the issue of animal self-recognition as demonstrated by the mark test), narrative approaches to the self, and social and cultural influences on the development of the self-concept. The text demonstrates how different fields of psychology approach a common topic. Contributing psychologists include: Susan Andersen; Mahzarin R. Banaji; Jerome Bruner; Gordon Gallup; John Kihlstrom; Stanley Klein; Michael Lewis; Ulrich Neisser; Katherine Nelson; and Howard Rachlin.
Self-esteem is an academic and popular phenomenon, vigorously researched and debated, sometimes imbued with magical qualities, other times vilified as the bane of the West's preoccupation with self. Though thousands of articles have been devoted to the topic, and bookshops work to feed the public's appetite for advice on revealing, enhancing and maintaining self-esteem, conflicting claims and findings have placed the field in disarray. In a very real sense, self-esteem is a victim of its own popularity. This book seeks to add clarity to a concept earlier examined by such notable self theorists as Morris Rosenberg but eminently worthy of re-examination and extension. We do this by asking some leading thinkers on self-esteem theory, measurement and application to assess what we know about self-esteem, and link it to important aspects of society and the human experience.
How can we get the most out of our close relationships? Research in the area of personal relationships continues to grow, but most prior work has emphasized how to overcome negative aspects. This volume demonstrates that a good relationship is more than simply the absence of a bad relationship, and that establishing and maintaining optimal relationships entails enacting a set of processes that are distinct from merely avoiding negative or harmful behaviors. Drawing on recent relationship science to explore issues such as intimacy, attachment, passion, sacrifice, and compassionate goals, the essays in this volume emphasize the positive features that allow relationships to flourish. In doing so, they integrate several theoretical perspectives, concepts, and mechanisms that produce optimal relationships. The volume also includes a section on intensive and abbreviated interventions that have been empirically validated to be effective in promoting the positive features of close relationships.
Overly emotional, hysterical, dependent, frivolous, fickle... Why have women been so consistently defined as deficient in maturity, self-mastery, and independence according to the models of human development inspired by male culture? The authors of WOMEN'S GROWTH IN CONNECTION, a sampling of the influential working papers from the Stone Center, Wellesley College, have sought to answer this question by studying developmental theory and reformulating it to reflect women's experience more accurately. These papers, about women's ways of being in the world, frame an innovative relational perspective on women's psychological development. The authors--clinicians, clinical supervisors, and teachers--have been searching for therapeutic models that take into account women's meaning systems, values, and organization of experiences, all of which often revolves around relationships rather than the self. By offering a new perspective on women's development, WOMEN'S GROWTH IN CONNECTION stands at the forefront of the ongoing feminist movement to examine and reshape psychological theory and practice. The authors offer this volume as an invitation to the reader to join in the building of new models of women's development.
This volume provides an overview of the theoretical and empirical work on relationship-induced self-concept change that has occurred over the last 10-15 years. The chapters in this volume discuss the foundations of relationship self-change, how and when it occurs, how it influences relationship decisions and behavior, and how it informs and modifies subsequent knowledge structures, all examined over the course of the relationship cycle (i.e., initiation, maintenance, and dissolution). Additionally, this volume identifies novel applications and extensions of the relationship self-change literature, including applications to health and behavior, intergroup relations, and the workplace. Among the topics discussed: Self-disclosure in the acquaintance process Commitment readiness Bolstering attachment security through close relationships Self-concept clarity and self-change The role of social support in promoting self-development Relationship dissolution and self-concept change Intergroup and sociocultural factors of self-expansion Self-concept change at work Measurement of relationship-induced self-concept change Interpersonal Relationships and the Self-Concept serves both as a comprehensive overview of the existing empirical research as well as a roadmap for future research on self-change, including a discussion of emerging theoretical frameworks. It will interest researchers focusing on romantic relationships, self and identity, and the intersection of self and relationships, spanning the disciplines of psychology, sociology, communication, and family studies.
The sexual revolution, oft discussed in the journalistic literature of recent years, has brought in its wake a host of questions that are only beginning to be addressed. How are women coping with "real world" challenges for which they may be ill prepared, both socially and psychologically? How successfully are they integrating old and new ego ideals in forging new identities? Is their ostensible "liberation" actually making for a sense of integration and wholeness? The Psychology of Today's Woman: New Psychoanalytic Visions probes these and related questions from the standpoint of both developmental and therapeutic concerns. Taking Freud's notion of female sexuality as a point of departure, editors Bernay and Cantor have compiled a collection of original essays that reassesses traditional conceptions of female psychology (Section I), proffers new visions of femininity (Section II), and explores critical situations in the lives of contemporary women (Section III). A final section of the book, of special interest to analysts and psychotherapists, examines the various facets of the clinical treatment of women. Collectively, the contributors to this volume articulate a strong challenge to the "deficiency model" of female identity that has long dominated psychoanalytic theory. More impressively still, they offer constructive alternatives to the preconceptions of the past. They converge in the belief that the richness and diversity of female experience cannot be encompassed in the overly simplified definitions and "masculine" analogizing of classical analysis. Whether we investigate the status of "masculinity" and "femininity" as personality traits, the relationship between "nurturance" and "aggression" in female identity, or the meaning of "normality" and "pathology" in treatment situations, we are very much in a realm of multiple truths in which the formulas of the past give little sense of the options of the present or the possibilities of the future.
In this pathbreaking and provocative new treatment of some of the oldest dilemmas of psychology and relationship, Gordon Wheeler challenges the most basic tenet of the West cultural tradition: the individualist self. Characteristics of this self-model are our embedded yet pervasive ideas that the individual self precedes and transcends relationship and social field conditions and that interpersonal experience is somehow secondary and even opposed to the needs of the inner self. Assumptions like these, Wheeler argues, which are taken to be inherent to human nature and development, amount to a controlling cultural paradigm that does considerable violence to both our evolutionary self-nature and our intuitive self-experience. He asserts that we are actually far more relational and intersubjective than our cultural generally allows and that these relational capacities are deeply built into our inherent evolutionary nature. His argument progresses from the origins and lineage of the Western individualist self-model, into the basis for a new model of the self, relationship, and experience out of the insights and implications of Gestalt psychology and its philosophical derivatives, deconstructivism and social constructionism. From there, in a linked series of experiential chapters, each of them a groundbreaking essay in its own right, he takes up the essential dynamic themes of self-experience and relational life: interpersonal orientation, meaning-making and adaptation, support, shame, intimacy, and finally narrative and gender, culminating in considerations of health, ethics, politics, and spirit. The result is a picture and an experience of self that is grounded in the active dynamics of attention, problem solving, imagination, interpretation, evaluation, emotion, meaning-making, narration, and, above all, relationship. By the final section, the reader comes away with a new sense of what it means to be human and a new and more usable definition of health.