Psychoepistemology

“In independent judgment and introspection: fundamental requirements of the free society, jerry kirkpatrick maintains that a free society can exist only when a sufficient number of people have healthy psycho-epistemologies. he identifies fundamental aspects in our culture that work against this end. building on the work of objectivist psychologist edith packer, he presents a process for improving one’s psycho-epistemology. kirkpatrick also traces the history of child-rearing practices and relates the process of change to the work of many other psychologists including horney, freud, ellis, and rogers.”

“Think as if your life depends on it puts barbara branden’s lectures on the principles of efficient thinking in print at last, along with three later lectures. in roger bissell’s excellent transcription, the ten lectures introduce readers to psycho-epistemology (the psychology of methods of thinking), the difference between directed and undirected thinking, the role of the subcon-scious in problem-solving, common faults in thinking, and motivational issues that interfere with thinking. her contributions were effectively erased from objectivism after the nathaniel branden institute closed; the original lectures were the most significant part of the objectivist corpus that remained to be recovered.”

“In this chapter, the author illustrates how she has used concepts from relational and object relations psychoanalysis to inform one research project. it is about becoming a mother for the first time and is part of a large research programme, funded by the british esrc (economic and social research council), entitled ‘identities and social action’. the focus on understanding identities in the context of social action is a relevant context in which to use a psycho-social approach, and the mothering identity is perhaps the most relational of all identities, with intersubjective effects that ripple out into all other relationships and identities. the author explores two interrelated ways in which the current research project engages in relational thinking, largely through the work of winnicott and bion. first, the author briefly outlines my theoretical approach to maternal identity, drawing on relational thinking. second, the author describes the research practices that follow and what she learns from them. (psycinfo database record (c) 2012 apa, all rights reserved). (chapter)”

“This book offers an overview of the rapidly expanding field of psycho-social research. drawing on aspects of discourse psychology, continental philosophy and anthropological and neuro-scientific understandings of the emotions, psycho-social studies has emerged as an embryonic new paradigm in the human sciences. psycho-social studies uses psychoanalytic concepts and principles to illuminate core issues within the social sciences. the present volume contributes to the development of the new research methodologies in a number of ways. it is written largely from the point of view of practitioners who are also researchers. although contributors draw largely upon object-relations traditions in psychoanalysis, other influences are also present, particularly from continental philosophy and the sociology of the emotions. it develops an approach to epistemology – how we know what we know, which is strongly informed by a living approach to psychoanalysis, not just as a theory but as a way of being in the world – that is as a stance.”

“Western psychology has essentially become an independent discipline, relying on empirical laboratory research. however, the era of big data will dramatically influence the research paradigm of scientific psychology. the characteristics of big data methods coincide with chinese folk epistemology, which provides chinese psychology the opportunity to weaken the influence of westernization and restructure our own psychological systems. we proposed an interactive system of tian, di, and ren as a new chinese psychological system. based on this system, chinese psychology can now study a wide range of subjects, from the cultural and spiritual mental representations to the influence of social situations, and further the individual’s psycho-physical experiences of cognition, emotion, reasoning, morality, and behavior. following this path, chinese psychology can become, as termed by auguste comte, the ‘the last science’. under this new system, chinese psychology will build a new paradigm and go beyond the dialectical dilemmas in traditional psychology, such as sample vs. population, individuals vs. patterns, situations vs. experiments, and data vs. behaviors.”