Critical Perspectives on Personality and Subjectivity (original) (raw)
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An in-depth look and analysis of theories of personality, spanning from Freud to modern day theorists. Covers theories of Freud, Jung, Adler, Erikson, Seligman, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and Karen Horney, referencing the integration of feministic theory.
Scientists exploring individuals, as such scientists are individuals themselves and thus not independent from their objects of research, encounter profound challenges; in particular, high risks for anthropo-, ethno- and ego-centric biases and various fallacies in reasoning. The Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals (TPS-Paradigm) aims to tackle these challenges by exploring and making explicit the philosophical presuppositions that are being made and the metatheories and methodologies that are used in the field. This article introduces basic fundamentals of the TPS-Paradigm including the epistemological principle of complementarity and metatheoretical concepts for exploring individuals as living organisms. Centrally, the TPS-Paradigm considers three metatheoretical properties (spatial location in relation to individuals’ bodies, temporal extension, and physicality versus “non-physicality”) that can be conceived in different forms for various kinds of phenomena explored in individuals (morphology, physiology, behaviour, the psyche, semiotic representations, artificially modified outer appearances and contexts). These properties, as they determine the phenomena’s accessibility in everyday life and research, are used to elaborate philosophy-of-science foundations and to derive general methodological implications for the elementary problem of phenomenon-methodology matching and for scientific quantification of the various kinds of phenomena studied. On the basis of these foundations, the article explores the metatheories and methodologies that are used or needed to empirically study each given kind of phenomenon in individuals in general. Building on these general implications, the article derives special implications for exploring individuals’ “personality”, which the TPS-Paradigm conceives of as individual-specificity in all of the various kinds of phenomena studied in individuals.
The growth of disciplines that offer knowledge of the human personality in the past century is startling when one measures that interest against previous centuries. Perhaps it is an expression of an emerging consciousness in our civilization that to be human requires a critical dimension of self-understanding previously absent as a norm. The fields that study personality range from areas of the natural sciences, through the social sciences, and, of course, the humanities. The experimental psychology of the nineteenth century, which focused on physiology, chemistry, and physics in approaching personality, still exists in the work of behaviorists. New knowledge in biochemistry continues the nineteenth century aspiration to explain temperament and mental health through the organic functioning of the human system. Medical psychiatry draws upon these traditional natural scientific methods, but since Freud has included as a dominant focus the study of personality. Personality is seen as a...
Contemporary psychology is in a state of confusion, claims this perennialist author and mental health clinician, because it cannot identify the 'self' or 'the unity of the personality'. This is because it "attempts to study what is beyond its epistemological and ontological scope and trespasses upon the domain of metaphysics". Drawing attention to the materialistic biases in contemporary psychology, which focuses on the empirical ‘self’ and its pathology without the normative criterion of a 'healthy personality', the author contrasts contemporary psychology with traditional pneumatology, which acknowledges the transpersonal Self as the source of normative personality.
The birth of the Renaissance movement in the West ushered the scholars as well as the masses into a broader perspective of learning and knowledge seeking. The spirit of the Renaissance paved the way forward for scholars to gain freedom of speech and liberation from their old mindset. Europe that was bursting with new philosophical and scientific ideas also gave its people a wide range of perspectives in understanding man and personality. Secularism and modernism that came as a result of the Renaissance movement caused a shift in the understanding on man and his personality from a religious to a scientific one. In this study, the researchers would like to venture into the areas of man and personality from the Western perspective. Very precisely, the researchers would like to conduct a survey on the shifting paradigms in the field of Western psychology, pertaining to the study on man and personality. Upon performing the survey, the researchers would like to identify and analyze the underlying factors that caused the emergence of the different paradigms in Western psychology.
The Science of Yoga claims to have discovered the laws that govern the personality of man, says Swami Vivekananda. Based on the book 'Personality Development' published from Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata, these class notes try to explain how personality transformation can occur in us.