Self In Relation

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.

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.

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.

Tracing out the origins of the Trinitarian 'revivial' in the modern era, through to the destabilizing effects of postmodernity on Trinitarian discourse, the author provides a critical hermeneutic for the evaluation and implementation of Trinitarian theology in the contemporary world.

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.

In Self and Other, Robert Rogers presents a powerful argument for the adoption of a theory of object relations, combining the best features of traditional psychoanalytic theory with contemporary views on attachment behavior and intersubjectivity. Rogers discusses theory in relation both to actual psychoanalytic case histories and imagined selves found in literature, and provides a critical rereading of the case histories of Freud, Winnicott, Lichtenstein, Sechehaye, and Bettelheim. At once scientific and humanistic, Self and Other engagingly draws from theoretical, clinical, and literary traditions. It will appeal to psychoanalysts as well as to literary scholars interested in the application of psychoanalysis to literature.