PubMed Health⌕ Search
Home/Archive/PubMed

PubMed · 8746491

Narrative and psychological understanding.

R Josselson
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

NARRATIVE understanding is based in philosophical hermeneutics, a tradition regnant in Europe but only recently penetrating the American intellectual consciousness. Within this epistemology, there is only the text (communicated in language), which is itself about a text, and dialogue within and among these texts. There is no priori place to stand to make truth claims: there are only interpretations made from a particular historical and value-implicated stance. The "hermeneutic circle" describes a process in which understanding requires reference to a priori understandings such that knowledge accrues in a circular, dialectic fashion. No knowledge can be independent of context or interpreter. The enterprise of science then becomes conversation from which emerge consensual ideas that constitute ways of perceiving and interpreting future texts.

Explore related subjects

AwarenessHumansInterpersonal RelationsLife Change EventsPhilosophyPsychoanalytic InterpretationPsychoanalytic TheoryPsychoanalytic TherapyVerbal BehaviorJournal Article

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

R Josselson. 1995. Narrative and psychological understanding.. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1995.11024738

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

PubMed2007

One, two, three, four, nothing more: an investigation of the conceptual sources of the verbal counting principles.

Since the publication of [Gelman, R., & Gallistel, C. R. (1978). The child's understanding of number. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.] seminal work on the development of verbal counting as a representation of number, the nature of the ontogenetic sources of the verbal counting principles has been intensely debated. The present experiments explore proposals according to which the verbal counting principles are acquired by mapping numerals in the count list onto systems of numerical representation for which there is evidence in infancy, namely, analog magnitudes, parallel individuation, and set-based quantification. By asking 3- and 4-year-olds to estimate the number of elements in sets without counting, we investigate whether the numerals that are assigned cardinal meaning as part of the acquisition process display the signatures of what we call "enriched parallel individuation" (which combines properties of parallel individuation and of set-based quantification) or analog magnitudes. Two experiments demonstrate that while "one" to "four" are mapped onto core representations of small sets prior to the acquisition of the counting principles, numerals beyond "four" are only mapped onto analog magnitudes about six months after the acquisition of the counting principles. Moreover, we show that children's numerical estimates of sets from 1 to 4 elements fail to show the signature of numeral use based on analog magnitudes - namely, scalar variability. We conclude that, while representations of small sets provided by parallel individuation, enriched by the resources of set-based quantification are recruited in the acquisition process to provide the first numerical meanings for "one" to "four", analog magnitudes play no role in this process.

Awareness↗
PubMed2007

[The brain-mind debate. Problems in the philosophy of science with regard to psychiatry].

The present interdisciplinary brain-mind debate with regard to neurobiology shows deficits in the criticism of methods and in the precision of language and argumentation. Simplifying localisations of psychic functions, insufficient explanations and over-interpretations in the sense of physical determinism are the consequence. This can be demonstrated in deficits of neurobiological theories of volitional action. Therefore, the current concept of man is less perturbed than is proposed by neurobiologists. For psychiatry besides the neurobiological approach also a separate way of building models seems to be useful if present theoretical psychology and systems science would be regarded. In particular, the systems science of natural systems offers new opportunities to bridge gaps between disciplines involved in the brain-mind debate.

Awareness↗