The Social Self in Japanese Philosophy and American Pragmatism: A Comparative Study of Watsuji Tetsuro and George Herbert Mead

1992 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Odin
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
Social Self ◽  
George Herbert Mead ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
The Social

The Contribution of Enrique Pichon-Rivière: Comparisons with His European Contemporaries and with Modern Theory

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Scharff
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
George Herbert Mead ◽  
Analytic Thinking ◽  
Family Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Original Family ◽  
Kurt Lewin ◽  
Social Applications

Enrique Pichon-Rivière, a pioneer of psychoanalysis, worked and wrote in Argentina in the mid-twentieth century, but his work has not so far been translated into English. From the beginning, Pichon-Rivière understood the social applications of analytic thinking, centring his ideas on "el vinculo", which is generally translated as "the link", but could equally be translated as "the bond". The concept that each individual is born into human social links, is shaped by them, and simultaneously contributes to them inextricably ties people's inner worlds to the social world of family and society in which they live. Pichon-Rivière believed, therefore, that family analysis and group and institutional applications of analysis were as important as individual psychoanalysis. Many of the original family and couple therapists from whom our field learned trained with him. Because his work was centred in the analytic writings of Fairbairn and Klein, as well as those of the anthropologist George Herbert Mead and the field theory of Kurt Lewin, his original ideas have important things to teach us today. This article summarises some of his central ideas such as the link, spiral process, the single determinate illness, and the process of therapy.

Mead, George Herbert (1863–1931)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Joas
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
William James ◽  
The Self ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
George Herbert Mead ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Charles Peirce ◽  
Infantile Development

Together with Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey, George Herbert Mead is considered one of the classic representatives of American pragmatism. He is most famous for his ideas about the specificities of human communication and sociality and about the genesis of the ‘self’ in infantile development. By developing these ideas, Mead became one of the founders of social psychology and – mostly via his influence on the school of symbolic interactionism – one of the most influential figures in contemporary sociology. Compared to that enormous influence, other parts of his philosophical work are relatively neglected.

Objective meaning: The formation of self in Mead and Sohn-Rethel

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46
Author(s):  
Magnus Granberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Processes ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
The Self ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
George Herbert Mead ◽  
Commodity Exchange ◽  
The Social ◽  
Objective Meaning ◽  
Self Formation ◽  
Interpretative Sociology

This analysis of the work of George Herbert Mead and Alfred Sohn-Rethel compares their respective accounts of the formation of the self. The analysis proceeds from two important similarities: the effort to understand self-consciousness not as primordial but as the product of social processes, and the view that these processes form a circuit: the self arises from consciousness’ return to itself, concluding a movement whereby consciousness is first externalized onto objects and then internalized, taking on the insular shape of self-consciousness. What sets the two accounts apart is the site from whence the self returns: objects. In Mead, the self returns from meaningful objects, and this same (intersubjective) meaning is entangled with the process of self-formation. In contrast, for Sohn-Rethel, the self returns from objects whose meaning is not established intersubjectively but objectively: the self is the unintended consequence of commodity exchange. In Mead, interaction among people affords meaning to objects and thus evokes the self; in Sohn-Rethel, interaction among commodities evokes an objective meaning that renders people as selves. Interpretative sociology should attend to the objectively and unconsciously meaningful forms analyzed by Sohn-Rethel. To illustrate this conclusion, reference is made to a certain experience of the social under neoliberalism.

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