The book examines how coevolved intraspecific aggression and appeasement gestures can give rise to complex social, cultural, and psychopathological phenomena. It argues that the individual's need regulate narcissistic supplies and maintain feelings of safety is the overriding determinant of human conduct and thought in mental health and illness.

This book presents the conception of a system of social identities, including the system's structure, development and dynamics, and explores the influence of cultural dimensions and identity salience on attitudes, behavior, and the structures of consciousness. The "Four C" model of identity-based conflicts provides fresh opportunities for analyses of the role of identity in conflicts and violence. Karina V. Korostelina introduces a model of dealing with identity conflicts that includes early warning, identity based training, management of multicultural communities, identity reconstruction workshops, and negotiation of identity. Every theoretical chapter in the book is followed by examples of research and methodological tools for analyzing data on social identities and identity based conflicts.

This book presents a new reading of film noir through psychoanalytic theory. In a field now dominated by Deleuzian and phenomenological approaches to film-philosophy, this book argues that, far from having passed, the time for Lacan in Film Studies is only just beginning. The chapters engage with Lacanian psychoanalysis to perform a meta-critical analysis of the writing on noir in the last seven decades and to present an original theory of criticism and historiography for the cinema. The book is also an act of mourning; for a lost past of the cinema, for a longstanding critical tradition and for film noir. It asks how we can talk about film noir when, in fact, film noir doesn't exist. The answer starts with Lacan and a refusal to relinquish psychoanalysis. Lacanian theories of retroactivity and ontology can be read together with film history, genre and narrative to show the ways in which theory and history, past and present, cinema and psychoanalysis are fundamentally knotted together. Tyrer also explores Lacan through particular noir films, such as Double Indemnity andThe Maltese Falcon - and demonstrates the possibilities for a Lacanian Film Studies (as one that engages fully with Lacan's entire body of work) that has hitherto not been realised.

This book introduces a novel approach for examining language and communication in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) - discourse and conversation analysis. The authors offer a set of very different perspectives on these complex issues than are typically presented in psychological and clinical work. Emerging from a range of social scientific fields, discourse and conversation analysis involve fine-grained qualitative analysis of naturally-occurring, rather than laboratory-based, interaction, enabling broad applications. Presented in two parts, this innovative volume first provides a set of pedagogical chapters to develop the reader's knowledge and skills in using these approaches, before moving to showcase the use of discursive methods through a range of original contributions from world-leading scholars, drawn from a range of disciplines including sociology, academic and clinical psychology, speech and language therapy, critical disability studies and social theory, and medicine and psychiatry.

This open access book reflects on academic life under a neoliberal regime. Through collaborative autoethnographies, the authors share stories about the everyday experiences, dilemmas and conflicts of three academics: the struggle for promotion, teaching's challenges, the race to publish, confronting bureaucracy and institutional politics, as well as the resulting emotional stress. These stories reveal the impact of neoliberal culture on ideological, economic, social, collegial, and emotional integrity which are integral to academics' lives today. But along with the challenges, the authors present their vision of hope, and transformation through academic solidarity - and for the silenced voices to be heard, inside academia and beyond it. This is an open access book.

Jerome Braun, known for his writings in interdisciplinary social science, an approach he calls pragmatic critical theory, here provides a book that discusses issues relevant to the moral underpinnings of democratic society, including issues of social evolution and of culture and personality. This book returns critical theory to its roots in both psychology and the social sciences. It shows some of the relationships between equality in a political and social sense and personal identity that either relates well to such equality, or rebels against it. All this reflects processes of social and cultural influence that involve not only random change but also processes of social and cultural evolution that themselves have effects regarding potentials for self-fulfillment and even public morality. This book provides a framework to help one study the interaction between individual aspirations and social opportunities.

This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Psychology (particularly in the areas of Psychology of Personality and Cultural Psychology), Sociology (especially those interested in Sociology of Alienation and Sociology of Culture, as well as Sociology of Mental Health), Anthropology (particularly in the area of Psychological Anthropology), Cultural Studies, and Social Theory in general.

This book discusses already established accounts about the sexualization of children through a theoretical and an empirical framework which bring together popular culture, consumption, sexuality, selfhood and childhood. Adopting the view that the debate about the sexualization of childhood is socially constructed, it pushes beyond the dominant preconceptions about 'the risks of childhood'. Moral judgements about children's welfare are perhaps nowhere more transient and controversial than when it comes to children's sexuality, something that has deep historical roots. However, and contrary to recurrent fears and moral panics about the loss of childhood as a result of a tidal wave of a sexualizing culture, this book theorizes the notion of children's sexualization within the social construction of myths of childhood innocence while also taking into account the extent of young people's actual engagement with media and technology in contemporary Western societies. It is within such a contextual framework that this book unfolds, bringing together a historical contextualization of childhood, sexuality and pornography with contemporary empirical accounts regarding the 'presentation of the self' and self-management.

Just as DNA determines the genetic makeup of every individual, a motif determines individual bio-psycho-social, emotional, and spiritual behaviors and attitudes. This epigenetic theory of individuality describes the motif as a unique artistry of organizing principles. The author uses the concept of motif to explain physiology, behavior, and attitude and to show how each person has his or her own unique system of motifs that comprises the fabric of every level of personality. Case studies exemplify the way in which motifs manifest the self and how the core personality is understood once the individual's motif is revealed.

Of interest to graduate students in psychology and clinicians and counselors in the field of humanistic and clinical psychology, holistic medicine, wellness and mind-body healing, psycho-biology, and spirituality this book will bring new understanding to personality and behavior studies.

This timely and thought-provoking collection explores the ways in which psychological science interacts with and addresses gender across varied subdisciplines in the field, from a feminist viewpoint. A particular aim of this volume is to move the conversation of gender in psychology beyond a difference-only paradigm. Veteran and emerging feminist scholars survey the handling of sex and gender issues across psychology, and describe how feminist perspectives and methodologies can and should be applied to enhance the field itself, but also in the service of social justice in the various cultures of corporations, academia, and the global stage. Contributions span theoretical advances, latest empirical findings, and real-world advocacy, with instructive and illuminating first-person accounts detailing challenges and rewards of feminist scholarship and practice in psychology. Throughout the volume, chapters document a dynamic field in its evolution from the traditional, two-dimensional study of gender-based differences to concerted multidisciplinary approaches, to cutting edge feminist theoretical and methodological advances such as intersectionality to understand gender in context. The volume is divided into three distinct sections. The first covers current theory and research in psychological science that considers gender beyond a difference-only paradigm. Then, leading feminist scholars reflect upon their own experiences in their respective subdisciplines. Finally, the third section explores innovative best practices and applications for feminist psychological science. Highlights of the coverage: * Beyond difference: Gender as a quality of social settings. * Adventures in feminist health psychology: Teaching about and conducting feminist psychological science. * Mind the thigh gap? Bringing feminist psychological science to the masses. * Feminist psychologists and institutional change in universities. With its stimulating compilation of theories, research, and applications, Feminist Perspectives On Building A Better Psychological Science of Gender is one of the most forward-thinking and innovative treatments of the field in recent years. It is a significant and important text for all psychologists, women's and gender studies specialists, social science researchers, and all those interested in using evidence-based psychological science to create a more just and equitable world.

Drawing on the non-individualistic perspective of social representations theory, this title presents an alternative view of social identity by articulating the inseparable dynamic relationships that exist between content, process and power relations when social identity is embedded in social knowledge.

In 1996, representatives from 27 different countries met in Jerusalem to share ideas about traumatic stress and its impact. For many, this represented the first dialogue that they had ever had with a mental health professional from another country. Many of the attendees had themselves been exposed to either personal trauma or traumatizing stories involving their patients, and represented countries that were embroiled in conflicts with each other. Listening to one another became possible because of the humbling humanity of each participant, and the accuracy and objectivity of the data presented. Understanding human traumatization had thus become a common denomi nator, binding together all attendees. This book tries to capture the spirit of the Jerusalem World Conference on Traumatic Stress, bringing forward the diversities and commonalties of its constructive discourse. In trying to structure the various themes that arose, it was all too obvious that paradigms of different ways of conceiving of traumatic stress should be addressed first. In fact, the very idea that psychological trauma can result in mental health symptoms that should be treated has not yet gained universal acceptability. Even within medicine and mental health, competing approaches about the impact of trauma and the origins of symptoms abound. Part I discusses how the current paradigm of traumatic stress disorder developed within the historical, social, and process contexts. It also grapples with some of the difficulties that are presented by this paradigm from anthropologic, ethical, and scientific perspectives."

This book provides a comprehensive historical account of the evolution of Sport and Exercise Psychology research, charting the progression of the field from the early days when well-controlled experimental research was the standard, to the subsequent paradigm war between positivism, post-positivism and constructivism. The book challenges current thinking and makes a plea for a move towards a future in which the accumulation of knowledge is at the core of Sport and Exercise research, rather than simply methods and measurements. The result is a critique not only of exercise and sport psychology, but of psychological research methods more broadly. It will be of great interest to researchers and students working in Sport Science, Research Methods, and Psychology.

In this book, Philippe Rochat explores self-consciousness, how it originates and how it shapes our lives, arguably the most important and revealing of all psychological problems. Why are we so prone to guilt and embarrassment? Why do we care so much about how others see us, about our reputation? What are the origins of such afflictions? Rochat argues that it is because we are members of a species that evolved the unique propensity to reflect upon themselves as an object of thoughts; an object of thoughts that is potentially evaluated by others. Based on empirical observations, this is a book of ideas, tapping into both developmental and anthropological phenomena and guided by strong existential intuitions regarding the human condition. At the core of these intuitions, there is the idea that human psychic life is predominantly determined by what we imagine others perceive of us.

At its core, psychology is about persons: their thinking, their problems, the improvement of their lives. The understanding of persons is crucial to the discipline. But according to this provocative new book, between current essentialist theories that rely on biological models, and constructionist approaches based on sociocultural experience, the concept of the person has all but vanished from psychology.

Persons: Understanding Psychological Selfhood and Agency recasts theories of mind, behavior, and self, synthesizing a range of psychologists and philosophers to restore the centrality of personhood-especially the ability to make choices and decisions-to the discipline. The authors' unique perspective de-emphasizes method and formula in favor of moral agency and life experience, reveals frequently overlooked contributions of psychology to the study of individuals and groups, and traces traditions of selfhood and personhood theory, including: The pre-psychological history of personhood, a developmental theory of situated, agentive personhood, the political disposition of self as a kind of understanding, Human agency as a condition of personhood, Emergentist theories in psychology, the development of the perspectival self.

Persons represents an intriguing new path in the study of the human condition in our globalizing world. Researchers in developmental, social, and clinical psychology as well as social science philosophers will find in these pages profound implications not only for psychology but also for education, politics, and ethics.

This edited book approaches the learning experience as a creative, constructive process from an epistemological orientation that combines transdisciplinary, participatory, and collaborative approaches to explore the most constructive ways forward for a networked constructivist (project- and problem-based) pedagogy. The volume emphasizes the value of a number of modes of inquiry that, among others, include ethnography, auto-ethnography, corpus analysis, narrative analysis, and their many intersections in the process of academic maturation and growth. This book will be of interest to applied linguists, sociolinguists, researchers, and educators of topics related to higher education and academic maturation, networked learning, qualitative inquiry and transdisciplinary studies.

Is the Ego nothing but our brain? Are our mental and psychological states nothing but neuronal states of our brain? Though Sigmund Freud rejected a neuroscientific foundation for psychoanalysis, recent knowledge in neuroscience has provided novel insights into the brain and its neuronal mechanisms. This has also shed light on how the brain itself contributes to the differentiation between neuronal and psychological states.
In Neuropsychoanalysis in Practice, Georg Northoff discusses the various neuronal mechanisms that may enable the transformation of neuronal into psychological states, looking at how these processes are altered in psychiatric disorders like depression and schizophrenia. He focuses specifically on how the brain is organized and how this organization enables the brain to differentiate between neuronal and psychodynamic states, that is, the brain and the psyche. This leads him to discuss not only empirical issues but also conceptual problems, for instance, the concept of the brain. Neuropsychoanalysis in Practice applies these concepts and mechanisms to explain the various symptoms observed in psychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia. In addition to the empirical issues, he also discusses various conceptual and methodological issues that are relevant in linking neuroscience and psychoanalysis, developing a novel transdisciplinary framework for linking neuroscience, psychoanalysis and philosophy.
This highly original new book will help foster new dialogues between neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and philosophy, and will be fascinating reading for anyone in these disciplines.

This book offers a practical approach to fostering self-efficacy and improving understanding of others' behavior. The authors introduce the ID37 instrument as a psychological model and assessment procedure for analyzing personalities and motivations, showing how exploring one's own personality can lead to more effective self-direction, greater satisfaction with life, and more profound success. By combining aspects of motivational psychology with practical diagnostics application, the book aims to demonstrate the practical benefits of motivation analysis on understanding identity formation and development. Among the topics addressed: Personality traits and states Motivation-driven action The 16 motives and their impact Obstacles to achieving satisfaction Case studies from business coaching, leadership, and HR management scenarios * Including the basics on motivational psychology as well as a variety of case studies and practical tips for day-to-day work, The ID37 Personality Analysis is a useful reference for students and researchers interested in personality development as well as HR managers and leaders looking to deepen their knowledge of motivational psychology.

Scholarship on the psychology of peace has been accumulating for decades. The approach employed has been predominantly centered on addressing and preventing conflict and violence and less on the conditions associated with promoting peace. Concerns around nuclear annihilation, enemy images, discrimination, denial of basic human needs, terrorism and torture have been the focal points of most research. The Psychological Components of a Sustainable Peace moves beyond a prevention-orientation to the study of the conditions for increasing the probabilities for sustainable, cooperative peace. Such a view combines preventative scholarship with a promotive-orientation to the study of peaceful situations and societies. The contributors to this volume examine the components of various psychological theories that contribute to the promotion of a harmonious, sustainable peace. Underlying this orientation is the belief that promoting the ideas and actions which can lead to a sustainable, harmonious peace will not only contribute to the prevention of war, but will also lead to more positive, constructive relations among people and nations and to a more sustainable planet. The Psychological Components of a Sustainable Peace is valuable and stimulating reading for researchers in peace psychology, political psychology, and conflict resolution as well as others who are interested in developing a sustainable, harmonious world.

The blush is a ubiquitous, but little understood, phenomenon that presents many puzzles. It involves a visible, involuntary and uncontrollable change in the face that can express feelings, reveal character, influence others and, for those individuals who fear blushing, cause intense anxiety. Ray W. Crozier provides a scholarly, yet accessible, synthesis of research, and new findings, locating blushing within the context of the 'social emotions' of embarrassment, shame and shyness.

What is "too fat?" "Too thin"? Interpretations of body weight vary widely across and within cultures. Meeting weight expectations is a major concern for many people because failing to do so may incur dire social consequences, such as difficulty in finding a romantic partner or even in locating adequate employment. Without these social and cultural pressures, body weight would be only a health issue. While socially constructed standards of body weight may seem immutable, they are continuously re-created through social interactions that perpetuate or transform expectations about fatness and thinness. Understanding social constructions of body weight requires insight regarding how people develop and use constructions in their daily lives. While structural conditions and cultural environments make important contributions to weight constructions, the chapters in this book focus on the "social processes" in which people engage while they interpret, negotiate, resist, and transform cultural definitions and expectations. As such, most of the chapters in this volume borrow from and contribute to a symbolic interactionist perspective. Written by sociologists, psychologists, and nutritionists, all of the chapters in "Interpreting Weight" focus on how people construct fatness and thinness. The contributors examine different strategies used to interpret body weight, such as negotiating weight identities, reinterpreting weight, and becoming involved in weight-related organizations. Together, these chapters emphasize the many ways that people actively define, construct, and enact their fatness and thinness in a variety of settings and situations.

This edited volume presents selected papers focusing on Ronald Fisher's cumulative contributions to understanding destructive intergroup conflicts from a social-psychological perspective, and to the development and assessment of small group, interactive methods for resolving them. Highlights include schematic models of third party consultations, intergroup conflicts, and a contingency approach to third party intervention. Overall, the selected texts offer a comprehensive description and clear rationale for interactive conflict resolution and its unique contributions to peacemaking.

I have long been awe-struck by authors' claims that their books had been in the making for 5, or 10, or even 15 years. I now have a better appreciation ofthe work involved in bringing a book to press. The seeds of this project have had a long germination. The impetus for this book began more than 10 years ago when I was a graduate student in clinical psychology. Having an interest in human sexuality-and in theories on the forms of sexual attraction specifically-I was perplexed by various perspectives on this subject. Disciplines of thought that I encountered medicine, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, gay/lesbian theory, social constructionism, anthropology, Marxism, Christianity, and others-perceived the issue so differently, so strongly, with almost no overlap. I was fascinated that the question ofhow and why one is attracted to either one or both sexes could elicit such conviction and divergent points of view. There seemed to be no easy way to resolve these differences. Still, what frustrated me most in my readings were several conceptual problems among the two prominent proponents of contemporary sexuality theory scientists and social constructionists. One ofmy first frustrations with biomedical and social scientists who write about sexuality was that they often define sexual attraction in strict behavioral terms, as completed observable sexual acts--observable in the sense that such acts or their consequences are seen by others."