From: Esiesc-AT-aol.com Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1996 17:44:34 -0400 Subject: re: unscientific psychology conference Please post/disseminate following conference information, which I think would be of interest to those of us who follow baudrillard. Thanks. Mary Fridley Unscientific Psychology: Conversations With Other Voices A two day conference on progress and possibilities in creating a cultural, relational and performatory approach to understanding human life June 14-15, 1997 Edith Macy Conference Center Briarcliff Manor, New York Sponsored by the Center for Developmental Learning of the East Side Institute for Short Term Psychotherapy With each passing day, psychology's inability to provide solutions to critical questions history has raised as we approach the 21st century becomes more apparent. Just about everyone -- theoreticians, practitioners, policy makers, consumers and the general public -- is growing more and more disillusioned with psychology, as it fails to understand or deal successfully with pressing issues such as the nature of human sociality and anti-socialness, emotional pain, violence, identity, sexuality, prejudice and bigotry, creativity, depression, learning and educational failure, memories false and true, to name just a few. >From the postmodern vantage point, the current crisis in psychology and the related fields of psychotherapy and education is rooted in misguided efforts to emulate the natural sciences: Human-social phenomena simply cannot be understood with the tools and conceptions that are used to study nature. Subjecting psychology to postmodern deconstruction, contemporary psychologists and philosophers find it to be a complex interweaving of the modern science paradigm with centuries- old philosophical presuppositions. Psychology's core conceptions -- such as development, behavior, the individual, the self, stages and patterns, rationality and irrationality, normality and abnormality -- are themselves rooted in philosophical-scientific assumptions about what it means to understand and to know. The challenge to psychology is equally a challenge to the modernist conception of understanding and knowing and its commitment to deeply-rooted methodological- philosophical biases, such as truth, objectivity, causality, duality and linearity. Understanding human life, some leading postmodern voices argue, demands a new epistology. Creating a new epistology -- an unscientific psychology -- is the activity of making new meaning. It is an emergent conversation created by and out of diverse voices who speak more poetically, culturally and historically than analytically and taxonomically. It is a conversation about persons (not minds), about relationships and relationality (not environmental influences on self-contained individuals), about human activity (not behavior), about narratives and stories (not Truth), about creating new forms of life (not adapting to forms of alienation). What is emerging is an approach to understanding human life as emergent, activisitic, relational and performatory. The invited presenters are leading voices in this conversation. The combination of rigor and creativity in their scholarship and practice is a provocative challenge to orthodox psychology. Erica Burman is Senior Lecturer in developmental and educational psychology at the Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, England. Her recent works are Deconstructing Developmental Psychology and the forthcoming Deconstructing Feminist Psychology. She is also editor of Feminists and Psychological Practice and co-editor (with Ian Parker) of Discourse Analytic Research. Lenora Fulani is on the faculty of the East Side Institute’s Center for Developmental Learning and a therapist at the East Side Center for Social Therapy. As a developmental psychologist and political activist, she has been a key player in the movement for independent politics in the US. She introduces diverse audiences--from community activists to politicians to inner-city teens--to the postmodern challenge. She is editor of The Psychopathology of Everyday Racism and Sexism and a contributor to Erica Burman’s forthcoming Deconstructing Feminist Psychology. Kenneth Gergen is the Mustin Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA. He is the author of three of the most influential postmodern discussions of the social sciences: Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge; The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life; and Realities and Relationships: Sounding in Social Construction. Mary Gergen is Associate Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Her scholarship concerns postmodern and feminist theories. She is editor of Feminist Thought and the Structure of Knowledge; and co-author (with Sara Davis) of the forthcoming Conversations at the Crossroads: Social Constructionism and the Psychology of Gender. Lois Holzman was on the faculty of Empire State College, State University of New York for seventeen years. She is currently director of the Center for Developmental Learning and the Barbara Taylor School (a Vygotskian laboratory elementary school), both in New York City. She is author of Schooling for Development: Some Postmodern Possibilities (forthcoming), and co- author (with Fred Newman) of Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist and Unscientific Psychology: A Cultural-Performatory Approach to Understanding Human Life. John R. Morss is Senior Lecturer at the University of Otago in New Zealand. A leading critical developmental psychologist, he is the author of The Biologising of Childhood: Developmental Psychology and the Darwinian Myth; and Growing Critical: Alternatives to Developmental Psychology. Fred Newman is a practicig psychotherapist, Artistic Director of the Castillo Theatre, and Director of Clinical Training at the East Side Institute for Short Term Psychotherapy in New York City where social therapy, the performatory approach he founded, is practiced. His recent books include Let's Develop! and Performance of a Lifetime: A Practical-Philosophical Guide to a Joyous Life and (with Lois Holzman) Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist and Unscientific Psychology: A Cultural-Performatory Approach to Understanding Human Life. Ian Parker is Senior Lecturer in social and abnormal psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, England. Parker is the author of The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology--and How to End It, co-author of Deconstructing Psychopathology, and co- editor of Deconstructing Social Psychology, Psychology and Society: Radical Theory and Practice and Discourse Analystic Research. John Shotter is Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire. His most recent books -- Cultural Politics of Everyday Life: Social Constructionism, Rhetoric and Knowing of the Third Kind; and Conversational Realities: Studies in Social Constructionism -- explore the dialogic realities of the lifeworld. The conference is designed to be informal and in-depth, with ample opportunity for participants to explore issues with the presenters. Participants: The conference should be of interest to a wide range of people, including university faculty, graduate and undergraduate students; clinicians, social workers, educators, health and mental health workers. Costs: Conference registration: $100 Accomodations and meals: $215 (double occupancy Saturday night, 3 meals on Saturday, 2 meals on Sunday) For information and/or to register, contact: East Side Institute 500 Greenwich Street New York, New York 10013 Phone: (212) 941-8906 Fax: (212) 941-8340 email: esiesc-AT-aol.com On the Internet: www.castillo.org
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