Human Arenas

The paper takes up the relationship between teleological explanation and psychology. Teleological explanation—given in terms of purpose, intention, and value—is generally viewed unfavorably in psychology and science broadly. Biophysical mechanistic explanations are generally regarded as more scientific. The paper argues that the contemporary hostility to teleology needs to be understood in the context of the early modern political-philosophical struggles against organized religion. European philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw that teleology was an essential part of how organized religion justified its political power. René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza are analyzed as philosophers who both attacked teleology, and contributed to the critique of organized religion. The early modern attack on teleology and the development of mechanistic science thus both had political as well as philosophical motivations. The tension between teleological and mechanistic explanation is shown to persist into the present, with the work of Carl Rogers and B.F. Skinner used as more recent examples. Rogers argued that humanistic psychology required a teleological understanding of both human and cosmic processes, whereas Skinner staunchly denied the reality of teleology and unfailingly championed behavioral, mechanistic science. Both Rogers’ and Skinner’s claims, moreover, can be traced to the early modern attack on teleology. It is then shown that contemporary research continues to grapple with the question of teleology. More specifically, the paper claims that contemporary writing fails to distinguish adequately between extrinsic and intrinsic teleology. The paper concludes advocating for a serious reckoning with the problem of teleology, and claims it is essential for genuinely scientific psychology.

Death seems still to be a taboo in contemporary society, and in Psychology as well. Crucial debates around the end of life are emerging in a variety of clinical, cultural, and philosophical realms in relation to the meaning of consciousness and near-death experiences. After the advent of quantum physics, the very notion of ‘evidence-based science’ has profoundly changed and new markers on the entanglements of matter and meaning are now available. The present contribution aims at questioning Psychology in its core empirical split between body and mind and at getting familiar with different thanatological perspectives, such as Eternalism. More specifically, it tries to address the epistemological and ontological entanglements in Psychology in order to propose an enlarged notion of mental life able to counter any neuroscientific reductionism. My arguments will be interrelated through the discussion of a case study about Santa Scorese, a young Catholic woman assassinated in Italy in 1991 by a stalker and in the process of beatification since 1998. Santa Scorese has been described as a unique example of martyr for women’s dignity of the present era and I am going to argue how she was passionately in love with God and with beauty while repressing her own body at the same time. The foci of analysis will be her original post-mortem published diary, her killer’s letters, and an interview I recorded with her sister (currently highly committed in the complex Catholic process of beatification).

The proliferation of social media has served as an extension of the social life of people; information seeking, socialization, and many other social needs. The study uses a sequential mixed method (quantitative and qualitative design) to examine the effects of social media dependency on marital relationships in northern Ghana. Results revealed a high dependency on social media in Ghana with serious ramifications on romantic relationships. Thus, frequent online engagement has heightened partner monitoring, suspicion, jealousy, and mistrust between couples, affecting long-term relationships’ well-being. Couples define standards/regulatory mechanisms to constrain their SNS engagement to minimize the associated effects of social media.

The study investigates the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mobility decisions of international and domestic (Danish) students in Denmark employing a phenomonology research design. The study revealed that some of the study participants’ mobility decisions and future employment prospects were largely impacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even those who had their internships abroad confirmed, uncertainties abound whether it will be done remotely or physically. Also, the switching from physical to online classes makes students-students and students-lectures interaction and relationship very challenging resulting in some cases, poor academic performance, loneliness, depression, and mental health problems. Besides, we discovered some positive endorsements towards the Danish government’s handling of the pandemic. Finally, the study proposed for a complete opening of the higher educational institutions and libraries in Denmark for physical teaching and learning to occur, with adherence to the safety protocols.

Taking Mangone and Dolgov’s 2019 article on Pitirim Sorokin’s “altruistic creative love” as a point of departure, I argue that Sorokin’s scientific approach could be further developed by linking it with work expressing an esthetic, artistic perspective. To illustrate, I compare Sorokin’s treatment of love, altruism, and amitology with writings by British author Clive Staples (“C.S.”) Lewis, especially The Four Loves (1960). I also draw on selected autobiographical and biographical sources, in order to illumine the development of distinctive scientific and artistic sensibilities in the two writers. In contrast to Sorokin’s application of a scientific frame of reference, including abstract variables, measurement strategies, and causal analysis, Lewis offers a treatment grounded in personal experience that has affinities with “thick description” in the social sciences, as well as auto-ethnography and Kurt Wolff’s phenomenological method of “surrender and catch.” The scientific frame yields a more detached, external knowledge, whereas the artistic produces a more immediate, interior type of knowing. I conclude that combining scientific and artistic understandings of love would accomplish part of the ambitious program that Sorokin called Integralism, while also contributing to the project of creating a “positive” sociology that Mangone and Dolgov advocate.

It has been 100 years since Wilhelm Wundt, our founding father of modern psychology, has passed away. In this present contribution to the journal Human Arenas special topic section marking this centennial milestone, I will be re-visiting some of the theoretical highlights coming out of the first and second Leipzig School of Psychology. Particular focus is given to Wundt’s examination of human consciousness, his emotional-will theory, creative synthesis, and especially the new direction implemented by his successors after his retirement in 1917. That is, the shift from a focus on elementary processes resulting in a creative synthesis to the developmental holistic outlook of Genetic Ganzheitspsychologie that takes holistic complexes and their transformations as the starting point for psychological examinations.

In this article, I further develop my account of the phenomenon meta-intentionality, which refers to the notion of “wanting the other to want what I want”. It is a sophisticated feature of interpersonal relationships that is based on the subjective bonding of the persons who want to affect the intentions of each other and projection of one’s Self into that of the Other. It is my claim that meta-intentionality is a concept that is highly relevant for the field of psychology, both in theory and in psychotherapeutic practice. Meta-intentionality provides insight into potential sources of conflict within interpersonal relationships, both in private and professional contexts — at the base of meta-intentionality lies our inherent human need to feel connected to others on a deep and sincere level. To deepen the understanding of meta-intentionality, I draw on the history of intentionality as well as theories such as Karl Bühler’s semiotics of language theory as well as Dialogism that can integrate the assumptions of the other in the meta-intentional encounter. Furthermore, to show the utility of meta-intentionality in psychotherapy, I present the notion of semiotic blockers and their role in the transference and countertransference dynamic of psychodynamic therapy.

Western civilisation is generally presented as a journey from the world of many gods, to the world of one god, to the world of no god, i.e. from myth, to religion to science. This, we are told, is progress, the march of civilisation towards equality, hence Universal Human Rights, one that the rest of the world from Africa through India to China is expected to emulate. But is it? This paper asserts, but does not argue (for that would mean subscribing to the Western myth of one truth) that this view of the world is based on Western myth that tends to be universal, linear, singular, and objective-driven. There are other ways of seeing the world, shaped by different myths, the Indian myth, for example, that makes our worldview contextual, cyclical, plural and consequence-based (Pattanaik 2013a). Considering such non-Western worldviews will help the West realise how the West’s current conflict with immigrants is not modern, or unique, but timeless, an integral part of its worldview.