Psychology of Imagination (eBook)

Front Cover 1
The Psychology of Imagination 2
History, Theory, and New Research Horizons 2
A Volume in Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures in Cultural Psychology 2
Series Editors: 2
Brady Wagoner, Aalborg University Nandita Chaudhary, University of Delhi Pernille Hviid, University of Copenhagen 2
CONTENTS 6
PART I: NIELS BOHR LECTURE 6
1. From Fantasy to Imagination: A Cultural History and Moral for Psychology 6
PART II: CONCEPTUAL AND HISTORICAL ANALYSES 6
2. Use Your Imagination: The History of a Higher Mental Function 6
3. Reviving the Logic of Aesthetics: Poetry and Music in Cultural Psychology 6
4. Kant and Goethe? The Connection Between Sensuality and Concepts 6
5. The Sinnlichkeit of Panoramic Experience 6
PART III: THEORETICAL APPROACHES AND DEVELOPMENTS 7
6. Ruins and Memorials: Imagining the Past Through Material Forms 7
7. Fantasy and Imagination: From Psychoanalysis to Cultural Psychology 7
8. Hope as Fantasy: An Existential Phenomenology of Hoping in Light of Parental Illness 7
9. From Fantasy and Imagination to Creativity: Toward a “Psychology With Soul” and “Psychology With Others” 7
PART IV: THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION IN PSYCHOLOGY 7
10. The Dynamics of “Necessity” Shaping Our Imaginative Lives: A Preconceptual Account of Discriminative Word Usage 7
11. Amerindian Psychology: The Cultural Basis for General Knowledge Construction 7
12. Gaps in Human Knowledge: Highlighting the Whole Beyond Our Conceptual Reach 7
13. Nature Leaves No Gaps: From Scientifically Dissected Phenomena Back to the Whole 7
PART V: NEW RESEARCH HORIZONS 7
14. “We Are Not Free, Admit It … But We Cling Onto Tomorrow”: Imagination as a Tool for Coping in Disempowering Situations 7
15. Feeling Myself With Nature: Reflections on Picking Flowers in Japan and Denmark 8
16. Russian Revival of the St. George Myth and Its Imagery: A Study Based on Reconstructive Picture Interpretation and Psychoanalysis 8
PART VI: CONCLUDING RESPONSE 8
17. Conclusion: The Reenchantment of Psychology 8
Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures in Cultural Psychology 3
The Psychology of Imagination 4
History, Theory, and New Research Horizons 4
Edited by 4
Brady Wagoner, Ignacio Brescó de Luna, and Sarah H. Awad Aalborg University 4
Information Age Publishing, Inc. 4
Introduction 10
Brady Wagoner, Ignacio Brescó, and Sarah H. Awad 10
References 13
Table 1.1. Yellow-Blue Polarity and Their Corresponding Sensorial-Moral Effects 24
Figure 1.1. Goethe’s color wheel, with associated symbolic qualities, after his own drawing (1809). 26
Part I 14
NIELS BOHR LECTURE 14
CHAPTER 1 16
From Fantasy to Imagination 16
Carlos Cornejo 16
Goethe’s Science 18
Goethe’s Theory of Colors 23
Fantasy in Goethe 26
Mystical-Theological Background 30
Fantasy in Vico’s Thought 36
Fantasy in Kant 39
Fantasy at the Dawn of the New Psychology 42
Scientific Psychology and an Irony of History 45
Conclusion 49
Acknowledgments 53
NOTES 53
References 55
PART II 58
Conceptual and historical analyses 58
CHAPTER 2 60
Use Your Imagination 60
Luca Tateo 60
What Do We Mean By Imagination? 60
History of Imagination: The Origins 62
The Renewed Interest in Imagination Since the Renaissance 66
Elementism Versus Segmentationism 72
Imagination and Rationality 73
Metonymic Constitution of Reality 74
Imagination and Intersubjectivity 75
Conclusion: A Possible Definition of Imagination 76
NOTE 77
References 78
CHAPTER 3 80
Reviving the Logic of Aesthetics 80
Sven Hroar Klempe and Olga V. Lehmann-Oliveros 80
Bottom-Up and Top-Down Perspectives on Aesthetics: Reconciling Sensation and Cognition 81
Schematism and Top-Down Approaches to Aesthetics 82
The Ambivalence of Sensation and Bottom-Up Perspectives on Aesthetics 83
A Path Toward Existence: Being and Becoming Through Aesthetics 86
Poetry and Science 88
The “Aestheticological” Dimension of Human Being 89
Conclusion 91
NOTE 92
References 92
CHAPTER 4 96
Kant and Goethe 96
Bo A. Christensen and Steen Brock 96
Goethe and Kant, According to Cornejo 97
Another Kant I 102
Another Kant II 104
Harré and Models 108
Conclusion 112
NOTES 112
References 113
CHAPTER 5 116
The Sinnlichkeit of Panoramic Experience 116
Jaan Valsiner 116
The Panoramic Nature of Human Experience 117
Panoramas: The Whole of a View 119
Theory of Pleromatization and Schematization 120
Romantic Roots of Psychology 121
From Gestalt Principles to Ganzheit Negotiations 123
Reaching Out Toward Infinities: Two Interdependent Processes 125
Why Landscape Painting is an Innovation? 125
General Conclusions: What Does “Going Forward With Goethe” Imply? 129
Acknowledgment 130
NOTES 130
References 131
Figure 5.1. Der Watzmann by C. D. Friedrich (1825–1826). 118
Figure 5.2. Meaning construction through parallel processes of schematization and pleromatization. 121
Figure 5.3. A real panorama of Danish landscape—a view from Ribe Cathedral. 124
Figure 5.4. The human psyche coordinating two parallel processes between infinities (after William Stern). 126
Figure 5.5. Panoramas as replicated in microscale on the ornamentation of clothing. 128
PART III 134
THEORETICAL APPROACHES AND DEVELOPMENT 134
CHAPTER 6 136
Ruins and Memorials 136
Zachary Beckstead 136
Materializing the Past 137
Simmel and Goethe 140
Simmel and Ruins 141
Materiality and the Ruin 144
Ruin Temporality 145
Conclusion: Ruins as Strange and Familiar 146
NOTES 148
References 148
CHAPTER 7 150
Fantasy and Imagination 150
Tania Zittoun 150
The Forgotten Part of Psychology 150
Fantasy and Imagination in Psychoanalysis 152
Fantasy and Imagination After Freud 155
Theorizing Imagination in Cultural Psychology Today 156
To Conclude: A Mermaid Meets His Eyes … 160
NOTE 160
References 161
Figure 7.1. Implausible imagining in a 3-dimensional space. 159
CHAPTER 8 164
Hope as Fantasy 164
Ditte Alexandra Winther-Lindqvist 164
On Imagination and Experience 166
Imagining and Future-Orientation in the Present 167
Experiencing As-Is, As-If, and What-If 167
Critical Comments on the Metaphor of Imaginary Loops 169
Critical Questions Regarding Time and Space in the Loop Model 170
A Focus on Lived Experience in Social Practice 171
Things Could Be Different: Hoping Practices in Light of Hostile Events 171
Hope and Agency 173
Modes of Hope 174
1. Resolute hoping involves most extensive fantasizing and wishing, where what is hoped for overrides the probabilities of its realization, even to the extent of a counter-conviction on the verge of illusion (i.e., a firm disbelief in the doctor’s ... 174
2. Estimative hoping relies heavily on knowing and cannot be maintained against what authorities (like medical opinions) predict and expect. Estimative hope then is a processual piecemeal kind of hope, which engages with quite concretely formulated e... 174
3. Global hoping is more open-ended and relies mostly on willing and knowing, in its realistic outlook, with a faith in the good (i.e., no matter what happens we still have each other and are to spend our time well). 174
Analyzing Case Material: Method and Aims 175
Describing Hope as Reaction to Parental Illness 175
Hope is Faced With a Threat to What One Cares About1 176
What Is It to Hope? 176
What Is it That Hope Hopes For? 177
Hope as Gegenstand When Faced With Uncertainty 178
Further Analysis: Emily’s Case 179
Emily’s Resolute Hope 179
Emily’s Estimative Hope 180
Emily’s Global Hope 181
Emily’s Perplexed Existence 182
General Comments 183
Summing Up 183
Acknowledgments 184
NOTES 184
References 185
CHAPTER 9 188
From Fantasy and Imagination to Creativity 188
Vlad Petre Glveanu 188
“The Past Is a Foreign Country, They Do Things Differently There” 190
The (Re)Birth of Creativity 192
Creativity and the Other 195
Toward a Critical Cultural Psychology 197
Acknowledgments 198
References 199
PART IV 202
THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION IN PSYCHOLOGY 202
CHAPTER 10 204
The Dynamics of “Necessity” Shaping Our Imaginative Lives 204
John Shotter 204
Moving on From Cornejo’s Account: Preliminaries to Bringing the Practices at Work Within Our “Civilizatory Orders” to Light 207
Life Within a Holistic, Still Developing World 208
Finding the “Roots” of Possible New Ways of Being in Current Forms of Talk 211
Imaginative Word Usage, Expressing Similarities (and Differences), and Noticing Distinctions 214
The “Moving” Power of Words in Their Speaking 216
“Objects of Comparison” in an Anthropological Hermeneutics 219
A Background Landscape of Particular, Hermeneutical Unities—The Possibility of Constitutive Forms of Talk 220
Conclusions: From Concepts and Theories to Imaginative and Indicative Ways of Talking 225
NOTES 228
References 231
CHAPTER 11 234
Amerindian Psychology 234
Danilo Silva Guimarães 234
Constructing the Supposed True Knowledge From Legendary Images of the Others in Western Societies 235
Images of Fantasy as Opposed to the Reality, the Illuminated Truth, and Scientific Knowledge 237
The Constructivist Alternative 239
Multiplying the Multiplicity of Psychologies 243
Facing the Diversity 244
Other Fantasies and Other Images Grounding Knowledge Construction 246
NOTES 248
References 249
Figure 11.2. Scientific knowledge construction between narrative and argumentative discourses. 242
Figure 11.1. Coordination system of constructivism. 241
CHAPTER 12 252
Gaps in Human Knowledge 252
Lucas B. Mazur 252
The Cartesian Anxiety Accompanying Our Search for Certainty 253
Awareness of the Limitations in the Natural Sciences, Psychology, and Theology 256
The Importance of Work in the Face of Doubt 258
The Importance of Work Because of Doubt 260
Conclusion 262
References 263
Table 13.1. Partnership Research Approach 269
CHAPTER 13 266
Nature Leaves No Gaps 266
Meike Watzlawik 266
“I Am Gay!”—Being in Contact With the Phenomenon 267
Writing Songs About Hatred Without Hating? 267
Capturing the Lived Experience 268
Diverging Interpretations 270
Taking Phenomena Apart to Then Put Them Back Together 270
What Do We Actually Know? 274
NOTES 275
References 275
Table 13.2. Marcia’s Identity Status Approach 271
PART V 278
NEW RESEARCH HORIZONS 278
CHAPTER 14 280
“We Are Not Free, Admit It … But We Cling Onto Tomorrow” 280
Sarah H. Awad 280
Imagination and Coping 281
Observing Imagination in Aesthetic Expression 282
Research Case: Imagination in the Aftermath of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution 283
Analyzing the Letters 284
Agency and Resilience 285
Social Constraints 286
Imagination as a Dialogue 287
Memory’s Interplay With Imagination 288
Future Imagination 289
Concluding Thoughts 291
References 293
Appendix: Sources of Prison Letters 294
CHAPTER 15 296
Feeling Oneself Into Nature 296
Rebekka Mai Eckerdal 296
My Japanese Experience: Flowers Are Here, But Nobody Picks Them 297
A Thought Experiment: Breaking Social Rules 299
Danish Affordances of Flowers: Conquering or Admiring 300
The Theoretical Issues of Violating and Not Violating Nature 301
The Special Meaning of The Living 302
Flowers: Living Things, Until They Die 303
Conclusion 304
NOTE 305
References 306
CHAPTER 16 308
Russian Revival of the St. George Myth and Its Imagery 308
Stefan Hampl and Dominik Mihalits 308
Interpretation of the Tweet’s Text and the Picture 309
Formulating Interpretation of the Tweet’s Text 310
Reflective Interpretation 310
“Georgish” in Opposition to “Ukrainian” 311
Language of Force/Military Talk 311
Distancing and Ridiculing 311
Credibility and Camouflaging: Making the Author Invisible 311
Context 312
Formulating Interpretation of the Picture of the Tweet 312
The Order of St. George and Its Ribbon as a Contemporary Derivative 313
Discussion: Psychoanalytical Interpretation of the Ribbon 317
The Ribbon: A Symbol of Coherence and Continuity 318
The Material Culture of Russkiy Mir 318
May 9th: The Ritual Celebration of Victory Over Death 321
Russkiy Mir: Soviet Union Reloaded With Christianity 321
Conclusion 323
NOTES 327
References 328
Figure 16.1. Picture of Elle advertisement in the twitter message of Pravda.ru, April 22, 2015. 309
Figure 16.2. Order Of Saint George, 1st class. Russian Federation. 314
Figure 16.3. St. George ribbon. Idea of the action—RIA Novosty (title translated from Russian). 315
Figure 16.4. Russian nationalists outside Crimean parliament building in Simferopoldon[ating] distributing St. George ribbons on February 27, 2014 (Fitzpatrick, 2015). Arthur Shwartz/EPA. 316
Figure 16.6. St. George ribbon of flip-flops. 319
Figure 16.5. Camouflaged fighter in Eastern Ukraine wearing St. George ribbon. 316
Figure 16.8. St. George ribbon on nail polish packaging. Special promotion from May 1 to10. 320
Figure 16.7. St. George ribbons as free gifts on sour cream packages. 320
Figure 16.9. “The immortal regiment,” May 9, 2016. 322
Figure 16.10. Russian president Putin among other commemorators, May 9, 2016. 322
Figure 16.11. Children in scout uniforms with St. George ribbon, May 9, 2016. 323
Figure 16.12. Orthodox Patriarch Kyrill I Blessing St. George ribbons. 324
Figure 16.13. Pope Francis receiving a St. George ribbon from a communist member of the Russian parliament, May 6, 2016. 324
Figure 16.14. Replacement cover for Elle Ukraine, May 2015. 325
Figure 16.15. Elle Russia, May 2015. 326
PART VI 330
CONCLUDING RESPONSE 330
CHAPTER 17 332
Conclusions 332
Carlos Cornejo 332
Anthropology Instead of Epistemology 334
Kant and Goethe? 336
The Actual Soil of Earth 339
Sensing Similarities 341
Expressivity of Life 343
NOTES 344
References 345
CONTRIBUTORS 348
Back Cover 350