strange and unexpected travels with the self (chap 1, introduction)
(Cushman, Philip. Travels with the Self: Interpreting Psychology as Cultural History (Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series) (p. 1). Taylor and Francis. Kindle edition.)
... my long-time travel companion, the concept of the self.
In my writing I use the self in its hermeneutic meaning, that is, the set of embodied beliefs and activities that live out what are considered by a particular culture or historical era to be the proper ways of being human and the limits and potential nobility of humans. During my early years of searching at the university, I longed for, but could not begin to articulate, the combination of history, literature, politics, and psychology that unite in that hermeneutic concept. I remember once looking for a graduate program that would help me learn about people in that interdisciplinary way. I went to a beloved former psychology professor, who said “that approach sounds interesting, but it isn’t psychology. Try history.” So I interviewed in the history department; they said “that approach sounds interesting, but it isn’t history. Try psychology.” Many years, graduate programs, and interesting but ultimately unsatisfying learning experiences later, social psychologist Ed Sampson introduced me to critical theory and philosopher Tony Stigliano to hermeneutics. That dual perspective has brought me as close to an intellectual home as I have ever had. (ibid, pp. 1-2)
The title of this book, Travels with the Self, then easily moves us into the subtitle, Interpreting Psychology as Cultural History, because if there are a multitude of ways of being human, shaped by particular cultural understandings, historical traditions, and political arrangements, then the indigenous psychologies embedded in those various societies must be considered artifacts of their time and place. For that reason, a psychological theory or practice, then, can’t be considered a universal science, whose subject of study is the putatively one, constant, immutable, universal human. Instead, psychology itself must be seen as a cultural artifact — in a way, it is the embodiment of the historical era that has brought it to light. (ibid, p. 2, italics added)
... as did psychologist Louis Sass, who in a nod to Clifford Geertz wrote in 1988 that understanding humans is not a matter of “getting inside someone’s head,” but more like standing behind the other and reading over their shoulder the cultural text from which they themselves are reading (Sass, 1988a, p. 250). (ibid, p. 2)
It was in 1990, with my article “Why the Self Is Empty,” that I put those ideas together and applied them to an important subject. And by 1995 I was able to better notice my overall approach to historical study and describe it through a four-part approach to the self. I suggested that we could study an era by identifying (1) the era’s predominant configuration of the self; (2) the ills to which that particular self is vulnerable; (3) the designated healers for those characteristic ills; and (4) the healing practices the designated healer uses.
When using the four-part analysis, it soon becomes apparent that, because the self changes over time, so do the other items of the analysis. They change because they are products of the social terrain in which they are embedded; they fit with the moral understandings and political arrangements of the time, and they serve particular functions within the body politic. When the terrain shifts, so do the self, its ills, its healers, and their healing practices. The self is a historical, cultural artifact. It travels. (ibid, pp. 2-3)
The chapters of this book are composed of six articles I previously published and nine talks I delivered, plus this new introduction. (ibid, p. 3)
It seems possible, does it not, that a critical hermeneutics — a critical cultural history — can lead us to compassion, love, and finally even hope. It is with hope that I offer this book to you. Once Ed Sampson, who was about to depart on a trip to China, gave me a reprint of his recently published 1988 article and signed it by paraphrasing Chairman Mao with the inscription “May a Thousand Mavericks Bloom.” I pass that hope on to you, with good cheer and gratitude for traveling along with me. (ibid, p. 5)
* well, fuck mao, philip apparently did not know what happened to those thousand mavericks later on
