Braun's work has a strong psychological focus on the ramifications of social change--with emphasis on modernization for meeting the psychological needs of the people involved. What is unique about the work (it represents the collaboration of seven scholars in such fields as philosophy, psychology, sociology, and political science) is that it makes a serious attempt to provide a realistic and relevant framework of analysis for interpreting the way the human personality reacts to strain and pressure, including cultural and social change. As societies become increasingly bureaucratic, anonymous, and materialistic, and social relationships become increasingly segmented rather than holistic, it is important to study how basic human needs are fulfilled and how personalities are molded.

Braun's work has a strong psychological focus on the ramifications of social change--with emphasis on modernization for meeting the psychological needs of the people involved. What is unique about the work (it represents the collaboration of seven scholars in such fields as philosophy, psychology, sociology, and political science) is that it makes a serious attempt to provide a realistic and relevant framework of analysis for interpreting the way the human personality reacts to strain and pressure, including cultural and social change. As societies become increasingly bureaucratic, anonymous, and materialistic, and social relationships become increasingly segmented rather than holistic, it is important to study how basic human needs are fulfilled and how personalities are molded.

Few concepts have come to dominate the human sciences as much as modernity, yet there is very little agreement over what the term actually means. Every aspect of contemporary human reality--modern society, modern life, modern times, modern art, modern science, modern music, the modern world--has been cited as a part of modernity's distinctive and all-embracing presence. But what is the exact nature of the reality to which the term modern refers? Has not such a promiscuous, ill-defined concept come to obscure and confuse rather than clarify a genuine understanding of our experience? Harvie Ferguson proposes a new view of modernity, arguing that, although it may variously be associated with the Renaissance, the European discovery of the New World, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and many other significant ruptures with primitive or premodern society, modernity fails as an idea if it only defines itself against what it replaced. Instead, he writes, modernity finds its clearest definition through an exploration of subjectivity. For the modern world there is no higher authority than experience. No longer is the human world subordinate to a divine reality beyond the capacity of its own senses. This idea finds its greatest expression in the philosophy of doubt originated by Descartes. Doubt seemed the radical starting point from which to found a wholly modern philosophy that makes the distinction between subject and object, but those who came after Descartes soon reached the limits of self-discovery and became trapped in deepening levels of despair. This despair in turn found expression in the concepts of self and other, and eventually in a dialectic of ego and world, which distinguishes and links together the most important social, cultural, and psychological aspects of modernity. Moving beyond these dualities of subject and object, mind and body, ego and world, and replacing them with the triad of body, soul, and spirit, Ferguson redraws the map of contemporary experience, finding links with the premodern world that modernity's self-founding concealed.

This vanguard collection of original and in-depth essays explores the intricate interplay of the aesthetic and psychological domains during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and considers the reasons why a common Modernist project took shape when and in the circumstances that it did. These changes occurred precisely when the distinctively modern disciplines of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis established their "scientific” foundations and achieved the forms in which we largely know them today. This volume examines the dense web of connections joining the aesthetic and psychological realms in the modern era, charting historically the emergence of the ongoing modern discussion surrounding such issues as identity-formation, sexuality, and the unconscious. The contributors form a distinguished and diversified group of scholars, who write about a wide range of cultural fields, including philosophy, the novel and poetry, drama, dance, film and photography, as well as medicine, psychology, and the occult sciences.

Psychology and Capitalism is a critical and accessible account of the ideological and material role of psychology in supporting capitalist enterprise and holding individuals entirely responsible for their fate through the promotion of individualism.

A History of Psychology places social, economic, and political forces of change alongside psychology’s internal theoretical and empirical arguments, illuminating how the external world has shaped psychology’s development, and, in turn, how the late twentieth century’s psychology has shaped society. Featuring extended treatment of important movements such as the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, the textbook approaches the material from an integrative rather than wholly linear perspective. The text carefully examines how issues in psychology reflect and affect concepts that lie outside the field of psychology’s technical concerns as a science and profession. This new edition features expanded attention on psychoanalysis after its founding as well as new developments in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and behavioral economics. Throughout, the book strengthens its exploration of psychological ideas and the cultures in which they developed and reinforces the connections between psychology, modernism, and postmodernism. The textbook covers scientific, applied, and professional psychology, and is appropriate for higher-level undergraduate and graduate students.

This provocative account of the origins, influences, and legacy of Jungian psychology is perhaps even more relevant today than it was when first published in 1979. By delineating the social, personal, religious, and cultural contexts of Jung's system of psychology, Homans identifies the central role of depth psychology in the culture of modernity. In this new edition, Homans has added an extensive foreword linking the core of Jungian psychology to contemporary works it has shaped—such as those of M. Scott Peck and Clarissa Pinkola Estes—that proclaim the power of Jungian concepts and theories to heal the alienated and isolated self in today's world. "Jung in Context is an intellectual triumph. . . . Utilizes the resources of biography, psychology, sociology, and theology to probe the genesis of a psychological system which is currently enjoying a wide following. . . . A splendid job."—Lewis R. Rambo, Psychiatry "Anyone seeking an introduction to Jung's thought will find a masterful précis here."—Jan Goldstein, Journal of Sociology "An unusually perceptive and clearly written book. . . . An important advance in the understanding of Jung, and Homans's methodology sets the stage for all future efforts to understand psychological innovators."—Herbert H. Stroup, Christian Century

It’s the American dream—unfettered freedom to follow our ambitions, to forge our identities, to become self-made. But what if our culture of limitless self-fulfillment is actually making millions desperately ill? One of our leading interpreters of modernity and nationalism, Liah Greenfeld argues that we have overlooked the connection between egalitarian society and mental illness. Intellectually fearless, encompassing philosophy, psychology, and history, Mind, Modernity, Madness challenges the most cherished assumptions about the blessings of living in a land of the free. Modern nationalism, says Greenfeld, rests on bedrock principles of popular sovereignty, equality, and secularism. Citizens of the twenty-first century enjoy unprecedented freedom to become the authors of their personal destinies. Empowering as this is, it also places them under enormous psychic strain. They must constantly appraise their identities, manage their desires, and calibrate their place within society. For vulnerable individuals, this pressure is too much. Training her analytic eye on extensive case histories in manic depression and schizophrenia, Greenfeld contends that these illnesses are dysfunctions of selfhood caused by society’s overburdening demands for self-realization. In her rigorous diagnosis, madness is a culturally constituted malady. The culminating volume of Greenfeld’s nationalism trilogy, Mind, Modernity, Madness is a tour de force in the classic tradition of Émile Durkheim—and a bold foray into uncharted territory. Often counter-intuitive, always illuminating, Mind, Modernity, Madness presents a many-sided view of humanity, one that enriches our deepest understanding of who we are and what we aspire to be.

This collection of chapters advances critical psychology by incorporating praxis (theory and practice) and decolonial streams of thought. They are united around a theme of psychosocial non-alignment to modernity/coloniality. Bringing together a transdisciplinary range of authors from around the world, this edited volume weaves together a spectrum of complex arguments and perspectives to lay the foundations for bridging the Global North–South divide in critical psychology through solidarity and dialogue. The book’s central argument is to emphasize praxis and transdisciplinarity over disciplinary fundamentalism. Psychology is only a starting point and not the end goal of critique in this book; incidentally, some of the authors are not even psychologists. Instead, the book draws on decolonial theoretical resources, such as Chican@ Studies, Black Male Studies, and Critical Pedagogy, to complement traditional theoretical resources like psychoanalysis, Marxism, poststructuralism, and feminism. This groundbreaking text is suitable for scholars and upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students studying critical discourse, the psychology and philosophy of post-coloniality, conceptual and historical issues in psychology, as well as anthropology and sociology courses engaging with action research.

This work explores contemporary developments within social psychology. some of the key thinkers within this field are introduced and discussed. The aim of the book is not only to function as an introduction to social psychology, however it also aims at developing new ways of approaching and using social psychological thinking. It raises the question: how adequate and up-to-date is existing social psychological theorizing?