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The Significance of the Skin as a Natural Boundary in the Sub‐Division of Psychology
Author(s) -
Farr Robert
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal for the theory of social behaviour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.615
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5914
pISSN - 0021-8308
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5914.00040
Subject(s) - psychology , perspective (graphical) , gestalt psychology , interpersonal communication , epistemology , individual psychology , social psychology , psychoanalysis , perception , philosophy , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science
From a phenomenological perspective, skin is an important boundary. My model here is the psychology of interpersonal relations (Heider, 1958). It is the behaviour of O that is visible from the perspective of P, the perceiver. Whether or not one is justified in going beyond the evidence available (“... the behavioural facts”) is a matter of some controversy in psychological circles e.g. between behaviourists (like Skinner) and gestalt psychologists (like Heider). Here the skin is an important boundary, at least in the visual modality. The divergence in perspective between actor and observer is due to the fact that they occupy two different points in space/time (Farr & Anderson, 1983). There is less of a divergence in perspective between speaker and listener since they could both be one and the same person (Bern, 1967). Skinner (1964) , in a pun on his own name, observed that in speech skin is not at all an important boundary. The implications for social psychology of this asymmetry between vision and speech are explored more fully (Farr, 1991). An attempt is made to identify when the skin is and when it is not a significant boundary. The history of psychology is briefly reviewed in the light of this distinction.