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Social elements as mind
Author(s) -
Harré Rom
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
british journal of medical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.102
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 2044-8341
pISSN - 0007-1129
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8341.1984.tb01591.x
Subject(s) - psychology , folk psychology , interpersonal communication , social psychology , social cognition , cognition , conversation , set (abstract data type) , epistemology , discursive psychology , cognitive psychology , cognitive science , linguistics , philosophy , communication , neuroscience , computer science , discourse analysis , programming language
The assumption that ‘mind’ is the product of individual development and that cognition and emotion must be sited in individual people has dominated psychology until recently. The new conception of a ‘social construction of mind’ is grounded in the idea that an interpersonal conversation is the fundamental psychological reality, and that individual minds are appropriations from it. Such a personal mind is created by making private what is originally and primarily public. This idea strikes at the Cartesian basis of both behaviourist and non‐behaviourist psychology, suggesting a more complex multidimensional set of polar oppositions for defining the problems of scientific psychology. For example, perhaps knowledge should be studied as a collective resource rather than as individual beliefs. There is evidence from anthropology that even that intimate form of cognitive organization we call the ‘self’ may have social origins in favoured grammatical models and so may be expected to differ from one linguistic culture to another.