The Psychology of Imagination - History, Theory and New Research Horizons

Front Cover

The Psychology of Imagination

History, Theory, and New Research Horizons

A Volume in Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures in Cultural Psychology

Series Editors:

Brady Wagoner, Aalborg University Nandita Chaudhary, University of Delhi Pernille Hviid, University of Copenhagen

CONTENTS

PART I: NIELS BOHR LECTURE

1. From Fantasy to Imagination: A Cultural History and Moral for Psychology

PART II: CONCEPTUAL AND HISTORICAL ANALYSES

2. Use Your Imagination: The History of a Higher Mental Function

3. Reviving the Logic of Aesthetics: Poetry and Music in Cultural Psychology

4. Kant and Goethe? The Connection Between Sensuality and Concepts

5. The Sinnlichkeit of Panoramic Experience

PART III: THEORETICAL APPROACHES AND DEVELOPMENTS

6. Ruins and Memorials: Imagining the Past Through Material Forms

7. Fantasy and Imagination: From Psychoanalysis to Cultural Psychology

8. Hope as Fantasy: An Existential Phenomenology of Hoping in Light of Parental Illness

9. From Fantasy and Imagination to Creativity: Toward a “Psychology With Soul” and “Psychology With Others”

PART IV: THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION IN PSYCHOLOGY

10. The Dynamics of “Necessity” Shaping Our Imaginative Lives: A Preconceptual Account of Discriminative Word Usage

11. Amerindian Psychology: The Cultural Basis for General Knowledge Construction

12. Gaps in Human Knowledge: Highlighting the Whole Beyond Our Conceptual Reach

13. Nature Leaves No Gaps: From Scientifically Dissected Phenomena Back to the Whole

PART V: NEW RESEARCH HORIZONS

14. “We Are Not Free, Admit It … But We Cling Onto Tomorrow”: Imagination as a Tool for Coping in Disempowering Situations

15. Feeling Myself With Nature: Reflections on Picking Flowers in Japan and Denmark

16. Russian Revival of the St. George Myth and Its Imagery: A Study Based on Reconstructive Picture Interpretation and Psychoanalysis

PART VI: CONCLUDING RESPONSE

17. Conclusion: The Reenchantment of Psychology

Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures in Cultural Psychology

The Psychology of Imagination

History, Theory, and New Research Horizons

Edited by

Brady Wagoner, Ignacio Brescó de Luna, and Sarah H. Awad Aalborg University

Information Age Publishing, Inc.

Introduction

Brady Wagoner, Ignacio Brescó, and Sarah H. Awad

References

Table 1.1. Yellow-Blue Polarity and Their Corresponding Sensorial-Moral Effects

Figure 1.1. Goethe’s color wheel, with associated symbolic qualities, after his own drawing (1809).

Part I

NIELS BOHR LECTURE

CHAPTER 1

From Fantasy to Imagination

Carlos Cornejo

Goethe’s Science

Goethe’s Theory of Colors

Fantasy in Goethe

Mystical-Theological Background

Fantasy in Vico’s Thought

Fantasy in Kant

Fantasy at the Dawn of the New Psychology

Scientific Psychology and an Irony of History

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

NOTES

References

PART II

Conceptual and historical analyses

CHAPTER 2

Use Your Imagination

Luca Tateo

What Do We Mean By Imagination?

History of Imagination: The Origins

The Renewed Interest in Imagination Since the Renaissance

Elementism Versus Segmentationism

Imagination and Rationality

Metonymic Constitution of Reality

Imagination and Intersubjectivity

Conclusion: A Possible Definition of Imagination

NOTE

References

CHAPTER 3

Reviving the Logic of Aesthetics

Sven Hroar Klempe and Olga V. Lehmann-Oliveros

Bottom-Up and Top-Down Perspectives on Aesthetics: Reconciling Sensation and Cognition

Schematism and Top-Down Approaches to Aesthetics

The Ambivalence of Sensation and Bottom-Up Perspectives on Aesthetics

A Path Toward Existence: Being and Becoming Through Aesthetics

Poetry and Science

The “Aestheticological” Dimension of Human Being

Conclusion

NOTE

References

CHAPTER 4

Kant and Goethe

Bo A. Christensen and Steen Brock

Goethe and Kant, According to Cornejo

Another Kant I

Another Kant II

Harré and Models

Conclusion

NOTES

References

CHAPTER 5

The Sinnlichkeit of Panoramic Experience

Jaan Valsiner

The Panoramic Nature of Human Experience

Panoramas: The Whole of a View

Theory of Pleromatization and Schematization

Romantic Roots of Psychology

From Gestalt Principles to Ganzheit Negotiations

Reaching Out Toward Infinities: Two Interdependent Processes

Why Landscape Painting is an Innovation?

General Conclusions: What Does “Going Forward With Goethe” Imply?

Acknowledgment

NOTES

References

Figure 5.1. Der Watzmann by C. D. Friedrich (1825–1826).

Figure 5.2. Meaning construction through parallel processes of schematization and pleromatization.

Figure 5.3. A real panorama of Danish landscape—a view from Ribe Cathedral.

Figure 5.4. The human psyche coordinating two parallel processes between infinities (after William Stern).

Figure 5.5. Panoramas as replicated in microscale on the ornamentation of clothing.

PART III

THEORETICAL APPROACHES AND DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 6

Ruins and Memorials

Zachary Beckstead

Materializing the Past

Simmel and Goethe

Simmel and Ruins

Materiality and the Ruin

Ruin Temporality

Conclusion: Ruins as Strange and Familiar

NOTES

References

CHAPTER 7

Fantasy and Imagination

Tania Zittoun

The Forgotten Part of Psychology

Fantasy and Imagination in Psychoanalysis

Fantasy and Imagination After Freud

Theorizing Imagination in Cultural Psychology Today

To Conclude: A Mermaid Meets His Eyes …

NOTE

References

Figure 7.1. Implausible imagining in a 3-dimensional space.

CHAPTER 8

Hope as Fantasy

Ditte Alexandra Winther-Lindqvist

On Imagination and Experience

Imagining and Future-Orientation in the Present

Experiencing As-Is, As-If, and What-If

Critical Comments on the Metaphor of Imaginary Loops

Critical Questions Regarding Time and Space in the Loop Model

A Focus on Lived Experience in Social Practice

Things Could Be Different: Hoping Practices in Light of Hostile Events

Hope and Agency

Modes of Hope

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 ...

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...

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).

Analyzing Case Material: Method and Aims

Describing Hope as Reaction to Parental Illness

Hope is Faced With a Threat to What One Cares About1

What Is It to Hope?

What Is it That Hope Hopes For?

Hope as Gegenstand When Faced With Uncertainty

Further Analysis: Emily’s Case

Emily’s Resolute Hope

Emily’s Estimative Hope

Emily’s Global Hope

Emily’s Perplexed Existence

General Comments

Summing Up

Acknowledgments

NOTES

References

CHAPTER 9

From Fantasy and Imagination to Creativity

Vlad Petre Glveanu

“The Past Is a Foreign Country, They Do Things Differently There”

The (Re)Birth of Creativity

Creativity and the Other

Toward a Critical Cultural Psychology

Acknowledgments

References

PART IV

THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION IN PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER 10

The Dynamics of “Necessity” Shaping Our Imaginative Lives

John Shotter

Moving on From Cornejo’s Account: Preliminaries to Bringing the Practices at Work Within Our “Civilizatory Orders” to Light

Life Within a Holistic, Still Developing World

Finding the “Roots” of Possible New Ways of Being in Current Forms of Talk

Imaginative Word Usage, Expressing Similarities (and Differences), and Noticing Distinctions

The “Moving” Power of Words in Their Speaking

“Objects of Comparison” in an Anthropological Hermeneutics

A Background Landscape of Particular, Hermeneutical Unities—The Possibility of Constitutive Forms of Talk

Conclusions: From Concepts and Theories to Imaginative and Indicative Ways of Talking

NOTES

References

CHAPTER 11

Amerindian Psychology

Danilo Silva Guimarães

Constructing the Supposed True Knowledge From Legendary Images of the Others in Western Societies

Images of Fantasy as Opposed to the Reality, the Illuminated Truth, and Scientific Knowledge

The Constructivist Alternative

Multiplying the Multiplicity of Psychologies

Facing the Diversity

Other Fantasies and Other Images Grounding Knowledge Construction

NOTES

References

Figure 11.2. Scientific knowledge construction between narrative and argumentative discourses.

Figure 11.1. Coordination system of constructivism.

CHAPTER 12

Gaps in Human Knowledge

Lucas B. Mazur

The Cartesian Anxiety Accompanying Our Search for Certainty

Awareness of the Limitations in the Natural Sciences, Psychology, and Theology

The Importance of Work in the Face of Doubt

The Importance of Work Because of Doubt

Conclusion

References

Table 13.1. Partnership Research Approach

CHAPTER 13

Nature Leaves No Gaps

Meike Watzlawik

“I Am Gay!”—Being in Contact With the Phenomenon

Writing Songs About Hatred Without Hating?

Capturing the Lived Experience

Diverging Interpretations

Taking Phenomena Apart to Then Put Them Back Together

What Do We Actually Know?

NOTES

References

Table 13.2. Marcia’s Identity Status Approach

PART V

NEW RESEARCH HORIZONS

CHAPTER 14

“We Are Not Free, Admit It … But We Cling Onto Tomorrow”

Sarah H. Awad

Imagination and Coping

Observing Imagination in Aesthetic Expression

Research Case: Imagination in the Aftermath of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution

Analyzing the Letters

Agency and Resilience

Social Constraints

Imagination as a Dialogue

Memory’s Interplay With Imagination

Future Imagination

Concluding Thoughts

References

Appendix: Sources of Prison Letters

CHAPTER 15

Feeling Oneself Into Nature

Rebekka Mai Eckerdal

My Japanese Experience: Flowers Are Here, But Nobody Picks Them

A Thought Experiment: Breaking Social Rules

Danish Affordances of Flowers: Conquering or Admiring

The Theoretical Issues of Violating and Not Violating Nature

The Special Meaning of The Living

Flowers: Living Things, Until They Die

Conclusion

NOTE

References

CHAPTER 16

Russian Revival of the St. George Myth and Its Imagery

Stefan Hampl and Dominik Mihalits

Interpretation of the Tweet’s Text and the Picture

Formulating Interpretation of the Tweet’s Text

Reflective Interpretation

“Georgish” in Opposition to “Ukrainian”

Language of Force/Military Talk

Distancing and Ridiculing

Credibility and Camouflaging: Making the Author Invisible

Context

Formulating Interpretation of the Picture of the Tweet

The Order of St. George and Its Ribbon as a Contemporary Derivative

Discussion: Psychoanalytical Interpretation of the Ribbon

The Ribbon: A Symbol of Coherence and Continuity

The Material Culture of Russkiy Mir

May 9th: The Ritual Celebration of Victory Over Death

Russkiy Mir: Soviet Union Reloaded With Christianity

Conclusion

NOTES

References

Figure 16.1. Picture of Elle advertisement in the twitter message of Pravda.ru, April 22, 2015.

Figure 16.2. Order Of Saint George, 1st class. Russian Federation.

Figure 16.3. St. George ribbon. Idea of the action—RIA Novosty (title translated from Russian).

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.

Figure 16.6. St. George ribbon of flip-flops.

Figure 16.5. Camouflaged fighter in Eastern Ukraine wearing St. George ribbon.

Figure 16.8. St. George ribbon on nail polish packaging. Special promotion from May 1 to10.

Figure 16.7. St. George ribbons as free gifts on sour cream packages.

Figure 16.9. “The immortal regiment,” May 9, 2016.

Figure 16.10. Russian president Putin among other commemorators, May 9, 2016.

Figure 16.11. Children in scout uniforms with St. George ribbon, May 9, 2016.

Figure 16.12. Orthodox Patriarch Kyrill I Blessing St. George ribbons.

Figure 16.13. Pope Francis receiving a St. George ribbon from a communist member of the Russian parliament, May 6, 2016.

Figure 16.14. Replacement cover for Elle Ukraine, May 2015.

Figure 16.15. Elle Russia, May 2015.

PART VI

CONCLUDING RESPONSE

CHAPTER 17

Conclusions

Carlos Cornejo

Anthropology Instead of Epistemology

Kant and Goethe?

The Actual Soil of Earth

Sensing Similarities

Expressivity of Life

NOTES

References

CONTRIBUTORS

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