Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here for FREE ACCESS to this landmark database

SAGETRACK

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Theory & Psychology
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gergen, K. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

The Place of the Psyche in a Constructed World

Kenneth J. Gergen

Swarthmore College, kgergenl{at}swarthmore.edu

The vast majority of social constructionist writings have been critical of psychological science-on both ideological and conceptual grounds. The constructionist emphasis on microsocial processes also functions oppositionally to psychological accounting. The existing animus grows, however, from a realist metaphysics and a correspondence view of language, neither of which constructionism endorses. Viewing the relationship between constructionism and psychological science in more pragmatic terms, we find three significant ways in which constructionism contributes to a more fully enriched and broadly effective psychology. First, critical constructionism functions to denaturalize psychological accounts, opening them to reflexive deliberation, and democratizing the field more generally. Second, constructionist metatheory invites a resuscitation of marginal or suppressed discourse within the field, and invigorates societally engaged efforts to forge new and more useful discourses of the mind. Finally, social constructionism offers the possibility for a fundamental reconceptualization of the self. Illustrative is the family of theories conceptualizing the self as either constituted by or constituting relationships.

Key Words: culture critique • discourse • metatheory • social construction

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 7, No. 6, 723-746 (1997)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354397076001
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Feminism PsychologyHome page
B. Ahmed, P. Reavey, and A. Majumdar
Constructions of `Culture' in Accounts of South Asian Women Survivors of Sexual Violence
Feminism Psychology, February 1, 2009; 19(1): 7 - 28.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
J. Martin
Real Perspectival Selves
Theory Psychology, April 1, 2005; 15(2): 207 - 224.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
J. Dixon and M. Wetherell
On Discourse and Dirty Nappies: Gender, the Division of Household Labour and the Social Psychology of Distributive Justice
Theory Psychology, April 1, 2004; 14(2): 167 - 189.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
B. S. Bradley and J. R. Morss
Social Construction in a World at Risk: Toward a Psychology of Experience
Theory Psychology, August 1, 2002; 12(4): 509 - 531.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
J. Jansz and M. Timmers
Emotional Dissonance: When the Experience of an Emotion Jeopardizes an Individual's Identity
Theory Psychology, February 1, 2002; 12(1): 79 - 95.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
F. J. Hibberd
Gergen's Social Constructionism, Logical Positivism and the Continuity of Error: Part 1: Conventionalism
Theory Psychology, June 1, 2001; 11(3): 297 - 321.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
A. H. Jenkins
Individuality in Cultural Context: The Case for Psychological Agency
Theory Psychology, June 1, 2001; 11(3): 347 - 362.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
J.R. Maze
Social Constructionism, Deconstructionism and Some Requirements of Discourse
Theory Psychology, June 1, 2001; 11(3): 393 - 417.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
J. Martin and J. Sugarman
Interpreting Human Kinds: Beginnings of a Hermeneutic Psychology
Theory Psychology, April 1, 2001; 11(2): 193 - 207.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
H. Frith and C. Kitzinger
Reformulating Sexual Script Theory: Developing a Discursive Psychology of Sexual Negotiation
Theory Psychology, April 1, 2001; 11(2): 209 - 232.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
H. J. Stam
Ten Years after, Decade to Come: The Contributions of Theory to Psychology
Theory Psychology, February 1, 2000; 10(1): 5 - 21.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
K. J. Gergen
Emerging Challenges Redux
Theory Psychology, February 1, 2000; 10(1): 23 - 30.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
K. R. Malone
Subjectivity and the Address to the Other: A Lacanian View of Some Impasses in Theory and Psychology
Theory Psychology, February 1, 2000; 10(1): 79 - 86.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
I. Markova'
The Individual and Society in Psychological Theory
Theory Psychology, February 1, 2000; 10(1): 107 - 116.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
H. Fisher
Postmodern Agency: You and I Can Show it; Not Own it
Theory Psychology, February 1, 1999; 9(1): 103 - 112.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Theory PsychologyHome page
K. J. Gergen
Agency: Social Construction and Relational Action
Theory Psychology, February 1, 1999; 9(1): 113 - 115.
[Abstract] [PDF]