An Intellectual History of Media Psychology

Premodernity, Modernity, and Postmodernity

In intellectual history, the history of ideas and systems of knowing, we typically discuss three periods of historical contexts. To discuss the difference between premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity, it is most helpful to look at the transitional moments first. We begin with the transition from premodernity to modernity. 

The year 1650 is typically used as practical demarcation of the boundary between what we call premodernity and modernity. The First World War is typically used as the event (concern) to demarcate the boundary between modernity and postmodernity. Let us sketch the picture of these three worlds.

Buddhist Psychology: On The Development of The Ego

Qin Shu, Lotus flower with dragon fly the morning .

The Western psychologist who wishes to explore Eastern psychology may wonder where to begin their search. Buddhism is an ancient tradition that has many variants and thousands of years of texts to explore. In this essay I would like to introduce a few basic concepts about Buddhist psychology, and discuss a basic description of the development of the ego.

There are many books available for Western psychologists who wish to explore Eastern psychology. Some of these books are more friendly to the beginner than others. Two books which I have found to be very helpful in my exploration have been The Sanity we are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology by Chögyam Trungpa, and Psychotherapy East & West by Alan Watts. Both of these texts offer the Westerner basic theory as well as basic attitude of Eastern psychology.

A few Basic Attitudes

Alan Watts describes the basic attitude of the Eastern psychologist with the image of the lotus flower. The lotus flower remains uninjured from the most turbulent storms, both from the sometimes restless waters from which it arises, and from the winds, rains, and scorching heat that it will encounter during its life. The lotus flower is a part of the world but is not destroyed by it. Stormy rains and high waters "roll off" its petals. This is the image that many Buddhists use as a lesson for how to be in the world. The lotus flower is the example of the serenity that one can cultivate despite the most hostile environments.

Search not Research

Eastern psychology is distinctively personal. Whereas Western psychologists may be taught methods of "research" that are based on the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment concept of objectivity, the Eastern psychologist engages psychology as something personal. In this way, we can think of Eastern psychology as searching, whereas Western positivistic psychology focuses on researching. The Western philosophical traditions of Existential-Phenomenology, Humanism, and some psychodynamic theories are exceptions to this distinction. It is acknowledged by even the most objective Western psychologists that "research is me-search." In Buddhist psychology this is the basic assumption. The "research" done by the Buddhist psychologist is a personal searching.

Enlightenment not The Enlightenment

 

A Theory of Depression: S. Freud's Mourning and Melancholia

Before describing and explaining Sigmund Freud's theoretical model for understanding depression, I would like to make some points about theory.

A theory is a working model; a way of conceptualizing a phenomenon that helps us to understand and effect change in ourselves or others. The American intellectual William James described how theoretical models can be useful for understanding while not being real. In this way, a theory can be true -meaning it works, while not being real. An example of this can be found in our everyday treatment of currency. What gives paper currency value is our belief in it, not the paper and ink itself, which is relatively worthless. It's value is symbolic and theoretical, not real. The value of the money is true in that it functions within our society in meaningful way. James shows us that theory can be true without being real. This being said, we can approach Freud's theory of depression as a model that can be useful in understanding the phenomenon, without becoming distracted by questions that have little bearing on its pragmatic functioning.

The Marketing Character

This blog originally appeared on October 23, 2011.

When Jean-Paul Sartre described a life lived etre de mauvaise foi he was not speaking so much of dishonesty or destructiveness to others, but rather, a dishonesty to oneself. The bad faith examined by Sartre is the life lived in what Heidegger called fallenness. Heidegger described the person who has become lost in culture, buried so deeply in the layers of the social that the authentic self is concealed. Heidegger does not isolate the self from culture; however, he does describe authenticity as a remembering or awareness of the identification with culture. This is the soul of Sartre’s bad faith -a life completely forgotten in the isolated spectacle of the manufactured desire.

Freud & The Cocaine Episode in Context

This essay was originally posted on January 5, 2015

Coca in Context: From The Andes to Paris & Atlanta

An early documentation of the use of the medicinal properties of the coca plant came from the Spanish friar, Vincente de Valverde, reporting on the importance of the coca tree to the Incas:

"...coca, which is the leaf of a small tree that resembles the sumac found in our own Castile, is one thing that the Indians are ne'er without in their mouths, that they say sustains them and gives them refreshment, so that, even under the sun they feel not the heat, and it is worth its weight in gold in these parts, accounting for the major portion of the tithes."¹

It was not long until quantities of the medicinal plant were being exported from South America to Europe and the United States, where Western "medicine men" began making coca infused beverages and tonics. Historian Howard Markel points to an 1817 article published Gentleman's Magazine to illustrate the European fascination with coca:

"[The Indians] masticate Coca and undergo the greatest fatigue without any injury to health or bodily vigor. They want neither butcher nor baker, nor brewer, no distiller, nor fuel, nor culinary utensils."²

According to Markel, the article called for immediate scientific research to uncover the wisdom of the power of Coca.

By the mid-nineteenth century, coca leaves were being analyzed for their chemical structure. In Germany, Albert Niemann earned his doctorate by developing a method for extracting the coca alkaloid from the leaf in 1860.³  As academics and pharmaceutical laboratories were investigating the chemical properties of coca, medicine men of a different sort were developing tonics and a variety of coca-infused beverages. One of the most popular and successful of these libations was Vin Mariani, a coca wine developed by the French chemist Angelo Mariani. By the turn of the century, Vin Mariani had become the choice intoxicant of many celebrities and artists. Mariani published a collection of celebrity endorsements for his wine in a book entitled Portraits from Album Mariani.⁴

In 1859 the influential Italian neurologist and fiction writer, Paolo Mantegazza, published an influential paper On the Hygenic and Medicinal Virtues of Coca.⁵  Sigmund Freud was an avid reader of Mantegazza's fiction.⁶

The Myth of Freud's Iceberg Model

Originally published on February 29, 2012

The 1933 illustration Freud used to depict the psyche.

About ten years ago I was heading to teach a class in introductory psychology at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. As I walked passed the social sciences office I encountered a box of books marked "free". Little did I know that the box contained an out of print gem, Robert C. Bolles' The Story of Psychology: A Thematic History.