Psychology as the Science of Human Being

Jaan Valsiner is the Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark.  He is the founding editor of Culture & Psychology (Sage) and the Editor-in-Chief of Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences (Springer, from 2007). In 1995 he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize in Germany for his interdisciplinary work on human development, and Senior Fulbright Lecturing Award in Brazil 1995-1997.Nandita Chaudhary is Professor of Psychology at Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, India. She is best known for her cultural psychological studies of child development in social contexts of high complexity—where child-related issues are coordinated by coalition formation of all child-related actors. She links developmental psychology with cultural psychology through an advanced focus on phenomena of human everyday life.Virginia Dazzani is Professor of Graduate Programmes in Psychology and in Education at the Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil. She has extensive experience in the educational psychology field. Her research track includes studies on knowledge and learning, family-school-community relationship/communication, semiotic processes. Her research expertise lies in the interface between psychology, cultural development and education.Giuseppina Marsico is a professor and researcher at the Development and Educational Psychology at the Department of Human, Philosophic and Education Sciences (DISUFF), at the University of Salerno (Italy) and Adjunct Professor at Ph.D Programme in Psychology, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil. She is a 15 years experienced researcher, with a proven international research network. Her research track includes studies on developmental risk at school, youth deviance, school-family communication, boundaries and contexts. She is Editor of the book series, CulturalPsychology of Education (Springer); Associate Editor of Cultural & Psychology Journal (Sage); and member of the editorial board of Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science (Springer). She also edited the book Crossing Boundaries: Intercontextual Dynamics Between Family and School (Information Age Publishing).Tatsuya Sato is Professor of Social Psychology and Dean of Research at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan.  He is a co-founder of the Trajectory Equifinality Approach in the study of human development, and the leading specialist in Japan on history of psychology and qualitative methodologies.

• Part I.  The reality of higher psychological functions.- 1. Constructive basis of human creativity.- 2. Centrality of aesthetics for psychological science.- 3. Higher psychological functions and their study.- 4. Anthropology of human complexity.- 5. Rituals and religious ideations.- 6. Sociogenesis of higher mental functions.- 7. Borders in the human psyche and societies: regulating relationships.- 8. Ideological discourses and human well-being.- Part II.  Historical roots of the study of higher psychological functions.- 9. Psychology as a phenomenological science.- 10. The role of the whole.- 11.Psychology as a normative science.- 12. Cultural-historical psychology.- 13. Why psychology cannot afford to be ethnocentric?.- Part III.  Methodology for the study of higher psychological functions.- 14. Study of the possible and the actual: TEA.- 15. Introspection, observation, and autoethnography.- 16. Psychology as a idiographic science.- 17. Returning to Windelband—to go beyond him.- 18. Psychology as a qualitative science.- 19. Meaningful methodology for cultural psychology.- 20. How to re-build methodology for human complexity.- Part IV Phenomena of high complexity.- 21. Reality of the Amerindian psyche.- 22. Affective networks in family contexts.- 23. Psychology as a science of art.- 24. Complex ethical actions in social contexts.- 25. Affective semiosis as the basic human “stuff”.- 26. Values and their ways of guiding the psyche.- 27. Varieties of love.- 28. Transgenerational care in human societies.- 29. Education: the process of becoming.