Gerhard Benetka – författare

Biographical ruptures and their repairs: Cultural transitions in development represents the efforts of bridging theoretical, methodological, and practice oriented issues revolving around the notion of biographical ruptures and their repairs. The aim is to bring novel understandings from cultural psychological perspectives to the debate of what it means to be a developing human being in an ever changing world.

Contrary to mainstream psychology ruptures and repairs are here not necessarily understood as a personal experience, which must be overcome through various coping strategies. Rather, ruptures are understood as experiences, which necessarily emerge out of the complex interrelatedness of intra-psychological, inter-personal, and societal processes. Moving along these different levels of analysis, each of the 13 chapters of this book contributes to the general cultural psychological understanding of ruptures from their own particular standpoint. The notion of ruptures and their repairs are discussed from such differing standpoints such as classical developmental psychological theories and challenges to such developmental approaches. They are discussed in relation to racial interpellations using the documentary method and social representations theory. On the object level ruptures are pointed out within popular music videos and from a Ganzheitspsychological approach and others.

The current book thus does not only represent a conglomerate of various theoretical, methodological, or practice oriented approaches to ruptures and their repairs, each adding with their own expertise to a better understand of the phenomenon in its whole. It also demonstrated a lively debate between leading specialists and practitioners from different disciplines and countries. Theoretical and methodological issues, as well as ethical and moral ones, are each discussed from their own cultural psychological viewpoint. This book will interest practitioners, scientists and students or anyone who is interested in biographical rupture and their repairs from a cultural psychological, developmental, social psychological or psychotherapeutic viewpoint.

The sciences philosophy, psychology and neuroscience share the basis that all refer to the human being. Therefore, an interdisciplinary collaboration would be desirable. The exchange of criticism is an essential requirement for interdisciplinary collaboration. Criticism must be heard and – if possible – considered. Indeed, criticism can be valid or unwarranted. However, whether criticism is unwarranted can only emerge from discussion and conversation. In the discussion of cognitive neuroscience, some criticism can easily be considered (such as the mereological fallacy that represents that talking about the person is substituted with talking bout the brain). Another issue for an interdisciplinary discussion of cognitive neuroscience is the interpretation of the readiness potential including re-considering Benjamin Libet’s classic experiments. Additionally, a critical discussion on cognitive neuroscience must address ethical questions, such as the possibility of the abuse of neuroscientific insight.

This book presents an overview of the life and work of Gustav Ichheiser, a social scientist in Vienna during the early 20th century. Gustav Ichheiser, along with many other Austrian Jews of his time, was forced into exile after the rise of National Socialism in Europe. Ichheiser''s work is considered an important front runner to the attribution theories. He was one of the first to study the phenomena of social misunderstandings in detail and in relation to concrete problem areas, such as success.

The aim of this book is to discuss, on an international level, the importance of Ichheiser''s theoretical approaches in his time and their relevance in today''s context of social and cultural psychology. In addition, the tragic course of Ichheiser’s biography, an example for many displaced scientists, highlights the importance of bringing a scientist’s work back into the focus of today’s current social scientific setting.

Memories of Gustav Ichheiser will be of interestto researchers as well as undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of psychology, social psychology, sociology, and psychiatry.