دانلود کتاب Persons and Their Minds - Towards an Integrative Theory of the Mediated Mind

This book is a careful move towards a new kind of psychology. It is rooted in
the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Dewey and Rom Harré. Of these three, it is
the latter two who have made constructive suggestions for psychology to develop
a humanly adequate general framework. Brinkmann takes up their challenge and
provides a new solution. It could perhaps be called a Theory of Human Dynamic
Normative Intentionality. What is proposed in this book is a theory that deals
with human life experiences as these are cultural in their nature. The proposed
theory is a major contribution to our contemporary area of cultural psychology –
a burgeoning area of research uniting developmental and social psychology with
anthropology, sociology and history – but which nevertheless has suffered in its
history of past three decades from absence of unifying general theories and lack
of methodology.

“Persons and their Minds is a remarkably elegant, deeply scholarly and integrative proposition
for a new ‘hybrid psychology’. Drawing on classical and current debates in philosophy,
cognitive sciences, social sciences and psychology, Svend Brinkmann proposes an original
theory of persons, with their minds as sets of practices and dispositions, mediated by their
brain, bodies and social worlds. Written with simplicity and humor, this monograph brings
much-needed theoretical and epistemological clarifications – demonstrating why, among
other things, people’s actions cannot be explained by brain mechanisms. This groundbreaking
work offers a new basis for understanding psychopathology and paves the way for an
integrative psychology of people’s everyday life in society.”

Today’s approaches to the study of the human mind are divided into seemingly opposed
camps. On one side we find the neurosciences, with their more or less reductionist research
programs, and on the other side we find the cultural and discursive approaches, with their
frequent neglect of the material sides of human life. Persons and their Minds seeks to
develop an integrative theory of the mind with room for both brain and culture. Brinkmann’s
remarkable and thought-provoking work is one of the first books to integrate brain research
with phenomenology, social practice studies and actor-network theory, all of which are held
together by the concept of the person.
Brinkmann’s new and informative approach to the person, the mind and mental disorder
give this book a wide scope. The author uses Rom Harré’s hybrid psychology as a metatheoretical
starting point and expands this significantly by including four sources of mediators:
the brain, the body, social practices and technological artefacts. The author draws on
findings from cultural psychology and argues that the mind is normative in the sense that
mental processes do not simply happen, but can be done more or less well, and thus are
subject to normative appraisal.
In addition to informative theoretical discussions, this book includes a number of detailed
case studies, including a study of ADHD from the integrated perspective. Consequently,
the book will be of great interest to academics and researchers in the fields of psychology,
philosophy, sociology and psychiatry.
Svend Brinkmann is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Communication and
Psychology at the University of Aalborg, Denmark. His primary research areas are general
psychology and qualitative methods. He is currently Co-director of the Center for Qualitative
Studies at the University of Aalborg and member of the Center for Cultural Psychology.
Persons and their Minds
The series Cultural Dynamics of Social Representation is dedicated to bringing
the scholarly reader new ways of representing human lives in the contemporary
social sciences. It is a part of a new direction – cultural psychology – that has
emerged at the intersection of developmental, dynamic and social psychologies,
anthropology, education and sociology. It aims to provide cutting-edge examinations
of global social processes, which for every country are becoming increasingly
multi-cultural; the world is becoming one “global village”, with the corresponding
need to know how different parts of that ‘village’ function. Therefore, social sciences
need new ways of considering how to study human lives in their globalizing
contexts. The focus of this series is the social representation of people, communities,
and – last but not least – the social sciences themselves.

“The mind has no breakfast” – but we have a new theory! (Editor)