Originally formulated within the cross-cultural psychology perspective, Eckensberger has moved on to construct a dynamic theoretical perspective of cultural psychology of human action and thinking (Eckensberger, 1990). Eckensberger’s Action TheoryĪ direct descendant of Boesch’s symbolic action theory that was developed in Saarbrucken, Eckensberger’s action theory builds on Boesch’s work in a number of ways. Boesch’s focus is in many ways parallel to the explanation of conduct through the notion of social representation of French social psychologist Serge Moscovici, yet it builds new concepts of a personal-subjective kind (e.g. His focus on the symbolic nature of action allows for analysis of the ways in which persons move from myths to actions via personally relevant fantasms. Working between Germany and Thailand since the mid-1950s, his theory includes a basic focus on complex psychological phenomena (e.g., aesthetic objects) which a person experiences through personal generalized symbols (fantasms) which are based on socially available myth stories. Boesch’s Symbolic Action Theoryīoesch (1991) has developed a system of cultural psychology that integrates concepts from the developmental constructionism of Jean Piaget and Pierre Janet with basic psychoanalytic insights, in clearly personological ways. The person is either denied as a unity and human psychological processes are viewed as merged with the cultural context (e.g., directions that emphasize appropriation of social input), or the person is viewed as an autonomous agent, who is nevertheless interdependent with the social environment. Versions of cultural psychology differ from one another in the definition of the role of the person in the cultural-psychological analysis. Contemporary Directions in Cultural Psychology Frederick Bartlett’s constructionist look at folk stories in the 1920s in England, and Muzafer Sherif’s analyses of construction of social norms, have laid the foundation for understanding the ways in which people reconstruct the social stimulus world, The cultural-historical theory of Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria in Russia (Vygotsky & Luria, 1930/1993, 1930/1994), the communication theory of Karl Buhler in Germany and William Stern’s personalistic psychology, are further roots for the contemporary reappearance of cultural psychology. In the first half of the twentieth century, cultural psychology relates to the sociology of Georg Simmel and Emile Durkheim, the anthropology of Richard Thurnwald and Lucien Levy-Bruhl, the genetic logic of James Mark Baldwin, John Dewey’s pragmatism, and the social psychology of George Herbert Mead.
it is based on the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce in the United States, and in the action theory of Pierre Janet in France. In general, cultural psychology is rooted in the nineteenth-century German Volkerpsychologie tradition (Moritz Lazarus, Heyman Steinthai, Hermann Paul, Wilhelm Wundt), as well as on the language philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt. History of Cultural PsychologyĬultural psychology antedates experimental psychology (1879), the first professorship in folk psychology (Volkerpsychologie) having been established in 1860 at the University of Bern, Switzerland. In contrast, cross-cultural psychology is largely concerned with the empirical investigation of differences between societies across a broad spectrum of psychological topics and exemplified by different psychological methods.
For such systemic analysis, direct empirical comparisons between different societies are useful but not necessary. Cultural psychology looks for systemic explanation, attempting to include in the explanatory system the notion of culture or its derivates (meaning, semiotic mediating devices, folk models, social representations).
Different trends in cultural psychology can be contrasted to cross-cultural psychology. Systemic Focus of Cultural PsychologyĬultural psychology is a heterogeneous class of perspectives which share an interest in explaining how human psychological functions are culturally constituted through various forms of relations between persons and their social contexts. Within psychology, cultural psychology relates to cross-cultural, social, developmental, and cognitive issues. As a discipline, cultural psychology relates to cultural anthropology, sociology, semiotics, language philosophy, and cultural studies. Cultural psychology is an interdisciplinary extension of general psychology regarding those psychological processes which are inherently organized by culture.