2004.01.25. open lecture and seminar in Ritsumeikan Univ.

Invited Lecture at the Open Seminar on Cultural Psychology
Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto 25th January 2004

Cultural Psychology Today:
An effort towards interdisciplinary integration

Jaan Valsiner (jvalsiner@clarku.edu)
Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, Ma. 01610, USA

ABSTRACT.

Cultural Psychology has a long history within psychology-one that antedates the birth of experimental psychology of Wundt (in 1879) by about two decades (1860). The roots of our contemporary invention of cultural psychology are in the different Volkerpsychologie traditions (Lazarus, Steinthal, Wundt), and related to the work of the "Wurzburg School" (Kulpe, K. Buhler) and the traditions of Ganzheitspsychologie. Cultural psychology --differently from cross-cultural psychology-- has been a discipline that integrates psychology, ethnology, and semiotics. In order to accomplish such integration, psychology needs to move to making inference from single cases through models of systemic causality, and to appreciate the centrality of history, development, and qualitative nature of the phenomena.

* * * * *

To be published in Japanese Journal of Qualitative Psychology
(Vol. 4)

---

Returning to The lecture