The Rediscovery of the Human Mind: The Discursive Approach
Author(s)
Harre, Rom
Abstract
The demise of behaviorism was followed by a period of cognitive model building, on Cartesian lines, invoking unobservable cognitive processes, then “mind behind the mind”. This has been followed by a second cognitive revolution which emphasizes the idea that mind is a flow of private and public symbolic patterns, created according to local norms. Basing psychology on this insight requires the preservation of the psychological concepts of ordinary languages as part of the basis for scientific psychology. The concept of “skill” can be used to link individuals with the matrix of interpersonal symbolic and practical interactions. The second revolution can be illustrated by recent work on emotion displays as discursive acts, and by studies on the role of pronouns in the expression of a sense of personal identity.
