The I and Being Human

Description

The ‘I’ in the title pertains to the core of self that persists over time. These are challenges that elude people like social scientists, philosophers, or critics of literature and the arts, who would chronicle or explain humanity’s doings. This informative, engaging, and joyous book by Norman N. Holland offers a usable model for the aesthetics, psychology, history, and science of the human subject. Holland begins by modeling the self as a theme and variations, constant yet constantly changing. He shows how symbolization, perception, cognition, and memory all contribute to the sense of I, hence how any one I grows out of a specific history and culture but also out of experiences all humans share. Holland proposes a scientific psychology based on his model, fusing the experiments of academic psychology with the insights of psychoanalysis. He illustrates his theory by the lives of George Bernard Shaw, Scott Fitzgerald, and other writers, as well as Freud’s patient "Little Hans," in adulthood a famed stage director at the Metropolitan Opera. The I and Being Human attempts nothing less than to draw together aspects of the self, such as objectivity and subjectivity, that have eluded connection. In so doing, Norman Holland offers a rereading of psychoanalysis as a theory of the I. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Introduction to the Transaction Edition Preface Part I: The Aesthetics of I 1. Themes and Wholes Holistic Analysis The Table d'hote Dream 426718 Iiro Conclusion 2. The Idea of Identity The "Promising" Writer Identity The Rat Man 3. Three Identities and an Identity Principle A Prostitute G. B. Shaw Dr. Charles Vincent The Identity Principle A Sixth Metapsychological Point of View Part II: A Psychology of I 4. Symbols Sam and Sandra DEFTing 5. Perception Perceptual Psychology Feedback Perception, Symbolization, and Identity 6. A Model of Mind A Linking of Loops Higher and Lower The Top Culture Model and Definition Part III: A History of I 7. Development as Dialogue Characterologies Development as Hike Development as Dialogue 8. The Birth of an I The Baby-Watchers The Preverbal Dialogue Teddy Bears 9. Zones and Modes The "Nomic" Stage Planning The "Intrusive" Stage 10. Gender and Oedipus Little Girls Other Sexualities 11. Questions and Answers An Epigenetic Dialogue 12. After Oedipus Little Hans Not So Little Hans From Adult to Infant The Story of I Part IV: A Science of I 13. Science and I This I "Scientific?" 14. The State of the Arts The Experimental Psychologists The Psychoanalysts 15. An Idea of Psychology Conclusions Appendix. The I, the Ego, and the Je: Identity and Other Psychoanalyses Classical Psychoanalysis Ego-Psychology A Psychology of the Self Bibliography Index