Establishing Embodiment in Psychology

Abstract

The dominant discourse within the western tradition and within the psychology it has spawned can be described as exclusionary: history, culture and community are generally not considered as central to understanding what are presumed to be universal psychological processes. Although the challenger and possible successor to the dominant tradition's discourses, social constructionism, is inclusive of history, culture and community, it shares with the dominant tradition an exclusion of embodiment. Other than the object-body (i.e. the body that a third person observer can know), which remains of interest both to the dominant tradition and to social constructionism's examination of how discourse constructs this object-body, neither the dominant nor the successor discourse deals with the inherently embodied character of all social practices, including discursive practices themselves. All exclusions, including the exclusion of embodiment, have serious political ramifications. Establishing an embodied discourse in psychological inquiry, including the inquiry governed by constructionism, will advance both our understanding and, more significantly, those disciplinary applications designed to contribute to human betterment.

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