Acts of Meaning: Four Lectures on Mind and Culture by Jerome Bruner

From the Publisher

Jerome Bruner argues that the cognitive revolution, with its current fixation on mind as 'information processor, ' has led psychology away from the deeper objective of understanding mind as a creator of meanings.

Library Journal

A psychologist and educator, and a pioneer in the field of cognition, Bruner provides an outline for a new synthesis of inquiry into mind and culture. The book consists of the 1989-90 Jerusalem-Harvard lectures divided into four chapters. The first, ``The Proper Study of Man,'' is a critique of the current antihistorical,anticultural bias of cognitive psychology, especially its information-processing model of the mind. ``Folk Psychology as an Instrument of Culture'' asserts that culturally shaped notions, stories, and narratives organize experience and manage expectations. ``Entry into Meaning'' views the beginnings of social understanding as a capacity to render experience in terms of narrative discourse (to be in a culture is to be in a set of connecting stories). Finally, ``Autobiography and Self'' illustrates the classic concept of Self from the perspective of cultural psychology--that ``selves are not isolated nuclei of consciousness locked in the head, but are `distributed' interpersonally.'' A challenging manifesto for a cultural psychology by a major figure in the field.-- William Abrams, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.

Booknews

Renowned psychologist Bruner (NYU) presents a critique of the fractionated state of psychology today and, at the same time, lays the theoretical foundations for a new synthesis of inquiry into mind and culture. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents