Psychology Archive
By: Isabelle Mansuy, Ph.D. Exposure to traumatic events in childhood or early adolescence can change a person and perturb her life for many years. It can also have an impact on the following progeny and affect a family across …
Adaptation in Evolution and Behavior: A short conversation among Descriptive Psychologists.A week of so after first posting, “ Playingfor the Fun of It….”, I added the following paragraph. Since I was arguing that play is intrinsic and involves intentional actions …
…the fun of playing…. As a concept, it cannot be reduced to any other mental category. Johan Huizinga, Homo LudensConsciousness is the first example of the selectiveness of enjoyment in the higher animals. Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of ThoughtA Zilch …
A person will not choose less behavior potential over more. Peter G. OssorioNemo me impune lacessit. The Order of the ThistleThe Degradation Ceremonies of everyday life don’t look like ceremonies. Instead, they look like how we go about treating people …
I had a funny thought about dreaming. It woke me up and then I went back to sleep. What I thought, "if I didn’t dream, I’d be too bored to stay asleep". I sometimes go back to sleep to see …
The parent's job is to facilitate their child's growth toward a "good enough" version of what is possible.What is emotional competence? How is it developed? How does trauma and deprivation interfere?I teach a course introducing psychodynamic theory to clinical …
For many years, I have taught “Introduction to Psychoanalysis” from the vantage point of Descriptive Psychology. The policy I try to follow is to use ordinary language and to avoid concepts and theory that do not actually inform my day-to-day …
Descriptive Psychology is the intellectual discipline devoted to connecting and making explicit the implicit structure of the behavioral sciences. As such, it concerns concepts rather than theories, is pre-empirical, and aims at identifying the full range of what constitutes a …
Neoteny refers to when a species’ traits that are typically associated with juvenile stages of development are carried into adulthood. A common example is the Mexican salamander, or axolotl. At full maturity, the axolotl continues to look like a …
The following is a paper submitted for publication. This content is largely taken from earlier entries in this blog and from my presentation at the Yale Personhood Beyond the Human Conference.What Is A Person And How Can We Be Sure? …
