The psyche between nature and culture in Edith Stein and William Stern

• Grant number: 13/03672-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): June 01, 2013
• Effective date (End): April 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Fundamentals and Assessments in Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Marina Massimi
• Grantee: Carolina de Resende Damas Cardoso
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research, in line of investigation of the history of psychology, has as object the historical and conceptual study of certain works of two authors who have excelled in the German context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: Edith Stein (1891-1942) and William Stern (1871-1938). Those works are: Contributions to the philosophical foundation of psychology and the sciences of the spirit (1922), written by Edith Stein; and General Psychology from the personalistic standpoint (1938), written by William Stern. Between both authors, there are similarities regarding studied topics as well as a precise historical relationship highlighted in their biographies: Stern taught psychology in Breslau and Stein attended his classes as a student in 1911-1912. The aim of this research is to apprehend the elaboration of psyche's concept and its relations with nature and culture in both author's proposals of scientific psychology that are formulated in their works. For such analyses, it will be employed the historical-conceptual method: it will be taken as primary sources the editions in Spanish language of Edith Stein's (1922/2003b) and William Stern's (1938/1951) work; the secondary sources will be used aiming further historical contextualization of the German philosophy and psychology of that time. The questions that will guide the analysis refer to: 1) to understand how each one of the authors conceives human psyche (its structure and functioning) in the interface between natural world and cultural world; 2) to verify if both theories proposed by the two authors had anything in common; 3) to evidence the similarities, the differences and the eventual contributions that these perspectives may bring to contemporary psychology, in a historical moment in which there is a resumption of the importance of culture in the constitution of human psyche as well as a search for broader epistemologies in which may be overcome the naturalism and positivism that founded psyche sciences in its beginning. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

CARDOSO, Carolina de Resende Damas. The psyche between nature and culture in Edith Stein and William Stern. 2017. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC) Ribeirão Preto.