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Self and Other in an Age of Uncertain Meaning explores the nature and origins of widespread problems of self in modern societies. It examines the paradoxical interplay between the modern world's many benefits and freedoms, and its mounting social challenges and psycho-emotional impacts.
List of contents
1. Interpersonal Climate Change; Part 1: Language, Mind, and Intimacy; 2. A Change of Mind; 3. Signals to Symbols: The Awakening of Intimate Experience; Part 2: The Origins of Uncertainty; 4. Through the Rear-View Mirror; 5. Recipe for Existential Crisis: Step 1. Undermine Certainty and Truth; 6. Recipe for Existential Crisis: Step 2. Weaken Neighbourhood Ties; 7. Recipe for Existential Crisis: Step 3. Foster Isolation; Part 3: The Shape of the Modern Self; 8. Selfie Nation; 9. Self from the Inside Out: Language, Mind, and the Sense of Self; 10. From the Basement Up: Modernity, the Self, and the Unconscious Mind; 11. And from the Outside In: Influences of Work, Technology, and Societal Institutions; 12. We Are Each Other: The Dawn of the Interpersonal Self; 13. Multi-Me: Self, Intimacy, and Loss; 14. Mini-Me: Wrong Ideas about Communication, Self, and Intimacy; Chapter Notes; Bibliography.
About the author
Timothy Stephen, PhD, is professor of communication at University at Albany (SUNY) specializing in the interrelationships of language, mind, culture, the self-concept, and intimacy, and, particularly, in the way in which communication in intimacy produces shared mind.
Summary
Self and Other in an Age of Uncertain Meaning explores the nature and origins of widespread problems of self in modern societies. It examines the paradoxical interplay between the modern world's many benefits and freedoms, and its mounting social challenges and psycho-emotional impacts.
Over time the character of consciousness has shifted in concert with societal trends. The experienced world has become more nuanced, fragmented, and uncertain, as well as increasingly personal and intimate, reshaping social relationships. Chapters analyze the interdependence of language, mind, intimacy, the self, and culture, arguing that as the coevolution of these five factors produced the modern world, many features of contemporary culture have become disruptive to security of being. The book explores the importance to the vital sense of self in constructing relationships based in mutual recognition of moral and intellectual equality between partners.
Rich with examples from everyday experience, this text offers profound insights for those interested in sociology, psychoanalysis, psychology, communication, history, and culture.
