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Tania Zittoun demonstrates that there is pleasure in thinking, and that the pleasure of thinking plays a key role in our lives - in the development of children, in learning, in adult life, and in ageing. Drawing on arts and philosophy, exploring research in developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and psychoanalysis, it highlights five modalities of thinking: curiosity, the functional pleasure of pursuing a task, the pleasure of discovery, the dialogical pleasure of thinking with others, and a meta-pleasure. This book proposes a unique integrative model of thinking, conceived as a situated activity, following trajectories that combine modalities of pleasure. Evolving with time, the pleasure of thinking can take place as we reason, make sense, or daydream, at school, at work, when we garden, or do science. Academics and graduate students in sociocultural, critical, developmental, and cognitive psychology will benefit from The Pleasure of Thinking.
List of contents
Foreword; 1. The pleasure of thought; 2. On the emergence of pleasurable thinking; 3. Thinking the pleasures of psychoanalysis; 4. Thinking in sociocultural psychology; 5. Thinking through the pysche; 6. The pleasure of thinking in diverse experiences; 7. Trajectories of pleasures in thinking; 8. Thinking forward.
About the author
Tania Zittoun is Professor at University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. She is a sociocultural psychologist interested in human development and particularly, the role of fiction and imagination in the lifecourse. She has published several books, including Transitions (2006), Human Development in the Lifecourse: Melodies of Living (2013), and Imagination in Human and Cultural Development (2016).
