Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T15:45:49.095Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Integrity, Boundary and the Ecology of Personal Processes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

A. Phillips Griffiths
Affiliation:
Royal Institute of Philosophy, London
Peter Binns
Affiliation:
University of Warwick Business School
Get access

Summary

Some definitions

I shall be employing a number of terms that have a variety of usages as in other contexts. The definitions I shall be using in this article are given below.

Psyche

By this I mean the field of the mind of a human being. It includes conscious and unconscious mental contents, and items which the self endorses and owns; but it also includes items which it does not own, and which are experienced as alien.

Person

This I understand as the centre or epicentre from which the various contents of the psyche appear to emerge, get organised, develop and change. There are many ways in which this happens, but I shall concentrate on two distinctive and complementary functions of the person in this paper: the individuating and the participative. The former crystallises out and separates subjects and objects from experiential life, while the latter unites and reconnects them. On this account a person is an achievement rather than something that is given; there can thus be both pre-personal states of the psyche, and also relatively well developed and relatively undeveloped persons.

Personal integrity

By the above definition persons are processes. The integrity of these processes can then be understood in terms of: (i) the well-connectedness of its parts and functions, (ii) their success in mediating an optimum relationship between self and environment.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×