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12 - Self-development, individuation, and culture: A psychoanalytic search

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

By
Güler Okman Fişek
Edited by
Sevda Bekman  and
Ayhan Aksu-Koç
Foreword by
M. Brewster Smith
Sevda Bekman
Affiliation:
Bogaziçi University, Istanbul
Ayhan Aksu-Koç
Affiliation:
Bogaziçi University, Istanbul
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Summary

Çiğdem is a valued colleague and friend. More importantly, she is an older sister and guide, especially in our joint attempts to help further the development of psychology in Turkey over the years. A sense of responsibility and obligation, to which we refer as “being girl scouts”, has led to adventures in many contexts, even to the extent of being summoned by the police during the early days of the 1980 coup. Beyond that relationship, I have gained knowledge and courage from Çiğdem's seminal ideas in pursuing my own interest in the interface of culture, family, and the self.

This chapter attempts to explore the topic of early self-development, especially with regards to the process of individuation from a comparative psychoanalytic perspective. Among the many points regarding the construal of self that Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı makes in her recent articles, one speaks directly to the topic of this chapter. Evaluating the general approach of cross-cultural psychology to different construals of self, she writes that, “this approach falls short of addressing questions regarding how these different types of selves emerge” (2005: 410). Stating that these questions require a developmental perspective she goes on to discuss the issue in the context of family and socio-cultural development.

Kağıtçıbaşı's constructs of “separate-relational” selves (1996a, 1996b) find echoes in constructs such as “independent-interdependent” (Markus and Kitayama 1991), “individualistic-collectivistic” (Triandis et al. 1988), “idiocentric-sociocentric” (Shweder and Bourne 1984), and so forth. These are social psychological or anthropological terms, from disciplines that have traditionally paid the most attention to culture.

Type
Chapter
Information
Perspectives on Human Development, Family, and Culture , pp. 194 - 206
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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