Some Implications of Medical Beliefs and Practices for Social Anthropology

A people's medical beliefs and practices persist because they answer instrumental and moral imperatives, and they are empirically effective. This is not the same thing as saying that they are effective from the standpoint of Western medical notions or that they always bring the results for which people hope. The empirical effectiveness of these practices has important ontological consequences, since it enables sickness episodes to communicate and confirm ideas about the real world.     

Psychosocial Homeostasis and Jen: Conceptual Tools for Advancing Psychological Anthropology

Personality is a Western concept rooted in individualism. The basic importance accorded it in psychological anthropology has obscured our understanding of how Western man lives in Western society and culture, or how any man lives in any society and culture. What is missing is the central ingredient in the human mode of existence: man's relationship with his fellow men. The concepts of psychosocial homeostasis and jen are designed to extricate our subdiscipline from this intellectual prison. The first describes the process whereby every human individual tends to seek certain kinds of affective involvement with some of his fellow humans. The second refers to the internal and external limits of the individual's affective involvement. With the aid of five major hypotheses based on these concepts, a review is made in a new light of familiar facts drawn from China, the United States, and Japan.     

A Companion to Psychological Anthropology

A Companion to Psychological Anthropology. Conerly Casey and Robert B. Edgerton, eds. Williston, VT: Blackwell Publishers, 2005. 523 pp.     

Psychological Implications of Cystic Fibrosis

A psychological and psychiatric study of 11 children with cystic fibrosis revealed major psychological problems in all of them. Among the parents of the majority of these children, marked psychopathology and gross marital discord were noted. Popular literature concerning cystic fibrosis had a negative effect on the child''s attitude toward the disease. Virtually all of these patients showed a preoccupation with death. In this study, the necessity of psychiatric consultation as an integral part of current intensive treatment programs in cystic fibrosis clinics was demonstrated.     

The Psychology of Labor Education: Some Major Issues

Soviet psychologists have done a good deal of research on some of the problematic aspects of the labor education of our young people. E. A. Klimov, K, K. Platonov, V. V. Chebysheva, and others have done general studies of career choice among school students. The following projects also warrant special mention: on the circumstances that foster a positive attitude toward work in instructional workshops and student production teams (L. V. Blagonadyozhina, M. A. Khomutova, F. I. Ivash-chenko, and others); on the role work activity plays in shaping a child's personality and helping to develop his moral and volitional qualities and his overall activity level (T. I. Agafonov, V. E. Gurin, V. I. Selivanov, D. I. Fel'dshtein, and others); on the motives that underlie work activity and career choice in school students (K. E. Drozdova, V. I. Zhukovskaya, and others); on the psychological mechanisms that are relevant to constructive career guidance for students in the upper grades (N. I. Krylov, I. V. Mikhailov, and others); on the development of a technical mind-set in school students (E. A. Faraponova et al.) In addition, researchers in the Psychology Faculty of the Gorky Pedagogical Institute in Minsk are currently involved in a program to investigate the influence the school student's self-appraisal and expectations of productive work exert upon his personality development. Yet, for all this, as the press has frequently pointed out, the scope and spirit of research on psychological aspects of labor education are still far from satisfactory in the light of contemporary needs. Psychologists are too often absent when attempts are made to set the content and form of labor education onto a rigorously scientific foundation and to ascertain the most educationally valid types of work for a child of a given age. The psychological underpinnings of career guidance have also received an inadequate share of scholarly attention.