On the evolutionary, contemporary and universal dimensions of culture and identifying the main research areas in cultural psychology

The term culture would mean the entire gamut of activities, beliefs, lifestyle, habits, rituals, arts, ethics and behavioral patterns of a society. Yet despite the wide definition of culture, the elements of culture being too varied and divergent, it is not easy to provide a relationship between culture and psychology. There are two common ways by which the relationship between psychology and culture is studied, through intra-cultural psychology or behavioral patterns within a particular society and intercultural psychology or behavior and psychological characteristics between societies.

Intra-cultural psychology seeks to understand the cultural basis of behavior by studying the peculiarities of a society, its rules and norms and shows how traditions shape or influence the collective psyche of the people within the society. However in psychology this is simply considered as 'cultural psychology' a straightforward term denoting the study of cultural traditions and their effects on the psychology of people. This sort of categorization may be misleading as it tends to see cultures as fundamentally different units and highlights differences rather than similarities. Cross-cultural psychology focuses on finding universal patterns of behavior or beliefs that are common among people of all cultures and this is what has been described here as 'inter-cultural' psychology. The terms 'intra-cultural' and 'inter-cultural' psychology would be more conducive to finding a psychology that shows convergent patterns of cultural behavior among people across societies.

The psychology of culture requires further development in the areas of defining culture and in finding cultural roots that would highlight collective psyche or universal patterns of behavior. Humans are finally united by common emotions and psyche and this broader cultural psychology has been promoted by Carl Gustav Jung who focused his studies on the importance of deriving or understanding the collective unconscious with those elements or archetypes that are carried from one generation to another.

Culture has been defined as the accumulated experiences of a society as a whole that has been socially transmitted so the collective unconscious in Jungian terms would serve as a repository of cultural imprints that shape human behavior right from childhood. The three predominant schools of cultural psychology have been identified as having activity, symbolic or individualistic approach (Carl Ratner explains this well). The activity approach highlights social activities of a group, the symbolic approach defines culture as shared meanings and concepts or symbols. The individualistic approach highlights the interaction of the individual with society and through this, individuals construct their personal culture. But I would downplay the personal aspect of culture and suggest culture as mainly a group phenomenon akin to individual conformity in society so apart from activity and symbolism, culture should be defined by its beliefs, values and ethics. Culture is finally about shared activities, shared symbolisms and shared belief systems.

The story of the birth of human culture would be closely related to the story of human evolution as with the formation of tribes, humans learned and adapted to group behavior. Man was born alone but became a social animal primarily due to survival needs and the development of culture is thus rooted in man's own needs for security, safety and survival. Humans follow rules, norms, traditions of a society simply 'to live' and culture is about conformity. So the psychology of culture is also the psychology of conformity and even the non conformist in a way conforms to certain basic social and cultural rules and traditions.

As 'culture' represents a broad spectrum of human activity, cultural psychology should involve the study of:

1. Evolutionary and historical patterns of human behavior, closely related to anthropology
2. Contemporary social trends (for example: celebrity culture, workplace culture, globalization) closely related to sociology, and
3. The intra-cultural and inter-cultural patterns of behavior to recognize the universal elements in human cognition, emotion and perception

Thus there seems to be three dimensions to the study of culture in psychology - the evolutionary, the contemporary and the universal. The evolutionary and historical dimension of cultural psychology would have to be largely explained in terms of Jungian psychology whereas social psychology becomes an integral part of the contemporary dimension. The universal dimension for the study of cultural psychology uses behavioral patterns or cognitive psychology to gauge at how people are programmed to behave in certain situations and whether these behavioral patterns are common across cultures and if not, whether there are only culture specific behaviors.

Psychologists have claimed that there are certain culture specific behaviors and certain universal behavioral patterns among humans and it is important to understand whether it is possible to delineate behaviors that are culture specific or intra-cultural and those that are universal or inter-cultural. If such an attempt is made, then it is possible to say that ethics and values, legal structures, lifestyle, activities, rituals and beliefs can widely vary between cultures and these elements represent intra cultural similarities and inter cultural differences. Yet certain attitudes and worldviews or opinions, emotions and perception, as also basic human traits of say intelligence or imagination are not culture specific and may have intra-cultural differences and inter-cultural similarities. For example emotions and emotional expressions are common across all cultures so we all cry when we are sad and laugh when we are happy. We also have common attitudes and opinions such as supportive views towards honesty and we universally detest crime. This is however the universal behavior found across cultures although there may still be variations. The strong intra-cultural beliefs and attitudes that are not universal are usually related to customs rather than emotions, for example attitudes towards marriage and courtship, vary widely between cultures or even dining table manners differ between cultures.

Thus human emotions and expressions and behavior motivated by such emotions tend to be universal or inter-cultural and customs/traditions and human behavior motivated by customs tend to be intra-cultural or culture specific. Cultures in today's world are largely shaped by religious belief systems, political and social or economic systems and that is why culture seems to be almost inflexible in it roots as seen in rigid religious structures of society, although the changing cultural patterns are manifested in political and economic systems. If we provide an agenda for cultural psychology, the future research areas in the psychology of culture should involve

1. Definition of culture - describing and identifying the concepts and structures of culture and answering what exactly constitutes culture
2. Identifying different dimensions of culture as they relate to cultural psychology - and studying the evolutionary, contemporary and universal aspects of culture
3. Expanding research in the current schools of cultural psychology on activity, symbolism and belief systems as well as considering individual or personal approaches in cultural psychology
4. Establishing the relationships between culture and anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis and human cognition and emotions.
5. Recognizing similarities in human emotions and expressions that are the basis of universal cultural elements and identifying differences in customs and practices

The psychology of culture is still a developing field and should try to answer basic questions on how behavioral patterns developed within cultures and why behaviors are similar or vary between cultures. The five areas of study listed above suggest the main problems and future directions in the study of culture within psychology and psychology within culture.

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On the problem of consciousness and its relations with mind, matter and the universe

The study of consciousness is one of the oldest and also one of the newest disciplines in philosophy and sciences. The problem of consciousness has been described as 'what it is like to be' by Nagel 1974, which emphasizes on how does it feels to 'be' something or someone. The study of consciousness is about the conscious and subjective experiences and highlights the 'explanatory gap' between the material aspects of perception as in brain mechanisms and the more subjective non-material aspects of perception.

The definition of consciousness is rather complicated and ambiguous as consciousness can have several meanings such as thoughts, expressions, self awareness, perception and a whole gamut of mental experiences. Consciousness can be explained either subjectively or the state of awareness of something with our unique individual sense of perception or objectively with brain mechanisms in which mental functions are thought to be nothing more than neural activity.

So there are two distinct paths to studying consciousness:

1. Consciousness as related to higher self and understanding, studied in mysticism, occult, transpersonal psychology, spirituality, and even Jungian psychoanalysis.
2. The scientific study of consciousness as is seen in modern approaches in philosophy of mind where consciousness is explained with brain mechanisms or in terms of subjective experiences

Thus the two distinct approaches to the study of consciousness would be old school or new school approaches in which the old school psychology of consciousness would discuss religion and spirituality, and Jungian psychoanalysis as also experiences of altered states of consciousness as in dreaming, hypnosis, drug induced states. The new school psychology of consciousness is about understanding the explanatory gap between the subjective and the objective, between mind and matter, between neural activity and subjective experience and the quest for understanding consciousness in a scientific manner. The new school of psychology has attracted scholars from all fields including quantum mechanics, biology, philosophy, psychology, linguistics and cognitive science. Some of the questions that are central to consciousness studies are - can a machine be ever conscious if consciousness is only about brain mechanisms? Is animal mind different from that of humans? What are the neural correlates of consciousness if any and can consciousness be explained only with neural or brain activity? Is consciousness largely a subjective experience characteristic of being human? when does a being actually become conscious and what is the physical mechanism behind this?

I will now describe some of my personal views on consciousness and what it means to be conscious or how consciousness could be explained scientifically. The study of consciousness should involve both the new and old schools of psychology and all forms of consciousness should be studied as a combination of subjective and objective experience. The subjective experience or sense of 'what it is like' is found in higher animals and is the most developed in humans. Although some form of subjective experience could be seen in the other animals as even animals express certain emotions in a specific manner. The objective experience is about perceiving the external world with the help of brain mechanisms and objective experiences are usually similar for all human beings like we all perceive the same colors and textures. Psychology has traditionally tried to understand all measurable aspects of consciousness such as attention, wakefulness, perception, cognition and sense awareness. Altered states of consciousness are also used to measure biological changes in the body, to provide a mind-body interaction framework. However these traditional approaches have given way to the more philosophical problems in consciousness and considering modern directions in consciousness, the psychology of consciousness will have to be studied empirically in keeping with the requirements of scientific knowledge but from a philosophical perspective.

We can also call this as the objective consciousness and subjective consciousness and objective consciousness is the general sense awareness also known as consciousness in which being unconscious would mean a temporary loss of sense awareness. Subjective consciousness is the feeling of' what it is like to be' or what it is like to feel a certain thing. This is the deeper description of our subjective experience and varies from one person to another. Whereas objective consciousness is general sense awareness, subjective consciousness is about being aware of this basic consciousness and thus subjective experience seems to be more important than objective consciousness in psychology, at least from a philosophical viewpoint. We are all conscious of having experiences which is subjective yet the experiences have elements of objectivity as well as subjectivity. A combination and balance of subjective and objective consciousness is found in most individuals although lower animals thrive on objective experiences and humans deal extensively with the subjective or interpretation of the objective.

Chalmers, a philosopher in consciousness studies has described the 'easy and hard problem in consciousness' - the easy part of understanding consciousness are those aspects of consciousness which can be reported, accessed, controlled etc. and the hard part is the experience which highlights the way an experience is felt. The main problematic of consciousness is whether the brain itself and the neurons which help us to perceive the external world also help us to experience what we perceive. The natural answer would be that the brain is capable of producing both the subjective and the objective experience or that the nerves are perfectly reducible to explain all experience in humans. The challenge would then be, if we build a machine with the complete physical and brain structure of a human being, will that lead to manufacturing a 'conscious' being? In this case, some scientists believe that it is not possible to replicate the entire brain structure and create a being with a brain structure exactly similar to that of the human. The problems arise in our understanding of brain mechanism and finally to the understanding of matter. When we do not know how a thought corresponds to a particular brain activity, we cannot know the entire dynamics of the brain and its association with conscious experience.

Finally the understanding of consciousness will depend on the understanding of brain mechanisms at the level of fundamental matter and the role of quantum mechanics becomes important here. Understanding matter at a level which can explain very minute details of the thought process through the minute details of brain activity would be important and this is where consciousness studies deals with the philosophy of matter more than the philosophy of mind. The main focus of the psychology of consciousness should be to integrate the subjective and objective experiences and explain mental phenomena with these experiences adequately. Objective consciousness as in perception of the external world (colors, odors, textures and basic sense awareness) and subjective consciousness or perception of the internal world (as experiencing or understanding what it is like) should be both examined to understand consciousness from a psychological, biological, evolutionary and philosophical viewpoint. As far as explanation of subjective experience with brain mechanisms is concerned, there may never be a solution as we may not be able to understand the nature of matter completely. There are some questions which don't have answers and cannot be understood within out limited human knowledge. Some of these intriguing questions which may not be amenable to humans are:

* The creation and infinity of the cosmos
* The attributes of matter at the fundamental level
* The deepest experiences of the human mind

These questions remain linked in a way because one question helps to explain another. The deepest experiences of the human mind are related to our understanding of matter and the nature of matter can be only comprehended with a clear picture of the universe and all unidentified cosmological issues. Consciousness is thus not just an isolated problem but one of the three basic problems in our quest for knowledge and intricately related to the other problems of mind, matter and the universe.

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On the need to focus on childhood events along with the developmental theories for a comprehensive psychology of children

Child psychology is associated with the social and personal development of children and a child goes through several stages before stepping into the adult world. The psychology of children has been studied from various perspectives including issues of nature and nurture and whether the child is a product of genes and heredity or a product of society and environment as also different developmental stages of sensory discrimination and perception, emotional expression and learning through language and cognitive development, development of intelligence and the socialization process. The study of child sexuality and sexual and moral development are also very important especially from a psychoanalytic viewpoint.

Children are vulnerable and affected easily by all events in the immediate environment. Events which are only trivial or unimportant to adults, may leave deep scars or memories in a child's mind. A child's mind is extremely impressionable and changeable and before the child reaches adolescence, certain very insignificant events can have great personal significance in a child's life. So 'childhood memories' and 'childhood events' are primary factors in determining adult personality pattern. Some major factors which can affect a child's later development and have potential long term effects are:

1. Loss or gain of a friend or friends
2. Memorable physical/bodily sensations
3. Separation in the family or divorce of parents
4. Domestic abuse or violence
5. Sexual molestation or abuse
6. Learning experiences either at play or during study
7. Personal experiences/events that evoked strong emotions of fear, joy, sorrow etc.
8. Accidents or illnesses experienced or observed
9. Death of family members, neighbors or close ones
10. Change of residence or relocation
11. Emotional relationships with friends, teachers or family members
12. Personal success or failure in school
13. Influence of films, stories, books or news events
14. War, terrorism, conflicts, bomb attacks etc.
15. Natural calamities like earthquakes, flood, famine etc.

The factors here are very general and every child goes through certain very specific events that affect him or her individually although there are certain very general theories in psychology that have been established through research studies and these theories have highlighted links between success or failure in later life and childhood events. Some of the major theorists of child development are John Bowlby, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg and Lev Vygotsky. Whereas Bowlby emphasized on childhood relationships, Piaget focused on cognitive development of the child through various stages and Freud wrote extensively on sexual development of children. Kohlberg studied moral development of children whereas Vygotsky analyzed the socialization process of children through social contextualism. All these theories on different aspects of child development only prove the immense complexity and the varied number of factors that tend to play a role in the psychological development of children. There are many dimensions to the psychology of children from social, emotional to cognitive, sexual and moral. Here I will provide a brief account of all these different theories and finally provide a comprehensive analysis on how these theories could be used along with the general factors listed above in the study of the psychology of children.

John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, developed the 'attachment theory' in which he emphasized the importance of a mother or primary caregiver in a child's life. He showed in his study that any infant should develop and maintain a warm and intimate relationship with the mother or mother substitute and all maternal deprivation can lead to serious mental health problems in the child later in life. Bowlby's theory is very true and a mother should develop a strong physical and emotional intimacy with the child by being physically close to the child at least until the child is 2 years old. Doctors around the world have recommended breast feeding and an important part of this is the physical closeness between the child and the mother which is extremely necessary once the child is out of the mother's womb. When the child is released from the mother's womb, the first emotion is fear and the mother's continued physical closeness instills confidence and a sense of security in the child. Orphaned children or children who are separated from their mothers at birth require a substitute or they can grow up as mentally ill or maladjusted individuals.

Freud on the other hand provided a complete psychosexual theory and emphasized on what many of us don't like to believe - the sexual pleasure of children. Freud overturned the concept of childhood innocence and suggested that we are born with our unrepressed basic instincts which are slowly tempered with social adaptation. Freud believed that the inherent pleasure seeking desires that we are born with focus on certain erogenous zones of the body and accordingly there are different stages of psychosexual development from oral and anal to phallic, latent and genital stages. In psychosexual development, the child's pleasure seeking behavior changes from the mouth as in sucking and biting to the anus through toilet training and then finally to the genitals. Thus the child according to psychoanalysis derives complete sexual pleasure by sucking, biting, playing with genitals and releasing waste by defecation. I do not necessarily endorse Freud's views on the sexual pleasure of children and the pleasure derived from bodily sensations could be explained in other ways as I will discuss in another article.

Jean Piaget, a French-Swiss philosopher established the theory of cognitive development in children and laid out four developmental stages - the sensorimotor period, the pre-operational stage, the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage. The first stage is when the child develops spatial abilities and comes to terms with the world through the senses during the first two years of life. The second stage is about developing and using concepts when children understand meaning of things and this continues until the age of 7. From 7-11 years the child reaches higher cognitive development through concrete operational stage and can sort and classify objects and can use logic to solve problems. The formal operational stage that begins around 12 years of age helps children to understand abstract thoughts, hidden meanings etc. Kohlberg provided a theory of moral development of children through six stages of pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional levels. These are related to concerns for punishment and self interest, as also inner need for conformity and striving for social order, as maintaining universal ethical principles. So moral development seems to move from a belief of 'what is right and what is wrong' and whether there is punishment for the wrong to what is universally ethical and acceptable social behavior. Another prominent psychologist Vygotsky highlighted the importance of socialization and interpersonal communication and child development according to this theory is seen as an internalization of social and cultural knowledge.

Of course, all these theories will have to be added up and a complete or comprehensive theory that would provide an insight into the child's mind and behavior will have components from all these theories. In addition childhood experiences and events which have been highlighted in psychoanalytic theories are also extremely important and not just from a sexual point of view. All the general factors that I have mentioned in the beginning of the essay should be considered as factors that underlie social, sexual, moral, emotional, physical and cognitive development of children. As learning experiences lead to cognitive development, personal emotional experiences lead to later emotional development and maturity. Sexual molestation, abuse or other types of bodily sensations in childhood affect later sexual development and divorce or separation in the family can affect moral development. Thus an individual who has been molested as a child may either develop a fear of sexual activity or may show complete lack of sexual restraint as an adult.

A child who has lived without a father may either become extremely irresponsible or can develop into an adult with a very strong sense of parental responsibility. Experiencing trauma in childhood through death or accidents of family members or living in times of war, natural calamities have deep impact on children and can leave a perennial sense of insecurity or a need for attachment in the children which continues through adulthood and even old age or on the other hand these events can make a child isolated, schizophrenic or simply detached in later life. For healthy life of children it is important to not just depend on psychological theories to understand how a child grows up and perceives the world, but it is also important to focus on events or experiences of the child and use these along with the theories for complete psychological understanding of children.

In contemporary child psychology the focus on events is mainly psychoanalytic and the impact of adverse events is considered especially significant. However it is important that all events, positive and negative are considered and this should then be used to complement psychological theories. To understand the child, it is important to understand the child's world and memories so an 'event-based' psychology of children should be balanced with a 'theory-based' psychology of children.

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