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Jaan Valsiner (JV) has been the foremost cultural psychologist in the world for the last 30 years. In 2021 professor Valsiner turned seventy, and he agreed to do an interview with colleagues and students on his understanding of cultural psychology, its potential for innovation and its connection to his many interesting experiences from around the world. The interview was conducted by the three directors of the Center for Cultural Psychology in Aalborg Denmark: Carolin Demuth (CD), Brady Wagoner (BW), and Bo Allesøe Christensen (BA). For an extensive discussion of the different sides of Valsiner work, readers can consult the recently published Festschrift (Wagoner, B., Christensen, B., & Demuth, C. [Eds.]. [2021]. Culture as process: A tribute to Jaan Valsiner. Springer.).

This Special Issue sets the stage for constructive integration of psychology with relevant phenomena it needs to study, and with its interdisciplinary collaboration possibilities. Based on a regular submission of an analysis of the conceptual network of psychology (Zagaria et al. 2020) an international constructive discussion ensued, with charting out three potential future pathways to psychology as science: (1) theoretical elaboration of the person-centered and idiographic approaches and move from “evidence-based” to experience-based research; (2) advancement of general developmental science perspective beyond the traditions of evolutionary psychology along the lines of the genetic logic of James Mark Baldwin, and (3) building interdisciplinary synthesis between psychology and semiotics in the domain of cultural psychology. The progress in contemporary biology (epigenetics) and qualitative mathematics can provide the epistemological support for this move.

In this article, we present the blueprint for a new class of methods—inter-modal pre-constructive methods—uniting the value of moving across modalities of understanding (poetry, drawing, music, etc.) in a scheme of microgenetic construction of affective fields. For this purpose, the historical roots of this class of methods were reviewed, and two empirical demonstrations are provided. In the demonstration, the possibility of exploring hyper-generalized feelings was opened up by repeatedly producing the feelings while transforming the modality step by step. In addition, it was suggested that the modality of music could be used as the next possibility. The inter-modal pre-constructive methods are ways of triggering and increasing the difficulty of expression of the original feelings. The difficulty of switching the modality is a new synthesis while keeping attention to the feeling once felt. Alternatively, we felt the feeling of “understanding” about others’ poetry. This implied that poetry, like painting, allowed for a new synthesis of the reader’s experiences. The multiplicity of the synthesis through a particular medium can be called “pluri-synthesis.” While such syntheses are unique to each person, we found that this diversity of meaning-making can be a catalyst for pleromatization through the communication of others’ feelings. In this article, we present the blueprint for a new class of methods—inter-modal pre-constructive methods—uniting the value of moving across modalities of understanding (poetry, drawing, music, etc.) in a scheme of microgenetic construction of affective fields. For this purpose, the historical roots of this class of methods were reviewed, and two empirical demonstrations are provided. In the demonstration, the possibility of exploring hyper-generalized feelings was opened up by repeatedly producing the feelings while transforming the modality step-by-step. In addition, it was suggested that the modality of music could be used as the next possibility. The inter-modal pre-constructive methods are ways of triggering and increasing the difficulty of expression of the original feelings. The difficulty of switching the modality is a new synthesis while keeping attention to the feeling once felt. Alternatively, we felt the feeling of "understanding" about others' poetry. This implied that poetry, like painting, allowed for a new synthesis of the reader's experiences. The multiplicity of the synthesis through a particular medium can be called “pluri-synthesis.” While such syntheses are unique to each person, we found that this diversity of meaning-making can be a catalyst for pleromatization through the communication of others' feelings.

Jaan Valsiner shows how human beings create cognitive and affective orders through constructions of meaning that allow them to move safely in highly complex situations and environments. He sees the human being as an “animal symbolicum” with performative needs and driven by the desire to communicate. He shows how processes of interpretation, understanding and ordering are structured and how a combination of approaches from social anthropology, semiotics, cultural psychology and psychoanalysis can contribute to a more appropriate representation of these processes and their functions. The Hans Kilian Award for the Research and Promotion of Metacultural Humanisation honours excellent achievements in interdisciplinary research and teaching in the social and cultural sciences. In addition to the keynote speech by cultural psychologist Jaan Valsiner in English, there is a foreword by Heinz-Rudi Spiegel, chairman of the board of trustees for the Hans Kilian Award, and a laudatio by Pradeep Chakkarath, co-director of the Hans Kilian and Lotte Köhler Centre for Social and Cultural Psychology and Historical Anthropology.

The study of development has been a particular hostage in psychology because its phenomena and general psychology’s methodological imperatives have passed one another by. This chapter presents a framework for analyzing and constructing scientific methods appropriate to the specific problems arising in the study of development. Developmental science, in contrast, seeks to build its generalizations ideographically. The key to Fischer’s innovation over the past four decades is in the basic acceptance of the dynamic variability of cognitive processes and viewing it as the crucial norm for development. The move toward future development can be depicted by web images unfolding over time in which some past microdevelopments have been actualized into ontogenetic development while others remain non-actualized, and potential future actualization can be seen as a function of the developing agent’s constructions in relation to differing environmental possibilities. One way to approach a specifically developmental methodology can be found in what has been called the Methodology Cycle.

This book is a testimony to the intellectual power and productivity of young researchers—students working in international tandems. It showed how empowering young students coming from two academic backgrounds—Luxembourg and Shanghai—can take a new look in intensive observational encounters in a Chinese kindergarten. This chapter proposes that academically less prepared but highly motivated young researchers have their unique advantages in advancing basic scientific knowledge. Based on the different researches included in this book, theoretical generalizations can be made as, for example, children as developing subjects faced with systematic socialization inputs and redundancy as the general rule. The great potential of generalization from single structured specimens is discussed and clarified.

Sensuality emerges from the human need for the sublime. Human beings live forward—constantly anticipating the immediate future that is—and cannot be—pre-known before it happens. Hence the future always looks ahead of us—creating the necessary conditions for the sublime. As active constructors of our own lives—through signs—we create the sublime moments by attributing meanings to the full scene we are facing as the future looms over us to become the present. We dramatize our ordinary lives by creating sublime experiences. Human living entails episodic reliance on sexual eroticism—the hyper-generalized feeling that leads to physiological sexual arousal and to possible sexual activities. This kind of eroticism entails Level 4 → Level 1 → Level 0 guidance of the body by higher level psychological functions. Sexual desire generated from the domain of higher order feelings—leading to bodily readiness for asexual encounter—differs from the “pure” sexual arousal (Level 0 → Level 1 activity). The latter is of completely physiological kind (Usually characterized by the general categories of satyriasis and nymphomania—exaggerated forms of sexual desires that enter into conflict with societal moral norms) and can lead to recognition of the bodily needs at Level 2. Such purely biologically organized sexuality is similar across different species. It is sufficient for the biological reproduction of the species—and completely devoid of any higher feelings. All three forms of sexuality are in the service of our human sensual living.

The question—what is body—is central for this chapter. It is needed for discussion of topics such as “embodiment”—and for the issue of sensuality in the present book. At first glance this seems obvious—my body is the strange mass of fat, muscles, and interior organs that make my living possible. Thus it is a biological question—our real body is the biological system of being that is fully bordered by our skin. Our story does not end with such “biological sack” notion. Our skin becomes the arena for human meaning construction (Semiotic Skin Theory). Personal meaning is executed on the skin—by cremes and tattoos applied to it—as well as through layers of clothing by which the human skin becomes covered. Each and every part of the human body has been made to be a communicative device to maintain one’s own psyche and to regulate relationships with others. The chapter includes elaboration of how the fused unity of being alone and being together leads to a new feeling of hyper-generalized kind. The presence of catharsis can happen at any level of affective hierarchy. In terms of the cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics, the phenomenon of catharsis is an example of a rapid momentary emergence of a hyper-generalized sign field. Its empirical example is well documented by Lev Vygotsky in his analysis of the last sentence of Ivan Bunin’s short story The Gentle Breath where the author’s particular decision for the last point to the story makes a mundane description of events deeply philosophical. Embodiment is made through signs.

In this article, I review main directions in innovative ideas that have been presented on the pages of Culture & Psychology over its 25 year history. The field of cultural psychology has become established and gains increasing prominence over the years covered—yet its future depends on careful development of the specific theoretical ideas catalyzed by the use of the hyper-term culture in the different arenas of concrete human psychology. Potential future ideas for cultural psychology include a move from acculturation to proculturation, modulation of psychological distance by signs, building models of dialogical relationships in socially asymmetric role relations, and of the affective textures of everyday living. These are all processes of higher-order complexity that require new ways of conceptualizing methodology in psychology—one that prioritizes theoretically based methods construction over those of consensually established “tool boxes.” Cultural psychology has the advantage over other areas of psychology to consider both the real and not (yet) real human conditions within the same scheme, thus allowing for conceptualization of highest forms of human creativity in ordinary human lives.

Since 2011 the world has experienced an explosion of popular uprisings that began in the Middle East and quickly spread to other regions. What are the different social-psychological conditions for these events to emerge, what different trajectories do they take, and how are they are represented to the public? To answer these questions, this book applies the latest social psychological theories to contextualized cases of revolutions and uprisings from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century in countries around the world. In so doing, it explores continuities and discontinuities between past and present uprisings, and foregrounds such issues as the crowds, collective action, identity changes, globalization, radicalization, the plasticity of political behaviour, and public communication.

In this paper we discuss the semiotic functions of the psychological borders that structure the flow of narrative processes. Each narration is always a contextual, situated and contingent process of sensemaking, made possible by the creation of borders, such as dynamic semiotic devices that are capable of connecting the past and the future, the inside and the outside, and the me with the non-me. Borders enable us to narratively construct one’s own experiences using three inherent processes: contextualization, intersubjective positioning and setting of pertinence. The narrative process – as a subjective articulation of signs in a contingent social context – involves several functions of semiotic borders: separation, differentiation, distinction-making, connection, articulation and relation-enabling. The relevant psychological aspect highlighted here is that a border is a semiotic device which is required for both maintaining stability and inducing transformation at the same time. The peculiar dynamics and the semiotic structure of borders generate a liminal space, which is characterized by instability, by a blurred space-time distinction and by ambiguities in the semantic and syntactic processes of sensemaking. The psychological processes that occur in liminal space are strongly affectively loaded, yet it is exactly the setting and activation of liminality processes that lead to novelty and creativity and enable the creation of new narrative forms.

Vygotsky was a brilliant literary scholar whose role in psychology borrows substantially from his interests in and fascination with literature and theatre. The central question for Vygotsky’s theory was aesthetic synthesis – the emergence of generalized feelings in human life-experiences. The critical empirical example for the emergence of affective synthesis for Vygotsky was the short story by Ivan Bunin, ‘Legkoe dykhanie’. My task in this article is to analyse Vygotsky’s way of conceptualizing dialectical synthesis as a general psychological process. I demonstrate that Vygotsky succeeded in locating the empirical phenomena where such syntheses can be observed, and proceeded halfway towards creating a general model of affective synthesis. Yet he failed to complete the task due to the limitations of the analogical transfer of the notion of short circuit into the psychological realm. The problem of synthesis remains unsolved up to the present day. Possible ways of solving it require formalization of the notion of double negation that has been used in dialectical philosophies, but has not been encoded into psychology’s research methodologies.

This unusual collection explores the development of ideas in psychology's past, and shapes them into a valuable resource for ideas in the discipline's future, with particular emphasis on holistic traditions in psychology. Diriwachter and Valsiner focus on developmental holistic psychology as advocated by the second school of Leipzig in Germany. Although largely neglected, this school of thought has provided some of the fundamental ideas necessary for a truly holistic approach in psychology.This volume includes Leibniz's dynamic holism and Ehrenfels' discussion about Gestalt qualities, which has generally been acknowledged as a major milestone in the formation of Gestalt psychology. Each chapter looks at the possible future of holistic psychology. "Striving for the Whole" contains several well-though out discussions on possible elaborations of holistic psychology by contrasting it with Ernst Boesch's cultural psychology, Pierre Janet's theory on emotions, and Jan Smuts holistic approach to personality theory. Discussions of holistic approaches in biology and evolutionary psychology, as well as a renewed look at Lloyd Morgan's comparative methodology, complete the volume." Striving for the Whole" has been written by an international group of authors and will be of interest to students of the social sciences and intellectual history, and anyone who wants to dive deeper into holistic approaches that maintain their ties with empirical methodology. It is ideal for graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses in psychology.

Creativity and culture are inherently linked. Society and culture are part and parcel of creativity's process, outcome, and subjective experience. Equally, creativity does not reside in the individual independent of culture and society.Vlad Petre Glveanu's basic framework includes creators and community, from which new artifacts emerge and existing artifacts are developed. He points to a relationship between self and other, new and old, specific for every creative act. Using this multifaceted system requires that researchers employ ecological research in order to capture the heterogeneity and social dimensions of creativity.Glveanu uses an approach based on cultural psychology to present creativity in lay terms and within everyday settings. He concludes with a unitary cultural framework of creativity interrelating actors, audiences, actions, artifacts, and affordances.

In their book Kritik der Neuropsychologie (Giessen: Psychosozial Verlag, 2016, 123 pp. ISBN 978–3–8379-2563-0), Hans Werbik and Gerhard Benetka provide a thorough analysis of the modus operandi of our contemporary neurosciences and their success in promising the public and funding institutions great breakthroughs in understanding the human mind through the study of the brain. As the authors prove such promises are inadequate given the qualities of the human psyche that cannot be reduced to the complex mechanisms of the activation of brain circuits because there cannot be isomorphism between the brain and the ongoing dynamic relating of the mind with the flow of subjective experiencing. The authors provide a scenario for possible solutions coming from cultural psychology which need further advancement of psychology’s methodology.

Resistance is a notion that can be viewed both from a common-sense perspective and from a scientific one. This volume contains a diverse range of empirical evidences of common-sense resistance in different cultural conditions. In each case, there is linkage with theoretical dimensions. These experiences facilitate a focus on resistance as a potential event for meaning-making, when faced with alternative perspectives. The common meaning of resistance has a loaded social value of opposition or contradiction. However, in recent psychological theory building, the term is value-free. Through explorations of life course dynamics in different domains, the process of active meaning-making has emerged from the instances of resistance. The primary focus of this book is to demonstrate how resistance as a phenomenon is key to human activity. We come to the conclusion that different forms of resistance have a similar process: neutralization, followed by one of the different forms: (a) counter-action (active event or symbolic), (b) escalated symbolic acceptance (of no action consequences) and (c) transversal displacement of action. Additionally, we have found some evidence to suggest that culturally significant issues or areas of heightened activity are more likely to elicit instances of resistance, in comparison with areas of lower significance. Thus, examples of resistance in different cultural settings can, in fact, provide evidence of the symbolic landscape of culture, making it possible to identify the contours of interaction through the study of resistance.

Creativity is the process of emergence of an alternative trajectory of human conduct, unfolding within irreversible time, mediated by signs. The theory of semiotic dynamics of human conduct situates the moment of emergence of novelty in the creation of sign hierarchies that either guide the person into previously known trajectory of feeling, thinking, and acting, or into a new trajectory not experienced before. This emergence is initiated by the person who strives in some direction, and utilizes signs as regulators and catalysts for bringing about innovative moments in one’s experience. Semiotic catalysis at the bifurcation point of the trajectories sets up the uncertainty of emergence of the new on the basis of past experience. Catalytic signs are field-like in their nature and occur in sign complexes that make possible the direction of affective meanings into variable pathways. Such sign fields can be observed to be encoded into symbolic resources—iconic images or re-narrated myth stories of memorable scenes that are set up to be maintained over generations and guide renewal of meaningful understandings of the world.

This introduction to the volume “Deep Experiencing: Dialogues within the Self”, departs by highlighting the need for new voices in psychology. In a quest to reach an objectivity it cannot fully conquer, psychology is becoming aphonic, and the fresh look to the richness of human phenomena can help her tuning in her voice. While announcing the six chapters of the book, we reflect upon the impact of having fresh look to the phenomena in terms of the methodological cycle and interdisciplinary synthesis.