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Developing Through Relationships

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This accessible book explains how individuals develop through their relationships with others. Alan Fogel demonstrates that human development is driven by a social dynamic process called co-regulation—the creative interaction of individuals to achieve a common goal. He focuses on communication—between adults, between parents and children, among non-human animals, and even among cells and genes—to create an original model of human development.

Fogel explores the origins of communication, personal identity, and cultural participation and argues that from birth communication, self, and culture are inseparable. He shows that the ability to participate as a human being in the world does not come about only with the acquisition of language, as many scholars have thought, but begins during an infant's earliest nonverbal period. According to Fogel, the human mind and sense of self start to develop at birth through communication and relationships between individuals.

Fogel weaves together theory and research from a variety of disciplines, including psychology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and cognitive science. He rejects the objectivist perspective on development in favor of a relational to treat the mind as an objective, mechanical thing, Fogel contends, is to ignore the interactive character of thinking. He argues that the life of the mind is a dialogue between imagined points of view, like a dialogue between two different people, and he uses this view to explain his relational theory of human development.

Developing through Relationships makes a substantial contribution not only to developmental psychology but also to the fields of communication, cognitive science, linguistics, and biology.

240 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 1993

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Alan Fogel

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231 reviews12 followers
January 9, 2025
Clearly aiming at investigating the core 'mystery' , if you will , of the human condition, namely the cross section of the psychological and the sociological

Intuitively , this is the correct perspective , getting closer to the heart of things. The author is however introducing platonic constructs, called metahpors , derived from computer technology. In summary this is the concept of "co-regulation" which is the dynamic interaction of information between actors in the drama of humanity

The author admits to not attempting to probe 'the details of the neurophysiological and neuromuscular processes that are at the heart of the perception-action linkages'. Thus - the author is as equipped to deal with these questions as is the philosopher of antiquity.

In order to get to the heart of the matter, one must, in my mind, map the function of the social brain , and perhaps this is the promising vision of the field of 'neurosociology'.

The most noteworthy concept from the book is that 'co-regulation converges to construct stable patterns of behaviour' - examples derived from animal research on wolves who behave ritualistically , performing a theatre of sorts.

The human memory is basically dramatic, and poetry is the art of embellishing human memory to create a more symmetrical structure.
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