Personality, Culture, and Science: Contexts for Understanding the Self

Abstract

After reading through the 20 commentaries on my article, we may have an empirical answer to the question raised in the title, Can we put our selves together? The answer, predicted accurately by several commentators-notably Tesser, Ogilvie, and Jefferson Singer-is that there is more to such a marriage than a union of ideas: There are families to bring together (large numbers of psychologists working within their single paradigm who have little or no familiarity with or interest in the other), a mutual home to establish (some organizational structure that would support integrative efforts that cut across paradigms as well as across clinical and experimental social psychology), and a large dowry to be paid (psychological entrepreneurs giving up claims to uniqueness of microparadigms). Although there are certainly several in the wedding party who bless this union, notably those of us (Strauman, Epstein, Jerome Singer, Horowitz and the University of California-San Francisco group [Fridhandler & Tunis], and a handful of others) who come in contact both with patients and with subjects and who work at the interstices of the two approaches, psychoanalysis and social cognition may well be star-crossed lovers. At this historical juncture, the psychoanalytic Montagues seem more willing to entertain a union than the social-cognitive Capulets.' Psychoanalysis certainly has its anti-empiricists, some championing the cause of hermeneutics as an alternative to empiricism, and others who simply see the couch as the only really important source of data about human psychology; nevertheless, most in the psychoanalytic community are now calling for an expanded empiricism (e.g., Wallerstein, 1988), empirical research is being funded by the American Psychoanalytic Association, and psychoanalysts are busy digesting the infancy literature and considering its relevance to their theories (e.g., Stern, 1985). On the social-cognitive side, several of the commentators on the target article seem equally interested in considering what psychoanalysis and clinical observation might have to offer the understanding of issues of self. Others, however, appear convinced that with business as usual, Kuhnian puzzle-solving will resolve any anomalies, and whatever truths the analysts may have happened upon in their unsystematic, unscientific musings will be demonstrated empirically and brought into the body of scientific knowledge. This probably reflects both the philosophy of science that underlies research in social cognition, to which I return, as well as the current vibrancy and point in the life cycle of social cognition as a paradigm or school of thought.2 The more sanguine of the social cognitivists do, indeed, have cause to argue that many of the limitations of their perspective adumbrated in my article are beginning to be addressed. Major theorists and researchers such as Tesser, Markus, and Higgins and his colleagues have indeed been injecting important affective and motivational elements into what was once a cold cognitive endeavor. Markus and her colleagues have begun taking culture seriously and doing cross-cultural work, which has been sorely needed. Bargh, Lewicki, Kihlstrom, and others have begun exploring unconscious social-cognitive processes empirically, and Bargh (1989) in particular has lucidly distinguished a variety of unconscious cognitive processes. Segal, Guidano, Mahoney, and others are now exploring issues of self from the perspective of cognitive therapy that go far beyond prior conceptualizations in the cognitive therapy literature. So why does this Westen crank think Hazel Markus should read the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis? Let me give two brief examples, each of state-of-the-art compilations of the latest in social-cognitive thinking and research, applied to unconscious processes and clinical psychology, respectively. Both represent the latest in social-cognitive thinking and research, and both have serious deficiencies. The first is a book cited by more than one commentator here, a fascinating compilation of articles on unconscious