Mahfoud, M. e Massimi, M. (2006). Editorial: Knowing a person in society. Memorandum, 11, 1-8. Retrieved  /   /   , from World Wide Web: http://www.fafich.ufmg.br/~memorandum/a11/ed11en.htm  

Editorial

 Memorandum: memory and history in psychology
Number 11

Knowing a person in society

 

The present issue of the electronic review Memorandum proposes a theme that is central for psychology and other human sciences: the person in its relation with society and some specific methodological paths to approaching it. The importance of this issue becomes even more evident considering the present Brazilian and international social-cultural context, whose challenges point toward the necessity of reaffirming the centrality of the human person. It is, therefore, of paramount importance to establish conceptual foundations that can serve as basis to health, educational and social practices, as well as political decisions directed toward this perspective. The academic world can not neglect this need. It consists in one of its main functions and responsibilities.

 

The studies contained in this eleventh number of Memorandum provide promising conceptual perspectives regarding the relation person / society, in an interdisciplinary horizon, which is the only one that is adequate to approach the theme without escaping through facile reductionisms.

 

Regarding the possible conceptual approaches to the theme of person in society, we have the contribution of phenomenology: A relação pessoa-comunidade na obra de Edith Stein by Achilles Gonçalves Coelho Júnior and Miguel Mahfoud discusses the contributions of Edith Stein towards the comprehension of the relation person-community as a relation of constitutive interdependency, in which the human person is apprehended in its bodily, psychic and spiritual dimensions.

 

Through an interdisciplinary horizon, philosophical anthropology based on phenomenology offers tools to consider the issue of person not only as object but also as subject of knowledge: Fenomenologia e ciências humanas: implicações éticas by Angela Ales Bello, after presenting the structure of the human person in its diverse dimensions (body, psycho and spirit) and in its constitutive intersubjectivity, evidentiates that this is also the structure of the researcher itself, opening up an epistemological reflection regarding human sciences, with particular attention to psychological science and the ethical questions about researching the human being.

Still in the interdisciplinary horizon, Understanding the human person from the standpoint of the relational sociology by Pierpaolo Donati discusses, from the perspective of sociology’s point of view, the concept of person as free subject according to the social realism approach as proposed by Margaret Archer, pointing towards a new way of understanding social relations in this perspective.

 

The question about the person and its work, an environment so decisive for social life, is studied in the article Subjetivação e sofrimento no trabalho: o "si" que "se" produz na atividade by Gilbert Cardoso Bouyer, Laerte Idal Sznelwar, Maria José Birro Costa, which discusses ways of dealing with suffering in work envolving the conscious adoption, by the worker, of certain techniques aimed at its own interiority, the conscious construction of meaning for experiences of anxiety; the evaluation of suffering and painful life experiences and the search for a new relation with oneself at work.

 

The history of psychology and psychological knowledge can also contribute towards the knowledge of person and its relations with society in different time and cultural contexts. A inteligência à deriva e a enfermidade social: idéias sobre ser humano e sociedade difundidas em Minas Gerais pelo jornal religioso Selecta Catholica (1846 ? 1847) by Raquel Martins de Assis, discusses concepts of human being as person and society diffused by a catholic journal edited by D. Antônio Ferreira Viçoso, published in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1846 and 1847. Refering to the serious psychosocial issue of child and adolescent abandonment, a decisive period for a person´s development, the article A infância e a adolescência abandonadas: laudos em processos do judiciário mineiro (1968-1984), by Roselane Martins Cardoso, presents an analysis of professional reports in lawsuits from 1968 to 1984 involving abandoned children and adolescents in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Outlining an overview of the situation of abandonment, the study identifies psychological ideas related to the treatment of children and adolescents in the judiciary instance. In fact, the approach of the question of person can not be separated from the effective care with itself and with the conditions of its own and proper development.

 

Referring to the knowledge of person in a very different cultural context but that affects considerably our western society, the article O caminho espiritual do corpo: a dinâmica psíquica no karate-do shotokan by Cristiano Roque Antunes Barreira and Marina Massimi explores historical, technical and conceptual paths of the most relevant anthropological concepts regarding karate (kime, sun-dome, zanshin), analyzed through the phenomenological point of view through the experience related by masters.

 

Memory is a specific and decisive dimension of the experience of the human person and psychology has studied it insistently in past and present times. A experiência de recordar em estudos da memória autobiográfica: aspectos fenomenais e cognitivos, by Gustavo Gauer and William B. Gomes, proposes an incursion into the concept and function of memory in different stages of the history of psychological ideas, approaching it as learning performance and as experience of remembrance in contemporary cognitivist studies of autobiographic memory.  Dedicated to the consideration of relations betweed memory and gender and still in a historical perspective, Memórias sobre o feminismo na psicologia: para a construção de memórias futuras, by Luísa Saavedra and Conceição Nogueira, analyzes gender studies and feminist attitutes in psychology.

 

Last but not least, we would like to underline the review of the book by Angela Ales Bello, written by Mobeen Shahid: Edmund Husserl: to think God, believing in God, emphasizing the new contributions of the author regarding the still not well known approach of Husserl towards the religious dimension as constitutive of the person.

The knowledge about the human person implies its relation with society and its challenges. As Maria Zambrano (1958/2003) reminds us “it is not possible to elect oneself as person without electing, at the same time, the others; and it turns out that the others are all humans” (p. 174). The possibilities of knowledge and cares toward the person deserve preeminent consideration in this moment in history because, still according to Zambrano, “the person is the place in which the future opens up” (p. 136).

 

Bibliographic reference

 

Zambrano, M. (2003). Pessoa e democracia. (I. Andrade, Trad.). Lisboa: Fim do século Edições. (Original publicado em 1958).

Miguel Mahfoud
Marina Massimi
Editors
October of 2006.