Social Constructionist Psychology: An Idealistic And Theoretical Research

There are four separate but interlocking assumptions within modem Psychology. The first of which is the distinction between a real or objective world outside of the mind and a subjective world within the mind, It is also believed that people can reflect or map the world as it is. When we speak or act, our words and actions serve as external expressions of our inner thoughts, thus we can find what people think by observing their words and actions. Finally, our words can furnish suitable guides or pictures of the world as it is. Social constructionists point out that (1) the distinction between the real world and the perceived world is a mistake. Without our experience, or if experience were removed from existence, there would be nothing left. We have only one world, that is a experienced world. (2) the"reflection" depend upon the forestructure of understanding. We can only understand the object in terms of our present conventions of interpretation. For this reason, Social constructionists insist that we can never known if we "reflect" the real world as it is. (3) what are the characteristics of mental states by which we can identify them? If we cannot identify them, how can we express it by words or actions well and truly? Without knowing what mental states exist, how could we link physiological condition with the mental world? By modern testing apparatus, we can but test the physiological changes, how can we find any mental states directly? (4) the relationship between signifiers and signifieds is ultimately arbitrary. Language can never describe or explain the world as it is. Words gain their meaning through their use within the life games. Given these critiques, social constructionists no long sustain the presumption that inner mind operate as mirrors of external reality. They believe that the mind is constructed through social processes. The "sensing" is not the transfer of information from an external world via the nervous system, but a part of tradition. The memory is not an individual act but a social or a collective one, and it is something taking place among people. Social constructionists view emotional performances as constituents of culturally specific scenarios. The gender is also the outcome of the social processes. Social constructionists insist that the discovery in modern psychology is not closer to the truth than others, and the same is true of social constructionism. It is just another "possibility" or another "construction". To make choice between the two paradigms, we should pay attention to what they will take to our life or our psychology, and not to which of them is true or false, right or wrong.