Cultural Theory

Cultural Theory: Classical and Contemporary Positions. Edited by Tim Edwards. Sage Publications, 2007. 284 lk

Kohutavalt sisutihe kogum artikleid, mis sobib suurepäraselt sissejuhatuseks kultuuriteooriatesse. Käsitleb Frankfurti ja Birgminghami koolkondi, autoreid nagu Bourdieu, Foucault ja Baudrillard ning nähtusi nagu feminism, prostitutsioon, popmuusika ja kodanlik tarbimine. Väga põhjalik ja kergestimõistetav - väga vähe jääb arusaamatuks ja teemad on niivõrd huvitavad, et kord alustades on raske raamatut pooleli jätta. Esimest korda saan seda öelda mõne teadusliku artiklitekogumiku kohta.
Et ma teaksin hiljem selle raamatu poole pöörduda vastava teema puhul, rivistan siia artiklid nende esinemise järjekorras: (1) Kultuurianalüüs Marksistlikus humanismis; (2) Georg Simmel; (3) Frankfurti koolkond; (4) Stuart Hall ja Birminghami koolkond; (5) Giddens ja kultuurianalüüs: puuduv sõna ja keskne kontsept; (6) Zygmund Bauman, kultuur ja sotsioloogia; (7) Foucault: tõlgendav analüütika ja ühiskondliku konstitutsioon; (8) Bourdieu raamimine; (9) "Spekulatsioon surmani": Jean Baudrillardi teoreetiline vägivald; (10) Esitise rekontseptualiseerimine ja identiteet: mured transkulturalismis ja transnatsionalismis feminismi ja kultuurisotsioloogia ristumisel; (11) Feministlik teadmus ja sotsiokultuuriline uurimus: etno-mimees, feministlik praksis ja visuaalne pööre; (12) Populaarmuusika; (13) Cultuuriline kodanikkond: Küsimused tarbimiskultusest, tarbimisest ja määrustest.
Mida mainiti päris mitmes artiklis ja minu jaoks oli uueks avastuseks, oli Theodore Adorno muusikakriitika: "It was Schönberg's view that music is a rational, intellectual articulation of objective cultural truths; it is not a mere expression of subjective emotions. Musical intellect is exercised through its specific forms of expression, and musica creativity involves the use of the 'grammatical' forms of a particular musical language in innovative ways."
Kuigi mõnele neist olid pühendatud eraldi artiklid, mainiti Barthesi, Bourdieud, Foucaulti, Baumani, Stuart Halli ja Baudrillardi päris mitmes artiklis. Kohe esimeses antakse möödaminnes ka kergestimõistetav selgitus Baudrillari hüperreaalsest: "The aim of film producers, for example, is to ensure that people see the world outside the cinema as continuous with the film. It is what Baudrillard (1981) would see as 'hyperreal'."
Mõistuspärane on ka Giddensist kõnelevas artiklis esitatud lühikokkuvõte Saussure lingvistika kursusest, mis tabab suurepäraselt pointi, mis mul endal (järgmisest raamatust) Saussure katkendit lugedes tabamata jäi:

The distinction between unobservable structures and the observable patterns they produce is something that Giddens developed from his readinf of structuralist theory. With the structuralists, he turned to Saussure's account of language (De Saussure, 1916) as a basis for understanding all other social phenomena. According to Saussure, the speech patterns found in everyday talk and conversation result from the application of definite rules of grammar (rules of syntax, semantics, phonology, etc.). These rules do not exist anywhere separately from the speech, but they can be identified and formulated by linguists as ways of explaining that speech. Competent speaker of English, for example, are able to form plural expressions in real time by adding appropriate endings to root words and making certain other regular changes to them. Linguists, for their part, can formulate the rules that govern this: when to add 's', when to add 'en', and so on. These linguistic rules, however, are not present in the consciousness of the individual speakers as they speak, and individual speakers may be completely unaware of the rules that they follow unreflectively. Nevertheless, it is because the members of a linguistic community share these rules that is is possible for them to speak and to understand the speech of others.

Jäädvustan siia ka samas peatükis esitatud arutluskäik teraapiatest:

This chronic anxiety about the self is bound up with the rise of the academic disciplines of psychology and sociology, which allow the development of expert systems available to advise, instruct, and discipline individuals. Alongside the growing number of economic and political experts is an expansion of those who claim expertise in relation to social relations and self-identities. At one level, psychotherapies are a response to the egoism and anomie of modern culture, but they are also a means through which reflexivity can be organized: 'Therapy is not simply a means of coping with novel anxieties, but an expression of the reflexivity of the self' (Giddens, 1991: 34). There has been a massive growth in the number of counsellors, therapists, and consultants who specialize in managing the reflexive self (ibid.: 33; see also Rose, 1998). Radical doubt about expert systems, however, means that individual must choose their own experts. They must choose, for example, from among the range of cognitive, behavioural, and psychoanalytical therapies with no real guidance from the character of the expert knowledge itself.

Veel väärib mainimist see, et leheküljel 169 esitatakse Baudrillardi seisukoht, miks ta peab tänapäeva massimeediat "mittesuhtluseks".
Kokkuvõttes ülihariv lugemine. Närisin seda kaks päeva järjest, aga see-eest oli see lugemist väärt. Võib-olla kunagi vanema ja targemana uuesti!

Analyzing Performance

Patrice Pavis - Analysing Performance: Theater, Dance and film. The University of Michigan Press, 2003. 362 lk

Lootsin seda lugema asudes leida midagi muud, aga lõppkokkuvõttes täitis ka see eesmärki: teatrisemiootikaga olen nüüd esmatutvuse teinud. See u 300-leheküljeline tutvus on muidugi nii pinnapealne ja ennastammendav, et lisa otsimine on kohustuslik. Meeldis see, et paljud asjad olid arusaadavad nii, et mõned kuud varem need kohe kindlasti seda olnud ei oleks. Kõige elavam näide sellest, kuidas ülikooliharidus tegi selle teose lugemise lihtsamaks, on Geertzi "tiheda kirjelduse" tarvitamine teatri kallal:

Differential Density Rather Than Homogeneity
A production is not always cut from the same cloth; it is not uniform in terms of its density. The notion of thick description comes from the anthropologist Clifford Geerts, who uses it to describe a given culture in a very precise way:
"The aim is to draw large conclusions from small, but very densely textured facts; to support broad assertions about the role of culture in the construction of collective life by engaging them exactly with complex specifics."
The inspiration for this kind of analysis is n an anthropology that strives to conduct a detailed, local analysis and, at the same time, a global synthesis of the forces involved. The local is approached through microanalyses, movements of discourses, while the global becomes explicit in the general discourse of the mise-en-scene (if need be) or in the account of its major working principles.

Kuna üks järgnevatest teostest käsitleb Merley-Ponty filosoofiat, täpsemalt seda, mida ta on spekuleerinud corporeality kohta, tahan siia jäädvustada ka sellist tsitaati:

Lyotard's dissemiotics, it seems, is even less possible and feasible than semiotics, but its merit is in its destabilizing of the notion of the sign, or at least the fixed sign, as linked to language and taking the place of the materiality of performance. This is what phenomenology also sets out to do, criticizing the segmentation of performance into signs and thus of its semiological function. In phenomenology, perception of the performance event is global, making all semiological segmentation absurd. The problem with semiotics is that, by treating theater as a system of codes, it necessarily dissects the perceptual impression that theater makes on the spectator. As Merleu-Ponty has said, "it is impossible ... to decompose a perception, to make it into a collection of sensations, bevause in it the whole is prior to the parts." Here is the source of reactions against analysis, and the beginnings of a globalizing phase where the aim is to find synheses rather than reading grids.

Minu uurimustöö seisukohast kõige olulisem informatsioon pärineb kohe näitlejat käsitleva peatüki algusest ja ütleb (kokkuvõtvalt), et näitleja ei pea emotsioone läbi elama, vaid neid näit-ama.

Approach through a Theory of the Emotions
What do we need to describe in the actor's work? Must our starting point be in a theory of the emotions, as the history of modern acting, from Diderot to Stanislavsky and Strasberg, would seem to suggest? When appliead to theater, such a theory of the emotions would only be valid for a very specific kind of actor: those involved in the theater of psychological mimesis and in the tradition of a rhetoric of passions. But we do need a theory of signification and of global mise-en-scene, in which the mimetic representation of feelings is only one aspect among many. Alongside the emotions, which are in any case enormously difficult to decipher and record, actor-dancers can be characterized through a range of other parameters that lack the fragility of the emotions, and are much easier to focus upon: kinesthetic sensatsions, awareness of the axis and body weight, of bodily structures and the location of their partners in space-time.
In theater, actors' emotions do not need to be real or lived; they must above all be visible, legible, and in compliance with the conventions relating to the representation of feelings. Sometimes the conventions are those of the current theory of psychological versimilitude, sometimes those of an acting tradition that has codified feelings and their representation. The emotional expressivity of human beings encapsulates the range of behaviors that, in turn, generate the psychological and dramatic situations that constitute the framework of the performance. In theater, emotions are always manifested by means of a rhetoric of the body and of gestures in which emotional expression is systematized, or even codified. The greater the degree to which emotions are translated into attitudes or physical actions, the greater their freedom from the psychological subtleties of the unspeakable and of suggestion.
On its own, a theory of the emotions is insufficient if we are to describe the work of a dancer or an actor; we require an entirely different theoretical frame that goes far beyond that of psychology. Indeed, once one extends the study of actors to include performances from outside Europe, one soon leaves the psychological theory of emotions behind, a theory that is at best applicable to theater forms that seek to imitate human behavior (particularly verbal behavior) in a mimetic way, as in naturalistic mise-en-scene.

Ja viimaks katkend aegruumist, milles on kolmandaks osapooleks kas tegija või tegevus (tekk, su ema, liikumine).

The interconnectedness of a time and a space constitute what Bakhtin, in the context of the novel, called a chronotope: a unit in which temporal and spatial indices form an intelligible, concrete whole. When appliead to theater, action and the actor's body are conceived as the amalgam of a space and a temporality. As Merleau-Ponty suggested, the body is not only in space, it is made of space and, one might add, of this time.

Raamatu kohta nii palju, et seda oli meeldiv lugeda, kuigi keel oli jälle võõras. Igat prantsuse keelest inglise keelde tõlgitud teost lugedes on mul selline tunne, et tõlk on ikkagi hoidnud prantsusepärast lausestust või isegi kasutanud selliseid sõnu, mida leiab vaid sõnastikest. Üks osa minust loodab, et järgmine selleteemaline raamat selgitab paremini neid võõraid termineid (nt mise-en-scene), teine osa loodab, et need terminid on Pavisile omased ja teised autorid on vähe selgemad. Pettusin selles suhtes, et lootsin saada mingisugust "sisemist" infot teatri ja näitlemise kohta, aga sain hoopis teoreetilise raamistiku teatrietenduste analüüsimiseks. Suures osas tundubki see raamat olevat teadusliku mulaga kokku põimitud kogumik etendusearvusi. Tõenäoliselt loen kunagi uuesti, aga mitte lähiajal.

Simulatons

Jean Baudrillard - Simulatons. Semiotext[e], 1983. 159 lk

Simulaakrumeid tutvustati meile põgusalt semiootika sissejuhatuse viimases loengus (ja millegi pärast on see ka üks paariteistkümnest eksamiküsimustestest). Meelde jäi vaid see, kuidas Salupere mõtiskles valjult Baudrillardi ja Matrixi suhte üle. Wiki ütleb, et Baudrillard tunnistas Matrixi oma töö väärititõlgendamiseks.
Raamat sisaldab kahte simulaakrumi-teemalist esseed: The Precession of Simulacra ja The Orders of Simulacra. Mulle on jäänud mulje, et selleteemalisi esseid on veel raamatuteks köidetud ja imestada siin midagi ei ole - Baudrillardi lähenemine on novel (uudne?) ja piisavalt keeruline, et norida selle kallal on raske.
Tekst on tuubil täis sõnu, mida kohtan esimest, teist või alles kolmandat korda. Näiteks aegis on tuttav sõna, aga selle täpne tähendus pole mul meeles; stucco tähendus on mulle võõras. Mida ma oodata ei osanud, oli selle teose poliitiline meelestatus. See peab ikkagi paika, et prantsuse akadeemia on keevaliselt marksistlik. Ka siin arutleb Baudrillard majandussuhteid, kui ta midagi peale nende üldse arutabki. Suures plaanis võtab ta semiootiliselt lahti Lääne majandusliku elu renessansist alates. Kas kõige selle eesmärk oligi vaid jõuda lõppsõnadeni "kunst on surnud", või on simulaakrumite teemadel ka mingisugune praktilisem rakendus, jäägu teistkordse lugemise jaoks. See on kahtlemata selline teos, mida tuleb korduvalt lugeda, et arusaamiseni jõuda. Seniks jätan siia paar (enda jaoks) olulisemat tsitaati ja ütlen esimese lugemise kohta, et kõige enam meeldisid mulle Sebeoki ja Leibnizi mainimised; esimeselt tõi ta tsitaadi, milles Sebeok pajatab kommunikatsiooniteadusest - kuidas geenid ja informatsioon on seotud; ja Leibnizi mainitakse digitaalsuse kontekstis (binaarsusega olen ma praegu veel paremini tuttav kui semiootikaga). Tsitaate:

Three orders of appearance, parallel to the mutilations of the law of value, have followed one another since the Renaissance:
- Counterfeit is the dominant scheme of the "classical" period, from the Renaissance to the industrial revolution;
- Production is the dominant scheme of the industrial era;
- Simulations is the reigning scheme of the current phase that is controlled by the code.
The first order of simulacrum is based on the natural law of value, that of the second order on the commercial law of value, that of the third order on the structural law of value.

The "advanced democratic" systems are stabilized on the formula of bipartitude altenation. The monopoly in fact remains that of a homogenous political class, from left to right, but it must not be exercised as such. The one-party totalitarian regime is an unstable form - it defuses the political scene, it no longer assures the feed-back of public opinion, the minimal flux in the integrated circuit which constitutes the transistorized political machine. Alternation, on the other hand, is the end of the end of representation, so solicitation is maximal, by dint of simple formal constraint, when you are approaching most nearly a perfect comptetitive equation between the two parties. This is logical. Democracy realizes the law of equivalence in the political order. This law is accomplished in the back-and-forth movement of the two terms which reactivates their equivalence but allows, by the minute difference, a public consensus to be formed and the cycle of representation to be closed. Operational theatre, where the only play staged anymore is the fulginous reflection of political Reason. The "free choice" of individuals, which is the credo of democracy, leads in fact precisely to the opposite: the vote becomes functionally obligatory: if it is not legally, it is by statistical constraint, the structure of alternation, reinforced by the polls. The vote becomes functionally aleatory: when democracy attains an advanced formal stage, it distributes itself around equal quotients (50/50). The vote comes to resemble a Brownian movement of particles or the calculation of probabilities. It is as if everyone voted by chance, or monkeys voted.

Kultuur ja plahvatus

Juri Lotman - Kultuur ja plahvatus. Varrak, 2001. 231 lk

Veel üks neist raamatutest, mida mul tuleks lugeda mitu korda. Olen päris kindel, et see on minu praeguseid õppejõude oluliselt mõjutanud. Lotmani laiahaardeline käsitlus teeb muidugi igasugused tõlgendused selle mõjust võimalikuks.
Väga palju on selles teoses jälle diskussiooni vene kirjanduse/ajaloo üle. Imetabane on see, et nüüd häirib see mind vähem - mitmed näited (tsitaadid, arutluskäigud) hakkavad juba tuttavana tunduma. Pealegi on nii mõnigi lõik äärmiselt põnev. Kasulikke (semiootikaga seotud) asju, mida mujalt ei saaks, siin minu arvates siiski polnud (või pole ma veel võimeline seda hoomama). Plahvatus on siin midagi, mida eristatakse protsessist. Iseenesest võiks plahvatus olla ka "sündmus", aga eks plahvatus kõlab khuulimalt (umbes nagu "kultuur plahvatab"). Sain teada Tartu-Moskva koolkonna seisukohast teksti suhtes. Olulisim erinevus "iganenud" vaatega, et autor loob teksti on see, et tekst loob ka autori ja tihtipeale on tekst autorist targem. See on midagi, mida peaks lähemalt uurima, kui "Autori surmani" jõuan.
Palju juttu oli ka ajaloost ja tulevikust - või minevikusündmuste seos tulevikusündmustega; kuidas igal "plahvatusel" võib olla kimp võimalikke tagajärgi, millest teostub üks. Jällegi, mitte midagi uut ja üllatavat, aga vähemasti uuel moel sõnastatud.
Lühike peatükk "Unenägu - semiootiline aken" tundus millegina, mis tuleks lausa sisse skänneerida ja PDF failiks vermida (tean inimesi, kellele kindlasti meeldiks seda lugeda). Iseasi, kas Lotmani keeruline keelekasutus selle peatüki mõistetavust ei nivelleeri.
Pisut veidrana tundus autokommunikatsioonist kõnelev katkend, milles rõhk oli sellel, et kasutatakse (ainult) ühte kanalit. Tahaks sellele kuidagi vastu vaielda ja kunagi tõenäoliselt teengi seda, praegu aga teen ülestähenduse, et Lotman on ka autokommunikatsiooni käsitlenud. Suurim mure selle raamatuga ongi minu jaoks see, et kõneletakse väga paljudest erinevatest asjadest ja lõpuks läheb see väljakuulutatud "uus ja kasulik kultuurisemiootika lähenemine" kaduma. Siinkohal pean Baudrillardi Simulatsioone paremaks lugemiseks.

vaata ka: [Inglisekeelse tõlke lugemine]

Signs - An Introduction to Semiotics

Thomas A. Sebeok - Signs - An Introduction to Semiotics. University of Toronto Press, 2001. 201 lk

Marcel Danesi eessõnaga. Sisaldab peatükki nimega "Nonverbal communication". Sebeok mõtleb selle all üldisemalt igasugust mitteverbaalset suhtlemist ja seostab seda biosemiootikaga. Raamat on kergesti loetav ja mõnusalt kokkuvõtlik; kasutasin selleks, et valmistuda aine Sissejuhatus Semiootikasse eksamiks (sain päris mitmele kordamisküsimusele siit selge vastuse). Kindlasti loen seda teost järgnevate aastate jooksul veel korduvalt (kuna see on lihtne ja sobib kordamiseks hästi), praegu aga toon välja selle, et Ventsel sai tõenäoliselt just siit mõiste "ekstraverbaalne retoorika" ja just sel teemal toon välja mõned tsitaadid:

In essence, Sebeok argues that nonverbal signing is more fundamental to survival, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, than is verbal signing.

A large portion of bodily communication among humans also unfolds largely in the form of unwitting signals. It has been shown, for example, that men are sexually attracted to women with large pupils, which signal unconsciously a strong and sexually tinged interest as well as making females look younger.
Humans are capable as well of deploying witting signals for some intentional purpose - e.g., nodding, winking, glancing, looking, nudging, kicking, head tilting. (Sebeok 2001[1994]: 10)

The word language is sometimes used in common parlance in an inappropriate way to designate a certain nonverbal communicative device. Such may be confusing in this context where, if at all 'language' should be used only in a technical sense, in reference to humans. Metaphorical uses such as 'body language,', 'the language of flowers,' 'the language of bees,' 'ape language,' or the like, are to be avoided. (Sebeok 2001[1994]: 12)

...linguistic problems are 'first and foremost semiological,' and the 'need will be felt to consider them as semiological phenomena and to explain them in terms of the laws of semiology' (Saussure 1967: 16-17), another has to be juxtaposed, namely, that linguistics, in Saussure's view, was to serve as the model for semiology (or semiotics). This formula, by the way, turned out to have been thoroughly mistaken, and fatally misleading for research endeavors, for instance, in such adjacent areas as 'kinesics.' (Sebeok 2001[1994]: 64)

A sweeping study of signs and systems of signs, whether verbal or nonverbal, demands both synchronic approaches (structural as well as functional) and an application of diachronic perspectives (developmental or ontogenetic, and evolutionary or phylogenetic). As to the ontogeny of semiosis in our species, it is perfectly clear that manifold non-verbal sign systems are 'wired into' the behaviour or every normal neonate; this initial semiosic endowment enables children to survive and both aquire and compose a working knowledfe of their world (Umwelt) before they acquire verbal signs. (Sebeok 2001[1994]: 135)

Kuidas lugeda ja kasutada kehakeelt

Anna Jaskolka - Kuidas lugeda ja kasutada kehakeelt. ERSEN, 2005. 208 lk

Mul on juba natukene villand nendest tootmisliini-kehakeeleraamatutest. Jälle same shit, different asshole. Jaskolka ainus eripära on see, et ta on enda sõnutsi üles kasvanud isa pokkerimänge jälgides ja lihvinud oma kehakeelt draamakoolis. Sellest hoolimata rekurgiteerib ta sündsusetult Pease'i ja kirjutab kehakeelest nii, nagu oleks olnud lubatud 70ndate lõpus või 80ndate alguses (aga mida eelmise aastakümne kohta pean lihtsalt häbiväärseks).
Esiteks ümberjutustused - enamus selle raamatu sisust on isiklike konstruktsioonidega ümber kategoriseeritud Pease. Ja need kategooriad ("käsivarržestid", "sõrmežestid", "jalažestid", "suuväljendused") pole just kõige asisemad. Teiseks on pildid kahesugused: fotod (keskpärase väljanägemisega näitlejatest odavas stuudios?) ja kahtlaselt tuttavlikud illustratsioonid (kontuurid). Kolmandaks - milles tegelikult süüdistan tõlki Tiia Rinnet - on palju ebamääraseid tõlgendusi ja seda ilma originaalsetele autoritele korrektselt viitamata. Ekmanist on kuidagi saanud Eckman ja millegi pärast on üllatusest saanud "huvi" (mis oli emotsioon vanemates emotsioonikäsitlustes). "Kehatsoonide" peatükis on kasutatud Halli prokseemilist mudelit, aga tema nime pole (isegi mitte valesti) mainitud. Neljandaks on selles raamatus nullilähedaselt teadust. Isiklikel konstruktsioonidel põhinevad müüdid on saanud siin uue ringluse. Näiteks: "Kui lõug toetatakse käele ja sõrm on suunatud ülespoole, siis mõtiskleb kuulaja selle üle, mida räägitakse". Klassikaline Pease, aga sellest hoolimata utter bullshit. Ligilähedaseim mida uurimustöö on tõestanud on see, et inimesed katsuvad oma alanägu tihemini tõsise vaimutöö ajal. Ülespoole suunatud sõrm on siin täiesti ülemäärane. Veel tahaks norida selle üle: "Erootiline jalažest on kinga kõlgutamine varbaotsal, mis viitab peenise sissetungimisele ühte ajal. See võib paista küllalt süütu, kuid on väga reetlik!" Siin saan isegi Pease'i ennast tsiteerida: "12. The Shoe Fondle. Dangling the shoe on the end of the foot also indicates a relaxed attitude and has the phallic effect of thrusting the foot in and out of the shoe. This action unsettles many men without them knowing what is happening." Ja samas keegi hilisem autor tegi samavõrd oletusliku väite, et jalaga taolisel kombel vehkimine on "probleemse teema jalaga kujuteldavalt eemale löömine". Milleks selline ületõlgendamine? Neil autoritel jääb tõsiselt vajaka igasugune teaduslik alus. Aga kes teab - see jamps ilmselt müüb - ja võib-olla punastamine ongi "kuumus, mis kerkib kaelast ülespoole" ja enesekindlus - väga selgelt defineeritud kui - "hinge energia".
Uuestilugemist (või üldse... lugemist) see raamat ei vääri. Selles on rohkem ümberlükatavat jampsi kui Piiblis (olgu, liialdus, Piibel võidab hands down). Teeb natuke morniks, et minu jaoks näib kehakeeles olevat "ahhaa-ohhoo!" momente edaspidi vaid akadeemilises kirjanduses.

Cognitive Therapy for Persistent Depression

Richard G. Moore and Anne Garland - Cognitive Therapy for Chronic and Persistent Depression. Wiley, 2003. 436 lk

Tahtsin lugeda midagi psühholoogiast ja Relational Frame Theory ei olnud lihtsalt kättesaadav (eesti raamatukogudes pole, internetis surnud lingid). Kognitiivteraapia sobis ka. Erinevalt RFT-st, mida alles proovitakse empiiriliselt järgi, on kognitiivteraapia järeleproovitud ja aktuaalne. Raamatu keskel hakkas tunduma, et see on terapeudide offshoot NLP-st. Sellele tundmusele aitas suuresti kaasa sõna "model" kasutamine. Vähemasti tundub CT olevat kaugemale arendatud kui NLP, sest manipuleerimine toimub teiste vahenditega. Selle asemel, et uks sisse lüüa ja seinad meelevaldselt üle värvida (NLP), koputatakse uksele viisakalt ja sisse pääsedes tehakse soovitusi, mis värv oleks parem (CT). Raamatu lõpuks tekkis suur tahtmine lugeda teisigi selleteemalisi raamatuid ja omistada parem arusaamine, aga momendil mul selleks aega pole. Sealjuures võtan arvesse CT-le osutatud kriitikat, et "teadus pole kohane perspektiiv, millelt vaadelda emotsionaalseid raskusi". Uurimused on tõestanud, et CT pole oluliselt tõhusam kui ükski teine kliendikeskne psühhoteraapia, aga on saavutanud suurema fiskaalse toetuse just vastupidist väites (kogu raamatust õhkab tegelikult seda so so scientific aurat). Teen siin ka märkuse, et kognitiivteraapial on veel alltüüpe nagu ratsionaal-emotiivne teraapia (RET) ja kognitiivkäitumuslik terapaia (CBT).
Raamatu märksõnadeks on persistent depression, automatic thoughts, modifying beliefs ja vicious cycle. "Süstemaatilised" üldistused olid huvitavad/kentsakad: nt environment, emotion, behaviour, thought ja biology. Nende abil kaardistatakse põhimõtteliselt kogu inimtegevuse sfäär ja kõige arusaamatum sellest tundus bioloogia. Tagantjärgi pole ka imestada - bioloogia all ei mõelda siin mitte rakuehitust ja paljunemist, vaid neuroteaduslikke aspekte (nt drooge) ja mis kõige olulisem - energiat. Siin on minu arvates tehtud sama arutlusviga, mille eest hoiatati funktsionalistliku psühholoogia ajaloos - füüsikaline mõiste "energia" on üle kantud valdkonda, kuhu ta tegelikult ei sobi, ja on kaotanud oma esialgse tähenduse (järgmises raamatuarvustuses toon samamoodi välja selle, kuidas "enesekindlus on hinge energia"). Olulisim infokild sellest raamatust on ilmselt see, et kui sa mõtled negatiivselt, siis sa satud depressiooni (noowaaay!). Lihtne ja huvitav lugemine, aga väga tõsiselt seda ei võtaks (uuesti loeksin küll tho, sest kliendi-küsimused on hästi sõnastatud). Tsitaate:

One further relevant trend in the field of cognitive therapy has been an interest in how patients experience their negative thoughts, rather than simply the content of their thinking. Theoretically, this has been evident in an increase in intrest in metacognition (e.g. Wells, 2000).

Assuming that the therapist manages to maintain their internal sense of motivation to help, appropriately adapting the expression of warmth or care for the patient depends on the development of empathy. In acutely distressed patients, empathy is often achieved through acknowledging and reflecting the patient’s feelings. However, cognitive and emotional avoidance in persistent depression confound the conveying of empathy in this way. For patients who are emotionally flat, it is often unclear what to empathise with. Simply mirroring the emotional flatness of the patient would result in the session grinding to a halt. With an emotionally turbulent patient, reflecting the patient’s emotional state could result in a counterproductive escalation of feelings. In cognitive therapy, conveying empathy depends not just on the mirroring of patients’ feelings, but also on conveying an understanding of how the world looks through their eyes.

Helping patients to become more aware of and better able to identify what they are feeling can contribute to developing empathy with chronically depressed patients. Some patients try not to give the therapist any verbal or gross non-verbal cues (e.g. crying) that they feel upset. The therapist needs to be particularly sensitive to signs of any potential affect shift, including subtle changes in tone of voice, direction of gaze or body posture. Rosemary tended to describe herself as fine when discussing problem situations and would do so in a curt, clipped tone of voice followed by an attempt to return the conversation to more superficial aspects of daily living. The therapist learned to pick up on this and gently to draw her attention to it. Over time Rosemary became more able to recognise and acknowledge when all was not well with her. Other patients react catastrophically to any sign of emotional arousal, perceiving their state simply as ‘awful’ or ‘terrible’. Helping them to discriminate between different negative emotions or different degrees of emotion can help to establish a sense that the therapist understands their feelings without criticising or rejecting them. This process of using feedback to train patients in recognising and labelling affective changes is prerequisite to more conventional expressions of empathy in many cases of chronic depression.

Many patients have been so focused on the issue of whether they will get back to work that they have not fully recognised what they have lost or how this contributes to their depression. It is important that the therapist is explicit in acknowledging the reality of the patient’s losses in relation to work, in order to help the patient to recognise the extent of their losses and even to grieve for them. Many of these losses are tangible and external, whereas others are more symbolic or internal. Working with the patient to validate these can be a useful step in recognising and understanding how thoughts and beliefs, as well as external circumstances, can be contributing to the depression.

Culture and Human Development

Jaan Valsiner - Culture and Human Development. Sage, 2000. 319 lk

See on üks raskemaid raamatuid, mida ma viimasel ajal lugenud olen. Teen siinkohal eristuse "keerulise" ja "raske" vahel. Keerulisest raamatust ei saa ma palju aru, raskest raamatust saan aru, aga loen kaua või vaevaliselt. Selles võib süüdistada nii autori kirjastiili kui ka raamatu formaati (tekst on väike ja kahes tulbas). Hoolimata raskuest oli raamat huvitav. Esimene osa räägib arenguteooriast ja -metodoloogiast (James Mark Baldwin, George Simmel, Herbert Mead, Lev Vygotski), teine osa analüüsib inimarengu keskkonda (perekond, semiootiliselt vahendatav koht), kolmas raseduse ja imetamise kultuurilist organisatsiooni (sünnitamisrituaalid), neljas varase lapsepõlve arengut (esimesed eluaastad) ja viies kultuuri poolt valitsevate tegevuste maailma (haridus ja töötamine). Raamat meeldis väga, aga niipea uuesti ei loeks (sest see võtab mitu päeva). Sealjuures tekkis küsimus, mida mõned väga tuttavad sõnad eesti keeles tähendavad:

• conduct - juhtima, läbi viima, käitumine, ülevalpidamine;
• semble - otsetõlget pole; assemble on kokku koguma, koostama ja koguma ning dissemble on hämama, puru silma ajama või (tundeid) varjama;
• teleology - teleoloogia (õpetus arengu eesmärgipärasusest).

Järgnevalt palju juhuslikke tsitaate, mis võivad kuidagimoodi kasuks tulla:

No science can be 'empirical' only (if it were, it would become equal to accounting). Instead, each science has its empirical part, the meaningfulness of which for knowledge depends upon the theoretical productivity if the given science. Methodology is of crucial importance since it relates the empirical and theoretical sides of a science. How it does it determines whether the given science provides new understanding of the phenomena, or keeps constructing illusionary accounts.

All human life is constantly novel as long as it lasts. There is no repetition of the same experience - each new occasion of making a bed, shaking hands, or opening a can is a qualitatively new event - even if it is similar to some previous, analogical, event. Yet, at the same time, we all live a relatively stable life. We do not doubt our identity as the given person from one morning's waking up to the next. We take for granted that the ways we move, talk, write etc. are in principle understandable for others (and remain "typcially ours" over time). Thus, the constant novelty of our life experience is paralleled by our psychological construction of stability at the same time.

Human mental orientation towards categorization is a major way to create relative stability in the life-worlds of continuous flux. Construction of categories - or classes of objects - can be accomplished in two different ways. Categorization on the basis of "bad infinity" leads to the creation of homogeneous classes of objects. Homogeneous classes of objects are compilations in which each and every member of the class is considered to be exactly the same in quality as each and every other member in the class.

What are signs?
Signs "stand for" something else - in generic terms, they present that something to somebody in some capacity. Peirce emphasized three kinds of signs:

1. An icon is a sign that denotes its object on the basis of a similarity that exists between the sign and the object it represents. Thus, a sculpted human figure is an iconic representation of the person, since the sculpture represents the person.
2. An index is a sign that denotes its object by way of representing the results of the objects inpact. For example, a footprint is an index of the foot that made it. The search for fingerprints by the police in the context of a crime is an effort to identify the person by his or her indexical sign.
3. A symbol is a sign that represents an object by way of associations and general ideas that operate in such ways that the symbol is interpreted as a representation of the object. The word foot (which, as a word, has nothing in common with the object foot, as it is neither the result of the action of a foot nor a physical replica of it) is a symbol of the object foot.

AXIOM OF HISTORICITY:

the study of the time course of the formation of selected phenomena
can
explain the present state of these phenomena

both persons and contexts are culturally constituted. They are interdependent with each other: persons can exist as they always live within their contexts; and contexts exist because they are constructed by persons. The cultural nature of human psychology specifies the meaningful nature of both persons-in-context and contexts-as-created by persons. In this respect, the life of humans as species differs dramatically from other biological species, even when rudiments of cultural organization of life can be found, as among higher primates.

In Western culture, sexual inequality if based on the belief in women's biological inferiority. This explains some aspects of Western women's liberation movements, such that they are almost always led by women, that their effect is often very superficial, and that they have not yet succeeded in significantly changing the male-female dynamics in that culture. In Islam there is no such belief in female inferiority. On the contrary, the whole system is based on the assumption that women are powerful and dangerous beings. All sexual institutions (polygamy, repudiation, sexual segregation, etc.) can be perceived as a strategy for containing their power. (Mernissi, 1987, p. 19)

Psychological organization
In contrast to other marriage forms (which function to eradicate feelings of jelaousy), monogamy is largely built upon the personal-cultural construction of jealaousies. Often jealousy is equated with the organizing concept of love. Love is a basically ill-defined concept, which nevertheless governs the feelings of human beings in their personal cultures in very powerful ways. As love may be linked with the notion of belonging (of one marital partner to another), the linkage to a monogamic relation as "mutual ownership" of the other is easily made. The basis for building such affective limits on the borders of monogamy is the symbolic "ownership" of the other (by the husband of the wife, and by the wife of the husband). Such ownership is cultivated through the collective-cultural myth systems of a society (for example, a belief that if the spouse is not jealous, the spouse "does not really love" the partner). In dyadic marital relations, testing of the fullness of the "ownership" of the other can occur constantly from the beginning (as well as from times before) the marriage. For example, the bride or wife may indulge in genetic dramatism of jealousy over the husband's real or imaginary female friends, thus both testing the "love tie" of the relationship and trying to channel the husband's interests (see Busco, 1995, pp. 115-116 for a description of marital relations in Colombian marriages). The needs of the traditionally economically more insecure partners - the women - are guaranteed by their implicit power control over the marital tie through the inevitable embeddedness of the husband in the wife-controlled negotiations of the family with its needs of everyday life.

The covered body: cultural organization of the body in movement
Human social life entails constant constraining on one's own and each other's conduct. It is not only the ways in which the human body is covered (or uncovered) in one or another setting, but how that (clothed, semi-clothed, or unclothed) body moves in the given activity setting. The patterns of human movement are culturally organized. This can entail amplification of the movement in special cases, such as making music or dancing, or attenuation of the movement on other occasions (for example, children forced to sit still in school lessons, or during rituals; promotion of the non-moving body as being culturally desirable etc.)
Patterns of human movements are most directly under the control of social others in specific settings. Social institutions often craft rituals of conjoint and coordinated movement of decorated bodies (for example, military parades of persons dressed up in parade uniforms). Angry crowds of people can become uncontrollable through their heterogeneity of movement. Ceremonies of calamity, such as funerals, entail prescriptions for slow movement of the participants. Fashion models are specifically prepared for moving their bodies on the catwalk. Children can be instructed not to move their bodies in one or another way so as not to appear "improper" - it is precisely some of these ways in which striptease artists may be instructed to move in order to appear "proper" in their profession.
In the history of human societies, human movement patterns have ben targets of ideological controversies. The Catholic Church (as well as the forces of the Protestant Reformation) fought a war against the movement of bodies in contexts of dancing, resulting in downplaying the flexibility of hip and leg movements in dance (see Wagner, 1997). That restriction did not work in the context of Latin and South America. In Christian churches in Africa (and in Afro-American churches in the USA), the basic dance rhythms of the history of the societies have become the rhythmic carriers of the religious services. Human body movements is an interface between the personal-cultural body and the activities that the person undertakes in the given setting.

Human environmental settings are cultural in their physical organization. This applies both to the physical setting within which persons move (external environment: houses, streets etc.) and those which persons move along with themselves (clothing, body decorations etc.).
A crucial aspect of human cultural development is migration. Migration opccurs for any age group, or gender group, depending upon specific circumstances. Migratory experiences differ by their permanence or temporariness, and, in the latter case, in the tempo of change of the settings. History of human societies indicates that the migration of children from natal homes to the homes of relatives, schools etc. has played a relevant role in their cultural development.

It is obvious that becoming pregnant is a result of sexual intercourse (or at least some manipulation in a test tube). Sex is of interest to males and females of many species, including humans. Yet, contrary to claims by people from the ambience of Freud's couch in affluent Viennese environments - sexuality is not the only, nor even the major, domain of human activities that are culturally regulated for the purposes of societal control over human conduct. Food-related activities are as important (or possibly even more so: as will be seen below, human sexual functions can be subsumes under nutritional ones, but it is unlikely that the reverse is true), and power issues stemming from property ownership, inheriting and production of exchange valie are probably central to human psychological organization of dealing with getting and raising offspring.

Communication and meta-communication
Meta-communication is communication about communication:

Parallel: Message Y (About Message X)
Communicative: Message X

The notion of meta-communication entails a focus on messages that guide the direction of interpretation of communicative messages. Such interpretation has two sides:
1. the direction of interpretation of the message itself;
2. the direction of interpretation of the inention of the communicator (relation with the recipient)
Thus, a communicative message "This is beautiful", when accompanies by laughter, can be interpreted as "You and I jointly understand that it is stupid to consider this beautiful". The primary message is guided by the meta-communicative message to be interpreted in terms opposite to its primary contents ("beautiful" = NOT BEAUTIFUL), with the notion of commonality of the interpretation direction ("You and I agree that beautiful = NOT BEAUTIFUL").

Adjustments to homogenization: relations between different rule systems
A child brought into the school context is set up within a field from which there is no exit. All formal schooling systems keep students within the field of educational activities - on the school territory, within a classroom, and often within a particular seat. Constraining of children's freedom of movement in the school context is similar to the phenomenon of infant swaddling (or cradle-board use). The function of such restraints is to maintain the children's activities within a range in which different educational efforts - both curricular and extra-curricular - can be inserted into the children's activity structure.
Given this function of the school, children who come from family backgrounds that are different would be faced with the need to coordinate different rule systems. By definition of its informal education focus, any home environment is different from a school environment. The contrast is especially profound if the collective-cultural background of the home is different from that of the school.

Keskkonnaeetika võtmetekste

Keskkonnaeetika võtmetekste. Koostanud ja toimetanud AIre Vaher, Riste Keskpaik, Külli Keerus. Tartu, 2008. 93 lk

Selle esseekogumiku on avaldanud Tartu Ülikooli eetikakeskus ja Jakob von Uexkülli keskus. Esmakordselt lugesin seda lühiteost aasta aega tagasi ja siis polnud mul suuremat aimu ei Tartu Ülikoolist, Uexküllist ega ka sissejuhatuses tänatud professorist Kalevi Kullist. Nüüd tundus nii mõnigi asi palju tuttavam. Näiteks loomade väärkohtlemise religioosseid tagamaid selgitav essee "Meie ökoloogilise kriisi ajaloolised juured" lõpeb sellega, et Assisi Franciscust tahetakse kuulutada ökoloogia pühakuks. Paljugi nende esseede puhul on kaheldava väärtusega (nt ökoloogiline kriis, vajadus pühakute järele), aga vähemasti üldpilt on mõtlemapanev. Peter Singeri essee on neist neljast minu jaoks mõjusaim, kuna toob kasutusse sellise sõna nagu spetsiesism (speciesism?) ja kõneleb loomade väärtkohtlemisest võrdluses rassismi ja seksismiga. Tulemus on muidugi see, et kõik inimesed on vähemal või rohkemal määral spetsiesistid (mis ei lisa arguemendile suuremat kaalu, aga loob kindla perspektiivi).
Teose eesmärk on osutada tähelepanu sellele, kas on õige pidada inimest maailma valitsejaks - võimuks, mis represseerib häbenematult iseenda elukeskkonda ja kõiki selles sisalduvaid olendeid. Miks on inimlapse elu püha, aga vasika oma mitte?
Mul on hea meel, et A-raamatukogul see raamat on. Erinevalt Freudist või Hiina surmanuhtlusest rääkivatest raamatutest, soovitaksin ma seda raamatut teistel lugeda.

Kultuurisemiootika

Juri Lotman - Kultuurisemiootika. Olion, 1990. 420 lk

Kohutav, lihtsalt kohutav. Written in semiologese. Kuigi tegin endale ülesande vähemasti esimese 30 lehekülje peale lahti laotatud teesid selgeks teha, jäid needki paiguti mõistmatuks. Pole kindel, kas asi on J. Lotmani kirjastiilis, konarlikus tõlkes või siis olen ma lihtsalt loll. Tõenäoliselt kõik kolm korraga. Esiteks on J. Lotmani keelekasutus täis vimma lihtsa ja arusaadava äripäevakirjanduse vastu - ta on justkui igas lauses üritanud midagi väga lihtsat öelda väga keeruliselt; sealjuures leiutades sõnu nagu metasemiootika, neoretoorika ja pseudomemuaarid. Jälle tundub mulle, et semiootikute jaoks on kõik asjad automaatselt lahedad, kui lisada eesliide "meta" (nt metatasandid, metavajadused, metavõileib ja metanool). Teiseks on tõlkes läinud kindlasti palju kaduma. Oletatavasti pole ma selle murega üksi, sest hariliku pliiatsiga tehtud märkmed on nii mõneski kohas jooninud midagi täiesti mõistetamatut alla ja maalinud kõrvale küsimärgi. Rohked venekeelsed tsitaadid ei tee ka muidugi asja väga meeldivaks. Kolmandaks mõistan, et kultuurisemiootikaga kohtun selles raamatus esmakordselt ja mingisugused paradigmaatilised ja süntagmaatilised teljed ei saagi hoobilt kohale jõuda. Õpin veel ja loen haritumana uuesti, küll siis mõistan rohkemat (see taktika on mõne abstruusse raamatu puhul teinud imesid).
Muidu oli tore lugemine. Väga palju informatsiooni on nendele lehekülgedele kokku pakitud. Enamus sellest käsitleb küll vene kirjandust (luulet, kroonikaid, teadust), aga ikkagi. Akadeemikule on see raamat väga eeskujulik s.t. ilma vastava hariduseta on seda raamatut võimalik samavõrd kergesti hoomata kui mandariini keelt. Jätan siia mõned katkendid, mis puudutavad minu uurimisvaldkonda:

"Märgisüsteemide ja nende abil toimuva suhtlemise tingimuste uurimisega tegeleb semiootika. Et see on teadus suhtlemisest, teadete edastamisest, inimestevahelisest (ning inimeste enda) mõistmisest ja mittemõistmisest, sotsiaal-kultuurilise kodeerimise vormidest, siis on semiootika loomuldasa sügavalt ühiskondlik."

"Inimeste (ja mitte ainult inimeste) sihipärast teadvustatud või alateadliku programmiga tegevust nimetatakse käitumiseks. Käituminegi võib olla vahetu (näit. töine käitumine) ja vahendatud, semantiline. Seda erinevust täheldame juba loomadel. Ühtedes olukordades - näiteks toidu hankimisel - käitutakse lähtudes praktilisest vajadusest ja siin loom toimib tegelikult. Teistes olukordades realiseerub käitumine märgilise (sümboolse) sisuga þestides: kihvade paljastamine või pea langetamine väljendavad ähvardust ja valmisolekut võitluseks, koera sabaliputus aga sõbralikkust ja meelitust. Teatud situatsioonides, nagu abieluline käitumine, laste kasvatamine, juhtiva koha haaramine karjas jne., kujuneb käitumise semantiline külg peamiseks, moodustades mängulise iseloomuga tegevuse keerukaid vorme."

"Eriliigiliste kunstiteoste ühtsust teatud suletud kultuuriruumis ei saa käsitleda lahus sellesse kooslusse lülituva inimese käitumisest. Eespool oli juba juttu, et Moskva aadlipereelamu tüüpiline struktuur eeldas jaotust alumiseks paraadkorruseks ja ülemiseks eluruumide korruseks, et isegi keskmise mõisniku vähenõudlikum eluase liigendus härraste- ja teenijatepooleks, talutares eristati ikooninurka. Eluruumi struktureerimisele vastavalt tekib käitumistüüpide liigitus, arvestades kõnnakut, þestikulatsiooni, hääletugevust jms.
XIX sajandi esimese poole vene aadli puhul kujundas ohvitseri riviteenistus ning ei kübetki leebem drill neiudel tantsuõpetaja käe all sootuks erilise hoiakutüübi. Tekkis võimalus eristada "kõrget" ("üllast") ja "madalat" ("labast") þestikulatsiooni-, kõnnaku-, kõne- ja käitumismaneeri ning vastavalt samastada end "kõrgete" või "madalate" tegelaskujudega kunstivallast, mis eeldas teatud kindlat tegude ning mõtteavalduste laadi, teatavat kõnelemisstiili. See oli palju üldisema kultuurifenomeni üks eriilminguid: nagu teada, determineerib sotsiaalne situatsioon - "karneval", "töötegemine", "riviteenistus", "paraad", "ball", "sõbralik vestlus" jne. - sobiva käitumise ja kõne, þesti ja miimika tüübi. Iga taoline situatsioon seondub aga teatava kultuuriruumiga ning järelikult antud kultuuri puhul stabiilsete kunstikooslustega. Seeläbi tekib vastavus kunstikoosluse ja kunsti "tarbija" käitumise vahel. Vähe sellest: inimese situatsioonkäitumine peegeldub omakorda kirjanduslike tegelaskujude käitumises ja kogeb nii alalist tagasisidet. Sel moel kujuneb objektiivne alus kunstide uurimiseks ühtse kultuuriterviku koosseisus."

Winning Body Language

Mark Bowden - Winning Body Language: Control the Conversation, Command Attention, and Convey the Right Message - without Saying a Word. McGraw-Hill, 2010. 257 lk

Esmakordne lugemine

Selle raamatu teistkordsel lugemisel märkasin juba eesõnas ja sissejuhatuses veenmist (persuasion) selle raamatu autori taseme ja raamatu sisukuse suhtes. See, et autorit tema enda sõnul seltskonnas austatakse, ei oma ju raamatu seisukohalt suuremat kaalu. Veenmiseks pean ka sissejuhatuses kasutatud retoorikat: "kui sa töötad firmas mis on nii ja nii edukas, siis see raamat ei ole sinu jaoks". Sellistes firmades töötab parimal juhul komakohtadega protsent elanikkonnast, kas ülejäänud 99.x % Maa inimestest peaks seda raamatut siis lugema?

As we physically and mentally advanced, our communication moved forward to include a fuller vocabulary of symbols and words. Small human groups or tribes could now look further afield, not only geographically in space but imaginatively in time, by laying down plans for the future, accounting for the past, negotiating the coalition of territories, or winning over the terrain through ever more elaborate strategies of agression.
It is the simple signs, sounds, signals, pictures, hieroglyphs, words, publications, and broadcasts disseminated across all channels and media, throughout time and space, that have revolutionized and advanced our world and our understanding within it. With our various sophisticated forms of communication, humankind has evolved into the major intelligent biological force on this planet.

TruthPlane on autori sõnul gestural system mis aitab omistada veenva ja mõjusa vocabulary of gesture.
Kommunikatsiooni definitsioon on siin "a source transmitting a message to a receiver in order to ahieve an intended result." Ja muidugi tundub siin, nagu ka mitmes teises kehakeelealases tükis, kommunikatsiooni intended result olevat manipulation of belief või ühe sõnaga pesuasion. Selgituses lisab ta ka mõisted channel, intent ja feedback, aga mida ta ei maini (ja mis minu arvates on problemaatiline), on müra. Noise on Shannon-Weaveri kommunikatsioonimudeli olulisim komponent, aga Bowden kasutab hoopis Harold Lasswelli kommunikatsioonimudelit: "Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) What Channel (with) What Effect." Shannoni mudelit mainib ta sõnumi mõistmisel ja toob sõnumi korrumpeerumisest välja sellised elemendid nagu generalization, deletion ja distortion. Kehakeelealaseid näiteid ta kahjuks ei too.
Huvitav mõiste: "cataplexy - a muscular weakness brought on by strong emotion". Soovitatav kirjandus:

George Lakoff - Moral Politics (2002)
Moshe Feldenkrais - Awareness through Movement (1972)
Brian Bates - Way of the Actor
Eugenio Barba - The Secret Art of the Performer
Paul Ekman - What the Face Reveals (1997)
Robert Ardrey - The Territorial Imperative

Raamatu sõnumit on tegelikult võimalik kokku võtta ühe sõnaga: "hinga". Aga see on kirjutatud veenval moel, mis sealjuures (apelsinide ja õunade võrdlemise osas) kasutab NLP modelleerimist. Pole väga väär öelda, et see raamat on mingil määral "hüpnotiseeriv" - rahulikust sügavast hingamisest lugemine paneb lugejat rahulikult ja sügavalt hingama ja raamatu lugemine muutub selle võrra kergemaks. Also, paneb lugejale pähe mõtte jalutada raamatupoodi, et tellida pitsat. "Truth Fearts No Question" tuleks meelde jätta religiooniteemalisteks diskussioonideks.

Now shift your hands up to your chest height and notice the difference. What has happened to your breathing rate now? Into which part of your lungs are you now predominantly bringing oxygen? You will have noticed that when you set your hands in the chest area, and specifically the horizontal plane of gesture that comes out from just a couple of inches above the sternum (the center and bottom of the rib cage, at exactly the level at which you can best feel your heartbeat), your breathing rate quickly increases and you breathe more into your chest than into your belly. Some of you may have already noticed an increase in your heart or pulse rate that automatically goes along with this.
It seems that gesturing with your hands at chest level automatically increases your breathing rate and heart rate and produces a slightly shallower style of breathing. And you will also notice that it quickly creates way more energy than an edge of excitement in you.

Raamat on sealjuures nii uus, et selles on mainitud ka Dr. Cal Lightmani tegelaskuju teleseriaalis Lie to Me. Esmalugemisel ei pidanud seda kasulikuks informatsiooni, kuna siis ei olnud ma veel nii palju kohanud Paul Ekmani nime ega lugenud ühtegi tema teost (nüüdseks olen lugenud kahte). Ekmani tööga seoses ütleb Bowden, et 52 näolihast moodustavad umbkaudu 5000 näoilmet.

The law of attraction is the philosophy that people's own thoughts (both conscious and especially unconscious) dictate the reality of their lives, wether or not they're even aware of it. So, essentially, the law of attraction says that if you really want something and you truly believe it's possible, you'll get it by directing your attention toward it. And if this is to be believed, then by the logic of the law of attraction, giving a lot of attention and thought to something that you don't want means that you'll get that, too!

YesState sõnad, mida annab eesti keelde tõlkida: jah / olgu / hea / nõustun / täpselt / kindlasti / tõsi / täielikult / alati / igal juhul / räägi mulle rohkem / sul on õigus / muidugi / absoluutselt.
Sain siit teada, et Edward Halli ruumijaotus ilmus ajakirja American Anthropologist artiklis "A System for the Notation of Prexemic Behavior". Ühest uurimustööst tean sinna järele kirjutada ka numbrid "1963, 65, 1003-1026".

You have the opportunity to become an artist - a poet with your nonverbal communication, and affect those around you purposefully, elegantly, and with the potential for great returns. However, this work is only for the brave and the bold. Remember the words of British author George Orwell, whose intense opposition to totalitarianism and passion for clarity in language led him to say, "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

Unmasking The Face

Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen - Unmasking The Face: A guide to recognizing emotions from facial expressions. Malor Books, 2003. 212 lk

Mõistmine on protsess. Iga Ekmani raamatu (üle)lugemisega täienevad teadmised inimese näoilmetest. Temast kaugemale minna selle informatsiooni saamiseks tundub asjatu, kuna samaväärselt põhjalikku tööd ei paista eksisteerivat. See on ka ilmselt põhjus, miks väga palju kasulikke viiteid selles raamatus ei sisaldu. Carol Izard ja Silvan Tomkins said üles märgitud, aga nende kirjutisi ei pruugi, just nagu Eibn-Eibensfeldti omi, olla saadaval. Viimase kohta sain vähemasti nii palju rohkem teada, et teda on avaldatud ka inglise keeles.
Seda konkreetset raamatut lugesin enne Emotions Revealed'i, aga mitte lõpuni (mistõttu jätsin ka kokkuvõtte tegemata). Seekord lugesin lõpuni ja tegin ka märkmeid. Näiteks tundus oluline üles tähendada põhilised näoosad, mis emotsioone väljendavad: otsmik, kulmud, silmad (täpsemalt nende vahetu ümbrus), põsed, nina, huuled ja lõug (chin).
Oluliseks määratluseks (mitte ainult näo, vaid ka muude kehaosade väljendusvõime kategoriseerimiseks) on kolm signaalitüüpi: (1) static - nt nahavärv, pea kuju jne; (2) slow - nt püsivad kortsud; (3) rapid - nt kulmude tõstmine. Sealjuures on oluline täheldada, kuna saab ilmest embleem (ajaline mõõde). Ja siis muud mõisted, mida ei hakka selgitama: display rules (cultural, personal, vocational requirements); mock expression; qualifying (commenting), modulating, falsifying; simulating, nautralizing, masking; blended expressions, conversation punctuators.
Kokkuvõttes juba kerge lugemine. Facial deceit peatükk jäi minu jaoks pisut häguseks, aga eks hilisem ülelugemine parandab ka seda. Ütleksin, et päris hea.

Psychosemiotics

Howard A. Smith - Psychosemiotics. Peter Lang, 2001. 332 lk

Teine raamat, mida pean enda ülikoolihariduse alusteoseks. See teos võtab kokku mõlemad alusmoodulid, mille ma ülikoolist saan: psühholoogia ja semiootika. Tagatipuks on see kirjutatud mehe poolt, kelle valdkonnaks on nonverbal communication in teaching. Nö edusemiotics on ka selles teoses olemas. Ausalt öeldes on see kõige selgesõnalisem, arusaadavaim ja parim semiootikaraamat, mida ma seni lugenud olen. "Abstruse" silti see raamat ei saa. Kavatsen seda korduvalt üle lugeda ja mitte selle pärast, et raamat oleks arusaamatuks jäänud, vaid selle tõttu, et see raamat sisaldab asju, mida tahan lõpuks mõiste täielikult ja pidada meeles. Mälu, taju, tõlgendamine, mõistmine, ruum, käitumine, kehakeel, märgiteed - neist kõigist on midagi ja sealjuures kasulike viidetega, milles nii mõnigi oli juba tuttav. Väga armas on see, et peatükkide lõpus olevate soovitatavate raamatute järele on kirjutatud ka ühelauselised kokkuvõted. Raamatu lõpus olev bibliograafia sütitas kadedust, sest autor on lugenud ja tsiteerinud The Semiotics of Language and Culture volume 2s sisalduvat psühhosemiootikast kõnelevat Watti artiklit (millele mul ei ole ligipääsu). Mõne kuu pärast loen seda raamatut kindlasti uuesti. Seniks kasutan sellest raamatust edasisteks õpinguteks kahte väljavõtet - kultuuripsühholoogia viited ja näited Peirce'i märgikategooriatest.

Two Traditions of Cognitive Psychology
Beginning readers in mainstream psychology can be excused for believing that a single epistemological paradigm underlies all psychological theory and research. Every psychology student soon becomes familiar with a standard toolkit of experimental tactics used to conduct research on psychological questions and with such names as John B. Watson, Robert Thorndike, B. F. Skinnes, Herbert Simon, and Jerry Fodor. However, despite appearances, the history of psychology in western scholarship has been marked by at least two main perspectives about how to conceptualize the discipline and how to its attending problems and issues. The second and lesser-known view is linked to purpose, meaning and interpretation and today carries the label of cultural psychology. This "second psychology" (Cahan & White, 1992) has been represented over time by such individuals as Franz Brentano, James Mark Baldwin, Lev Vygotsky, George Herbert Mead, and Jeome Bruner. Unfortunately, too few psychology students are familiar with the works of this second group of scholars.
Psychology's two main perspectives are replicated in the history of the discipline's major subarea of cognitive studies. Hence, assorted elements of cognition have been subjected to two models of inquiry: the currently-dominant quantitative and essentially causal approach, and the increasingly popular qualitative and essentially interpretative model. However, another large and diverse group of individuals that is also deeply interested in the processes and products of human cognition lurks on the margins of psychology. This group is composed of the linguists, philosophers, biologists, pshysicians, and other human scientists who consider themselves semioticians and who share many of the same fundamental views as the cultural psychologists. Representatives of this latter group of scholars include Charles Peirce, Jakob von Uexküll, Karl Bühler, Julia Kristeva, and Roman Jakobson. A safe guess is that almost no student of mainstream psychology is familiar with the works of any of these individuals.

Table 1: The Ten Classes of Peirce's Sign

Class	Name	Code	Example
1	Rhematic iconic qualisign	111	Feeling of red
2	Rhematic iconic sinsign	211	An individual diagram
3	Rhematic indexical sinsign	221	A spontaneous cry, "Ow!"
4	Dicent indexical sinsign	222	A weather vane
5	Rhematic iconic legisign	311	A diagram, generally
6	Rhematic indexical legisign	321	Demonstrative pronoun
7	Dicent indexical legisign	322	A street cry, "Showtime!"
8	Rhematic symbol legisign	331	A common noun, "Chair"
9	Dicent symbol legisign	332	Any proposition
10	Argument symbol legisign	333	A syllogism