The book includes a new theoretical synthesis of William Stern's classic personology published in the 1930s with contemporary cultural psychology of semiotic mediation developed by the author over the last two decades. It looks at the human mind as it operates in its full complexity, starting from the most complex general levels of aesthetic and political participation in society and ending with individual willful actions in everyday life contexts.

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Provides a unique new view on human mind in its societal context Breaks down the border of science and artrichly illustrated Unites general psychology with cultural psychology

Autorentext

Jaan Valsiner, born in Tallinn, Estonia in 1951, is a cultural psychologist with a consistently developmental axiomatic base that is brought to analyses of any psychological or social phenomena. He is the founding editor (1995-2025) of the Sage journal, *Culture & Psychology and Editor-In-Chief, Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science (Springer, 2007-2026). After working for over three decades in USA at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Clark University, he accepted in 2013 the position of Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark. Valsiner is the Head of the Competence Center on Cultural Psychology at University of Tallinn, Estonia. He focuses on theoretical innovation, with monographs *The guided mind (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1998, *Ornamented Lives (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers, 2018) and Sensuality in Human Living (Springer, 2020). He has also published a major theoretical treatise General Human Psychology (t2021 by Springer) that would synthesize William Stern’s personology with his Cultural Psychology of Semiotic Dynamics. Jaan Valsiner has been awarded major research prizes in Europe-- the *Alexander von Humboldt Prize of 1995 in Germany, and the *Hans-Kilian-Preis of 2017. As part of his credo for building psychology on an international and trans-cultural basis, he has been a visiting professor in Brazil, Japan, Australia, Estonia. Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Since 2017 he is a *Foreign Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences.

Inhalt

1. Constructing and Destroying One's Life: Phenomenology of the human life course.- 2. Signs in Minds: Semiotic basis for the New General Psychology.- 3. Mediating Mind: Making values.- 4. Silent screaming: Voices within the Self.- 5. Disquieting societies.- 6. Constructing loyalties: Dialogues between rights and duties.- 7. Masked morality: Theatrical reality of living.- 8. Monuments and memory: Imagination amplified and objectified.- 9. Political Sentiments: Escalation and resistance.- 10. Desires for Beauty: Aesthetics of human existence.- 11. From Wanting to Acting: Active desire for meaningful living.- 12. How to investigate complex personological processes.- 13. Final Conclusions: General Structure of Cultural Personology.