Currently Reading:
Principles of topological psychology. Lewin, Kurt (1939)
Last night, I became curious about the “boundaries” as they’re used in psychology. We take for granted notions of “personal space”, group dynamics, in-group / out-group and they’re all related concepts but what was the genesis of the underlying concept?
It started when a friend mentioned a basic “life rule” of his, which is one that I also have said, basically, “You’re not responsible for someone else’s emotions” (which has its negative side too, so one has to use such a concept correctly) and as we’re of the same generation, I wondered if we had similar influences.
Tracing back, it appears we did: both products of the Positive Psychology, “I’m OK / You’re OK”, Scripts people live, and realizing this, I began to trace it backwards until I hit a concept known as “genidentity”, coined by Levin and a friend of his from the German student body movement from back in 1922. Forwarded to Social Psychology’s birth.