In this revolutionary study, Howard Stein reverses the conventional view of the body as a dependent variable—pushed and pulled by discourse. With his concept of psychogeography, Stein shows how bodily experience and fantasy give rise to and shape discourse.  To make certain you have the opportunity to read this important study, we are making it available now at the very special rate of $14.95 (list $39.99). Click here for information on getting your personal copy. Paperback:   262 pages Publisher:   Library of Social Science Author:   Howard F. Stein Date of Publication:   May 14, 2013 List Price:   $39.99 ISBN-13:    978-0915042050 “Howard Stein has one of the finest minds engaged in the study of culture in our time. He has the capacity to see straight through to the meaning of things, and to understand it and express it with precision--a quality people used to refer to as genius. This wide ranging book is a feast.” —Howard S. Schwartz, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Oakland University, author of Narcissistic Process and Corporate Decay “Howard Stein is one of the world’s most original thinkers in the human sciences.” —Robert Endleman, Ph.D., author of Psyche and Society About the Author: HOWARD F. STEIN is a psychological anthropologist and Professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. He is the author of 14 books and over 100 scholarly papers.

Disease within the Nation

Writing to President Truman in 1946, American diplomat George Keenan called World communism a “malignant parasite which feeds on diseased tissues.” J. Edgar Hoover stated (1947) that communism was a “malignant condition akin to diease that spreads like an epidemic.” More recently, Paul Wolfowitz claimed that al-Qaeda was like a “disease that has infected a healthy body.”

In Developmental Time, Cultural Space, Howard Stein presents the concept of psychogeography, showing how metaphors in political rhetoric reveal fantasies about the body as the source of political ideology.

Bodily Experience Structures Thought

Cognitive linguist Mark Johnson (1987) shows how “structures of our bodily experience work their way up into abstract meanings.” Post-modernism posits “discourses of the body.” Psychogeography suggests that bodily experience and fantasies are mapped into the external world, determining the shape and structure of discourse.

Defending Boundaries

Johnson says that the container is the most basic kinesthetic schemata, giving rise to a bounded space that differentiates outside from inside. Human beings are containers—and so are nation-states. In Developmental Time, Cultural Space, Stein identifies boundaries as the central concept of psychogeography, giving rise to the “defense discourse of states” (Bruce Chilton, 1996).

What does it mean for a nation to be “secure”? That theboundaries of one’s nation cannot be penetrated. Like a body with an immune system, nations defend against “others” conceived as alien or not-self.

Body as Source of Discourse

Stein’s Developmental Time, Cultural Space reverses the conventional view of the body as a dependent variable pushed and pulled by discourse. Rather, Stein focuses on bodily experience and fantasy as the source of discourse. The body represents an independent variable, giving rise to—shaping—ideology and culture.