Physical Being A Theory for Corporeal Psychology [Paperback]

Body care has never before been so much a focus of public interest, nor have the ways we classify people by reference to their kind of body excited such political passions. This study is an attempt to build a comprehensive account of the roles our bodies play in our lives. Through a series of discussions Rome harre concludes that the roles the body plays in our lives are determined less by organic functioning than by cultural conventions and social meanings.Part I: Metaphysics.1. Embodiment.

2. Body Kinds I: Categories and Characters.

3. Body Kinds II: Shapes and Temperaments.

4. The Experience of Embodiment I: Parts and States.

5. The Experience of Embodiment II: Feelings.

Part II: Evaluations.

6. Bodily Rights and Obligations.

7. Emotions of the Body.

8. Disease into Illness.

9. Body Cultivation.

10. The Body as a Locus of Social Control.

Part III: Meanings.

11. Corporeal Semantics.

12. Anthropographie.

Index.

A masterly guided tour. Harre surveys a wonderful range of attitudes and aspects of experience, from hysteria to embarrassment, from earnest body-building to corporal punishment, from Kretschmerian body-types to sexual differences.
Times Literary Supplement

An intriguing and useful set of analyses
Contemporary Psychology

Rom Harre's numerous publications include The Explanation of Social Behaviour (with Paul Secord), Social Being, Personal Being, Varieties of Realism and, most recently, Pronouns and People with Peter Muhlhausler, also available from Blackwell Publishers.Body care has nel£-