Psychology is a strange science, established upon a preoccupation with mind yet frequently denying such a thing exists. What stories can psychology tell? 

Projective interpretations are one of the more intriguing, if unquantifiable, aspects of psychology. The premise is that each of us can only know the world through our personal experience, which in turn is reflected in all our perceptions. Our signature is immanent in all that we say and do -- like this...
 
 Or things that make us feel good, like this ... 

Educational psychology relies on theories of projective interpretation much less than it does psychometric measures such as achievement or intelligence tests, but a trend in educational psychology is bringing to bear (ahem) an enlightened approach to research that relies a good deal on telling stories. Not those that begin "once upon a time" or that often end "and they lived happily ever after" but the stories of real lives within the contexts and processes that are meaningful to the people involved.  How these individuals negotiate their participation in the communities of practice they inhabit -- work, school, peers, family, church, and countless others -- becomes the living story psychologists wish to describe and understand.

I once studied a group of young boys in a juvenile correctional facility school to observe and know as closely as I could what their lives and identities became as they participated in the learning community there. Yes, there were times when calling it a learning community seemed anything but appropriate, though learning is an incessant occupation of the human mind.  We may not always be learning what others think we should but we are learning. What these students learned and how that became a part of who they are was at the heart of my research. 
 
While I hitchhiked through the lives of those students, I was involved in creating my own story, as well. As it continued, I began new chapters of research. At Auburn U, Montgomery (AL), I worked with two separate groups of students and two students working independently. In one group, we studied the interactions of prejudice, regional culture, education, and the need for cognition -- is it true that we are who we are because we live where we do, or are we more likely to differ as individuals, despite cultural influences?

In the other, we investigated the post-abortive experiences of women in several different countries. Again, we were exploring the impact of culture as a defining influence on experience but were trying also to determine whether there are characteristic elements of post-abortive experience across time and cultures. Both research groups were able to present their work in China and in Hawaii. You go, teams!

Other research that I have supervised includes a close look at authentic identity and learned helplessness among elementary students with disabilities, and a study on fetishism and its personality correlates among male university students. Is that redundant? My personal research interests are related to iconic identity and personality, social-networks as holistic identity, and behavior as unknown identity. Throughout it all, my interests lie in the mind-brain relationship and understanding consciousness as - perhaps - the only reality.

On any given day, there are more questions to ask than time to answer! Today I am writing this. Tomorrow there may be more.  Check to see or drop me a line at bmoore@sullivan.suny.edu

Thanks for visiting. 

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