The postmodern subjective representation of reality in our minds has two stages: 1) reconstruction of reality (rather than simple reflection) based on cognitive, emotional and behavioral mechanisms and 2) subjective evaluations of reality. The 20 century postmodern turn in science went straight to 2) without uncovering and quantifying 1). The need for a 21 century “postmodern turn in science ve...

For the past two decades, the postmodern debates dominated the cultural and intellectual scene in many fields throughout the world. In aesthetic and cultural theory, polemics emerged over whether modernism in the arts was or was not dead and what sort of postmodern art was succeeding it. In philosophy, debates erupted concerning whether or not the tradition of modern philosophy had ended, and m...

This paper introduces hermeneutic philosophy and inquiry to postmodern therapists. Hermeneutic inquiry is an approach to research that posits that all understanding is interpretation, and interpretation is constructed in language. It shares a common view of language with postmodern therapies, and therefore is likely to be a congenial and accessible approach to research for postmodern therapists...

In this essay, the use of postmodern rhetorical irony as a subversive strategy is explored. In particular, Susan Dorothea White's painting, The First Supper, is analyzed as a subversive, postmodern ironic reading of Leonardo da Vinci's famed work, The Last Supper. This analysis suggests that subversive irony assumes distinctive and complex technical and theoretical characteristics, most relevan...

In examining the postmodern turn in counseling and its implications for school counseling practice, it is suggested that in postmodern approaches, there is a change in the use of the narrative metaphor, a shift from the therapeutic focus on problems to solutions, and a reinterpretation of the meanings of the core counseling values that sustain the client-counselor therapeutic relationship. An i...

Although childbirth is fundamentally involved with the issue of women's bodies, it is also involved with such social values as politics, economics, medicine, and other phenomena characteristic of a particular time and culture. In this article I divide Japanese society and childbirth into pre-modern, modern, and postmodern phases, with special emphasis on the postmodern phase. I use the word "po...

Identity has become a much-used word. The term captures the dilemma of self, for it describes and seems to explain the contradictions of living in a society that appears to be in constant change. Similarly, 'postmodernism', 'postmodernity', and 'postmodern' have become widely-used terms in public life as well as in the social sciences. In this context, indentity-construction and maintenance in ...

The past decade has seen the gradual emergence of what might be called a postmodern perspective on nursing research. However, the development of a coherent postmodern critique of the modernist position has been hampered by some misunderstandings and misrepresentations of postmodern epistemology by a number of writers, leading to a fractured and distorted view of postmodern nursing research. Thi...

Changing times and postmodern perspectives have disrupted the taken-for-granted relationship between child development knowledge and the preparation of early childhood teachers. Despite ongoing exchanges about how best to respond to the critique of the developmental knowledge base, few descriptions of how particular teacher educators have gone about reconceptualizing their curriculum exist. Emp...