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Post by sonnyt2 on Nov 24, 2017 23:15:35 GMT
Butt is giving us (and Psychologists, in general) advice about how to understand people. One possibility he suggests is that we try to interpret people in the same way that we interpret texts. He cautions, however, "If we want to appreciate a text, we will never do it by learning the alphabet" (p. 88). Explain what you think his comment means about how Psychologists should go about studying people.
I think what Butt is trying to say here is that we are more than the sum of our parts. In going with the analogy already provided by Butt, We can see that having literacy is not enough to fully comprehend or internalize any written work. The reader needs to look for context, for recurring ideas or themes, for tone. I think that this is a brilliant analogy because it can remind psychologists to take an atomistic approach to their study of people. I think that it can also remind psychologists that they should perhaps rely less on great ideas and theories and more on the finite details of an individual's life, when it comes to understanding people.
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