The Pleasure of Thinking

Demonstrates the fundamental importance of the pleasure of thinking for human experience and development in the lifecourse.

Tania Zittoun (Author)

9781316510834, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 October 2023

284 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.56 kg

'… an original, intellectually stimulating, and timely book that overflows with ideas and images, making reading it most exciting and enjoyable.' Ivana Markova, Culture & Psychology

Tania Zittoun demonstrates that there is pleasure in thinking, and that the pleasure of thinking plays a key role in our lives – in the development of children, in learning, in adult life, and in ageing. Drawing on arts and philosophy, exploring research in developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and psychoanalysis, it highlights five modalities of thinking: curiosity, the functional pleasure of pursuing a task, the pleasure of discovery, the dialogical pleasure of thinking with others, and a meta-pleasure. This book proposes a unique integrative model of thinking, conceived as a situated activity, following trajectories that combine modalities of pleasure. Evolving with time, the pleasure of thinking can take place as we reason, make sense, or daydream, at school, at work, when we garden, or do science. Academics and graduate students in sociocultural, critical, developmental, and cognitive psychology will benefit from The Pleasure of Thinking.

Foreword
1. The pleasure of thought
2. On the emergence of pleasurable thinking
3. Thinking the pleasures of psychoanalysis
4. Thinking in sociocultural psychology
5. Thinking through the pysche
6. The pleasure of thinking in diverse experiences
7. Trajectories of pleasures in thinking
8. Thinking forward.

Subject Areas: Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]