The Pleasure of Thinking

Tania Zittoun

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2023
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009041409
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Foreword
• Chapter 1 The Pleasure of Thought
• Chapter 2 On the Emergence of Pleasurable Thinking
• Chapter 3 Thinking the Pleasures with Psychoanalysis
• Chapter 4 Thinking in Sociocultural Psychology
• Chapter 5 Thinking through the Psyche
• Chapter 6 The Pleasure of Thinking in Diverse Experiences
• Chapter 7 Trajectories of Pleasures in Thinking
• Chapter 8 Thinking Forward
• Notes
• References
• Index