Culture in Psychology: A Renewed Encounter of Inquisitive Minds

This introductory chapter outlines the historical picture of the recent interest in the linking of culture and psychology, as well as the conceptual obstacles that have stood on the way of re-introducing complexity of human psychological functions-higher cultural forms-to psychological research practices. The avoidance of complex and dynamic phenomena (affective processes in feeling, religious sentiments that take the form of values, and of the high varieties of cultural forms displayed all over the World) has limited psychology's knowledge creation. In the past two decades, with the emergence of cultural psychology at the intersection of developmental, educational, and social psychologies and their linking with cultural anthropology, sociology, and history, we have observed a renewed effort to build an interdisciplinary synthesis of ideas. This takes place in the wider social context of the globalizing world. Psychology needs culture to make sense of the human lives.