Abstract:
This paper presents fundamentals of cultural psychology defined as a way to do psychology based on the premise that psyche and culture make each other up. In order to overcome four reductionisms (reduction to the rational, to the individual, to the innate, and to the inside), cultural psychology postulates that mental life includes intellectual and emotional aspects, that its origin is socio-cultural, that it spreads among people and the artifacts they use, and that it has to do more with the stories, myths, and cultural narratives than with genes and neurotransmitters. The experience is the unit of analysis, i.e. the way people appreciate, perceive, and interpret the world. The experience constructs the culture - explicit and implicit shared life styles - and at the same time, the experience is constructed by culture. Finally, we suggest some applications derived from a psycho-cultural perspective.