Abstract

In recent years the importance of an indigenous psychological approach has been asserted in the context of cultural psychological discourse, especially in the debate on overcoming the problems of the cross-cultural psychological paradigm. However, the problem of the dichotomy between particularism and universalism remains unsolved. Despite this lack of clarity the relevance of the indigenous psychological attempt to formulate a socio-cultural construction of meaning systems may not be ignored as, in our opinion, it is essential to construct a cultural psychological ethos which allows for the discussion of the diversity and complexity of differing cultural, intercultural, and cross-cultural concepts. In our contribution we would like to introduce a number of psychological mechanisms which are of great importance in everyday Korean life: for example, "Han", "Cheong", "Shim-Cheong". These mechanisms form the foundation of Korean social interaction, and play a decisive role in the construction of "we-ness"In social interaction, especially in conflict situations, "we-ness" is, through constant reconstruction of past events, regularly redefined. In this discourse the past events are not related to actual occurrences, but rather they are the product of the joint construction of meanings. We refer this process, which is difficult to define through existing social psychological categories, as "Shim-Cheong" psychology. This could be perhaps best translated as "affection of mind" psychology. The available categories of academic psychology which are exclusively developed in European and American Universities, always imply the norms and ideologies of Western societies. If we can define the cultural psychological project as an attempt to reconstruct or deconstruct such categories, then our attempt to categoric; the psychological processes, which entail differing cultural-historical backgrounds, is well suited to the task of cultural psychology. We do not imply that these mechanisms can not be understood by Western psychologists, but we wish to demonstrate that there are alternative ways and means for the construction of psychological theories.