Embodiment em metáforas: psicologia cultural nas práticas de Kung Fu

Abstract

The embodiment concept, originally discussed in Philosophy, only started to appear in studies in the area of Psychology around the 1980s. Explaining the integrated functioning of mind and body has been a great challenge for researchers working on this topic. In our study, which was divided into two articles, we gathered what has been studied from the perspective of Psychology in recent years on this topic, as well as we proposed a methodology for the investigation of this complex phenomenon. In the first article we did a literature review of what has been produced about embodiment in the area of knowledge of Psychology in the last 5 years. We gathered 349 works, of which 48 were selected for the complete reading and analysis. We found that the majority (32) of the articles are of a theoretical nature, and only 16 of them are of an empirical nature. Furthermore, in articles of an empirical nature, we identified that the most used approach to investigate this phenomenon was the experimental one. Our analysis led us to understand the difficulty of studying this phenomenon empirically from a methodology that contemplates its complexity. Our second article presents a methodological proposal for an empirical investigation of embodiment with an idiographic and non-experimental approach, aligned with the perspective of Cultural Psychology and the Methodological Cycle proposed by Valsiner (2012). In addition, through our literature review, we identified an interlocution between the use of metaphors and the embodiment phenomenon. In this way, we developed an instrument that consisted of proposing situations in which research participants should relate Kung Fu postures to abstract stimuli (abstract nouns, colors and emojis). Our goal was to trigger narratives enriched with metaphors in explaining the relationships made by the participants. We use Kung Fu as the setting for this research because we believe that it is a cultural practice and that it provides the construction of its own meanings from the practitioner's experience. Our results demonstrated that the participants recover their senses from their practice to justify the relationships they created between Kung Fu postures and abstract stimuli through metaphorical production.