“Having It All”: Cognitive Polyphasia as Preserving a Complex Reality: The Israeli Case

Dina Friling Education Department, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel Kay Academic College of Education, Beer Sheva, Israel

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of Cognitive Polyphasia as it relates to

other terms of Social Representation theory as well as 'Cognitive Dissonance'. It will be

demonstrated through two different sets of Cognitive Polyphasia presented as they

appear in the symbolic world of Israeli Jewish parents whose sons were doing their

mandatory military service in the Israel Defense Force’s combat units. It will be shown

that 'Cognitive Polyphasia' is preserving a situation of "having it all" that stresses the

complexity of the situation as well as the difficulty in choice making. It might also

indicate the complexity of actually experiencing coping with change. Even though the

two different examples demonstrated were situated and used in two different and

specific social settings they share a lot in common. The paper concludes by suggesting

that Cognitive Polyphasia might be common sense's tool for coping with the dynamiccomplex

world.

Dina Friling, Education Department, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel Kay Academic College of Education, Beer Sheva, Israel

DINA FRILING lives with her family in a small village in the Israeli Negev desert. Her doctoral

thesis is based on Social Representations Theory exploring the symbolic world of Israeli parents

of combat soldiers within distinct Israeli social groups, and she took part in the Israeli SRT group

at the Education Department of Ben-Gurion University. She published a number of papers in

Hebrew and English on SRT as well as on Teacher Education topics and serves as a member of

ACE program and Counseling Department at Kaye Academic Collage of Education in Beer

Sheva, Israel.