Atheists

Atheists represent an inconspicuous minority, identifiable only by their disbelief in God(s). Despite being highly stigmatized and disliked, until recent scientific endeavors, little has been known about this group including why they don't believe, how many people are atheists, and why they trigger intense reactions. Thus, this paper aims to synthesize what is known about atheists (so far) and to help explain the widespread negative attitudes and prejudice towards atheists; the possible cognitive, motivational, and cultural origins of disbelief; and the unique challenges facing the study of religious disbelievers. To do so, we will explore current findings in psychological research on atheism by considering the complex interactions of cultural learning, motivations, and core cognitive processes. Although significant scientific progress has been made in understanding the factors underlying atheism, there remains much to be explored in the domain of religious disbelief.     

Atheists Giving Thanks to the Sun

Philosophia - I argue that it is rational and appropriate for atheists to give thanks to deep impersonal agents for the benefits they give to us. These agents include our evolving biosphere, the...     

Some Thoughts on Supervision

Quite often we have the experience that adolescents do not accept an offer of treatment, in spite of the fact that they feel miserable. Or, that they do start in treatment and then change their minds and break off contact. The author reflects about factors and conditions contributing to these analytic failures. He discusses elements of analytic method, setting, neutral position, analytic relationship, and how the frames are put under pressure in work with adolescents. He thereafter presents some vignettes and examples of analytic work, where intuitive interventions and interpretations appear against a background of ordinary psychoanalytic method. For the analyst, these interventions can feel unexpected, incidental, like ideas out of the blue. On second thoughts, we may sometimes be able to trace and understand how these intuitions are based on non-conscious processes, like counter-transference feelings, an understanding of the patient still unclear and unarticulated for the analyst or perhaps a last desperate attempt to reach the patient and get in contact at a decisive or critical moment. Finally, the author reflects on the double face of psychoanalysis: both a contemplated, carefully described and systematic method and a craft with elements of intuition, creativity and, sometimes, inspiration.     

关于感觉的几点思考

通过对感觉定义的分析,发现动物及不具备语言能力或相应生活经验的婴幼儿是不具备感觉能力的,而这显然是不正确的。究其实质,传统意义上的感觉或认知心理学中的感觉等当属于意识的范畴,而这与感觉是最低级的心理现象这一认识相矛盾,最后指出有必要对感觉进行重新规范     

A Meaningful Intercourse: Some Thoughts about Thinking

This article traces the development of ideas about consciousness, symbolisation, thinking and affects in the works of Freud, Bion, Meltzer and Stern. Consciousness is viewed as a special quality of psychic functions and therefore related to the complexity of the world of experience, to its different dimensions as Meltzer describes them. Freud's initial idea about direct and reproductive thinking and a compulsion to associate returns in Bions development of an epistemological instinct and are referred to by Stern as an ongoing, omnipresent milieu of thoughts in which instinctual life takes place. Bion develops Freud's thinking of unpleasure, primary and secondary processes, when he formulates the difference between pain and suffering, which also makes it possible for him to develop Freud's views on symbol formation. Bion's grid describes the relation between different forms of symbols and makes it possible to understand the importance of the reverie of the mother and how a feeling of meaning unfolds, when symbol formation takes place in a process in which the individual is in contact with the underlying structure. These ideas are in its turn developed in another direction by Stern in his theories of a pre-narrative envelope. Freud's ideas about perceptual identity and thought identity as a criteria for the release of motor activity are looked upon as a criteria for truth, which returns in Bion's ideas about the relation between truth and the development of the capacity to think. Meltzer takes up this thread when he claims that truth is beauty and beauty truth.     

Partisanship and Political Obligation: Some Sceptical Thoughts

Res Publica - In Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies, Matteo Bonotti argues that the problem of political obligation can be solved for at least a sub-set of citizens, namely,...     

On Whether B-Theoretic Atheists Should Fear Death

In this paper I revisit a dispute between Mikel Burley and Robin Le Poidevin about whether or not the B-theory of time can give its adherents any reason to be less afraid of death. In ‘Should a B-theoretic atheist fear death?’, Burley argues that even on Le Poidevin’s understanding of the B-theory, atheists shouldn’t be comforted. His reason is that the prevalent B-theoretic account of our attitudes towards the past and future precludes treating our fear of death as unwarranted. I examine his argument and provide a tentative defense of Le Poidevin. I claim that while Burley rightly spots a tension with a non-revisionary approach to our ordinary emotional life, he doesn’t isolate the source of that tension. The real question is how to understand Le Poidevin’s idea that on the B-theory, we and our lives are ‘eternally real’. I then suggest that there is a view of time that does justice to Le Poidevin’s remarks, albeit a strange one. The view takes temporal relations to be quasi-spatial and temporal entities to exist in a totum simul.     

Atheists and Agnostics Negotiate Religion and Family

Through in‐depth interviews with scientists at elite academic institutions—those particularly likely to have no firm belief in God—we provide insight into the motives scientists who are not religious have for joining a religious group and the struggle faced by these individuals in reconciling personal beliefs with what they consider the best interests of their families. Narratives stress the use of resources from identities as scientists to provide their children with religious choices consistent with science and in negotiating spousal influence and a desire for community. Findings expand the religious socialization and identities literatures by widening the range of understanding of the strategies parents utilize to interface with religious communities as well as lead to more nuanced public understanding of how atheist and agnostic scientists relate to religious communities.     

Some Irreverent Thoughts on Paradox

There is currently great interest in the use of paradox in psychotherapy. Unfortunately, there is also considerable confusion and misunderstanding of paradox, owing, in part, to the lack of a comprehensive theory that explains the role of paradox in human problems. This paper does not address itself to such theory but explores some cultural and epistemological components of therapists' misperceptions and misattributions of “paradox.”     

来自经济学的启示:关于心理学科的一些思考

从许多方面看,经济学与心理学都存在着共同之处。自20世纪70年代起,主流经济学在解释现实上的失败引发了经济学界的深刻反思,这些反思带给心理学的启示有：(1)心理学与经济学同属社会科学,而不是中间科学或二重科学;(2)统一的范式并不见得是这类以人为研究对象的社会科学的理想状态;(3)实验方法的发展方向不在于越来越精密地控制试验,而是允许不确定性的存在,并通过对不确定性的研究和发掘促进学科的进步。