Henry A. Murray's Early Career: A Psychobiographical Exploration

ABSTRACT This paper is a psychobiographical study of Henry A Murray's early career A formulation of his personality is developed, emphasizing his inner depressive tendencies, his sense of specialness, and his characteristic concerns in relationships His decision to become a psychologist, his initial reaction to academic psychology, and his years of involvement with psychoanalysis are considered in the light of his personality The final section contains an examination of the ways in which Murray's personality and his experiences during his early career shaped Explorations in Personality, his most influential work.     

WITTGENSTEIN'S PERSONALITY AND HIS RELATIONS WITH FREUD'S THOUGHT

In this contribution the author examines the connections between Wittgenstein's personality and his attitude to Freud's psychoanalytic theories in the light of biographies of the philosopher, published exchanges of letters between him and his sisters, his 'secret' diaries from the time of the First World War, his diaries from the nineteen-thirties and the writings in which he discusses Freud and psychoanalysis. The paper quotes liberally from all these sources. Following an account of Wittgenstein's cultural and family background in Vienna and his subsequent peripatetic life, hypotheses are presented concerning his personality, sexuality and 'internal' theology, together with some ideas about his relationship with his family (in particular, his parents and sisters) and his critique of Freud's theories, with particular reference to dreams and their interpretation. Wittgenstein emerges as a highly original philosopher who is, however, emotionally disturbed and restless. His personality is found to have narcissistic aspects that moulded his behaviour and thought, and the author contends that his mental suffering caused him to apply psychological and psychoanalytic categories to his philosophy.     

Regression and new beginnings: Michael, Alice and Enid Balint and the circulation of ideas

This article offers a new evaluation of Michael Balint's history. It starts with his growing up in Hungary and examines the central concepts of his writing: the analytic pair, regression and the basic fault and creativity, up to and including his renowned work on the eponymous Balint groups (which forged a unique link between psychoanalysis and medicine). While his name is, of course, well known, this article aims to bring his ideas to the attention of a modern analytic audience. Having trained in the 1920s with Ferenczi, Balint brought Ferenczi's literary inheritance to England where he lived until his death in 1970. His connections to Klein, Winnicott and Lacan, all of whom respected his analytic stance, are also examined. Furthermore, this article argues that his ideas were filtered through the theoretical lens of his first wife Alice Balint and later through Enid Balint, both of whom played a key - and rarely recognised - role in the development of his thought. It ends with a brief discussion of his ideas on analytic training and his quest, successful only after his death, to publish the complete Freud-Ferenczi correspondence, together with Ferenczi's diary.     

3. The Voyager and the Voyage

ABSTRACT Chapter 3 presents the biography of Dodge Morgan from childhood through the end of his remarkable voyage. Derived from biographical and autobiographical sources, his life narrative is presented chronologically as basic data for our case study. The importance of his male role models, his early love of sailing, and his later adventures on boats, in Alaska, and in the business world are illustrated. We describe the context of his voyage and his intense, thorough voyage preparations, both external and internal. We also delineate his successful circumnavigation in detail.     

FROM MISSION TO MEMORY: WALTER BENJAMIN AND WERNER SCHOLEM IN THE LIFE AND WORK OF GERSHOM SCHOLEM

This article deals with Gershom Scholem's role in the remembrance and reception of two of the most influential figures of his youth: Walter Benjamin and Werner Scholem. The first part of the article examines his role in the reception and remembrance of Walter Benjamin in Germany, focusing on his position among émigré intellectuals in the light of Scholem's complex relationship with his friend and colleague Theodor Adorno. The second part of the article compares Scholem's memory of his friend with the remembrance of his brother, the communist politician Werner Scholem. By analysing the way Gershom Scholem reflected his relationship with his friend and his brother throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his own position towards the political and social changes in post war Germany is discussed.     

Richard Wagner: Grandiosity,Entitlement, and its Metastases

Richard Wagner was a genius. About this there is little doubt among musicians and musicologists. It is also a judgment with which Wagner, himself, would have readily concurred. There was also little doubt among those who knew him that he was a scoundrel. As a genius, he felt entitled. The two-dimensionality of his character stands in sharp contrast to the complex, three-dimensional characters that populate his operas. However, his evil characters are all Jews, and his anti-Semitism reigned supreme in his life and art. His creativity died with him, but his grandiosity, entitlement, and anti-Semitism metastasized to his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and found a welcome home with Adolf Hitler. In this article, I describe Wagner’s early life, his near-death experience shortly after he was born, his recollections of his cold mother, his unclear paternity, and his self-aggrandizing autobiography in which he depicted himself as having had the childhood and parents that he felt would have befit the extraordinarily creative person he considered himself to be. Nevertheless, his impact on the musical world was revolutionary.     

Critical reflection on the ESL teacher’s subjectivity

This study explores the possibility of raising the author’s own critical awareness as an ESL teacher by reflecting critically on his subjectivity involved in the implementation of critical literacy in the reading classroom, especially examining not just his thoughts and feelings but also his teaching practices. It highlights discrepancies between his expectations and realities, and conflicts between his own beliefs. It also highlights not just effective aspects of his teaching, which show his contribution to enhancing dialogue among students and their engagement with critical social practices, but also less-effective aspects of his teaching, which show his failure to push participants for more information and his distortions of participants’ statements. Further, the study demonstrates the need for encouraging teachers to reflect critically on themselves as transformative beings.     

Screen memory: its importance to object relations and transference

A screen memory of an obsessive and narcissistic man, reported early in psychoanalysis, both represented and disguised the patient's oedipal conflict, incestuous wishes, and sibling rivalry. It symbolized for him his relationship with his mother and was treated by him, in a repetitive and fetishistic manner throughout treatment, as the reason for his bitterness toward life, his sense of entitlement, his narcissism, and his distrust of women. In the transference, the memory-far from being inert- constantly played an active role in his wishes and disappointments regarding the analyst, and in his fantasied oedipal triumph over him. As the analysis progressed, and after years of treatment, the encapsulated nature of this memory began to give way to the patient's growing awareness of his oedipal wishes, the full range of his feelings toward his mother, and his sense of abandonment by her. The nature of screen memory is explored, including how it relates to a patient's personality and use of the past in general, how it may figure in the development of a person's object relations, and the decisive role it may play throughout a treatment.     

Shepherd Ivory Franz: His contributions to neuropsychology and rehabilitation

Shepherd I. Franz was an important figure in psychology of the last century, and historians of psychology have given recognition to much of his work. However, his experimental work with animals and his pioneer investigations in experimental and clinical neuropsychology have been largely ignored. This article reviews his conceptual, assessment, and treatment contributions, including (1) his pioneering work on the use of learned behavior as a baseline for the study of cerebral ablations, (2) his interest in brain plasticity, (3) his development of comprehensive psychological assessment methods, and (4) his work on the rehabilitation of neurological patients with techniques derived from his animal experiments. His work predated much of what is now part of the conceptual substance of the experimental and clinical neurosciences.     

TWO PSYCHOTIC PLAYWRIGHTS AT WORK: THE LATE PLAYS OF AUGUST STRINDBERG AND TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

August Strindberg and Tennessee Williams both became severely deranged during their playwriting careers. Both emerged from the most intense form of their derangement and wrote plays afterward. Strindberg, however, wrote his greatest plays after his psychosis; Williams, before his. Strindberg's psychosis spurred his creativity; that of Williams severely damaged his. This paper proposes that Strindberg mastered his psychosis and that in his late plays he dramatically symbolized psychotic processes. Williams, on the other hand, could neither access nor master his, and his late plays embody the repeated, unsymbolized acting out of his psychosis within an aesthetic context. These differences between the two playwrights become clear not through analysis of dramatic characters, but through changes that each playwright made to the dramatic medium itself.     

Alexander W. Astin: Higher Education's Relentless Reformer

Alexander “Sandy” W. Astin of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), probably the most prolific and influential researcher in American (U.S.) higher education today, talks about his development as a professional in the field, his mentors, his professional contributions, his personal development, his family, dual career issues, and his hopes for the future of the field.     

On the vicissitudes of Freud's early mothering. III: Freiberg, screen memories, and loss

Utilizing clinical examples, I attempt to show that the memories Freud recalled on his return to his childhood home in adolescence screened the traumata he had suffered when he lost his Kinderfrau, then his playmates and the Freiberg countryside during his early childhood.     

In Retrospect: Reflections on a Psychoanalytic Career

This account of the author's psychoanalytic education and the subsequent evolution of his theoretical and technical beliefs emphasizes his sustained attachment to classical Freudian principles. The refinement of his views consequent to his close friendship and collaboration with Charles Brenner is described. In recent years, his study of the work of certain colleagues who are exponents of other psychoanalytic points of view has resulted in some modulation of his technical stance, without altering his fundamental convictions about the nature of the psychoanalytic enterprise.     

The Homosexual Tendencies of King James: Should this Matter to Bible Readers Today?

The question whether King James, who commissioned the translation of the Bible into English in 1604, had homosexual tendencies has been under discussion in recent years. We review the arguments presented against this view and conclude that they are largely circular and ad hominem. We then consider the evidence presented by those who argue for this view, including the emotional distance between King James and his wife; his intense affection for three men in the course of his life; contemporary criticism of his public expressions of affection toward two of these men; and contemporary allegations that his reluctance to commit England to war was due to his “effeminate” nature. We discuss his family history and his relationship to one man in particular and conclude that the argument he had homosexual tendencies is compelling. We then take up the associations that his own contemporaries made between homosexual behavior, effeminacy, pacifism, and the scholar, and present our view that in authorizing the translation of the Bible into English, he provided a scholarly model for male cooperation that was inherently superior to the martial model of male enterprise advocated by his opponents. We also suggest that his authorization of a new translation of the Bible was psycho-dynamically related to his loss of his mother in infancy and to his guilt for having failed to come to her aid when she requested his help. Finally, we make a case in behalf of the King James Version of the Bible on the grounds that it functions as a cultural selfobject (Kohut), due mainly to its maternal associations; that King James’s favorite Bible verse was Matthew 5:9—“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God”; and that James had homosexual tendencies.     

Zhu Xi��s choice, historical criticism and influence��An analysis of Zhu Xi��s relationship with Confucianism and Buddhism

As a great synthesist for the School of Principles of the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, Zhu Xi’s influence over the School of Principles was demonstrated not only through his positive theoretical creation, but also through his choice and critical awareness. Zhu’s relationship with Confucianism and Buddhism is a typical case; and his activities, ranging from his research of Buddhism (the Chan School) in his early days to his farewell to the Chan School as a student of Li Dong from Yanping and then to his critical awareness of the Chan School, developed in his association with Wang Yingchen, set the entire course of his relationship with Confucianism and Buddhism. It fostered his antagonistic attitude towards the Chan School, which lasted his entire life. Zhu approached the Chan School mainly as an objective social and cultural phenomenon; his discrimination between Confucianism and Buddhism was from an epistemological point of view; and his refutation of the Chan School was mainly from the point of view of language and methodology, an antagonistic attitude of how to face learning. Therefore, his opposition to the Chan School not only directly fostered an awareness of the Confucians of the Ming dynasty against Buddhism, who simply viewed the latter as an external and objective existence, but to a certain extent resulted in the disappearance of the transcendence of the School of Principles, and caused a total change in academic direction during the Ming and Qing dynasties and the formation of the Qianjia Hanxue. What is more, such an opposition to Buddhism continues to influence people’s understanding of the School of Principles.     

Joy, 20 Years Later: A Conversation With Will Schutz

Will C. Schutz, an encounter groups pioneer, was interviewed about his personal life, the turning points of his life that led to his involvement in group work, his experiences before, at, and after Esalen, and his views on the field of counseling.     

Temple Gairdner of Cairo revisited

Temple Gairdner was a prominent and respected figure in his own time, and remains an intriguing and engaging character worthy of occasional re‐examination. This paper presents some of the salient features of his biography and highlights some aspects of his life and work that deserve emphasis because of their continuing importance for the Christian approach to Islam. In particular, it describes the evolution in his assessment of Islam, how this affected his apologetic interpretation of Christianity for Muslims, his contribution to the training of missionaries to Islam, and how his contribution has been creatively continued within the Anglican Communion.