What Does It Mean to Think Developmentally in Doing Clinical Work?

Thinking developmentally is a theoretically integrative, pluralistic approach to clinical work. It entails working in a fluid, developmentally informed manner. This article fleshes out this kind of thinking and demonstrates the multilayered way it works when looking at case material.     

What Does It Mean to Be Human? A Personal and Catholic Perspective

A philosopher-poet-theologian ponders the implications of the multimillion-year biogenetic process that produced Homo sapiens and is beginning to reveal itself ever more clearly as evolution of the mind and consciousness. As meaning trappers and makers, called to actualize the divine image imprinted upon us, we are now facing biological and cultural evolution with deliberate human input as well as the evolution of evolution. As communicating animals that are becoming ever more aware of our adaptive behavior, we have the potential of affecting our own destiny by listening to the spirit within and nurturing the genes and memes that give rise to physical, intellectual, creative, and moral excellence. In the matrix of cyberspace we have the opportunity to heal the two-culture split, to reinvent ourselves, to incubate/weave the emergent religions of the future, and to create our multiple "Ways" appropriate to the dawning Age of Global Dialogue.     

What Difference Does It Make?

Abstract. The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion has its most direct influence on faculty members who teach in colleges, universities, and theological schools. These faculty members, in turn, have an impact upon churches through their leadership and teaching in local communities. Wabash workshops encourage faculty to continue to develop four qualities that make a difference in their teaching and scholarship, in the lives of students who become community and church leaders, and ultimately in the life of the church: these are the abilities to (1) help pastoral leaders integrate multiple kinds of knowledge, (2) value context and particularity, (3) strengthen their skills as public theologians and community leaders, and (4) cultivate the encouragement to live lives of wholeness. The gift of hospitality at Wabash workshops provides the environment and space for faculty to engage these qualities in their teaching, research, scholarship, and living.     

What Does It Mean to Be Relational? A Framework for Assessment and Practice

The authors begin with a question regarding how to better draw upon relational thinking in making case assessments and treatment plans. They first address issues regarding the cultural construction of self and relationships, integrating women's psychology, family systems, and collectivist culture literatures within a discussion of power. Then they present a heuristic framework for how individuals orient themselves within relationships that includes two dimensions--focus and power--and evolves out of the social context. From these two dimensions, a typology of four basic relational orientations is presented: position directed, rule directed, independence directed, and relationship directed. Case examples from couple's therapy and suggestions for practice are provided.     

What Does It Mean to Be a Postcolonial Feminist? The Artwork of Mithu Sen

This article examines what the work of New Delhi‐based artist Mithu Sen brings to thinking about being a postcolonial feminist. Using images from Sen's solo exhibit in New Delhi and New York titled Half Full (2007), I theorize on the complexities that proliferate when thinking about postcolonial feminism. Sen's images play with “an” identity to showcase the hybrid and mobile configuration of postcolonial subjectivity. Sen's provocative aesthetic urges us to rethink defining a set of conditions or tenets for postcolonial feminism. Rather, her aesthetic politics propels through humor and provides a prism to constantly reimagine postcolonial feminist subjectivity by urging a consideration of maps that intersect and overlap.     

What Does it Mean to call God Good?

Contemporary expositions of God's goodness commonly err either (1) by subjecting God to moral laws, which is to question His sovereignty, or (2) by failing to establish that God will always act in accordance with moral principles, which removes the theist's ability to appeal to God's goodness in response to problems of evil. Current attempts at intermediate positions which avoid these two problems fall short. In this paper, I aim to construct a better intermediate position and account of God's goodness. I do this by claiming that God's ability to create is best explained in terms of God's self-love. Since God, as the greatest possible being, must be able to create, He must love Himself. I argue that this in turn entails that God loves all things, since by loving Himself, God loves the pre-existent ideas of everything that will come to exist, and by extension the things themselves. This, I argue, allows us to have confidence that God will act in accordance with moral principles, but without subjecting Him to moral laws.     

Love: What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Does It Operate?

ABSTRACT— Love is a perennial topic of fascination for scholars and laypersons alike. Whereas psychological science was slow to develop active interest in love, the past few decades have seen considerable growth in research on the subject, to the point where a uniquely psychological perspective on love can be identified. This article describes some of the more central and well-established findings from psychologically informed research on love and its influence in adult human relationships. We discuss research on how love is defined, the significance of love for human activity and well-being, and evidence about the mechanisms by which love is believed to operate. We conclude by describing several key questions and potentially important new directions for the next wave of psychological science.     

What Does It Mean That “Space Can Be Transcendental Without the Axioms Being So”?

In 1870, Hermann von Helmholtz criticized the Kantian conception of geometrical axioms as a priori synthetic judgments grounded in spatial intuition. However, during his dispute with Albrecht Krause (Kant und Helmholtz über den Ursprung und die Bedeutung der Raumanschauung und der geometrischen Axiome. Lahr, Schauenburg, 1878), Helmholtz maintained that space can be transcendental without the axioms being so. In this paper, I will analyze Helmholtz’s claim in connection with his theory of measurement. Helmholtz uses a Kantian argument that can be summarized as follows: mathematical structures that can be defined independently of the objects we experience are necessary for judgments about magnitudes to be generally valid. I suggest that space is conceived by Helmholtz as one such structure. I will analyze his argument in its most detailed version, which is found in Helmholtz (Zählen und Messen, erkenntnistheoretisch betrachtet 1887. In: Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie. Springer, Berlin, 1921, 70–97). In support of my view, I will consider alternative formulations of the same argument by Ernst Cassirer and Otto Hölder.     

What Does Heidegger Mean by the Transcendence of Dasein?

Abstract

In this paper, I shall examine the evolution of Heidegger’s concept of ‘transcendence’ as it appears in Being and Time (1927), ‘On the Essence of Ground’ (1928) and related texts from the late 1920s in relation to his rethinking of subjectivity and intentionality. Heidegger defines Being as ‘transcendence’ in Being and Time and reinterprets intentionality in terms of the transcendence of Dasein. In the critical epistemological tradition of philosophy stemming from Kant, as in Husserl, transcendence and immanence are key notions (see Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, 1907, and Ideas I, 1913). Indeed, ‘transcendence in immanence’ is a leitmotif of Husserl’s phenomenology. Husserl discusses transcendence in some detail in Cartesian Meditations §11 in a manner that is not dissimilar to Heidegger. Heidegger is critical of Husserl’s understanding of consciousness and intentionality and Heidegger deliberately chooses to discuss transcendence as an exceptional domain for the discussion of beings in his ‘On the Essence of Ground’, his submission to Husserl’s seventieth-birthday Festschrift. Despite his championing of a new concept of transcendence in the late 1920s, Heidegger effectively abandons the term during the early 1930s. In this paper, I shall explore Heidegger’s articulation of his new ontological conception of finite transcendence and compare it with Husserl’s conception of the transcendence of the ego in order to get clearer what is at stake in Heidegger’s conceptions of subjectivity, Dasein and transcendence.     

Different Realities: What Is Reality and What Difference Does It Make?

Consciousness does not exist apart from psyche; it reflects it. Different realities are not interchangeable with other manifestations of psychic reality. “Borderland consciousness” is the term I have conceived for people who, in one way or another, have a living dynamic connection to and relationship with nature. Given this understanding, the oral traditional and Native American cultures manifest a reciprocity psyche, and are today the closest manifestation of the psychic reality in Genesis, pre-expulsion from Eden. Navajo language contains no words for religion, guilt, human, inanimate, psyche, or ego. The Western psyche manifests a dominion psyche; that is, a binary consciousness borne as a result of the expulsion in Genesis, and wedded to logic as an uncompromising characteristic of sanity and health. This kind of consciousness too often crushes the spirit dimension, which is transrational. An awareness of borderland consciousness is entering into the Western cultural collective. This is the telos of the Garden of Eden expulsion, and itself represents the dominion psyche and the reciprocity psyche in dialogue. This dialogue offers a critical counterbalance to the rogue behavior of the overspecialized Western ego of the dominion psyche. This article urges Jungians to develop new methods of connecting with borderland consciousness since the dominion psyche and its technology alone cannot save our species in the face of the threat of a global climate change disaster.     

What Does (the Young) Heidegger Mean by the Seinsfrage ?

Heidegger's central concern is the question of being (Seinsfrage). The paper reconstructs this question at least for the young (pre- Kehre) Heidegger in the light of two interconnected hypotheses: (1) the substantial content of the question of being can be identified by seeing it as a response to (Marburg) neo-Kantianism; and (2) this content centres around the claim that, pace the neo-Kantians, 'epistemological' concerns are grounded in 'ontological' ones, for which reason 'ontology' must precede 'epistemology' as a form of philosophical inquiry. In section I the general position of (Marburg) neo-Kantianism is sketched. In section II the implications of the neo-Kantian position for the concepts of truth and reality, reason, and experience, are outlined; significant similarities to Sellars, Davidson, and Brandom are revealed. Finally, in section III Heidegger's analysis of everydayness is shown to yield a distinct critique of the neo-Kantian relativization of the concept of the real to the theoretically knowable. From this critique it emerges why Heidegger thinks that 'ontology' precedes 'epistemology'. The project of fundamental ontology marked by the question of being thus shows itself to be at least in part a response to the aporia of Marburg neo-Kantianism.     

The Educational Reform Movement: What Does it Mean for Counseling?

Case, C.W., Lanier, J.E., & Miskel, C.G. (1986). The Holmes Group report: Impetus for gaining professional status for teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 37(4), 36–43.     

What Does It Mean to Be an American? Patriotism,Nationalism, and American Identity After 9/11

The period of heightened nationalism in the United States that followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 provided unusual conditions for investigating issues surrounding the distinction between patriotism and nationalism and the relationship between national identification and pluralistic values. In a survey of national identity and social attitudes conducted in late September 2001, two different definitions of national unity were inserted in the introduction to the questionnaire in an attempt to prime activation of different conceptualizations of nationality. Results demonstrated that the priming conditions did have an effect on the pattern of interrelationships among measures of patriotism, nationalism, and tolerance for cultural diversity.     

What Can Causal Claims Mean?

How can Hume account for the meaning of causal claims? The causal realist, I argue, is, on Hume's view, saying something nonsensical. I argue that both realist and agnostic interpretations of Hume are inconsistent with his view of language and intentionality. But what then accounts for this illusion of meaning? And even when we use causal terms in accordance with Hume’s definitions, we seem merely to be making disguised self-reports. I argue that Hume’s view is not as implausible as it sounds by exploring his conception of language.     

Does God Know What It is Like to be Me?

Does God knows what it is like to be me? Scripture and religious tradition seem quite clear that God knows everything about us, even the deepest secrets of our hearts. There is nothing hidden from him. And this is an answer backed up by a more philosophical theology; for among the traditional list of divine attributes is omniscience: knowing everything that there is to know. The idea, moreover, seems essential to the ordinary religious consciousness, for how can God really help us, or fairly judge us, unless he knows exactly what things are like for us?     

Autism—What Does Gender Have to Do With It?

The relationship between gender and autism is an underexplored topic, and one in which the psychoanalytic literature on gender is relevant. The therapist examines her failing to have understood the importance of gender issues for an autistic male child and his family and the ramifications of this oversight to help in the development of “gender creativity” (Ehrensaft, 2016). The gender issues included an initial absence of gender (the meaning of which will be clarified), a subsequently emerging wish to be a girl, and then a powerful, in part reactive wish to be a male. This case highlights the early sensory issues in the development of gender, dyadic work with parents in the treatment sessions, countertransference reactions related to gender, and the relevance of thinking psychoanalytically about neurodevelopmental disorders.     

What Could It Mean to Say That Today's Stand-Up Audiences Are Too Sensitive?

Contemporary comedy audiences are accused by some comedians of being too morally sensitive to appreciate humor. To get closer to an answer, I will first briefly present the argument over audience sensitivity as found in the nonphilosophical literature. Second, I then turn to the philosophical literature and begin from the idea that “funny” is a response-dependent property. I present a criticism of this response-dependence account of “funny” based in the claim that funniness is not determined by what normal audiences actually laugh at, but by what merits laughter. Third, I argue that excessive or deficient moral sensitivity distorts audience receptivity to humor. Fourth, I turn to candidates for ideally sensitive audiences. I conclude by returning to the particular cases of supposed oversensitivity or undersensitivity to jokes to see how we might judge them.