The Bilingualism of the Language of the Victim and the Language of the Victimizer

Inspired by a panel which took place at the 2018 IARPP conference in New York – this paper, which deals with the bilingualism of the language of the victim and the language of the perpetrator, offers a close reading of the panel’s three papers, trying to characterize their unique poetics of testimony through a differentiation between four modes of traumatic testimony which are distinguished from one another by the degree of the psychic motility they succeed to form in relation to traumatic memories: the “metaphoric”, the “metonymic”, the “excessive” and the “Muselmann” testimonial modes. The last part of the paper suggests a link between the testimonial language of the victim and the testimonial language of the victimizer, trying to understand these polarized languages as two variations of the refusal to mourn.     

Understanding the social costs of narcissism: the case of the tragedy of the commons

Two studies examined narcissism and behavior in a commons dilemma. Study 1 used a four-person, laboratory-based task and Study 2 used a dyadic task. Participants were told that they represented one of four (Study 1) or two (Study 2) forestry companies and then were asked to harvest timber from a renewable forest. Narcissism was found to be positively related to acquisitive goals and harvesting more timber in the initial round. The more narcissists harvesting in the competitive group of four (Study 1) or dyad (Study 2), the less timber was harvested overall and the more rapidly the forest was depleted. Within competitive groups and dyads, however, narcissists harvested more than the nonnarcissists competing with them. In all, narcissism provided a benefit to the self, but at a long-term cost to other individuals and to the commons.     

Influence of the rider on the variability of the equine gait

The aim of this study was to show that the motion pattern of a well-ridden horse varies less than the motion pattern of an unridden horse. In order to do so, we recorded the motion of two markers, one attached to the dorsal spinous processus of lumbar vertebra L4, the other to the right fore hoof. In total, we measured 21 horses in trot, ridden and unridden, with a fitting and with a non-fitting saddle. After breaking down the entire time series of the three-dimensional motion of the markers into their respective motion cycles, we computed a measure of motion pattern variability for the motion as well as for the derivatives (velocity and acceleration) along each of the three principal dimensions. Two of six variables (velocity and acceleration in the forward direction) displayed a significant discrimination between the ridden and the unridden case, and demonstrated the beneficial effect of a rider on the horse's motion pattern variability. Saddle fit was shown to have also an influence on motion variability: variability of two variables (velocity and of acceleration in forward direction) was significantly lower with a fitting saddle compared to a non-fitting saddle, a third variable (acceleration in the transversal direction) showed a significant difference also. This new method offers an objective evaluation of saddle fit, and a sensitive assessment of the quality of the rider in the moving horse.     

序成六虚上下,数生太极乾坤--今本《周易》卦序排列数学规律三探

今本<周易>序卦是一件完美的数学作品.序卦的分布规律体现于一系列的数列之中,但是,假如这些排列规律彼此间缺乏关联性,显得孤立、分散,便难以真正体现序卦排列的数学规律性.经过更深入的研究,笔者发现这些排列规律并非彼此分散、互不相干的,而是互有关联,整合成一个完美的统一体.序卦排列数学规律其鲜明的特点有四:其一是连续性,其二是周期性,其三是对称性,其四是关联性.连续性、周期性体现其简易性,对称性、关联性体现其统一性.简易性、统一性体现其完美性.     

An evaluative study of the role of the grandparent in the best interests of the child

Abstract

Most custody decisions are made in courts hewing to the concept “the best interests of the child. “Most professionals agree that children suffer from a fractured family situation; they disagree on the degree to which children suffer at various stages of growth and development. There is a lack of agreement as to what constitutes a child's best interests. Recent research suggests that grandparents may play a very significant role in the entire life cycle of children. The legal position of grandparents in custodial matters remains somewhat ambiguous. Recently legislation has granted grandparents the right to seek visitation. This represents an awareness on the part of the court that grandparents and grandparenting may be a significant factor in actualizing the best interests of the child.     

Neurodevelopmental assessment of the young child: the state of the art

A wide variety of tests are available to assess the central nervous system (CNS) function of the toddler and preschool-aged child. These tests vary as to function; qualities and abilities tapped; facility with which they can be learned, administered, and scored; availability of test materials and manuals or training videos; and strength of standardization and validation data. Some were developed to screen development of large numbers of children. Others were developed to evaluate a child for diagnosis of disability or delineation of a child's strengths and weaknesses. Some broadly screen or assess multiple aspects of development, while some focus on specific abilities. A limitation of all these tests is that they tap only a small portion of a child's abilities at a given point in time. Administration of a variety of different tests provides a more complete evaluation of a child's abilities. Tests that can follow a child's development over time tap into the continuum of human development. The ability to measure various aspects of CNS functional development is a first step in addressing our greatest challenge, how to promote and support a child's development.     

试论宋儒人文性格的时代特征

受时代变迁和社会环境的影响,宋儒的人文性格呈现出鲜明的时代特质。他们所表现出来的“仕以行道”、以天下为己任的理想与豪情,严格的道德自律精神,深沉、浓重的忧患意识,参禅悟道、争相趋禅之风尚,从一定意义上讲,都与当时的社会文化环境密切相联。宋儒人文性格之形成与涵养,涵摄了个人自身和与之相应的社会文化现象的多重因素。     

On the Psychology of the Uncertain Self and the Integration of the Worldview Defense Zoo

In this paper, I focus on two issues raised against the uncertainty management model that I proposed. The first issue has to do with the need for deeper insight into psychological processes instigated by uncertainty concerns, including the possibility of positive responses to uncertainty. The second issue revolves around the question to what extent uncertainty management is the core motive (vs. a core motive) of worldview defense and sense-making. By discussing these two issues, I hope to (a) make my view on uncertainty management processes clearer, (b) note explicitly that I was advocating a core motive of worldview defense (not the core motive), and (c) propose a research agenda for future research. I end the article with a plea for research studies that focus on moderators of worldview defense motives. These moderator studies may help to integrate the large variety of core motives proposed in the literature to underlie worldview defense strategies.     

On the examination of the role of the episcopalian priest in the pastoral ministry

The purpose of the research was to identify empirically and measurably those dimensions considered important by laity in evaluating their priest. The 83-item questionnaire was developed from existing instruments and from an interview survey carried out on laity from a national selection of Episcopal parishes. 221 parishes responded with complete data. A factor analysis was performed on the data yielding eight useable factors: (a) Pastoral sensitivity, (b) Administrative Skills, (c) Scholarship, (d) Personal Integrity, (e) Innovation, (f) Personal Spirituality, (g) Meaningfulness of Services, and (h) Laity Involvement. The results of the research were seen as a beginning insight into what the laity perceived as important aspects of their parish priest's role, and an instrument to measure these dimensions for further research was produced.     

On the Emergence of the Subject

The paper retraces the elaboration of a model that accounts for the emergence of subjectivity-the possibility to distance self from others and oneself-if we consider people as always taken in social and cultural streams of meaning and tensions. It builds a model considering first, human experience as possible when a person takes distance from the here-and-now. Second, it suggests considering two general semiotic streams that feed in, or support, that distancing-social and cultural discourses, and personal experience. Third, a knitting model suggests the constant creation of personal patters out of these two streams. Fourth, a dynamic, star-like model is proposed to account for the actual and constant emergence of subjectivity out of such social and cultural configurations. The model is constituted by a 2, 3 or N-number of eight-shaped crossing loops, resulting in a star-like model situated in a 3 dimensional space. The proposition is to analyze a person in a specific situation: the attractors enabling these loops, or end-points of the star, are the relevant social and cultural elements: others with whom he or she interacts, specific bodies of shared knowledge, social representations, cultural elements and tools, and so on. In each situation, the relative strength of these elements, or the tension they generate, are negotiated by the person; the unique ways of dealing with that situation and inviting solutions can thus be seen as the emergent subjectivity. The model is explored to account for developmental dynamics at various scales in the lifecourse. Finally, the pragmatic interest of a model emphasizing complex configurations, not simple causalities, is recalled.     

成也萧何败也萧何——工业化语境下当代医学的困境与出路

工业化革命的动力打造了当代医学的昌明和繁盛,而工业化思维即成为当代医学向高层次发展的新羁绊。工业化思维的价值取向,使当代医学走向刻板和教化,耐日益失去应有的灵性和柔性,其僵硬的模式化治疗体系与高度个性化的代谢性新疾病群形成了巨大的反差。医学的技术语汇应匡正“恶”行,择“善”而为,追求和谐,这是当代医学走出工业化阴影的必然出路。     

The state of the art and the fate of the earth

A recent review by Nevin of Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth applies a “behavioral perspective” to the problem of species survival in a nuclear age. It is suggested that no perspective, in this context as in others where less is at stake, should dismiss prematurely some useful ideas from other perspectives. A sampling of “cognitive” concepts is offered to illustrate what actions, aimed at resisting species extinction, might follow from them—not instead of, but in addition to, the guidelines for action a behavioral perspective provides.     

Precision of the anchor influences the amount of adjustment

The anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic has been used to account for a wide variety of numerical judgments. Five studies show that adjustment away from a numerical anchor is smaller if the anchor is precise than if it is rounded. Evidence suggests that precise anchors, compared with rounded anchors, are represented on a subjective scale with a finer resolution. If adjustment consists of a series of iterative mental movements along a subjective scale, then an adjustment from a precise anchor should result in a smaller overall correction than an adjustment from a rounded anchor.     

Development of the understanding of the polysemous meanings of the mental-state verb know

This study investigated children's understanding (3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-year-olds) of the different levels of meaning of the cognitive verb know as defined by the Hall, Scholnick, and Hughes (1987) abstractness and conceptual difficulty hierarchy. We found that cognitive verb knowledge increased with development and that certain low levels of meaning were mastered before certain high levels of meaning irrespective of the medium of presentation: video-taped “skits” and audio-taped “stories.” However, children developed an understanding of low levels of meaning at a more rapid rate than high levels of meaning. This resulted in a more differentiated and hierarchical cognitiveverb knowledge in older children. Finally, we found that the audio-taped stories were more difficult than the video-taped skits, and that both tasks were significantly correlated with a standardized vocabulary measure for all ages except the 3-year-olds. The implications of this study and others for a model of the cognitive-verb lexicon are discussed.     

Discerning the Signs of the Times

This article offers a close reading of the six reports from the 4th Assembly of the WCC in Uppsala 1968. The assembly was keenly in tune with the worldwide upheavals of the year. It indeed sought to discern the signs of the time and produced a number of creative suggestions, for example by emphasizing the aspect of inclusiveness in catholicity, by stressing the multilateral dimension of mission, and not least by highlighting the churches' inherent responsibility to be agents of justice and peace in a fractured world. Uppsala 1968 proved to name in a prophetic way crucial issues that remain on the agenda for worldwide Christianity: class, economy, isolationism, racism, the arms race. But today the churches are also confronted with new and renewed issues such as post‐colonialism, migration, ecology, gender, and a theological grounding of the church‐s existence in the world. The article concludes by proposing table fellowship as a possibility for such theological grounding.     

The Jews of Jaffa at the Time of the Arab Revolt: the emergence of the demand for annexation

The outbreak of the 1936 riots immediately motivated the Jews of Jaffa to sever their ties with that city in favour of annexation to Tel Aviv. This demand became one of the thorniest and most sensitive problems on the local level, and engaged the British authorities right up to the end of the Mandate. It also became a concern of the highest order for the institutions of the yishuv, bound up with the Zionist struggle as a whole. This article focuses on the origin of the problem and its treatment from 1936 to 1939. The activity of the Jewish side is studied as being in conflict with that of the British and Arab side. From the outset, a solution hardly seemed likely. As long as the authorities preferred a policy of non-involvement, the issue remained a quarrel between the Jews and the Arabs. Although this period ended without any progress towards a settlement, it produced several notable gains for the Jewish side that formed a basis for continued action towards annexation in the years to come.     

Consciousness from the Viewpoint of the Structural-functional Relationships of the Brain

The brain of vertebrates consists of brainstem and spinal cord conducting reflexes, compound movements, and innate behaviour, and the cerebral neocortex generating sensorimotor function and association function. These five major functions are assisted by four regulatory systems: limbic system, basal ganglia, cerebellum and sleep-wakefulness brainstem centres. Consciousness contains three different levels, i.e., wakefulness, awareness and self-consciousness. Wakefulness is a fundamental brain function regulated by the brainstem wakefulness centres. Awareness represents integration of diverse sensory signals, largely in the neocortex, for the perception of what is going on in the external world. Consciousness in humans is directed to the self so that an individual is aware of what is going on in his or her internal world, i.e., the mind, and seems to be inherent to the association cortex, in particular the frontal lobe. Freud's id emerges from the hypothalamus and limbic system, whereas the ego involves both the sensorimotor and association cortices. The super-ego is likely to be embodied in part of the association cortex. When movement and thought are conceived as a control system function, instruction for control corresponds to the will which initiates these actions and which represents a positive aspect of consciousness. Though consciousness is related to brain structures in these ways, a crucial question remains as to how we subjectively experience will, affect or self-consciousness as a consequence of neuronal activities in the brain structures.     

On the replicability of the factorial structure of the sensation seeking scale

The present investigation sought to further examine the underlying factorial structure of the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS). Since the cross-national replicability of the structure postulated by Zuckerman was studied recently by researchers from Australia and Canada using the SSS form V (Ball, Farnill and Wangeman, 1983; Rowland and Franken, 1986), it seemed worthwhile to compare their results with the results obtained in a non-English speaking culture.One-hundred-and-sixty-nine Israeli female students completed the Hebrew version of the SSS within a selection type setting. The factor analytic results by-and-large replicated three out of the four Sensation Seeking subfactors identified by Zuckerman. A comparison of the factor analytic results with those obtained in the Australian and Canadian studies yielded a considerably high congruence between the Israeli and the Canadian samples. However, a lower congruence was achieved when each of these samples was compared with the Australian sample. As a result of the cross-national comparison, 16 items were identified as inadequate. In spite of the general replicability of the factor structure of the SSS in several cultures, the findings of this study support the conclusion reached by Ball et al. (1983) and by Roland and Franken (1986) that a refinement of the scale is desirable.