The analyst's participation: a new look

Over the past fifteen years or so, advocates of a relational theory of psychoanalytic process have developed a compelling challenge to the classical approach to clinical work. Their critique of a fixed "standard technique," applicable across the board to all analyzable patients, has been particularly effective. The new approach opens the possibility of tailoring technique to individual analysands, negotiating the best way of working within each unique analytic dyad. But despite the openness of relational theory, many of the most influential clinical vignettes in the recent literature emphasize the analyst's risk-taking, engaging patients in a highly personal way that breaks the traditional analytic frame. Various implications of the tendency of relational analysts to emphasize this sort of intervention are discussed, and questions raised about the way this may affect how relational thinking is received.     

Taking a new look at seductive details

What is the effect of seductive details on learning outcomes? What are the boundary conditions of seductive detail effects? How do seductive details affect learning? These are the kinds of questions addressed in this special issue on seductive details. This special issue contains 11 articles presenting original results that take a new look at seductive details.     

Fictionalism versus deflationism: a new look

In the recent literature there has been some debate between advocates of deflationist and fictionalist positions in metaontology. The purpose of this paper is to advance the debate by reconsidering one objection presented by Amie Thomasson against fictionalist strategies in metaontology. The objection can be reconstructed in the following way. Fictionalists need to distinguish between the literal and the real content of sentences belonging to certain areas of discourse. In order to make that distinction, they need to assign different truth-conditions to the real and the literal content. But it is hard to see what more is required for the literal content to be true than for the real content to be true. So, fictionalism is an unsatisfactory position. Here I offer a novel reply to Thomasson’s challenge. I argue that the literal and the real content need not be distinguished in terms of their truth-conditions; rather, they can be distinguished in terms of their different subject-matters, leaving it open whether their truth-conditions coincide or not. I explain how replying to Thomasson’s objection is crucial for deepening our understanding of fictionalist strategies in metaontology.     

Taking a new look at looking at nothing

A crucial question in cognitive science is how linguistic and visual information are integrated. Previous research has shown that eye movements to objects in the visual environment are locked to linguistic input. More surprisingly, listeners fixate on now-empty regions that had previously been occupied by relevant objects. This 'looking at nothing' phenomenon has been linked to the claim that the visual system constructs sparse representations of the external world and relies on saccades and fixations to extract information in a just-in-time manner. Our model provides a different explanation: based on recent work in visual cognition and memory, it assumes that the visual system creates and stores detailed internal memory representations, and that looking at nothing facilitates retrieval of those representations.     

Perceiving an object and its context in different cultures: a cultural look at new look

Abstract - In two studies, a newly devised test (framed-line test) was used to examine the hypothesis that individuals engaging in Asian cultures are more capable of incorporating contextual information and those engaging in North American cultures are more capable of ignoring contextual information. On each trial, participants were presented with a square frame, within which was printed a vertical line. Participants were then shown another square frame of the same or different size and asked to draw a line that was identical to the first line in either absolute length ( absolute task ) or proportion to the height of the surrounding frame ( relative task ). The results supported the hypothesis: Whereas Japanese were more accurate in the relative task, Americans were more accurate in the absolute task. Moreover, when engaging in another culture, individuals tended to show the cognitive characteristic common in the host culture.     

A new look at selective exposure

The relevance of the personality dimension “repression-sensitization” (D. Byrne in B. A. Maher (Ed.), Progress in experimental personality research, Vol. 1, NY: Academic Press, 1964, pp. 169–219) to selective exposure processes was investigated. Experimental repressors (who typically employ “avoidance” strategies in dealing with threatening stimuli) and experimental sensitizers (who generally “approach” threatening stimuli) were allowed to choose and keep one of two pairs of painting reproductions, each pair containing one positively and one negatively valued painting. After the decision, which experimental subjects believed terminated the experiment, subjects were allowed to inspect the alternatives ad libitum for 75 sec. Eye gaze during this period was unobtrusively videotaped. Compared to their matched controls, who were simply asked to inspect the paintings in order to decide which ones they liked best, experimental repressors inspected paintings that were consonant with their choices and avoided looking at paintings that were dissonant with their decisions. Experimental sensitizers did not manifest such postdecisional selective exposure. The implications of these results for past and future research on dissonance-produced selective exposure were discussed.     

打造新时代的天师道风貌

天师道文化自祖天师张道陵创教起,至今已有1800多年的历史。如果加上其前身的道家学说和方仙道崇拜,历史就更加悠久。数千年来,宗派传承,历代高道孜孜不倦地探索,创造了与儒、释并立的中国主流文化之一。其深厚的文化沉淀,丰富的人文哲理,至今仍闪烁着先辈智慧的光芒。当然,在漫长的历史进程中,天师道文化也不可避免地掺杂了一些糟粕。发掘和继承传统的精华,摒弃不合时代的糟粕,使天师道更好地适应现代社会,适应世界科学文明高速发展的潮流,是我们这一代人义不容辞的责任。故撰写此文,权当与全体道教同仁及所有热爱道教文化的社会贤达之士共…     

A new look at Copernicus and Kant

Continental Philosophy Review -     

A new look at time and eternity

In his Systematic Theology, Vol. III, Wolfhart Pannenberg argues that God as eternal comprehends the different moments of time simultaneously and orders them to constitute a whole or totality. The author contends that this approach to time and eternity might solve the logical tension between the classical notion of divine sovereignty and the common sense belief in creaturely spontaneity/human freedom. For, if the existence of the events constituting a temporal sequence is primarily due to the spontaneous decisions of creatures, and if their being ordered into a totality or meaningful whole is primarily due to the superordinate activity of God, then both God and creatures play indispensable but nevertheless distinct roles in the cosmic process.