Freud and the Visual Arts

Freud was more interested in literature than painting and sculpture, as Louis Fraiberg and Richard Sterba note. The question is how this affected his analysis of Leonardo's paintings and Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses The author argues that because he regarded them as intellectual puzzles to be psychoanalytically deciphered, he reduced them to a species of literature, suggesting his reluctance to recognize their aesthetic significance, and perhaps his inability to do so. The visual work of art becomes something to be read rather than seen. Its sensuousness is given short shrift. For example, Freud makes no mention of chiaroscuro and sfumato in his study of Leonardo—just those elements for which his art is famous as art. As Freud said, his analytic turn of mind kept him from obtaining any pleasure from what he could not rationally explain. The author traces Freud's elevation of the literary over the visual, and with that of the analyzable over the unanalyzable, to his critique of Charcot, whom he described as a visuel,' a man who sees his patients (and photographed them) rather than listens to them. Finally, Freud's dislike of modern art is contrasted with Karl Abraham's appreciation of its sensuous uniqueness. The general point is made that Freud didn't understand that the key to art was the artist's engagement with the medium.     

Combining the roles of “Priest” and “physician”: A clinical case

In antiquity the healing role was usually performed by one person-a priest-physician. This also applied to hypnotism. As science emerged, eventually the roles of physician and priest were separated and performed by different persons. In the present case the roles of priest and physician were again united, resulting in significant improvement for the patient. Previously the separated roles had been ineffective.Edward M. Scott, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist in private practice, is Professor of Medical Psychology, University of Oregon Health Sciences Center, Portland, and Clinical Manager of the Alcohol Treatment and Training Center, Department of Human Resources, Oregon State Mental Health Division. He is an Associate Editor of theInternational Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, the author of three books, and co-editor (with his wife Kathy) of a fourth book, and the author of 39 published articles.     

Introduction to the Special Edition: The Implications of Multicultural Diversity and Ethnopolitical Conflict for Working with Groups

This introduction to a special edition of the journal Group on The Implications of Multicultural Diversity and Ethnopolitical Conflict for Working with Groups explores the reasons that social and political forces and traumatic societal events have until recently been neglected in the theory and practice of group psychotherapy. Freud's abandonment of the infantile seduction theory and subsequent emphasis on intrapsychic fantasy and defense, the philosophy and science of the Enlightenment, and professional norms in a field dominated by individuals from privileged classes and cultures are cited as sources of the relative neglect of ethnopolitical conflict, minority issues, and multicultural diversity in the treatment process. The articles in this journal attempt to redress these shortcomings and constitute a movement towards including these factors in the common standard of training and treatment.     

Some aspects of eloquence in Descartes's works

In Descartes's philosophy, communicating scientific and philosophical truth does not represent a problem that can be traced back to humanistic rhetoric, meant as the art of persuasion. Descartes states his belief in the eloquence of reason: a clear, precise, and adequately expressed thought cannot fail to convince the listener. This is the measure of the distance between the level of truth and the level of opinion. However, the moment of confrontation with the public is also the very moment when the truth of the new knowledge enters into conflict with other, different conceptions. Education and history influence communication with the result that the distinction between intellectual conviction and persuasion becomes less straightforward. Rational eloquence, as Descartes is well aware, must be articulated in such a way as to avoid any possible language equivocation and to adopt exposition strategies ensuring effective access to readers. The aim of this paper is to illustrate some aspects of this tension as expressed by the writer Descartes with reference to a number of texts (from the Regulae to the Meditationes) that were essential for the elaboration and dissemination of his philosophy.     

Freud and Erikson: Their Contributions to the Psychology of God-Image Formation

Sigmund Freud's construct of the father of personal prehistory (1961), provides the foundation for the argument that our earliest and most enduring representations of God emerge in infancy during a process Freud calls primary identification, that is an identification with this first father, whom Freud says is actually both parents and the flow of feeling between them. Erik Erikson's work on infants' earliest experiences provides support for this argument if it does not anticipate it. Pastoral psychotherapist in private practice in     

Yes,Virginia, Lemons are Yellow

This paper discusses a number of themes and arguments in The Quest for Reality: Stroud's distinction between philosophical and ordinary questions about reality; the similarity he finds between the view that coloris unreal and the view that it is subjective; his argument against thesecondary quality theory; his argument against the error theory; and the disappointing conclusion of the book.     

Modal logic with names

We investigate an enrichment of the propositional modal language with a universal modality having semanticsx iff y(y ), and a countable set of names — a special kind of propositional variables ranging over singleton sets of worlds. The obtained language _c proves to have a great expressive power. It is equivalent with respect to modal definability to another enrichment () of, where is an additional modality with the semanticsx iff y(y x y ). Model-theoretic characterizations of modal definability in these languages are obtained. Further we consider deductive systems in _c. Strong completeness of the normal _c-logics is proved with respect to models in which all worlds are named. Every _c-logic axiomatized by formulae containing only names (but not propositional variables) is proved to be strongly frame-complete. Problems concerning transfer of properties ([in]completeness, filtration, finite model property etc.) from to _c are discussed. Finally, further perspectives for names in multimodal environment are briefly sketched.     

John Nash's Postdelusional Period: A Case of Transformed Narcissism

This article concludes the psychoanalytic study of mathematical genius John Nash begun in previous articles (Capps 2003a, 2003b) by focusing on his recovery from paranoid schizophrenia after more than a decade of being under control of his delusions. I develop the idea that Nash was a highly narcissistic personality, the primary focus of which was his beautiful mind, in the years preceding his mental breakdown. I attribute his recovery primarily to the transformation of his narcissistic personality and support this attribution by means of Heinz Kohut's identification of five major expressions of transformed narcissism in his classic essay on the forms and transformations of narcissism.     

A. “Verification” of statements in psychology

(1) In contradistinction to mathematics, physics and biology, psychology and psychiatry deal to a large extent with the verbal behaviour of their objects. They are faced with two kinds of sense-problems: those with which the observer has to do in his theory-construction, and those which are characteristic of the verbal behaviour of his subjects.(2) Apart from a schematic and simplified usage, as it occurs in filling-up exercises and other laboratory verbal behaviour, the psychologist has to do with statements the sense of which, on the one hand, is determined by the usage of his subjects and, on the other hand, so far as his records and theory are concerned, by his own language-sense.(3) This situation may give rise, and often gives rise, to all kinds of verbal confusions. If we call object-language the language used in verbal behaviour of people which psychology investigates and meta-language the language psychology uses in its discourse about the verbal behaviour of people, it becomes obvious that in present-day psychology the two languages are inextricably mixed together. The language of the subject is I-language, that of the observer, in relation to the subject, is he-language. Both, investigators and investigated, often use terms without referents or with only verbal associations. There can be a great dispersion between the sense of statements used by the subject and that of statements used by the observer.(4) The use of physical language is not a remedy against a confusing terminology. One can tell highly speculative stories in physical language. The empirical verification of statements used by the investigator would require naming the concrete operations involved in testing them.(5) Objective, in the sense of a class of responses yielding maximum reliability coefficients within or between individuals facing a common observational situation or situational element, refers to a criterion to which the protocol of the tester is subjected. An investigation into the way in which subjects verify their, often mainly emotive, statements requires other means (e.g. looking at the way in which they justify their behaviour or trying to break through the chain of their verbal associations (circular reasonings)).     

The ‘will to believe’ in science and religion

Conclusion The Will to Believe defines the religious question as forced, living and momentous, but even in this article James asserts that more objective factors are involved. The competing religious hypotheses must both be equally coherent and correspond to experimental data to an equal degree. Otherwise the option is not a live one. If I say to you Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan, it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. Analogously, in A Pluralistic Universe James is at pains to convince the reader that his own religious hypothesis is just as objective, makes just as much sense, etc. as alternative possibilities: the only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it [pluralistic pantheism] is a fully coordinate hypothesis with monism. This world may, in the last resort, be a block universe; but on the other hand, it may be a universe only strung along, not rounded in and closed. Reality may exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. On that possibility I do insist. Here, once again, before the will to believe can be employed, the objective factors of competing hypotheses, their equal coherence and correspondence, must be brought out.When reconstructed, James' overall outlook has a qausi Kuhnian taint to it- though obvious differences remain. Much of what goes on in evaluating competing scientific hypotheses is either not forced, or not living, or not momentous, but rather typical, dead, and avoidable, in short very normal. But there are moments in the history of science where the decision between hypotheses might well be forced, living and momentous, and sometimes James comes close to recognizing this.Analogously, a good deal of what goes on in religion is not forced, not living or not momentous - in short it is all too normal. In The Varieties of Religious Experience for example, James proposes to ignore the institutional branch of the religious domain and to concentrate on personal and psychological factors, his reason being that the institutional aspect concentrates on the routine, the normal. Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods. and again The word religion, as ordinarily used, is equivocal. A survey of history shows us that, as a rule, religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to organize themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing; so that when we hear the word religion nowadays, we think inevitably of some church or other.Clearly here religion has a normal, i.e. trivial side, just as does science. On the other hand, there are revolutionary moments in religion, such as that of choosing between theism and materialism in Pragmatism, or choosing among theism, monistic pantheism and pluralistic pantheism in A Pluralistic Universe. Such moments involve the will to believe and are clearly more personal than their counterparts in the domain of normal institutionalized religion. Going further, there are no doubt differences of degree between the will to believe decisions in science and the will to believe decisions in religion. These have been explicated in more specific terms by Ian Barbour in his article, Paradigms in Science and Religion. ...each of the subjective features of science... is more evident in the case of religion: (1) the influence of interpretation on data, (2) the resistance of comprehensive theories of falsification, and (3) the absence of rules for choice among paradigms. Each of the corresponding objective features of science is less evident in the case of religion: (1) the presence of common data on which disputants can agree, (2) the cumulative effect of evidence for or against a theory, and (3) the existence of criteria which are not paradigm-dependent. It is clear that in all three respects religion is a more subjective enterprise than science. But in each case there is a difference of degree - not an absolute contrast between an objective science and a subjective religion. Barbour correctly notes that the ...choice is not between religion and science, but between theism, pantheism, and naturalism, let us say, as each is expressed in a particular historical tradition. No basic beliefs are capable of demonstrable proof. James sometimes comes close to recognizing this but his oscillation on the status of the everyday world of common sense, or the perceptual world, causes him not to see the issue clearly. When the animated world of the perceptual is taken as the all inclusive really real, science is viewed as an abstract, second class citizen. But James offers what we would consider a more sophisticated and adequate perspective when he views the world of common sense, having become linguistified, as itself suspicious, and consequently views all three tiers - common sense, scholastic philosophy, and science - as regional ontologies, or language games in Wittgenstein's terminology - and opposes all three to a more primordial or prereflexive level. When James takes this second approach it is easier to see that the basic distinction he began to make in The Will to Believe was between the scientific and religious domain where the will to believe was to be employed, and the domain of ordinary religion and science. Finally this position anticipates his ultimate metaphysical outlook, viz. pure experience as approachable through language on a series of diverse regional levels, but nonetheless not completely describable within language.It is important to recall that in The Varieties of Religious Experience James distinguishes between the science of religions and what he calls living religion: [T] he science of religions may not be an equivalent for living religion; and if we turn to the inner difficulties of such a science, we see that a point comes when she must drop the purely theoretic attitude, and either let her knots remain uncut, or have them cut by active faith. The study of religion, in short is not the activity of religion; the latter is animated, personal, and, we would argue, necessitates a commitment in terms of the will to believe. Once again, however, James hesitates over offering the same two-fold delineation in other areas of science. On the one hand he tells the reader that science-has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view. On the other hand, he offers the following comment a few pages later on in a footnote: ...the divorce between scientist facts and religious facts may not necessarily be as eternal as it at first sight seems, nor the personalism and romanticism of the world, as they appeared to primitive thinking, be matters so irrevocably outgrown. The final opinion may, in short, in some manner now impossible to forsee, revert to the more personal style, just as any path of progress may follow a spiral rather than a straight line. If this were so, the rigorously impersonal view of science might one day appear as having been a temporarily useful eccentricity rather than the definitely triumphant position which the sectarian scientist at present so confidently announces it to be. The burden of this paper has been to indicate that when James' two-fold outlook on perception and/or common sense is properly reconstructed, the raproachment between science and religion is not so impossible to forsee.

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Hare on utilitarianism and intuitive morality

InMoral Thinking R. M. Hare offers a very influential defense of utilitarianism against intuitive objections. Hare's argument is roughly that utilitarianism conflicts with defensible moral intuitions only in unusual cases and that, in such cases, even defensible moral intuitions are unreliable. This paper reconstructs Hare's arguments and argues that they presuppose the success of his problematic proof of utilitarianism. Contrary to what many have thought, Hare's negative defense of utilitarianism against intuitive objections is not separable from his proof. In the second part of the paper I argue that Hare does not succeed in defending utilitarianism against the objection that it is too demanding. The final section of the paper sketches a substantially revised version of Hare's reply to intuitive objections. So revised, the argument is independent of Hare's proof and affords a plausible answer to the objection that utilitarianism is too demanding.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Loyola University and Saint Olaf College. I am greatly indebted to my colleague Harry Gensler for helpful comments on numerous drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Michael Gorr, Brad Hooker, Shelly Kagan, Heidi Malm, Richard Hare, Peter Singer, Onora O'Neill, George Trey, Joe Sullivan, and an anonymous referee. This paper developed out of a series of discussions with Mark Overvold. I dedicate the paper to his memory. I would also like to thank Loyola University for a paid leave of absence which enabled me to write the paper.     

Six-year-old children's understanding of sentences adjoined with time adverbs

The adjoining of clauses with temporal links is the basis for many sentences that convey sequence of events. The present study attempts to delineate 6-year-old children's (N=30) understanding of the meaning sequences imparted by sentences adjoined with after, before, and until. Their performance of the meaning sequence for each of 24 carefully constructed sentences is compared to an adult model. Analysis of the results (using a Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Rank Test) indicated that: (1)Ss understood sentences adjoined with after according to an adult model more frequently than before adjoined sentences (P<0.01); (b) Until adjoined sentences with a negative marker in the main clause were understood according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences with no such negative element, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01; (3)Ss understood before adjoined sentences according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01. In general, the results indicated that 6-year-olds have not yet completed development of an adult grammar with respect to adjoining clauses with temporal links, after, before, and until.     

Myth-conceptions concerning death-related behavior

Summary The discussion here has suggested that it is likely that the following beliefs are myth conceptions: Living is always prefarable to dying. It is possible for people not to play God. We can be sure that what happens biologically is willed by God. God speaks to us only through our biology. Dying occurs only at one point in time-at the end of the terminal period. Death or dead are more accurate labels than passed on. Persons who are dying know without being told that they are dying. Biological death is the most important thing happening when a person dies.The goal of achieving understanding of our death-related behavior can be facilitated by recognition of myth-conceptions such as these and the previously identified myths the acceptance of which may have an impact upon both biological and mental or spiritual health of those involved.He is the author ofSociology of Death and other books and articles.     

The artist as transgressor in Mandel'štam's poetry

In Mandel'tam's writing, artistic creativity is described as based on the indispensable yet contradictory modes of compliance and deviation. The artist, by his artistic nature, must be an obedient disciple to the tradition that inspires him, and, at the same time, a violator who renders what inspires him in an individual form. Thus, art implies iterability through novelty. In the totalitarian state, this double nature of art acquires a sinister context and brings the artist to an unavoidable conflict with the state. He has a choice between a servile compliance with the state's command and artistic independence. If the artist complies, he loses his ingenuity; if, on the other hand, he has the courage to break away from the established order, his fate is martyrdom. The criteria of truth and falsehood, the issue of loyalty, of compromise and collaboration or resistance become most relevant. Such words as outcast or non-contemporary acquire the meaning of non-collaborationist or enemy of the people. In the totalitarian state a genuine artist is viewed as a law-breaker, and his art leads him to crime. The notions of compliance and deviation cease being merely aesthetic terms and assume in Mandel'tam's poetry complex, subtle and tragic overtones.I would like to express my gratitude to John Barnstead, Thomas Blakeley, James Doull, Elena Glazov-Corrigan, Gregory Glazov, Leonard Kazdan, Peter Kussmaul, Malcolm Ross, Detlev Steffen, and Ieva Vitins for their valuable criticism, suggestions, and revisions of my English.     

Semantics for existential graphs

This paper examines Charles Peirce's graphical notation for first-order logic with identity. The notation forms a part of his system of existential graphs, which Peirce considered to be his best work in logic. In this paper a Tarskian semantics is provided for the graphical system.     

The group member's view of inner and outer reality: The Janus phenomenon applied to the group

This paper surveys some theoretical aspects of psychodynamic group treatment from the vantage point of the Janus phenomenon. This focus may provide some clarification in understanding how group therapy facilitates growth, especially in the relationships between inner realities and the realities of the external world. The paper explores and seeks bridges and connections between the dynamics of the group and intrapsychic dynamics. The inner view may be understood as intimately connected with intrapsychic concerns, whereas the issues for patients in groups do, to a degree, concern interpersonal processes in and projections onto the external world. The paper concludes that, thus far, we must accept less than perfect integration of theory and settle for limited domain reasoning (Scheidlinger, 1982). Erlebnis is the term coined by Paul Federn (1952) to refer to subjective experience of the self.     

A paradigm shift in Heidegger research

The Beiträge zur Philosophie mandates a paradigm shift in Heidegger scholarship. In the face of (1) widespread disarray in the current model, the new paradigm (2) abandons Sein as a name for die Sache selbst, (3) understands Welt/Lichtung/Da as that which gives being, (4) interprets Dasein as apriori openedness rather than as being-there, (5) understands the Kehre as the interface of Geworfenheit and Entwurf, not as a shift in Heidegger's thinking, (6) interprets Ereignis as the opening of the Da rather than as appropriation, and (7) understands human finitude as what gives all forms of being and all epochs in the history of being. The conclusion alludes to the function of Mitdasein (co-openness) as die Sache selbst.     

The Oedipus Complex and the Role of Religion in the Neurosis of Father Hunger

This essay discusses Freud's writings on the Oedipus Complex to illumine his distinction between a boy's object-choice and identification with his father. Explains why object-choice is relinquished in favor of identification in the demolition of the Oedipus Complex. Identifies homophobia as an effect of this outcome, and indicates how the Judaeo-Christian religion is implicated in the fact that love between boys and their fathers is unrealized, and thus why men are inflicted with the neurosis of father hunger.     

On the identification of clinically significant client changes: Reinterpretation of Jacobson's cut scores

Cut points or cut scores play a central role in Jacobson's popular method of identifying clinically significant changes in psychotherapy. When pre- and posttherapy scores of a client are on different sides of one of these cut scores, the change is considered clinically significant, provided that it is also reliable (i.e., not due to measurement errors). This article critically examines the meanings and implications of these cut scores. Contrary to popular beliefs, they are generallynot the test scores for which the probability of belonging to the Functional population is equal to the probability of belonging to the Dysfunctional population. When the Functional population distribution is above that of the Dysfunctional population, persons scoring above these cut scores can, in fact, have much greater probabilities of belonging to the Dysfunctional than to the Functional population. Goals of Jacobson's method can be attained only with Bayesian methods. Bayesian modifications of Jacobson's cut scores are proposed, although their use is limited by the availability of relevant base rates. Bayesian methods (a) can provide information about the probability that an individual belongs to each population, given his (her) score, and (b) are expected to yield total misdiagnosis rates that are many times lower than those of Jacobson's method. Users of Jacobson's method are cautioned against interpreting ratios of likelihoods as if they were ratios of posterior probabilities.