Freud's philosophy of the uncanny

This paper is an attempt to uncover and bring to a coherent interpretation Freud's thoughts on the phenomenon of uncanniness. Starting out with the essay “The uncanny” the author wants to show that uncanniness plays an important rôle in the turn that Freud's thinking goes through at this time, and that the concept can serve as a springboard for a critical, phenomeno- logical reading of Freud's thoughts on the development of the ego. The analysis of the phenomenon of uncanniness itself tends to disrupt the coherence of Freud's earlier views and pushes him towards his later thinking. “Unheimlich” in German has the double meaning of uncanny and unhome-like, and what is not at home in itself in an uncanny sense, according to Freud, is precisely the human ego. Freud in “The uncanny” links the interpretation of uncanniness to compulsive repetition and thus makes the connection to trauma and birth anxiety discussed in later works such as “Beyond the pleasure principle” and “Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety”. The origin of our general sensitivity to the uncanny is thus, according to Freud, the loss of the mother suffered by the child as a kind of a priori traumatic experience, which is also the very event that makes the child into an ego. The understanding of traumatic neurosis and other forms of mental illness is consequently linked to an analysis of this primal uncanniness of life.     

I Am My Brother's (and Sister's) Keeper: Jewish Values and the Counseling Process

The author writes a rejoinder to M. S. Kiselica's (2003) article “Anti‐Semitism and Insensitivity Toward Jews by the Counseling Profession: A Gentile's View on the Problem and His Hope for Reconciliation—A Response to Weinrach (2002),” which is part of a dialogue in the fall 2003 Journal of Counseling & Development on anti‐Semitism in the counseling profession. M. S. Kiselica supports the notion that Jewish concerns are inextricable from multicultural counseling. The author has asserted that there has been a critical mass of anti‐Semitic behavior within the counseling profession, including the American Counseling Association, for more than 3 decades. The author's perspective may be viewed as an application of the Torah's dictum “I am my brother's [and sister's] keeper.” The author also argues that while culture may influence behavior, it does not determine it exclusively.     

Passing‐over: The Death of the Author in Hegel's Philosophy

Criticism of Hegel has been a central preoccupation of “postmodern” philosophy, from critical theory and deconstruction to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Foucauldian “archaeology.” One of the most frequent criticisms is that Hegel's invocation of “absolute knowledge” installs him in a position of authorial arrogance, of God‐like authority, leaving the reader in a position of subservience to the Sage's perfect wisdom. The argument of this article is that this sort of criticism is profoundly ironic, since Hegel's construction of the role of the Sage possessing absolute knowledge is in fact an elaborate mask covering over a radical project of disappearance of the author by which it becomes the reader who is left to author the text. The article explores Hegel's commitment to his own death as an author in his invention of a new method of demonstration, his epistemology, his philosophy of language, his theory of desire, and even in the seemingly least likely place of all, his portrait of “absolute knowledge.”     

What Is Wrong Indeed?

This is a critical response to Dr. Tamara Dobler's paper “What Is Wrong with Hacker's Wittgenstein? On Grammar, Context and Sense‐Determination.” It demonstrates that Dr. Dobler has no idea of what Wittgenstein meant by “grammar” or “rule of grammar.” She does not know what Wittgenstein meant by “grammatical proposition,” nor does she know what a compositional account of meaning or a category mistake is. She labours under the illusion that to say, as Wittgenstein did, that a rule of grammar excludes a form of words from use is incompatible with the claim that whether an utterance makes sense may be a context‐dependent issue. Unlike Dr. Dobler, Wittgenstein did not.     

Which Horse do You Ride? Trauma from a Relational Perspective. Discussion of Prince's “The Self in Pain: The Paradox of Memory. The Paradox of Testimony”

Discussing Dr. Robert Prince's clinical case example, the author presents a relational psychoanalytic perspective on working with the traumatized patient. She considers the presentation of his work with a Holocaust survivor from a relational perspective with particular attention to the dyadic interaction, the intersubjectivity and co-creations of patient and analyst, and finally, addresses the role of the “witness” in psychoanalytic work. The idea of the witness has particular currency in contemporary psychoanalytic thinking. The author briefly examines the dimensions of the “witness” from a relational point of view. Consideration is also given to the necessary distinction between adult onset and childhood onset trauma and the repercussions of each for the analytic couple.     

The Poetry of Genetics: On the Pitfalls of Popularizing Science

The role genetic inheritance plays in the way human beings look and behave is a question about the biology of human sexual reproduction, one that scientists connected with the Human Genome Project dashed to answer before the close of the twentieth century. This is also a question about politics, and, it turns out, poetry, because, as the example of Lucretius shows, poetry is an ancient tool for the popularization of science. “Popularization” is a good word for successful efforts to communicate elite science to non‐scientists in non‐technical languages and media. According to prominent sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, “sexual dominance is a human universal.” He meant, of course, that men dominate women. Like sociobiology, genetic science is freighted with politics, including gender politics. Scientists have gender perspectives that may color what they “see” in nature. As the late Susan Okin Miller suggested in an unpublished paper tracing the detrimental impact of Aristotle's teleology on Western thought, scientists accustomed to thinking that men naturally dominate women might interpret genetic discoveries accordingly. Biologists have good, scientific reasons to fight the effects of bias. One must be critical of how scientists and popularizers of science, like Genome author Matt Ridley, frame truth and theory. Ridley's “battle of the sexes” metaphor and others have a doubtful place in serious explanations of science.     

The Question of a Jungian Community

The author describes her relationship with the reality of Parkinson's disease—how she twists and turns and pivots and falls with this rapacious intrusion, and how a new, hitherto unknown space opens between Parkinson's and herself. This new space claims its own dynamic, objective reality. In attempts to consciously access the reality of this third space, the author faces paradox, “plays” with metaphor, and tries to recognize the right “reality.” She considers Freud's reality and pleasure principles, Winnicott's iconoclastic declaration of “health being the ability to play with psychosis,” and Jung's transcendent function. She also calls on Hermes with his wings to fly through otherwise impenetrable borders. As an incantation, an evocation or a pathway, she implores Hermes to breathe in flight. In the midst of this inner work, the dragonfly literally appears, emanating transformation.     

“Im Anfang liegt alles beschlossen”: Hannah Arendts politisches Denken im Schatten eines Heideggerschen Problems

The article seeks to understand Hannah Arendt's political thinking by relating it to an issue which is crucial to the thinking of the later Heidegger, i.e., the problem of originality ( Anfänglichkeit) and history. In opposition to Hegel's thesis of the “end of art,” Heidegger envisages in “great art” such as Hölderlin's poetry a new origin of thinking and history. The end of art, which Hegel holds to be necessary, is in Heidegger's view to be overcome precisely because art, for him, entails an origin which is not a “Not yet” of a teleological perfection in Hegel's sense, but a “Not yet” of a future history. However, Heidegger's orientation towards a “pure” origin qua future leads him to poietically escape the realm of the Political and the questions of praxis and practical rationality. Like Heidegger, Arendt is taken with the problem of origin; but in contrast to her former teacher, she tries to regain what Heidegger thought he could leave, viz., the dimension of the genuine Political and of acting. The original sense of acting (for Arendt, the capability of human beings to make a new beginning) can be observed in the Greek polis as well as in the American Revolution in modern times: The revolutionary act of a total new beginning elucidates, according to Arendt, what “acting” means in the full and truly political sense. However, Arendt's notion of an epochal beginning seems one-sided, and her abstract concept of acting seems to foster a mere actionism and anarchy. Therefore, contrary to Arendt's claims, the concept of the Political which she shapes in accordance with the extraordinary experiences of an epochal acting has apolitical consequences. The task of thinking after Heidegger and Arendt thus remains one of determining the political character of action in a convincing manner. In this respect, the paper pleads for a rethinking of Hegel's concept of ethical life ( Sittlichkeit).     

Epistemic Responsibility and Critical Thinking

Should we always engage in critical thinking about issues of public policy, such as health care, gun control, and LGBT rights? Michael Huemer (2005) has argued for the claim that in some cases it is not epistemically responsible to engage in critical thinking on these issues. His argument is based on a reliabilist conception of the value of critical thinking. This article analyzes Huemer's argument against the epistemic responsibility of critical thinking by engaging it critically. It presents an alternative account of the value of critical thinking that is tied to the notion of forming and deploying a critical identity. And it develops an account of our epistemic responsibility to engage in critical thinking that is not dependent on reliability considerations alone. The primary purpose of the article is to provide critical thinking students, or those that wish to reflect on the value of critical thinking, with an opportunity to think metacritically about critical thinking by examining an argument that engages the question of whether it is epistemically responsible for one to engage in critical thinking.     

Collaborative relationships and dialogic conversations: ideas for a relationally responsive practice

The author presents a set of philosophical assumptions that provide a different language for thinking about and responding to the persistent questions: “How can our therapy practices have relevance for people's everyday lives in our fast changing world, what is this relevance, and who determines it?” “Why do some shapes of relationships and forms of talk engage while others alienate? Why do some invite possibilities and ways forward not imagined before and others imprison us?” The author then translates the assumptions to inform a therapist's philosophical stance: a way of being. Next, she discusses the distinguishing features of the stance and how it facilitates collaborative relationships and dialogic conversations that offer fertile means to creative ends for therapists and their clients.     

Transcendence as a Subset of Evolutionary Thinking: A Darwinian View of the Creative Experience

The states of transcendence and affective discontinuities as features of the creative act are posited as analogous to Darwin's theory of evolution. The intellectual essence of Darwin's argument is that randomness processed through a selection system yields purpose. Some recent studies suggest this process holds true for profound acts of creativity. Darwin's two criteria for change, randomness and a system of recognition, are examined in application to the creative act. The argument is made that extraordinary creative people use a specific selection process coupled with the ability to de-structure or randomize their mental environment. Finally, techniques are proposed to structure a creative recognition system and to de-structure the input that is processed to enhance creative results. Considerable research into creativity has been concerned with transcendent thinking, the sudden discontinuous pattern shifts that lead to wonderful new insights. Three schools of thought have attempted to explain and resolve this discontinuity. Overton and Newman (1982) describe two of these. There is the reductionist view taking the position that all creative thinking can be explained by continuous processing. Discontinuity is treated merely as a behavioral or affective phenomenon since by nature pre-conscious algorithms are unavailable for systematic inquiry. The organismic view, on the other hand, takes the lofty position that transcendence is a function of indeterminacy: ideas actually operate in earthly terms but are post-Newtonian in nature. That is, transcendent states are delocalized concepts operating beyond the tangible limitations of space and time. Attempts to measure these phenomena are doomed to the same outcome as the proverbial killing of the goose that laid the golden egg. McCarthy (1993) has recently attempted to reconcile the above positions by arguing that the answer may well be found in the field of quantum physics and elementary particle research. She proposes that nature is a duality. Creative insight and transcendence come about through the superposition of two realities, one which is “boundary-free”; the other a more conscious process which is hierarchal and “boundary-laden.” Presented here is a reductionist point of view asserting that what we consider to be transcendence — the mystical nature of creativity — is not only sequential but a subset of the evolutionary process as set forth by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species (1859). Further, the principles of Darwin's theory may be applied to speed and improve the creative process both for individuals and groups. Other researchers in the field (Campbell, 1960, Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992, Gruber& Davis, 1988, Kantorovich, 1993; Simonton, 1988), have invoked evolutionary thinking to explain the creative process. However, this argument looks at the two properties of evolution necessary for its function and shows how in highly creative people they may operate differently.     

The aesthetic as mirror of faith in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling

One of the most intractable issues in Kierkegaard scholarship continues to be the question of what one is to make of the relation between infinite resignation and faith in Fear and Trembling. Most commentators follow Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author in claiming that progression to faith is a “linear” process that requires infinite resignation as a first step. The problem with such a reading is that it leads to paradox: It seems to require attributing to the “knight of faith” two inconsistent belief‐attitudes simultaneously—on the one hand, the willingness to resign one's heart's desires (infinite resignation) and, on the other, the conviction that one will somehow receive back what one has resigned. But this is a confused way of thinking about faith. I will show that faith's alleged paradoxicality is only apparent and that the element of resignation that constitutes an aspect of it actually bears some striking similarities to what the aesthete has in mind when he speaks, in Either/Or, of throwing hope overboard in order to make possible a truly artistic way of life. Hence, on my interpretation, the knight of faith does not need to adopt two contradictory attitudes at the same time (or constantly to “annul” one of them), but must rather practice a form of spiritual discipline in many ways analogous to the aesthete's endeavour to become a “poet of possibility.”     

The primal scene and symbol formation

This article discusses the meaning of the primal scene for symbol formation by exploring its way of processing in a child's play. The author questions the notion that a sadomasochistic way of processing is the only possible one. A model of an alternative mode of processing is being presented. It is suggested that both ways of processing intertwine in the “fabric of life” (D. Laub). Two clinical vignettes, one from an analytic child psychotherapy and the other from the analysis of a 30 year‐old female patient, illustrate how the primal scene is being played out in the form of a terzet. The author explores whether the sadomasochistic way of processing actually precedes the “primal scene as a terzet”. She discusses if it could even be regarded as a precondition for the formation of the latter or, alternatively, if the “combined parent‐figure” gives rise to ways of processing. The question is being left open. Finally, it is shown how both modes of experiencing the primal scene underlie the discoursive and presentative symbol formation, respectively.     

Claudia Card's Atrocity Paradigm

This paper deals with Claudia Card's important contributions to a theory of evil that steps out from traditional models of thinking about this problem (theodicies, metaphysical theories, etc.). Instead, our author seeks to explore important elements from other theorists (such as Kant and Nietzsche) in order to build up her ideas of what she calls the “atrocity paradigm.” This critical essay focuses mainly in the spaces where Card's conclusions need to rethink the limits and constraints of her theory.     

Some Reflections around the Concept of Value: On Valéry's Claim that Philosophy is Poetry

In response to Paul Valéry's claim that “philosophy is poetry,” Simone Weil set out to examine the nature of philosophical thinking. She argues that it is above all concerned with value. In the course of her argument, she lays out the grammatical differences between thinking about value, and other epistemological endeavours. These differences mean that inconsistencies are not to be avoided in philosophy, and that philosophy is not a matter of system building. In the end, she also believes that thinking philosophically requires one to possess the value of detachment, and hence a readiness to be transformed.     

Developmental Changes in the Basis of Associational Contamination Thinking

Three experiments evaluated the basis of associational contamination thinking among Japanese college students and 4- and 7-year-old children. “Associational contamination thinking” is the belief that mere proximity between a contaminant and a substance will render the substance noxious even without direct contact between contaminants and substances. In Experiment 1, 7-year-olds and adults engaged in associational contamination thinking more often for disgusting (feces and roaches) and dangerous (poison and O-157) contaminants than for taste contaminants (salt and sugar). However, 4-year-olds' predictions were not different among the three types of contaminants. In Experiment 2, when contaminants were assumed to have some biological properties, both adults and 7-year-olds were somewhat more likely to engage in associational contamination thinking; however, such a relation was not found in 4-year-olds. Younger children's similar thinking with related to all contaminants was not attributable to ignorance of the necessity of physical contact. Instead, it appeared to be due in part to overreliance on perceptual cues, as was suggested in Experiment 3.     

THE “AS‐YET SITUATION” IN WINNICOTT'S “FRAGMENT OF AN ANALYSIS”: YOUR FATHER “NEVER DID YOU THE HONOR OF”… YET

The author proposes a new hypothesis in relation to Winnicott's “Fragment of an Analysis”: that as early as 1955, in the case described in this text, Winnicott is creating the paternal function in his patient's psychic functioning by implicitly linking his interpretations regarding the father to the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit. The author introduces an original clinical concept, the as‐yet situation, which she has observed in her own clinical work, as well as in Winnicott's analysis of the patient described in “Fragment of an Analysis” (1955).     

Technology and guidance: a balance

The following symposium discusses the place of technology in guidance and some of the concerns involved. Tiedeman, a leading authority on technological applications in guidance, takes the position that guidance technology is an important new development. Schmidt, who has written widely in the areas of psychology and counseling, questions the place of technology in guidance and society and underlines some of the concerns related to the adoption of technology. The authors' discussions of “one-way” versus “two-way” thinking and the problem of control over the technology should be of interest to readers concerned with applying technology in guidance.