Affect,Desire, and Judgement in Spinoza's Account of Motivation

Two priority problems frustrate our understanding of Spinoza on desire [cupiditas]. The first problem concerns the relationship between desire and the other two primary affects, joy [laetitia] and sadness [tristitia]. Desire seems to be the oddball of this troika, not only because, contrary to the very definition of an affect (3d3; 3 General Definition of the Affects), desires do not themselves consist in changes in one's power of acting, but also because desire seems at once more and less basic than joy and sadness. The second problem concerns the priority of desires and evaluative judgements. While 3p9s and 3p39s suggest that evaluative judgements are (necessarily) posterior to desires, Andrew Youpa has recently argued that passages in Ethics 4 indicate that rational evaluative judgements can give rise to, rather than arise out of, desires. I aim to offer solutions to these problems that reveal the elegance and coherence of Spinoza's account of motivation. Ultimately, I argue that whereas emotions and desires stand in a non-reductive, symmetrical relationship to one another, evaluative judgements must be understood as asymmetrically dependent on, and reducible to, emotions or desires. This interpretation sheds light on our understanding of Spinoza's cognitivist account of emotion. For Spinoza, while emotions are representational, they are not underpinned by evaluative judgements. Rather than inflating emotions to include evaluative judgements, he deflates evaluative judgements, treating them as emotions, or valenced representations, and nothing more.     

大学生的情绪向性、表达性与心理健康关系的研究

采用量表法以170名大学生为被试研究了情绪向性(分正、负向情感变量)、情绪表达性和心理健康的关系.差异检验表明:男性的负向情感多于女性,情感表达不如女性,在正向情感、快乐感上无显著性别差异;大一学生的快乐感多于大四学生,在正、负向情感、情绪表达性上无显著年级差异.(2)相关分析表明:快乐感、正向情感与多数心理症状因子呈显著负相关,负向情感与所有心理症状因子呈显著正相关;情绪表达性与人际敏感、敌对、抑郁、焦虑等因子呈显著负相关.(3)回归分析进一步表明:负向情感对强迫、人际关系、抑郁、焦虑、敌对、偏执等因子均构成显著回归效应,情绪表达对人际敏感、敌对、抑郁、焦虑等因子构成回归效应.     

The death of an analysand: transference, countertransference and desire

This paper is offered as an exploration of transference and countertransference issues when, in the process of analysis, the analysand becomes terminally ill. Written from the point of view of the analyst, eros and boundary issues are discussed. It is proposed that those who are about to die may form particularly intense erotic attachments and that this is characteristic of a speeded up individuation process. The paper is based on the case of a suicidally depressed man who formed an immediate, dependent and erotic transference. After three months, he was diagnosed as having an inoperable lung cancer. From then on the analytic frame was challenged by pressures to act out in a number of different ways. It is argued that gender difference and the heterosexual pairing facilitated the differentiation of adult, sexual and Oedipal feelings from infantile, pre-Oedipal ones. Maintenance of the analytic frame enabled the individuation process to continue to the end.     

Christer Sjödin interviews Jan Stensson

Abstract

The author examines different definitions and applications of the terms “psychic energy” and “libido.” With regard to the “psychic energy” terminology, he shows that its application and usage relate in particular to the perspective of Brenner and not to Freud's definition. He argues that Freud uses the term “psychic energy” as a synonym for “libido,” and not “libido” as a synonym for “psychic energy.” It is demonstrated that in Freud's view, up until 1914, “libido” relates to manifestations of bodily sexual tensions, and subsequently this term applies to the manifestations of sexual energy in the psychic field. The author rejects this change in terminology and also challenges Freud's attempt to use dynamic-economic considerations as an explanatory device for epistemological reasons. Freud's concept of energy is inconsistent with the meaning of energy as defined in the physical sciences, and whereas the metapsychological topographical, dynamic, and structural viewpoints have a solid foundation in the representational world to which the psychoanalytic process affords unique access, this is not true of the economic viewpoint. It is claimed that bodily tensions only exist in the representational world in the form of affects, so that, in the author's opinion, the economic viewpoint should be abandoned in favour of an affective one. In the context of the endeavour to obtain pleasure and avoid unpleasure adduced by Freud, this viewpoint focuses on the relationships between affects and the different elements of the representational world, thereby serving as the subject of metapsychological investigation.     

中学生厌学心理及其干预与学习效率的相关研究

本研究旨在考察两个问题：1．心理咨询是否是改变中学生厌学心理的有效途径,如果是,它能够在多大程度上改变厌学心理;2．厌学心理的改善能否有效提高中学生学习效率。本实验用问卷调查法从183名中学生中筛选出有厌学心理的学生24名。运用个体心理咨询、团体心理咨询等手段对这24名学生进行为期4个月干预、结果表明：心理咨询能够有效且明显地改善厌学心理。但要完全消除厌学心理则还需要辅以其他干预手段;随着学生厌学心理的改善,其学习效率也相应有了明显的提高。     

On Death—Preliminary Communication

I try to show that throughout the analytical process, real issues arise which require analysis; these may relate to time changes, fees, endings of the week or of the term and ultimately the ending of the analysis. The patient's capacity to handle the pain of feeling excluded relates to the patient's internal objects as they are re-experienced in relation to real events in the analysis. These patients ‘experiences of real events, past and current, may be closely bound up with early unconscious phantasies which colour and even dominate the way these events were and are experienced and negotiated. I have particularly emphasised the intersection of real events in the patients’ past and current lives with real events in the analysis and have tried to indicate ways in which they might be addressed in analytic work     

AQUINAS'S ARGUMENT AGAINST SELF-HATRED

Aquinas's argument against the possibility of genuine self‐hatred runs counter to modern intuitions about self‐hatred as an explanatorily central notion in psychology, and as an effect of alienation. Aquinas's argument does not deny that persons experience hatred for themselves. It can be read either as the claim that the self‐hater mistakes what she feels toward herself as hatred, or that, though she hates what she believes is her “self,” she actually hates only traits of herself. I argue that the argument fails on both readings. The first reading entails that all passions are really self‐love, and so is incompatible with Aquinas's own “cognitivist” view of what it is that distinguishes specific passions in experience. The second reading entails that persons have no phenomenal access to “self,” rendering self‐reference—how it is that the self can be an intentional object of conscious mental states—a mystery. Augustine's claim, which Aquinas accepts on authority, that all sin originates in inordinate self‐love seems to entail the impossibility of genuine self‐hatred because both thinkers fail to distinguish between two distinct forms of self‐love: amor concupiscentiae and amor benevolentiae.     

The logic of logical revision formalizing dummett's argument

Neil Tennant and Joseph Salerno have recently attempted to rigorously formalize Michael Dummett's argument for logical revision. Surprisingly, both conclude that Dummett commits elementary logical errors, and hence fails to offer an argument that is even prima facie valid. After explicating the arguments Salerno and Tennant attribute to Dummett, I show how broader attention to Dummett's writings on the theory of meaning allows one to discern, and formalize, a valid argument for logical revision. Then, after correctly providing a rigorous statement of the argument, I am able to delineate four possible anti-Dummettian responses. Following recent work by Stewart Shapiro and Crispin Wright, I conclude that progress in the anti-realist's dialectic requires greater clarity about the key modal notions used in Dummett's proof.     

The synergy of memory, affects and metaphor

Recently, the concept of metaphor has been revitalized as a result of the convergence of interest in this subject from a variety of disciplines including neurobiology, linguistics and cognitive science. Metaphor is now viewed as an emergent property of mind. Metaphor is rooted in the body in two senses: metaphor is used to organize bodily sensation cognitively, especially affects, and secondly, metaphor is rooted in the body as it rests on the border between mind and brain. Metaphor is therefore viewed as a developmentally early, primitive mental function related to synesthesia. There is a significant distinction between frozen or foreclosed metaphors and open and generative metaphors. The foreclosed metaphor will dominate the perception of others in cases of trauma and can be understood as an explanation of transference repetition. Clinical examples of foreclosed metaphors are illustrated by vignettes of patients who have suffered traumas. Examples taken from two artists are used to illustrate instances in which the artist's own unassimilated experiences appear as generative metaphors.     

Fanatic Hatred and Violence in Contemporary America

The paper is a social psychological and psychoanalytic examination of collective violence in the United States in which fanatic hatred and sheer destructiveness are the central operating principles. The primary character structure of who's involved in fanatic violence are shown here to be people who were raised in authoritarian-oriented backgrounds, who find themselves marginal, and unnecessary persons in postmodern American society.     

Under the volcano: varieties of anger and their transformation

This paper seeks to illustrate the ambiguity of the affect of 'anger' which masks a number of subtly different emotions observable in clinical work. The author differentiates between anger, rage and hatred in terms of the dialectical relationship between ego and self and pays particular attention to why it is that for some patients, experiences of anger may be harnessed creatively into development, whereas for others, they remain self destructive. Using illustrations from work with two patients in analysis, the author describes how a persistent grievance originating in the earliest stages of life is linked with hatred and can lead to a defensive self structure. It is suggested that the clues to the presence of a grievance and to its potential transformation are likely to be observable first in the analyst's countertransference in the form of an all-embracing emotional strait jacket. Analysts' capacity to tolerate their own hatred is crucial to the transformation of a patient's grievance.     

Humility, Contemplation and Affect Theory

The affect theory of Tomkins is described and compared to Hilton’s Scale of Perfection. The affect theory suggests that the affects and emotions control human attention, cognition, and behavior. Thus, humans who are able to maintain affective balance and control are most able to negotiate their environment most successfully, and may be considered most free. The Scale of Perfection also suggests that control of the affects and emotions are important, particularly through humility and charity. Hilton describes the act of contemplation as the moment in which humans most fully become themselves and function optimally.Brendan Ignatius McGroarty is a doctoral student in Psychology and Religion at the Catholic University of America, where he is writing a dissertation on the Scale of Perfection and affect theory.     

Développement et validation en langue française de l’Échelle de Mesure de l’Efficacité AutoRégulatrice des Affects en Sport (EARAS)

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the affective self-regulatory efficacy scale (EARAS) in a French sample. The instrument was developed from an adaptation to the sport context of a scale measuring this construct in everyday life (Bandura et al., 1996, 2001, 2003). A series of four complementary studies was carried out with a total sample of 669 students to: (a) develop a preliminary version of EARAS (study 1), (b) confirm the factorial structure of the instrument and examine its invariance (study 2), (c) evaluate the stability of the instrument (study 3), and (d) examine the construct validity of the scale (study 4). The bifactor model of affective self-regulatory efficacy provided the best fit. The EARAS presents satisfactory psychometric properties and constitutes a reliable and valid instrument for developing future research on the role of affective self-regulatory efficacy with in the sports activities of French people.     

Erich Fromm’s concept of reactive violence

Abstract

This paper explores the current relevance of Fromm’s concept of reactive violence for understanding particular patients and for generating hypotheses about the world we live in. In his discussion of reactive violence, Fromm gives us a nuanced approach to forms of aggression that can be employed in the service of life. According to Fromm, the aim of reactive violence is preservation, not destruction. It is rooted in fear and, he believes, is the most frequent form of violence. This paper traces the evolution of Fromm’s concept of reactive violence, and considers how it might apply to today’s social and political challenges.