The Silence of the Body

As a practice meant to release the subject from the narcissism that informs the concerns and preoccupations of her or his ego, psychoanalysis aims at a transformation of the subject comparable to the Buddha's quest for enlightenment. In order to clarify this subtle and difficult dimension of psychoanalytic work, this essay draws upon a clinical example and discusses it in the context of both Freud's and Lacan's ideas about the role of narcissism in the formation of the ego, and the Buddha's doctrine of Anatta, which insists that the concept of the Atman, or self, is based upon an illusory thought.     

Silence is not golden: a case for socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting

The present research explored the effect of selective remembering and the resulting "silences" on memory. In particular, we examined whether unmentioned information is more likely to be forgotten by a listener if related information is recollected by the speaker than if related information is not recollected by the speaker. In a modification of the retrieval-induced forgetting paradigm, pairs of individuals studied material, but in the practice phase, only one member of each pair selectively recalled it, while the other listened. Experiment 1 employed paired associates, and Experiment 2 used stories. Experiment 3 involved not controlled practice, but free-flowing conversation. In each case, results from a final memory test established not only within-individual retrieval-induced forgetting, but also socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting. The results demonstrate that listening to a speaker remember selectively can induce forgetting of related information in the listener.     

Computation of mean size is based on perceived size

The present study investigated whether computation of mean object size was based on perceived or physical size. The Ebbinghaus illusion was used to make the perceived size of a circle different from its physical size. Four Ebbinghaus configurations were presented either simultaneously (Experiment 1) or sequentially (Experiment 2) to each visual field, and participants were instructed to attend only to the central circles of each configuration. Participants’ judgments of mean central circle size were influenced by the Ebbinghaus illusion. In addition, the Ebbinghaus illusion influenced the coding of individual size rather than the averaging. These results suggest that perceived rather than physical size was used in computing the mean size.     

The heart's content: the association between positive psychological well-being and cardiovascular health

This review investigates the association between positive psychological well-being (PPWB) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). We also consider the mechanisms by which PPWB may be linked with CVD, focusing on the health behaviors (e.g., smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, sleep quality and quantity, and food consumption) and biological functions (e.g., cardiovascular, inflammatory, and metabolic processes) that are most relevant for cardiovascular health. Because PPWB is a broad concept, not all aspects of PPWB may be associated with cardiovascular health. Thus, we distinguish between eudaimonic well-being, hedonic well-being, optimism, and other measures of well-being when reviewing the literature. Findings suggest that PPWB protects consistently against CVD, independently of traditional risk factors and ill-being. Specifically, optimism is most robustly associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular events. In general, PPWB is also positively associated with restorative health behaviors and biological function and inversely associated with deteriorative health behaviors and biological function. Cardiovascular health is more consistently associated with optimism and hedonic well-being than with eudaimonic well-being, although this could be due in part to more limited evidence being available concerning eudaimonic well-being. Some similarities were also evident across different measures of PPWB, which is likely due to measurement overlap. A theoretical context for this research is provided, and suggestions for future research are given, including the need for additional prospective investigations and research that includes multiple constructs of psychological well-being and ill-being.     

Silence in Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration: Not Everything Said is Relevant,Not Everything Relevant is Said

Solving publicly important issues asks for the development of socio-technical approaches, which demands collaboration between researchers with different perspectives, values, and interests. In these complex interdisciplinary collaborations, the course of communication is of utmost importance, including the moments when people, consciously or not, keep silent. In 2012, an interdisciplinary group of water management engineers and scientists collaborated to explore how the university's separate water management research fields could fit better in today's socio-technical trends. Studying the interactional process revealed that during the collaboration many issues were not said by various parties at various times. Results show that, in particular, engineers and scientists stayed silent to secure group performance, to keep disagreements from surfacing, and manage conflicts of interest in the bargaining process. Although silence served various interactional functions, it also shaped the course of interaction in ways that were not intended, resulting in the development of a latent conflict. It is concluded that the concept of silence adds a relevant dimension to our understanding of interaction among engineers and scientists participating in interdisciplinary collaboration that is currently absent in existing literature on scientific collaboration.     

Speaking of Silence

In a previous article (Capps 2011) I discussed a short story and essay I wrote in high school and showed that themes that had figured prominently in my later writings were prefigured in these earlier writings. Invoking John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1957) I concluded that the high school boy who lives inside of me has been my faithful companion throughout the years. In this article I focus on a sermon I preached in my senior year of high school and on several poems I wrote that year. The sermon and poems reflect my interest at the time in the harmful effects of silence on human relationships. An article that focused on the son of Saint Augustine (Capps 1990b) signaled my return to the issue of silence after a thirty-year hiatus. My subsequent reading of Alice Miller’s Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (1991) and The Truth Shall Set You Free (2001) helped me to understand why silence had been a personal issue for me. It also encouraged me to listen to the fledgling poet who lives within me and to appreciate his insights concerning silence and love.     

Silence as the Voice of Trauma

Silence is a key to the unspoken world of the patient. Rather than interpreting silence as a defensive maneuver, the analyst may understand this disruption as a royal road to the patient’s traumatic experiences. The author proposes to recognize traumatic silences in the analytic process and the transference as a re-experiencing of past, unpredictable traumatic affective states and memories. Silences in this context are both a repeat of a disconnecting experience as well as a manifestation of a silencing identification with the original silencer. The clinical material illustrates effects of a German mother’s World War II (WWII) personal traumata and collective shame-based silence on her daughter’s self and good object development. In the daughter’s analysis, the patient and the analyst, who herself experienced similar WWII traumata, face the pain of trauma recovery and un-silencing. The author suggests that the deadening effect of past traumata may be reversed by an analytic process of re-membering and re-speaking for both the patient and analyst. This allows for a more transparent, subjective experience in the transference and a verbal integration of ego functions.     

Silence and the Patience of God

This article considers some of the implications of the assertion that God is patient, and in particular the appeal to God's patience as the ground of the possibility of human patience. Reflection of God's patience raises questions about the terms in which we speak of God's prevenient activity. I explore (via the work of Nelle Moreton) the possibility of characterising silence, divine and human, as active rather than passive, and consequently of qualifying accounts of God's prevenience that focus on the divine speech act. This in turn has implications for theological ethics, which are developed using Rowan Williams' and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's thought on silence and listening.     

Shame and Silence

Abstract

Samantha Vice’s proposal on how to live in ‘this strange place’ of contemporary South Africa, includes an appeal to the concepts of shame and silence. In this paper, I use Emmanuel Levinas and Giorgio Agamben to move the discussion of shame from a moral to an existential question. The issue is not about how one should feel, but about the kind of self that whiteness in South Africa makes possible today. Shame desubjectifies. Vice’s recommendation of silence is then taken as witnessing/listening, which I argue grounds the possibility of a recovery of the self.