When it is not the patient who pays

This paper looks at the question of third-party payments in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. This is of particular relevance in Holland, where the Dutch government makes substantial payments for psychoanalytic treatment via a state insurance system. The literature concerning third-party payments is reviewed. Freud himself was inconsistent about this matter and cannot therefore be relied on to give a clear guideline. The majority of writers are heavily in favour of ‘personal sacrifice’ and show a strong bias, especially against insurance payments for fees. These arguments are examined in detail and the two main conclusions are explored, namely that (1) certain unconscious conflicts cannot be mobilised where there is external financing, and (2) that the absence of personal sacrifice engenders too much wish-fulfilment. Both these arguments are rejected as being biased and are found not to stand up to detailed scrutiny.

The effects that different types of payment have on the development of the therapeutic situation, and the different types of transference and countertransference problems that each engenders, are explored. There is some speculation as to the reason for the persistence of this view if it is so patently false. Finally there is some consideration of the positive effects third-party payments can have on psychoanalytic practice.     

Personality as a work of art

The idea of the personality as a work of art offers a new conception of personality. From this perspective, personality would be the ethical and aesthetic style each person gives to their life, according, naturally, to the prevailing personal circumstances and social values. The idea is developed in two parts. In the first, which constitutes the empirical part, a historical review, from the time of Homer to the present day, reveals a ‘great chain of personality’, with its characteristics in each era. In the second, or transcendental part, we argue that it is some kind of work-of-art or life project that constitutes personality, whatever its aesthetic form. From this point of view, life projects, though in principle fictitious, may end up forging a person's true character, in accordance with a person-character dialectic. This dialectic is well illustrated by the literary figure of Don Quixote, but it is equally valid for anybody in everyday life. In any case, it is understood that the development of a personality is a dramatic task (in line with the theatrical sense that is at the basis of this conception). Among the most important consequences of this idea is the confirmation of responsibility as an essential constituent of the person.     

When a Picasso is a “Picasso”: The entry point in the identification of visual art

We investigated whether art is distinguished from other real world objects in human cognition, in that art allows for a special memorial representation and identification based on artists’ specific stylistic appearances. Testing art-experienced viewers, converging empirical evidence from three experiments, which have proved sensitive to addressing the question of initial object recognition, suggest that identification of visual art is at the subordinate level of the producing artist. Specifically, in a free naming task it was found that art-objects as opposed to non-art-objects were most frequently named with subordinate level categories, with the artist’s name as the most frequent category (Experiment 1). In a category-verification task (Experiment 2), art-objects were recognized faster than non-art-objects on the subordinate level with the artist’s name. In a conceptual priming task, subordinate primes of artists’ names facilitated matching responses to art-objects but subordinate primes did not facilitate responses to non-art-objects (Experiment 3). Collectively, these results suggest that the artist’s name has a special status in the memorial representation of visual art and serves as a predominant entry point in recognition in art perception.     

When the job is a calling: The role of applying one's signature strengths at work

This study investigates the role of applying the individual signature strengths at work for positive experiences at work (i.e. job satisfaction, pleasure, engagement, and meaning) and calling. A sample of 111 employees from various occupations completed measures on character strengths, positive experiences at work, and calling. Co-workers (N?=?111) rated the applicability of character strengths at work. Correlations between the applicability of character strengths and positive experiences at work decreased with intraindividual centrality of strengths (ranked strengths from the highest to the lowest). The level of positive experiences and calling were higher when four to seven signature strengths were applied at work compared to less than four. Positive experiences partially mediated the effect of the number of applied signature strengths on calling. Implications for further research and practice will be discussed.     

Shaftesbury on life as a work of art

ABSTRACT

This paper explicates Shaftesbury’s idea that we ought to live our lives as though they are works of art. I show that this idea is central to many of Shaftesbury’s most important claims, and that an understanding of this idea enables us to answer some of the most contested questions in the scholarship on Characteristics.     

When the smile is a cue to familiarity

The question discussed in the two following experiments concerns the effect of facial expressions on face recognition. Famous and unknown faces with neutral or smiling expression were presented for different inspection durations (15 ms vs 1000 ms). Subjects had to categorize these faces as famous or unknown (Experiment 1), or estimate their degree of familiarity on a rating scale (Experiment 2). Results showed that the smile increased ratings of familiarity for unfamiliar faces (Experiments 1 and 2) and for famous faces (Experiment 2). These data are discussed in the framework of current face-recognition models and are interpreted in terms of social value of the smile. It is proposed that the smiling bias found here acts at the level of the decision process.     

When the smile is a cue to familiarity

The question discussed in the two following experiments concerns the effect of facial expressions on face recognition. Famous and unknown faces with neutral or smiling expression were presented for different inspection durations (15 ms vs 1000 ms). Subjects had to categorise these faces as famous or unknown (Experiment 1), or estimate their degree of familiarity on a rating scale (Experiment 2). Results showed that the smile increased ratings of familiarity for unfamiliar faces (Experiments 1 and 2) and for famous faces (Experiment 2). These data are discussed in the framework of current face-recognition models and are interpreted in terms of social value of the smile. It is proposed that the smiling bias found here acts at the level of the decision process.     

Appreciating art verbally: Verbalization can make a work of art be both undeservedly loved and unjustly maligned

Two experiments examined whether appreciating art verbally would aesthetically confuse viewers. Participants were asked to verbalize why they either liked or disliked two different kinds of paintings; one piece was representational, the other piece was abstract. Those who verbalized their reasons for liking the artworks were more likely to prefer the representational painting, whereas those who verbalized their reasons for disliking the paintings were also more likely to dislike the representational painting. While it was easy to describe reasons for both liking and disliking representational art, the same proved difficult for abstract art. The findings suggest that due to its figurative qualities people will be encouraged to generate reasons to describe representational art, rather than abstract art, and that these reasons could potentially be biased and cause them to change their preferences in line with these reasons.     

Moral Cacophony: When Continence is a Virtue

Contemporary virtue ethicists widely accept thethesis that a virtuous agent's feelings shouldbe in harmony with her judgments about what sheshould do and that she should find virtuousaction easy and pleasant. Conflict between anagent's feelings and her actions, by contrast,is thought to indicate mere continence – amoral deficiency. This ``harmony thesis' isgenerally taken to be a fundamental element ofAristotelian virtue ethics.I argue that the harmony thesis, understoodthis way, is mistaken, because there areoccasions where a virtuous agent will findright action painful and difficult. What thismeans is that the generally accepteddistinction between continence and virtue isunsupportable. This conclusion affects severalwell-known accounts of virtuous action,including those of Philippa Foot and JohnMcDowell. A closer look at Aristotle, however, providesanother way of distinguishing betweencontinence and virtue, based in hiscategorization of goods as noble or base. Iargue that virtue is exhibited when anagent's feelings harmonize with his correctjudgments of value, while discrepancies betweenfeelings and correct judgments of valueindicate continence. This understanding ofcontinence and virtue enables us to accommodatethe problem cases I raise.     

When confidence in a choice is independent of which choice is made

For forced-choice two-alternative general-information questions, confidence in the correctness of the answer differed reliably for different questions, regardless of which answer was chosen. Results suggested that this choice-independent confidence is mediated by the domain familiarity of the question and by its tendency to bring to mind either few or many thoughts and considerations. Ratings of the questions on familiarity and accessibility yielded strong correlations with participants’ confidence in whichever of two answers they had chosen, and with estimates of the percentage of participants who were likely to have chosen either of the answers in a previous experiment. The results were interpreted in terms of confirmation bias: Because items differ in the extent to which they bring to mind few or many pertinent thoughts, selective focusing on supportive evidence should yield a positive correlation between mean confidence in one answer and mean confidence in the alternative answer, as if there is no competition between them.     

When work came home: Formation of feeling rules in the context of a pandemic

The shift of middle-class jobs to home settings, which occurred as a result of COVID-19 health measures that also closed schools and daycares, introduced dynamic changes to everyday life. We investigate these changes drawing on data from our study in which participants in Nova Scotia, Canada, who were working at home due to the pandemic, wrote journal entries in response to weekly prompts. Participants not only documented changes to their routines and challenges of managing work and parenting simultaneously and in the same physical space, but also reflected on their conflicted emotions about life during the pandemic and their vision for life as things return to “normal.” Their narratives prompt us to consider these experiences and emotions in relation to Arlie Hochschild's scholarship on feeling rules, emotion work, and gender and work more broadly. We find that from our participants’ struggle to meet existing expectations on activities and emotion while simultaneously managing new sets of protocols and feeling rules what emerges is a resistance to norms of busyness, productivity, and exhaustion.