Relentless writing and the death of memory in elementary education

This paper explores the relentless character of writing in elementary education. We begin with the reflections of a Grade Three teacher on incidents in her classroom regarding writing and the leaving of traces, followed with a consideration of the deep cultural investment we have in leaving such traces. A brief examination of the latest work by Lucy Calkins is followed by a discussion of the paradoxical relations between writing, remembering and forgetting and the forging of community as an order of memories. The issue of writing as the rendering of experience into cultural capital is followed by concluding remarks on the pleasures of walking around unwritten.     

A Translation of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic into Basic Predicate Logic

Basic Predicate Logic, BQC, is a proper subsystem of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic, IQC. For every formula in the language {, , , , , , }, we associate two sequences of formulas 0,1,... and 0,1,... in the same language. We prove that for every sequent , there are natural numbers m, n, such that IQC , iff BQC n m. Some applications of this translation are mentioned.     

Understanding the Self in Self-Transcendence

Based on the work of William James and Bernard Lonergan, this article proposes an understanding of the self as a duplex, dialectical, first-person reality constituted by consciousness and experienced as I and me.     

Gender Differences in Depression: The Role Played by Paternal Attitudes of Male Superiority and Maternal Modeling of Gender-Related Limitations

A reanalysis of a large multi-generational,predominantly Caucasian sample of adults found a largegender difference in self-reported depression involvinganxiety, appetite and sleep disturbance, and fatigue (anxious somatic depression) butnot in pure depression unaccompanied bymany of these other symptoms, replicating earlierfindings on high school and college samples. Anxioussomatic depression was prevalent among women whosefathers reported attitudes of male superiority and amongwomen whose mothers reported emphasizing the importanceof professional success but feeling that the jobs they held were not respected by others. Anxioussomatic depression, but not pure depression, was foundto be prevalent among women who did not attend collegeand among those who attended college but felt that the jobs they held were not respected byothers.     

From I: A/M to “Who am I?”—Aggregation/Massification and Trauma-Based Affects and Object Relations in Groups: A Response to Earl Hopper

Hopper's portrayal of the fourth basic assumption of Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification has two components: (1) a revision of Turquet's theory of BA Oneness to incorporate the polarity of aggregation and massification stemming from annihilation anxiety; and (2) a conception of the difficult patient as having an encapsulated psychosis. Hopper's theory of the encapsulated psychosis offers an important but incomplete perspective in explaining borderline and narcissistic pathology, as well as psychological trauma. In this response to Hopper, I suggest that the fourth assumption is in fact a still more primitive state of boundary opening and closing. I also see a need to differentiate trauma as such from borderline pathology, and further hold that the relationship between Hopper's British Independent theory and trauma theories based on dissociation needs to be clarified.     

Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant

Plato and Kant advance a constitutional model of the soul, in which reason and appetite or passion have different structural and functional roles in the generation of motivation, as opposed to the familiar Combat Model in which they are portrayed as independent sources of motivation struggling for control. In terms of the constitutional model we may explain what makes an action different from an event. What makes an action attributable to a person, and therefore what makes it an action, is that it issues from the person's constitution, and therefore from the person as a whole, rather than from some force working on or in the person. This in turn implies an account of what makes an action good: what makes an action good is that it is deliberated upon and chosen in a way that unifies the person into a constitutional system. Through deliberative action we constitute ourselves as unified agents. Platonic justice and Kant's categorical imperative are shown to be normative standards for action because they are principles of self-constitution.     

Care and the dynamics of social world

The concept of social world is formulated for the purpose of deepening our understanding of the dynamics of inclusion, exclusion, and care in interpersonal interaction. World is defined as an irreducible subject-object polarity.Social world is the extremely fragile environment within which people meet, and is easily destroyed. With special attention to family and church life, the conditions for maintaining or losing this environment are examined. Three levels of social world are defined. On the highest level, mutual care, rather than shared opinion, is seen as the factor that facilitates the preservation of social world in the face of world-threatening issues.     

Death and the “life review” in Halakhah

Coping with old age involves resolving the task of integrity versus despair, which demands a nondefensive confrontation with the inevitability of death. Halakhah (Jewish ethics) also considered this task critical in later years of life, spoke of death's inevitability, and attempted to discourage denial of death. The Jewish approach seems compatible with Butler's concept of life review as a reconciliation with death and a reintegration of one's identity that occurs throughout later years. While the Eriksonian goal is confronting old age with a certain capacity for wisdom, the rabbis maintained that such wisdom must culminate in the creative act of repentance.     

Joint action and group action made precise

The paper argues that there are two main kinds of joint action, direct joint bringing about (or performing) something (expressed in terms of a DO-operator) and jointly seeing to it that something is the case (expressed in terms of a Stit-operator). The former kind of joint action contains conjunctive, disjunctive and sequential action and its central subkinds. While joint seeing to it that something is the case is argued to be necessarily intentional, direct joint performance can also be nonintentional. Actions performed by social groups are analyzed in terms of the notions of joint action (basically DO and Stit).A precise semantical analysis of the aforementioned kinds of joint action is given in terms of time-trees. With each participant a tree is connected, and the trees are joined defining joint possible worlds in terms of state-expressing nodes from the trees. Sentences containing DO and Stit are semantically evaluated with respect to such joint possible worlds. Intentional joint actions are characterized in terms of the notion of we-intention (joint intention), characterized formally by means of a special operator.     

Expletives and woman's place

This study empirically examined the relationship between the expletives, bitch and bastard, and sex-role stereotyping. The expletives were rated by 68 men and 68 women on 80 trait adjectives as to how typical or characteristic each trait was of the stereotypic bitch or bastard in our society. The sex-role implications of the 10 trait terms judged most characteristic of each expletive were then examined. For male subjects, the most distinguishing feature between the two expletives was the inclusion of the stereotypically masculine trait dominant, in their characterization of bitch. Female subjects, on the other hand, did not ascribe such opposite sex-role stereotype traits to bitch, but rather emphasized stereotypically masculine traits in their characterization of bastard. These results are discussed in terms of the regulatory and expressive nature of language, as well as the differential sanction value of the terms bitch and bastard for out-of-role behavior.     

The Self Psychology of Heinz Kohut: What's It All About Theologically?

As a psychoanalytic thinker who offered by means of his self psychology a new paradigm of psychological development and functioning, Heinz Kohut was also a theologian manqué. With the help of the method of interpretation devised by Paul Tillich and David Tracy, Kohut's limit-concepts of tragic man, the self-object, and empathy, all set within his theory of narcissism, are elucidated as theological constructs. These are critiqued for adequacy from a Christian perspective. The conclusion is that Kohut's understanding of the human dilemma and of the way of salvation correlates well with Christianity, while his view of empathy as the means of salvation has created some confusion. Kohut has thus left an unfinished, profoundly important, agenda for theologians and clinicians.     

On Ultrafilter Logic and Special Functions

Logics for generally were introduced for handling assertions with vague notions,such as generally, most, several, etc., by generalized quantifiers, ultrafilter logic being an interesting case. Here, we show that ultrafilter logic can be faithfully embedded into a first-order theory of certain functions, called coherent. We also use generic functions (akin to Skolem functions) to enable elimination of the generalized quantifier. These devices permit using methods for classical first-order logic to reason about consequence in ultrafilter logic.Presented by André Fuhrmann     

Time,quantum mechanics,and decoherence

State-reduction and the notion of actuality are compared to passage through time and the notion of the present; already in classical relativity the latter give rise to difficulties. The solution proposed here is to treat both tense and value-definiteness as relational properties or facts as relations; likewise the notions of change and probability. In both cases essential characteristics are absent: temporal relations are tenselessly true; probabilistic relations are deterministically true.The basic ideas go back to Everett, although the technical development makes use of the decoherent histories theory of Griffiths, Omnès, and Gell-Mann and Hartle. Alternative interpretations of the decoherent histories framework are also considered.I would like to thank Abner Shimony for valuable criticism.     

Intellectual fascism

Intellectual fascism is the arbitrary belief that individuals possessing certain good traits (such as intelligence and creativity) are intrinsically superior to those possessing bad traits (such as stupidity or lack of artistry). Although it is true that under certain conditions and for various purposes some human traits are more advantageous or better than others, rating people as good or bad on the basis of their intellectual performances is inaccurate and is often as pernicious as is political-social fascism. Moreover, where political fascists at least rate themselves highly while damning and persecuting others, intellectual fascists tend to severely damn themselves (as well as others) when they lack superlative intellectual and artistic traits. According to RET, all global ratings of people tend to be fascistic overgeneralizations. Intellectual fascism is political-social fascism with the trait names changed—the same hearse with different license plates.This article is a revision of one that originally appeared in a book by Dr. Ellis entitledSuppressed.     

Measuring grief: A short version of the perinatal grief scale

Despite a considerable number of studies, there are two major drawbacks in the literature on grief and bereavement. One is a lack of adequate and generally agreed upon measures for assessing grief. The second is a lack of ability to predict from existing measures the likelihood of what has been termed chronic or pathological grief reactions. This paper reports the results of the development of a bereavement measure for the study of perinatal loss which attempts to address these gaps. The measure is specific to a pregnancy-related loss, although it has the potential for adaptation to use for other types of loss. Analysis of responses from 138 women has resulted in the reduction of the original measure from 104 to a more manageable and almost equally comprehensive and reliable 33 items. In addition, a factor analysis has produced three factors, two of which indicate the possibility for longer-term and more severe grief reactions. Because of its sound psychometric qualities and interesting factor structure, the measure shows promise of being useful for both research and clinical purposes.This research was funded by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant R01 H18431-04, with additional assistance from the Center for Social Research at Lehigh University. Dr. Potvin is supported by the Quebec Health Research Fund.     

The Client Is the Most Important Common Factor: Clients' Self-Healing Capacities and Psychotherapy

I first briefly review the dodo bird verdict and suggest that we should be responding to it by looking for a new way to conceptualize how therapy works. Then I describe the dominant medical or treatment model of psychotherapy and how it puts the client in the position of a dependent variable who is operated on by supposedly potent therapeutic techniques. Next I argue that the data do not fit with this model. An alternative model is that the client is the most important common factor and that it is clients' self-healing capacities which make therapy work. I then argue that therapy has two phases—the involvement phase and the learning phase—and that the involvement phase is the most important. I next review the five learning opportunities provided by therapy. Finally, I argue that a relational model of therapy focused on consultation, collaboration, and dialogue is better than a treatment model.     

The treatment of adolescents and their families in cultural transition: Issues and recommendations

Increasing numbers of immigrant families with adolescent children are seeking therapy because of intergenerational conflicts specific to the adolescent separation-individuation phase of the life cycle and transitional problems related to immigration and cultural transition. Three types of adolescent immigrants are identified and discussed: Immigrants (subtypes Reluctants and Optimists), Immigrant-Americans, and Americans. Therapists' issues which can negatively affect therapy with such adolescents and families are also discussed. Effective therapy with immigrant families requires that family therapists become more culturally sensitive, therapeutically flexible, and accepting of family values to which they may be diametrically opposed. Recommendations for therapy are offered.Dr. Baptiste is himself an immigrant. The experiences and observations discussed here are culled from his work with immigrant families and children over the past 19 years in the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Indiana, and New Mexico.Portions of this article will appear in a chapter Psychotherapy with adolescent immigrants and their families in cultural transition in B. Settles and D. Hanks (Eds.),Families on the move: Emigration, immigration, migration and mobility. Sage Publications, 1990, and are used here with permission.     

Naive realism about operators

A source of much difficulty and confusion in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a naive realism about operators. By this we refer to various ways of taking too seriously the notion of operator-as-observable, and in particular to the all too casual talk about measuring operators that occurs when the subject is quantum mechanics. Without a specification of what should be meant by measuring a quantum observable, such an expression can have no clear meaning. A definite specification is provided by Bohmian mechanics, a theory that emerges from Schrödinger's equation for a system of particles when we merely insist that particles means particles. Bohmian mechanics clarifies the status and the role of operators as observables in quantum mechanics by providing the operational details absent from standard quantum mechanics. It thereby allows us to readily dismiss all the radical claims traditionally enveloping the transition from the classical to the quantum realm — for example, that we must abandon classical logic or classical probability. The moral is rather simple: Beware naive realism, especially about operators!     

Sheaves over Heyting lattices

For a complete Heyting lattice , we define a category Etale (). We show that the category Etale () is equivalent to the category of the sheaves over , Sh(), hence also with -valued sets, see [2], [1]. The category Etale() is a generalization of the category Etale (X), see [1], where X is a topological space.     

Confusion in philosophy: A comment on Williams (1992)

Patricia Williams made a number of claims concerning the methods and practise of cladistic analysis and classification. Her argument rests upon the distinction of two kinds of hierarchy: a divisional hierarchy depicting evolutionary descent and the Linnean hierarchy describing taxonomic groups in a classification. Williams goes on to outline five problems with cladistics that lead her to the conclusion that systematists should eliminate cladism as a school of biological taxonomy and to replace it either with something that is philosophically coherent or to replace it with pure methodology, untainted by theory (Williams 1992, 151). Williams makes a number of points which she feels collectively add up to insurmountable problems for cladistics. We examine Williams' views concerning the two hierarchies and consider what cladists currently understand about the status of ancestors. We will demonstrate that Williams has seriously misunderstood many modern commentators on this subject and all of her five persistent problems are derivable from this misunderstanding.

Nelson (1989, 67).