The Purusārthas: An Axiological Exploration of Hinduism

Three doctrines have often been identified in the context of Hindu civilization as its distinctive markers: the doctrine of the varnas (or the doctrine of the four classes), the doctrine of asramas (or the doctrine of the four stages of life), and the doctrine of the purusarthas (or the doctrine of the four goals of life). The study of the last of these has been comparatively neglected and the doctrine has even been dubbed a myth (Krishna 1996, 189–205). The purpose of this article is twofold: to establish the cogency of the doctrine of the purusarthas in the face of such criticism and to indicate the directions in which the doctrine could be developed further.     

The drive revisited: Mastery and satisfaction

Starting from the theory of the libido and the notions of the experience of satisfaction and the drive for mastery introduced by Freud, the author revisits the notion of the drive by proposing the following model: the drive takes shape in the combination of two currents of libidinal cathexis, one which takes the paths of the ‘apparatus for obtaining mastery’ (the sense‐organs, motricity, etc.) and strives to appropriate the object, and the other which cathects the erotogenic zones and the experience of satisfaction that is experienced through stimulation in contact with the object. The result of this combination of cathexes constitutes a ‘representation’, the subsequent evocation of which makes it possible to tolerate for a certain period of time the absence of a satisfying object. On the basis of this conception, the author distinguishes the representations proper, vehicles of satisfaction, from imagos and traumatic images which give rise to excitation that does not link up with the paths taken by the drives. This model makes it possible to conciliate the points of view of the advocates of ‘object‐seeking’ and of those who give precedence to the search for pleasure, and, further, to renew our understanding of object‐relations, which can then be approached from the angle of their relations to infantile sexuality. Destructiveness is considered in terms of “mastery madness” and not in terms of the late Freudian hypothesis of the death drive.     

Theoretical foundations of analytical psychology: recent developments and controversies

This article gives an introductory overview of the papers in this volume originally given at the Joint Conference of the IAAP and the University of Basel, Basel, October 18‐20, 2018. The aim of the conference was to bring core concepts of analytical psychology together with theorizing and research from academic sciences, at the very place where Jung started his academic career, the University of Basel. The conference focussed on three fields: the relationship of consciousness and the unconscious and the theory of complexes; the theory of archetypes; and the status of analytical psychotherapy in contemporary psychotherapy research. The aim of the conference was to further the development of theory in analytical psychology in relation to results and insights in contiguous areas of knowledge. In the first area, contributors pointed to the solid evidence especially from the neurosciences for the psychodynamic conceptualizations of the unconscious, and also for the concept of complexes. In contrast to this, the concept of archetypes is controversial, with a majority of contributors questioning Jung’s biological conceptualizations of archetypes, and speaking instead for reformulations from the perspective of cultural theory, dynamic systems theory and other approaches. In the field of psychotherapy research, contributors pointed to the profound need for conducting more empirical studies on the outcome of Jungian psychotherapy, but also for a thorough reconsideration of standard research designs in the field.     

The Possibility of Meaning in Human Evolution

Science undermines the certitude of non-naturalistic answers to the question of whether human life has meaning. I explore whether evolution can provide a naturalistic basis for existential meaning. Using the work of philosopher Daniel Dennett and scientist Ursula Goodenough, I argue that evolution is the locus of the possibility of meaning because it has produced intentionality, the matrix of consciousness. I conclude that the question of the meaning of human life is an existentialist one: existential meaning is a product of the individual and collective tasks human beings undertake.     

Inférences émotionnelles et compréhension de textes narratifs : lorsque la perspective du lecteur diverge de celle du protagoniste

This study deals with the emotional inferences readers generate during the reading of narrative texts. The objective was to show that the accessibility of the representation of the emotional state of the protagonist depends on the reader's and the protagonist's knowledge of the situation. In the texts we used, the reader and the protagonist either shared the same amount of knowledge of the situation, or the protagonist was described as being ignorant of relevant situational information. The main result indicated that, in the presence of a difference between the protagonist and the reader, regarding their situational knowledge, the accessibility of the representation of the protagonist's emotion slowed down. In other words, the protagonist's emotion was more accessible when it was coherent with the situational knowledge of both the reader and the protagonist.     

Together – apart: in touch in a time of separation

This paper explores the experience of working as a Jungian analyst through the various phases of the global COVID-19 pandemic, examining the importance of the physical containing space alongside the analyst’s internal mind and how technology can both help and hinder understanding. A number of clinical vignettes illustrate the challenge of communicating over a distance, paying particular attention to the way countertransference phenomena can become re-attuned. Reference is made to mythology and symbols of hope, and consideration given to the meaning and purpose of the pandemic.     

Sacred Circle: Symbol of Wholeness in Traditional Persian Art and Architecture

Jung wrote extensively about the archetypal mandala symbol as an expression in many cultures of the centrality and nature of the interplay between human consciousness and divine consciousness. This article investigates—how in Persia, for millennia—the archetypal symbol of the mandala has been widespread in many expressions of the sacred arts. My research outlines the importance of the archetypal mandala symbol in Persian religio-aesthetic history from the first unearthed stone carvings of Persia's ancient foundations until the more recent, breathtakingly marvellous ceilings of traditional Persian architecture today. From the artistic expressions of first religious beliefs of ancient Persia—Mithraism—and through the development of the Zoroastrian faith until the subsequent rise of Christianity and then Islam, Persian sacred art illustrates the Jungian idea that wholeness sought in the journey of individuation is often expressed through archetypal symbols of circles that articulate basic truths about the divine interplay with humanity.     

The transcendent function in Spitteler’s Prometheus and Epimetheus

In August 2020, John Beebe and Steve Myers met via Zoom to discuss their differing interpretations of psychological typology and the different sources within Jung’s writings that influenced their books: Integrity in Depth: Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type (Beebe), and Myers-Briggs Typology vs Jungian Individuation (Myers). The discussion centred on Spitteler’s epic poem Prometheus und Epimetheus, which forms the basis of chapter V of Psychological Types. This is both the largest chapter and one of two chapters that Jung highlighted in the Argentine foreword as containing the essence of the book. Jung’s book is primarily about the transformation of personality rather than the categorization of people. Although it contains a critical psychology that deconstructs the nature of consciousness, that is only one half of the book and a stepping-stone to the other half, which is the reconciliation of opposites with particular emphasis on the relation of consciousness and the unconscious. Jung assumed that readers were already familiar with Prometheus und Epimetheus, an understanding of which sheds light on the nature of the transformation that Jung described – the development of a new attitude towards attitude itself.     

On Classification of Scientific Revolutions

The question whether Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions could be applied to mathematics caused many interesting problems to arise. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether there are different kinds of scientific revolution, and if so, how many. The basic idea of the paper is to discriminate between the formal and the social aspects of the development of science and to compare them. The paper has four parts. In the first introductory part we discuss some of the questions which arose during the debate of the historians of mathematics. In the second part, we introduce the concept of the epistemic framework of a theory. We propose to discriminate three parts of this framework, from which the one called formal frame will be of considerable importance for our approach, as its development is conservative and gradual. In the third part of the paper we define the concept of epistemic rupture as a discontinuity in the formal frame. The conservative and gradual nature of the changes of the formal frame open the possibility to compare different epistemic ruptures. We try to show that there are four different kinds of epistemic rupture, which we call idealisation, re-presentation, objectivisation and re-formulation. In the last part of the paper we derive from the classification of the epistemic ruptures a classification of scientific revolutions. As only the first three kinds of rupture are revolutionary (the re-formulations are rather cumulative), we obtain three kinds of scientific revolution: idealisation, re-presentation, and objectivisation. We discuss the relation of our classification of scientific revolutions to the views of Kuhn, Lakatos, Crowe, and Dauben. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

论儿童心理发展的动力及其机制

本文依据马克思主义的唯物史观和唯物辩证法原理,从儿童的实际社会生活过程出发,运用系统方法论证了儿童心理发展的动力是主客体之间的结构性矛盾,而由“主体──活动──客体”三项格式构成的反馈回路系统则是心理发生发展的动力场。本文还运用儿童心理发展的控制论模型,从活动的机能性方面探讨了同化和顺应之间的平衡化动力机制,揭示了主客体之间矛盾运动的原理和过程;平衡化机制是受社会文化历史的发展规律支配的。     

The myths of free association and the potentials of the analytic relationship

The author challenges the traditional and still prevalent view of 'free association', arguing that it entails three forms of denial (also formulated in terms of corresponding myths): 1) denial of the patient's free agency; 2) denial of the patient's and the analyst's interpersonal infl uence; and 3) denial of the patient's share of responsibility for co-constructing the analytic relationship. That responsibility includes some degree of consideration of the analyst's needs. Sometimes, the patient's good judgment to that end may be refl ected in what is automatically and mistakenly reduced to a form of 'resistance'. Attention to the patient's responsibility must be balanced against the effort to provide a uniquely safe environment for the patient's revealing of shame and anxiety-ridden feelings and attitudes. But the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, ideally, includes the cultivation, through lived experience, of the dialectical interplay of self-expression, on the one hand, and caring relational engagement, on the other. Recognition of the patient's free agency does not preclude exploration of constraining structures laid down in the past. On the contrary, it deepens such exploration. At the same time, it opens the door to the possibility of explicit recognition, via challenge, criticism, or affi rmation, of the patient's contributions to the analytic work.     

The Precious Blood of Christ: faith,rituals and civic and religious meaning during the centuries of Mantuan devotion

This article explores the main meanings given to the presence of the relic of the Precious Blood of Christ in the city of Mantua, and also highlights the links with the Altdorf-Weingarten relic of the same, which derives from it. For centuries the presence of this relic has intertwined in several ways with events in Mantua and has shaped some of their most significant religious and cultural expressions. Above all, during the Middle Ages, the Precious Blood had a widespread impact, destined to expand all over Europe. However, we possess vague and scarcely defined evidence of this, as much of the evidence was removed, mostly in the name of rationalist critique, and diminished with the passing of time. Within a long-term perspective, the text which follows here aims to tackle some relevant problematic issues, from a historical and historico-anthropological viewpoint. It attempts both to strengthen understanding of the local and wider intertwining which characterised the development of such a relevant religious experience of our culture, and also to enter into contact with essential aspects of it.     

The Symbol and the Theory of the Life-World: “The Transcendences of the Life-World and Their Overcoming by Signs and Symbols”

This essay presents a phenomenological analysis of the functioning of symbols as elements of the life-world with the purpose of demonstrating the interrelationship of individual and society. On the basis of Alfred Schutz's theory of the life-world, signs and symbols are viewed as mechanisms by means of which the individual can overcome the transcendences posed by time, space, the world of the Other, and multiple realities which confront him or her. Accordingly, the individual's life-world divides itself into the dimensions of time, space, the social world and various reality spheres which form the boundaries or transcendences that the I has to understand and integrate. Signs and symbols are described as appresentational modes which stand for experiences originating in the different spheres of the life-world within the world of everyday life, within which they can be communicated, thereby establishing intersubjectivity. Schutz's theory of the symbol explains how social entities – such as nations, states or religious groups – are symbolically integrated to become components of the individual's life-world. The following paper reconstructs Schutz's concept of the symbol as a crucial component of his theory of the life-world, which is seen as an outstanding phenomenological contribution to the theory of the sign and the symbol in general.     

Intergenerational Relationships Within the Local Congregation

ABSTRACT

The following article explores the effect of the quality of intergenerational relationships on the health, healing and wholeness of the congregation. The fundamental premise is that an intergenerational approach to congregational life is a conscious, intentional choice on the part of the leadership and membership of that congregation to honor both the contributions and the requirements of each and every generation for the good of that generation as well as the good of the whole community. A casestudy is presented to demonstrate this approach. A reflection on the casestudy focuses on three dimensions of this approach to building up intergenerational relationships, i.e., the revelation of 1 Corinthians 12, the approach of family systems theory, and the paradigm of pastoral care.     

Alief and Explanation

This article critiques the much‐discussed notion of alief recently introduced by Tamar Gendler. The narrow goal is to show that the notion is explanatorily unnecessary; the broader goal is to demonstrate the importance of making explicit one's explanatory framework when offering a philosophical account of the mind. After introducing the concept of alief and the examples Gendler characterizes in terms of it, the article examines the explanatory framework within which appeal to such a concept can seem necessary. This framework, it argues, is a generalization of the belief‐desire account of action. Although Gendler introduces the notion of alief in an attempt to move beyond the belief‐desire account, it argues that she nevertheless works within a generalized version of its explanatory structure. Once the framework is made explicit, we find no explanatory need that requires introducing the notion of alief into our account of the mind.     

The cryptomnesic origins of Jung's dream of the multi-storeyed house

Abstract :  Jung first recounted his dream of the multi-storeyed house in the 1925 seminars to illustrate the concept of the collective unconscious and explain the influence of phylogeny on his split with Freud. However, his telling the story of the dream belies a cryptomnesic influence of the early writings of psychoanalysis because Josef Breuer used a similar image to illustrate the structure of the psyche which Édouard Claparède associated with a phylogenetic inheritance. When telling the story of the dream, Jung misrepresented Freud's position, creating the impression of there being a bigger difference between their theories than was actually the case, and giving the dream a fictional significance for the breakdown of their relationship. In fact, Jung followed Freud into the fields of mythology and phylogenetics, and their split was due primarily to their different attitudes towards sexuality rather than phylogeny. The dream image has therefore led to a misunderstanding of Freudian theory when viewed from within a Jungian perspective. Freud believed there was a phylogenetic layer in the psyche, though he held a different view to Jung on its nature and importance.     

Probabilistic Cause and the Thirsty Traveler

In this paper I start by briefly presenting an analysis of token cause and of token causal relevance that I developed elsewhere, and then apply it to the famous thirsty traveler riddle. One general outcome of the analysis of causal relevance employed here is that in preemption cases (early or late) the preempted cause is not a cause since it is causally irrelevant to the effect. I consider several variations of the thirsty traveler riddle. In the first variation the first enemy emptied the canteen and the second enemy threw it away. On this variation, the act of neither enemy comes out, on the analysis employed here, as causally relevant to, and thus not as a cause of, the fact that the traveler died, but the conjunction of the two acts is a cause of it. This version is a case of mutual preemption. I argue that it has the same structure as the voting paradox, which thus has an analogous solution. In the standard version, in which the first enemy added poison to the water in the traveler's canteen, the act of the second enemy (who threw the canteen away) comes out, on the analysis used here, as causally relevant to and as a cause of the fact that the traveler died, but the act of the first enemy comes out as neither. I also make a comparison with Lewis' accounts, and discuss alternative treatments of the puzzle such as those of Hart and Honore and of Gavison, Margalit, and Ullmann-Margalit.     

Le travail collectif à l’épreuve des restructurations organisationnelles

The ergonomic analysis of work (Daniellou, 1996; Wisner, 1996) and especially the psychological analysis of real working activity (Leplat, 2000) allow investigating the main factors of work situations. The objective is to show the influence on the nursing representations of psychiatric services that are restructured, of the initial working situations, the projects, the restructuring models. The analyses assess the nursing representations of psychiatric services that are restructured, the projects, the restructuring models, the real working activity. The data show impacts of collective work and restructuring models, especially the damaging consequences of fusions. The results enable the authors to discuss from the points of views of theory, methodology and interventions.     

Der Religiöse Glaube Und Die Religionskritik Der Aufklärung. Beschränkungen Des Vernunftgebrauchs Im Lichte Kritischer Philosophie

Summary   Religious Faith and Criticism of Religion of Enlightenment. Restrictions of the Use of Reason in the Light of Critical Philosophy. In the this paper I analyse the present problem situation of the christian faith with respect to the assumption of the existence of God and the role of Jesus and I criticize the problem-solutions offered by Bultmann, Ratzinger, Küng and Habermas. I try to show that all these solutions imply a similar arbitrary restriction of the use of reason.