How Love Inspires Hate

SUMMARY

In this study the relationship between childhood perception of rejection and a conflicted marital relationship was explored. Sixty subjects participated in a causal comparative ex post facto study. The Parent Acceptance Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ) was used to measure perception of rejection by mother and father. The Pair Attraction Inventory (PAI) was used to assess the type of marital relationship. The subjects were divided into two groups, those who felt accepted by mother or father (n = 33) and those who felt rejected by mother or father (n = 27), based on the PARQ scores. Those who perceived a rejecting experience with their mother were significantly more likely to experience a hostile and rejecting interactional pattern with their marital partner. Conversely, those who perceived acceptance by their mother were significantly more likely to experience a harmonious, healthy interdependency with their spouse. There is a need for clinicians to be prepared to assess and treat couples caught in a collusive recreation of a rejecting or “bad object” relationship from childhood.     

Love Never Ends Well: Termination as the Fate of an Illusion: Commentary on Papers by Jill Salberg and Sue Grand

The following is a discussion of the papers by Jill Salberg and Sue Grand on the topic of psychoanalytic termination. The discussion focuses on the idiosyncratic nature of the psychoanalytic relationship and the particular nature of its ending, some similarities between the end of analytic love and the loss of love in every day life, problems with analyst initiated terminations, and the transgressive nature of termination and analytic creativity. There is a discussion of the cases presented by each of the authors.     

How to Fail in Private Practice: 13 Easy Steps

Because the many burdens of establishing and maintaining a private practice can sometimes feel heavy, this article is offered as a catalyst for lightening up a bit. Having learned from making some form of each of these 13 mistakes, the author humbly presents them to readers with tongue in cheek.     

Confucian Democracy as Pragmatic Experiment: Uniting Love of Learning and Love of Antiquity

This paper argues for the pragmatic construction of Confucian democracy by showing that Chinese philosophers who wish to see Confucianism flourish again as a positive dimension of Chinese civilization need to approach it pragmatically and democratically, otherwise their love of the past is at the expense of something else Confucius held in equal esteem, love of learning. Chinese philosophers who desire democracy for China would do well to learn from the earlier failures of the iconoclastic Westernizers, and realize that a Chinese democracy cannot come about by ignoring or dismissing such an important part of China's history, its Confucian tradition. The best chances for democracy in China lie in transforming that tradition without destroying it. Eagerness to learn from others must be united with a proper appreciation of one's own past to nurture democracy as a way of life.     

How to Regulate a Practice: The Case of Cosmetic Surgery

How should a practice, subservient to a public good, be regulated in order to guarantee fair access without encouraging improper claims? In the first place, a clear understanding of the goal of the practice is indispensable for knowing what criteria the regulation must contain. As to the purely formal aspect, the regulation of any practice must include both general rules and particular instances. Finally, to resolve conflicts, committees in which different kinds of expertise are represented should be installed. These three theses are illustrated by the Dutch regulation for cosmetic surgery.     

'The Christian as Christ to the Neighbour': On Luther's Theology of Love

Abstract: This article explores the theology of love advanced by Martin Luther, relating it to his account of the presence of Christ by faith in other people, and to his biblical expositions. In outlining Luther's contrast between the love of God and the human loves, it is argued that Luther nonetheless is still able to value human love. Finally, the relationship between love and faith in Luther is described: love is chief among the many gifts of God that we receive by faith.     

Globalising Love: On the Nature and Scope of Love as a Form of Recognition

This article begins by tracing two issues to be kept in mind in discussing the theme of love as far back as Aristotle: on the one hand the polysemy of the term philia in Aristotle, and on the other hand the fact that there is a focal or core meaning of philia that provides order to that polysemy. Secondly, it is briefly suggested that the same issues are, mutatis mutandis, central for understanding the discussion of love or Liebe by Hegel, the central classic reference in debates on recognition. Thirdly, by pointing out a certain ambiguity in Harry Frankfurt’s recent work on love, the article focuses more closely on the thought that love in the simple sense which Aristotle had pinpointed as the focal meaning of philia, which is arguably at the core of Hegel’s discussion of Liebe, and which still forms at least one of the core senses of the term, is a ‘personifying’ attitude of recognition. Finally, drawing on the above points the article addresses the question whether love as a form of recognition is restricted to intimate relations such as those between family-members, ‘lovers’, close friends and so on, or whether it has applications in interhuman relations more broadly. The answer to this question, it is suggested, is essential for the viability of ethically substantial notions of solidarity beyond circles of close acquaintances, whether within the civil society, across nations, or towards future generations.     

How to reason without words: inference as categorization

The idea that reasoning is a singular accomplishment of the human species has an ancient pedigree. Yet this idea remains as controversial as it is ancient. Those who would deny reasoning to nonhuman animals typically hold a language-based conception of inference which places it beyond the reach of languageless creatures. Others reject such an anthropocentric conception of reasoning on the basis of similar performance by humans and animals in some reasoning tasks, such as transitive inference. Here, building on the modal similarity theory of Vigo [J Exp Theor Artif Intell, 2008 (in press)], we offer an account in which reasoning depends on a core suite of subsymbolic processes for similarity assessment, discrimination, and categorization. We argue that premise-based inference operates through these subsymbolic processes, even in humans. Given the robust discrimination and categorization abilities of some species of nonhuman animals, we believe that they should also be regarded as capable of simple forms of inference. Finally, we explain how this account of reasoning applies to the kinds of transitive inferences that many nonhuman animals display.     

From Necessity to Fate: a Fallacy

Though clearly fallacious, the inference from determinism to fatalism (the ``Lazy Argument') has appealed to such minds as Aristotle and his disciple, Alexander of Aphrodisias. It is argued here (1) that determinism does entail a rather similar position, dubbed ``futilism'; and (2) that distinctively Aristotelian determinism entails fatalism for any event to which it applies. The concept of ``fate' is examined along the way.     

Falling in Love as a Therapeutic Moment-Therapy as a Moment of Falling in Love

The author compares falling in love in ordinary life with falling in love in therapy. This way, he offers a wider understanding of these phenomena, regarding in particular to transferring processes. The result is a model, inside the frame of reference of Gestalt Therapy, to work through the positive sources of falling in love process-in ordinary life and in therapy. Among other things, he means by that: (1) an understanding of the links between one's original family and partner's choice and (2) a new perspective of the alternatives of behavior the person has now (in the resolution phase of falling in love), in comparison with his/her experience in his/her original family.     

Managers' Views of How to Hire: Building Bridges Between Science and Practice

It has been suggested that the state of practice in employee selection differs markedly from the state of research. We explored this issue in interviews with 166 line managers, who were asked to describe their own successes and failures in hiring, as well as what hiring issues they would like to learn more about. Managers attributed their hiring successes primarily to luck and intuition, but also acknowledged the value of using a more systematic and rigorous approach to hiring. Managers' comments imply a lack of awareness of research, rather than a lack of interest in topics being researched. The scientist–practitioner gap thus seems to relate more to the usage of research than to the focus of research questions.     

Monuments as Commitments: How Art Speaks to Groups and How Groups Think in Art

Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. Art can even be part of how groups think to themselves – how they keep a grip on their values over time. I focus on monuments as a case study. Monuments, I claim, can function as a commitment to a group value, for the sake of long‐term action guidance. Art can function here where charters and mission statements cannot, precisely because of art's powers to capture subtlety and emotion. In particular, art can serve as the vessel for group emotions, by making emotional content sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Art enables groups to guide themselves with values too subtle to be codified.     

Love as a Fictitious Commodity: Gift-for-Sex Barters as Contractual Carriers of Intimacy

Gift-for-sex (GFS) barters are a niche practice potentially representing the commodification of everyday dating practices. We inquire how GFS exchanges are practiced and understood in contemporary Russia. Second, we situate these in relation to contemporary economic culture. Our project provides answers in two steps based on online content. First, we identify GFS exchange practices within a major dating website. Next, we take the signals exchanged in those dating profiles and display their intersubjective meanings in Russia based on blogs and discussion fora. Our analysis focuses on gender roles and inter-gender conflicts, the use of economic jargon, the link between luxury consumption and sexuality, and understandings of gift-giving and generosity, in order to show how GFS barters, despite being contractual, carry emotional and romantic content. As such, love is under a constant conversion process, through the medium of the contractual gift, into the fictitious commodity form.     

Reconciliation as Expression of Christ's Love

This paper discusses the theme of the upcoming World Council of Churches' assembly from the perspective of mission as reconciliation as it has been formulated in ecumenical discussions around the World Missionary Conference at Athens 2005 and since. It argues that the intersecting of reconciliation and healing disclosed theological and ethical dimensions in both concepts that have been picked up in ecumenical mission theology while they had been less prominent in earlier decades. The emphasis on the Holy Spirit as agent of mission (Athens, Arusha) is then used to interpret Christ's love as the outpouring of the inner dynamic of the Trinity into the world.