Ältere Menschen als Zeugen vor Gericht

This article provides an overview of the current empirical literature concerning older adults as eyewitnesses. Aging affects perception, memory and eyewitness testimony in many older adults (aged 65 years and above). As a group, they provide shorter accounts in free call, fewer correct and more incorrect details. Often they have to be asked more questions than young witnesses in order to obtain the same amount of information. Age differences have also been demonstrated for answers to questions. There are some promising attempts to improve older witnesses’ testimony, such as the Cognitive Interview. However, replication studies are still needed here. It remains unclear if older witnesses are generally more vulnerable to suggestions than young witnesses. There is some evidence that at least in some situations this seems to be the case. In photographic line-ups young and older adults show similar positive identification rates, but older adults have higher false alarm rates. When viewing mug books, older adults are more likely to make a choice than young adults, which can lead to higher rates of possibly false identification in a subsequent line-up. With increasing age age differences between young and old witnesses also increase. However there is considerable interindividual variation in witness performance: some witnesses are impacted by age early-on, while others remain highly functioning until very old age.     

Der ?ltere Gewaltt?ter vor der Strafvollstreckungskammer

As much as violent offences are the beloved item of criminal novels and, the more brutal the better of the media, there is little research about this issue, when it comes to convicted offenders being in their sixties and seventies, and subjects of whether or not to be released. This article cannot present any evaluated database but must refer to common experience drawn from many individual cases mostly related to prisoners serving a life-time sentence or preventive detention. The discussion requires a distinction between a large variety of violations and will lead to the finding that every single violent offender must be closely and individually scrutinized. Nevertheless, the law provides some rules which, although they are given for every decision to be made on sentenced offenders who are to be released or to stay in penitentiary (which is, according to German law, a decision dedicated to a special Chamber of the Court), show specific implementations when applied to this group; what it does not show is pure age as a valid protective factor.     

Ästhetische Befriedigung und Unbestimmtheitsreduktion

Zusammenfassung Vpn mußten unter standardisierten Bedingungen zweidimensionale Farbmuster herstellen, die ihrer Meinung nach ästhetisch maximal befriedigend, bzw. maximal unbefriedigend waren. Die beiden Gruppen von Bildern wurden untersucht, wobei sich eine Gruppe von ästhetisch befriedigenden und zwei Gruppen von ästhetisch unbefriedigenden Bildern zeigten. Eine weitere Analyse ergab, daß sich die ästhetisch befriedigenden Bilder von den ästhetisch unbefriedigenden statistisch darin unterscheiden, daß bei den ästhetisch befriedigenden Bildern die Farbelemente in hohem Maße zum Aufbau komplizierter und tiefer Hierarchien von Zeichen höherer Ordnung verwendet wurden, wohingegen bei den ästhetisch unbefriedigenden Mustern übergeordnete Konfigurationen entweder nur in einfacher Form und flachen Hierarchien auftreten (1. Gruppe) oder Zeichen höherer Ordnung gar nicht vorhanden sind (2. Gruppe). Aufgrund der empirischen Ergebnisse wird die Hypothese aufgestellt, daß ästhetische Befriedigung auf Unbestimmtheitsreduktion gegen Widerstand zurückgeführt werden kann. In einem nachfolgenden Experiment wurde diese Hypothese geprüft und bestätigt.

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Aesthetical appreciation and the reduction of uncertainty

Summary Subjects were asked to construct colored pictures which they considered to be aesthetically maximally pleasing or unpleasing. These two groups of pictures were analyzed and it was found that the aesthetically pleasing pictures showed a statistically significant increase in the number of higher order configurations of color elements and a greater hierarchical organization of such configurations. Furthermore, the higher order configurations of the aesthetically pleasing pictures were of a more complicated structure than the higher order configurations of the aesthetically unpleasing pictures. Considering these results, the hypothesis was raised that aesthetical appreciation may be based on the reduction of uncertainty against the resistance of a complicated system of ordering relations within a stimulus. This hypothesis was tested and verified in a subsequent experiment.

     

DEN TÄNKANDE KROPPEN

In this paper, the author thematizes guilt through a reading of Camus' novel “The Fall”. The first part of the novel is presented as describing a state of mind in which the main character has not been able to become his own self, and this is conceptualised through Kierkegaard's concepts “sickness unto death” and “sickness of despair”. The second part of the novel is described as picturing a “fall”, i.e., the coming into being of a self that realizes itself and becomes conscious of its own guilt. This guilt is finally described through Freud's “scientific myth” of patricide, and the “nachträglich” realization of this ancient deed.     

Johannes Daubert als Ästhetiker

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

VANHASET. ESSEITÄ VANHENEMISESTA

The focus of this paper is on how the visual perception of an analysand reflects central inner object relations. The article raises the question of how to understand the analysand's visual perception. Is it merely projections of content? Of form? Or is it ingrained in the whole personality, and in that respect revealing a mode of functioning which spreads out to cognitive as well as emotional areas? In the analysand's visual constructions, figure- ground perception seems to be closely related to the process of separation and individuation. The shadow perception seems to be related to loss. As products of mentalisation, these perceptual tendencies seem to bind the affect at the level of imagery, which is a higher level of psychic transformation than somatic or motor activity, but lower than verbalisation.     

Menschen, maschinen und g?dels theorem

Mechanism is the thesis that men can be considered as machines, that there is no essential difference between minds and machines.John Lucas has argued that it is a consequence of Gödel's theorem that mechanism is false. Men cannot be considered as machines, because the intellectual capacities of men are superior to that of any machine. Lucas claims that we can do something that no machine can do-namely to produce as true the Gödel-formula of any given machine. But no machine can prove its own Gödel-formula.In order to discuss and evaluate this argument, the author makes a distinction between formal and informal proofs, and between proofs given by men and proofs given by machines. It is argued that the informal proof capacities of machines are possibly greater and the formal proof capacities of men are possibly smaller than the anti-mechanist claims. So the argument from Gödel's theorem against mechanism fails.Though Gödel's theorem does not prove that minds are different from machines, it is not irrelevant to the analysis of thought and to the mind/machine controversy. It points to the importance of informal methods even within formal sciences and to the need for an analysis of the notion of informal thinking in cognitive science.     

Ein Husserlmanuskript über Ästhetik

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Suchttherapie bei abhängigen Ärzten

Background

International studies indicate an increased incidence of substance abuse disorders among physicians. This article investigates specific variables in the work field and describes existing treatment programs.

Patients and methods

In a cross-sectional study 107 physicians with and 468 without substance abuse disorders were compared. Two highly developed treatment programs in Germany and Canada are described.

Results

The high work-load associated with the medical work environment leads to reduced performance and social isolation. Treatment programs for addicted physicians work with the concept of ?help before restriction“. The abstinence rate of the 5-year Canadian program is over 90%.

Conclusions

As a form of prevention, medical students should be systematically informed about work-related stress in the medical profession. Structured treatment programs should be implemented nationwide. The expert team ?Risk of addiction in physicians“ of the German Addiction Foundation, whose members are authors of this article, may be a small step in this direction.     

Über Ähnlichkeit bei gesehenen Figuren

Ohne Zusammenfassung Mit 64 Textabbildungen. Für das Problem der Arbeit bin ich Herrn Prof.M. Wertheimer, für Rat und Hilfe Herrn Dozent Dr.W. Metzger zu gro?em Dank verpflichtet. (Dissertation der naturwissenschaftlichen Fakult?t Frankfurt a. M.)     

Neue Beiträge zur ‘Philosophie des Menschen’

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Träume werden zwischen den Menschen geträumt

Because we humans have a multitude of relationships, which first allow us to live, dreams as a natural phenomenon can express this basic feature of humans but they can also be understood specially for various relationships: they depict multiple relationships in which we are involved, illuminate relationships, give another new component to conscious knowledge and in this way alter relationships. We tell each other about dreams and exchange them amongst ourselves in a special narrative sphere.When working with dreams in the therapeutic process, the messages of dreams on the analytical relationship are important information and experiences from an unaccustomed perspective. That both the analysand and the analyst share an understanding of the dreams, is shown in particular by the initial dream. It can conclusively be shown in dream series how relationship conflicts change through the work with dreams.     

Eine Welt ohne Individuelle EntitÄten?

A world without individual entities? An advice to not to extract immediate ontological consequences from quantum theory. Should we assume a world without individual entities? I pledge not to extract immediate ontological consequences from quantum theory. My intention is to focus on the complexity of ontological concepts commonly associated with quantum theory. Using as an example the compatibility of EPR correlations with the existence of individual entities, it is shown that an absolute rejection of an ontological category, based on some aspects of the formalism of quantum theory, does not seem reasonable. A consequence of this argument is that the common sense view – the world is composed of individual entities – can be maintained, despite of the particularities of quantum mechanics.