The Gnostic heritage of Heavy Metal

The religious impulse in early Heavy Metal music is fundamentally Gnostic. An ancient religious tradition emphasising the rule of evil and the remoteness of salvation, Gnosticism was integrated into hard rock music in the late 1960s. Early Heavy Metal musicians encountered Gnosticism as it had been absorbed into popular fiction and film, including especially the works of Dennis Wheatley and J.R.R. Tolkien. Prominent in giving Gnosticism musical form was the band Black Sabbath, whose first three albums in 1970 and 1971 pioneered the patterns of musical practice that would become the conventions of the genre. Heavy Metal’s alternately heavy and giddy affect, created via a synthesis of musical practices and complementary verbal and visual representations, brought Gnostic beliefs into meaningful intersection with the everyday lives of young blue-collar males in Britain and the United States, as they confronted the post-industrial age in the context of a waning sixties counterculture.     

Rejoinder to Wall

Edmund Wall's criticism of the author's earlier analysis of Hare's consequentialism and Kantian ethics claims that the author overlooked Hare's commitment to preference satisfaction as an “ultimate good.” This rejoinder points out that Hare never uses the phrase in question, nor any equivalent phrase or concept, in presenting his own arguments and refers only to the standard of “universalizability” as ultimate, in contexts that support the author's original argument. Hence Wall has only given us yet another example of how Hare's views can be misunderstood by philosophers who fail to attend to the details of Hare's approach.     

The War Memoirs: Some origins of the thought of W. R. Bion

The work of W. R. Bion changed the shape of psychoanalytic theory in fundamental ways, one of the most important of which was Bion's insight into the nature of normal projective identification. No other psychoanalytic theorist has Bion's ability to represent the horrors of psychic abandonment and the converse, the absolute necessity of the presence of another mind for psychic survival. Through a discussion of Bion's War Memoirs 1917–1919 ( Bion, 1997 ), Attacks on linking and A theory of thinking (1993), this paper explores the link between war, masculinity, the maternal and Bion's sensitivity to the significance of everyday interpersonal contact. It is argued that Bion's apocalyptic experiences as a teenage tank commander gave him shattering insight into the extent to which mind is inter-mind, self is inter-self. Bion's life writing has the quality of survivor insight: 'And only I am escaped alone to tell thee' (Job 1: 14–19), as he returns repeatedly to the events of the day when he 'died ', 8 August 1918. His insight into the elemental passions nature of love, hate and mindlessness are borne of his experiences on the battlefield, and exquisitely crystallized in his repeated explorations of an encounter with a dying soldier.     

Self-observation and behavior change: Applications to academic and adjustment problems through behavioral consultation

Self-observation as a behavior change technique was implemented through behavioral consultation in a public elementary school system. The self-observation procedures were introduced to two subjects with academic problems (assignment completion) and two subjects with behavioral problems (disruptive talk and interruptions, respectively). In each of the four cases, self-observation resulted in improvement in client behavior. Results are discussed within the context of previous methodological issues in the self-observation literature and the relevance of self-observation as a therapeutic tool in school settings.     

Antecedents to Fechner's law: the astronomers J. Herschel, W. R. Dawes, and N. R. Pogson

The history of the stellar magnitude scale is briefly traced from the second century b.c. until the middle of the nineteenth century. It becomes clear that astronomers formulated "Fechner's Law" by about 1850. While Fechner is credited with the grander view of things, the contention is made that the astronomers John Herschel, W. R. Dawes, and N. R. Pogson have not been given their due by historians of psychology.     

Social inhibition as a function of observation and recording of performance

In order to compare the relative effects of observation of performance and recording of information about performance on social facilitation/inhibition, 256 college students solved three concept-attainment problems in an orthogonal design. The variables were (a) number of observers (an additional observer or the experimenter alone), (b) videorecording (yes or no), (c) audiorecording (yes or no), (d) task complexity (four, six, eight, or ten total attributes in the problems). Each of videotaping, filming, and audiotaping resulted in poorer performance than the control condition, with no differences between these three recording conditions. The presence of an additional observer had no effect on performance. Pulse measures indicated that the presence of an additional observer increased arousal, but covariance analysis indicated no association between differences in performance and arousal.     

Effects of noise on sensitivity of introverts and extraverts to signals in a vigilance task

Forty Ss, previously classified as introverts or extraverts on the basis of scores on the Eysenck Personality Inventory, performed a visual vigilance task while being stimulated with noise at an intensity level of either 65 or 85 dB. Introverts given noise of 65 dB intensity showed an improvement in detection rate across trials, whereas introverts given noise of 85 dB intensity showed a decline in detection rate. Extraverts responded to noise of 65 dB intensity with a slight decrease in detection rate, but showed an improvement in detection over trials when noise of 85 dB intensity was given. When noise of the lower intensity was given, introverts showed greater sensitivity to signals than extraverts. When noise of the higher intensity was given, introverts and extraverts were equal in sensitivity. The results are discussed in terms of a hypothesized relationship between stimulation and arousal, with E-I as a moderator variable.     

Personality correlates of retrieval processes in intentional and unintentional forgetting

Early accounts of intentional forgetting relied exclusively on mechanisms that operate at encoding. The results of more recent experiments indicate that memory-retrieval inhibition also is involved, thus linking waking intentional forgetting with hypnotic amnesia. The present Experiment 1 was designed to provide further support for the retrieval-inhibition hypothesis by testing four alternative explanations for some of the recent results. Experiment 2 examined the role of word affect in both intentional forgetting and unintentional forgetting to evaluate theoretical interpretations of the retrieval mechanisms thought to be involved. Unintentional forgetting of negative words was consistent with a repression-like interpretation, whereas intentional forgetting of negative words appeared to be limited by sensitization. Personality correlates of the recall results were identified and were found to be in support of these interpretations.     

What is educational theory and how to make it?

An analysis is provided detailing the conditions for the appropriate theoretical study of the object of educational science: pedagogy.     

Developmental differences in subjects' associative-learning strategies and performance: Assessing a hypothesis

Fifth-, seventh-, and ninth-grade (11-, 13-, and 15-year-old) subjects were presented with a list of paired associates to learn and were interviewed about the strategies used to learn them. Although a majority of fifth graders reported simply rehearsing the pairs in order to remember them, very few ninth graders relied exclusively on rehearsal. Consistent with a hypothesis advanced by Rohwer (1973), the number of subjects who elaborated some or all of the pairs increased with age. Paired-associate performance increased with age, but the level of paired-associate learning was much more related to the type of strategy reported by the subject than to the age of the subject per se.     

兰恩存在精神病学的心理治疗观

兰恩是20世纪英国著名的存在主义精神病学家,在反对传统精神病学诊疗观的基础上,提出了独特的存在精神病学的心理治疗观。在精神疾病的诊断上,兰恩主张从存在主义——现象学的视角来理解精神疾病,要从一个人的环境或背景中来理解他的行为。在精神疾病的心理治疗上,兰恩强调通过改变患者的生存环境来促进其自我恢复。     

R．D．莱因对传统精神疾病诊疗观的变革

传统的精神疾病诊断以一种经验式的分类手册来诊断精神疾病,而莱因主张从存在主义——现象学的视角来理解精神疾病,认为家庭或社会才是精神疾病的真正来源。在精神疾病的治疗方面,莱因主张通过改变患者的生存环境来促使其进行自我恢复。莱因的思想推动了当代精神病学的变革与发展,具有重要的现实意义。     

加工深度和元记忆训练对多重记忆系统监测的影响

这项研究探讨元记忆判断对情节记忆系统、语义记忆系统和ＰＲＳ（ｐｅｒｃｅｐｔｕａｌｒｅｐｒｅｓｅｎｔａｔｉｏｎ）系统的监测问题。已有的研究表明,元记忆对情节记忆的监测好于对语义记忆的监测。这项研究在深度加工和元记忆训练的条件下,进一步比较了Ｒ反应（Ｒｒｅｓｐｏｎｓｅｓ）项目、Ｋ反应（Ｋｒｅｓｐｏｎｓｅｓ）项目以及成功补笔项目的ＦＯＫ幅度（ＭＦＯＫ,ｍａｇｎｉｔｕｄｅｏｆＦＯＫ）。结果表明,无论是在深度加工的条件下,还是在元记忆训练的条件下,Ｒ项目的ＭＦＯＫ明最高于Ｋ项目和成功补笔项目。这说明元记忆系统的监测模式具有相对的稳定性,它不受记忆痕迹的性质与元记忆判断策略的影响。     

Counterfactuals and Context-Sensitivity

It is commonly agreed that when evaluating the validity of an argument involving context-sensitive expressions, the context should be held fixed. In their 2008 essay “Counterfactuals and Context,” Brogaard and Salerno argue further that context should be held fixed when evaluating an argument involving counterfactuals for validity, since, as many will agree, counterfactuals are context-sensitive. In the present paper, it will however be argued that Brogaard and Salerno fail to distinguish between two different roles that context plays in determining the meaning of a given counterfactual. If they were fully aware of the distinction between these two roles played by context, they might propose a contextualist approach to counterfactuals, as has been developed by Ichikawa in his 2011 paper “Quantifiers, Knowledge, and Counterfactuals.”     

The role of overt activity in children's sentence production

Nursery schooler's abilityto associate pairs of toys was assessed under four experimental conditions: (1) control, (2) S manipulating the toys, (3) S generating a sentence, and (4) S generating a sentence while manipulating the toys. All three S-involvement conditions produced significantly better recognition performance than the control but contrary to initial predictions, the difference between the sentence-only and sentence-plus-manipulation conditions was not significant. In contrast to previous research, Ss in the sentence-only conditions had little difficulty producing sentences when asked. Of interest was the finding that the quality of sentence production was poorer in the sentence-plus-manipulation condition than in the sentence-only condition. Results are discussed in terms of the possible “conflict” produced when the child is required to engage in more than one overt activity simultaneously.     

Augustine’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Confessions</Emphasis>: The Story of a Divided Self and the Process of Its Unification

This article takes up William James’ observation that Saint Augustine is “a classic example” of the discordant personality or divided self, and employs E. R. Dodd’s equally classic (1927–28) article on Augustine’s “spiritual maladjustment” to explore the psychological bases, especially parental, for Augustine’s discordant personality, and to evaluate the effectiveness of Augustine’s efforts to overcome the discordancy through a personal religious conversion.     

Creating the Best Possible World: Some Problems from Parfit

It is sometimes argued that if God were to exist, then the actual world would be the best possible world. However, given that the actual world is clearly not the best possible world, then God doesn’t exist. In response, some have argued that the world could always be improved with the creation of new people and that there is thus no best possible world. I argue that this reasoning gives rise to an instance of Parfit’s mere addition paradox and should thus be rejected. Others (Robert Adams, in particular) have argued that the actual world may, in fact, be the best possible world, at least for all actual people. I argue that this reasoning gives rise to Parfit’s non-identity problem and should thus be rejected.