The near-death experience: An ancient truth,a modern mystery

The near-death experience (NDE), as an experience of whole-ness, an adventure in consciousness, and a metaphoric encounter with light, links theoretical physics with the occult, the Primordial Tradition, and various religious belief systems. Light as image, vehicle, and first cause ties the NDE to mystical experience. Where science sees mystery, religion sees metaphoric truth; the NDE as spiritual quest and physical encounter beckons to both disciplines for explanation.International Association for Near-Death StudiesDr. Fenske is President of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, and is engaged in the private practice of psychotherapy and the integration of psychology and religion. This paper is a revised version of her keynote lecture presented at the International Association for Near-Death Studies First Annual Conference, Rosemont, PA, June 1989.     

Dreams,psychoanalysis and virtuality: the ancient mind in the modern world

The modern psyche is being shaped by the technological revolution involving the development of a virtual electronic environment in replacement of the natural world. Through the lens of the dream, as it has been valued and devalued in various cultures (including psychoanalysis), we can explore changes in the status of inner life. Psychoanalysis at first celebrated, now ignores dreams. This development runs parallel to the high value of dreams in pre‐industrial cultures and their demotion in contemporary post‐industrial Western culture. Despite official disregard for dreams, dreams as the original virtual experience, serve as the basic model from nature for the electronic virtual world displayed on the external screen. Also, dreams reappear in a technological transformation as film, video, TV and computer imagery. The ancient importance of dreams has been transferred to the powerful influence of life on the external screen. But dreams as dreams are like “the canary in the mind,” warning of a continuing demotion of inner life in modern “post‐human” culture. A rebellious re‐engagement with dreams, in clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis, is advocated.     

From ancient consolation and negative care to modern empathy and the neurosciences

A historical understanding of the virtue of consolation, as contrasted to empathy, compassion, or sympathy, is developed. Recent findings from neuroscience are presented which support and affirm this understanding. These findings are related to palliative care and its current practice in bioethics.     

Intelligence,divergent thinking,and creativity

Guilford's Alternate Uses, Plot Titles, and Consequences tests were given to 94 university students along with the Concept Mastery Test, a traditional measure of verbal intelligence. These measures were correlated with an inventory of creative activities and accomplishments. A composite index of ideational fluency correlated with four creativity indices: Crafts, Performing Arts, Math-Science, and Total Creativity, while the Concept Mastery Test correlated with three indices: Art, Literature, and Total Creativity. With the exception that verbal intelligence was a better predictor of creativity in literature, no statistical difference between the predictive accuracies of ideational fluency and verbal intelligence were found. The need to re-examine the widely accepted association of divergent thinking with creativity was discussed.     

中国上古中古史研究的宗教维度--评钟国发《神圣的突破--从世界文明视野看儒佛道三元一体格局的由来》

魏晋以后中国人精神世界中儒释道并存的格局早已为治学者所熟知,然而对常识的习焉不察往往阻碍了我们对该问题的进一步探询与反思.钟国发先生的新作<神圣的突破--从世界文明视野看儒佛道三元一体格局的由来>(四川人民出版社2003年10月版)不囿于成见,提出儒佛道三元一体的命题,并且对这一命题从宗教内部及其与社会历史之间关系进行了阐释.尤为可贵的是,这种阐释是在世界文明视野下,在对中华文明的起源、发展历程作出整体性的把握之后展开的,因此,这种阐释本身就是对中国上古中古史的一种气势恢宏而又不失严谨缜密的书写,体现了作者对中国历史追本溯源、富有洞察力而又自成体系的理解.故而,该书的关怀已远远超出了宗教领域,而深入到中国历史的思想、知识、信仰、社会组织、政治形态等诸多层面的研究,对上古史、中古史多有贯通之解.下面就该书的若干观点作一简单评介.     

Group supervision of groups: a modern analytic perspective

This article is introduced by historical references to Freud's Wednesday Evening Society and to relevant sources in the literature on group supervision. The aims of group supervision are defined: helping supervisees to understand the individuals who comprise their groups, helping the supervisee become a group-oriented therapist, alerting supervisees to the critical task of monitoring and regulating the amount of emotional excitation within their groups, helping supervisees deal with the range of feelings induced in them by their groups, and helping them become familiar with the principles and become proficient in the techniques of modern analysis. Major aspects of the group-supervisory process are delineated and illustrated through the use of relevant vignettes. Resistance in supervisory groups is discussed with examples of the resolution of some resistances. The author's method and style of leading supervisory groups is presented, as are observations on the boundaries of supervisory groups.     

The functioning of religions from a modern psychoanalytic perspective

This paper considers the personal psychological development which can take place in the adherents of certain religions, and compares it with the personal development which can take place in a psychoanalysis. The author argues that the preoccupations of different religions are very various, and to understand their functioning it is important to recognise the variety of their goals. Using the Kleinian notion of psychic ‘positions', and with the help of a neuro-scientific model, it becomes possible to conceptualise the psychological effectiveness of both psychoanalysis and the religions, and to relate them intelligibly. There continues, however, to be a radical difference between the ways in which psychoanalysis and the religions cause their psychological effects, which is best seen by considering the nature of their objects.     

Declines in divergent thinking with age: cross-sectional, longitudinal, and cross-sequential analyses

Six measures of divergent thinking were administered to 825 men ranging in age from 17 to 101 over the period from 1959 to 1972; repeat administrations were given to a subset of 278 men after a 6-year interval. Cross-sectional analyses showed curvilinear trends, with an increase in scores for men under 40 and a decline thereafter. Repeated measures analyses on subjects initially aged 33 to 74 generally replicated this finding, whereas cross-sequential analyses suggested a decline for all cohorts tested at a later time. Additional analyses suggested that not all of the decline could be attributed to reduced speed of response production. These longitudinal findings confirm earlier cross-sectional reports of decline in divergent thinking abilities with age.     

Eudoxos and Dedekind: On the ancient Greek theory of ratios and its relation to modern mathematics

This material is based upon work supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DIR-8808575.     

今、帛、竹书《周易》与今、古文问题

帛书及楚竹书、阜阳汉简<周易>的面世,极大地拓展了我们对<周易>经文的研究视野.东汉熹平间,灵帝诏诸儒正定五经,以熹平石经作为今文标准本,熹平石经遂成为后人研究、界定汉代经今、古文的重要依据.然今以帛<易>考之,汉初人们以隶字抄书,并无严格的今、古文区分,故熹平石经作为分辨汉人今、古文的权威,只是为平息当时的今、古文之争.汉唐人以自己所见之有限的古文本而定其"古文某作×",今以竹书校之,方知其所见之古文本及其古文字,与战国竹书古文本多有不同.而由今本与竹书本多有相同相通者考之,知今本确为古文本无疑.随着帛<易>的出土,有本师传授的今文<易>在亡佚千余年后又重现于世,对弄清<周易>六十四卦中的一些疑难卦爻辞原旨,厘清汉人今、古文经学的发展与演变,无疑有重大的借鉴与帮助.     

A modern learning theory perspective on the etiology of panic disorder

Several theories of the development of panic disorder (PD) with or without agoraphobia have emerged in the last 2 decades. Early theories that proposed a role for classical conditioning were criticized on several grounds. However, each criticism can be met and rejected when one considers current perspectives on conditioning and associative learning. The authors propose that PD develops because exposure to panic attacks causes the conditioning of anxiety (and sometimes panic) to exteroceptive and interoceptive cues. This process is reflected in a variety of cognitive and behavioral phenomena but fundamentally involves emotional learning that is best accounted for by conditioning principles. Anxiety, an anticipatory emotional state that functions to prepare the individual for the next panic, is different from panic, an emotional state designed to deal with a traumatic event that is already in progress. However, the presence of conditioned anxiety potentiates the next panic, which begins the individual's spiral into PD. Several biological and psychological factors create vulnerabilities by influencing the individual's susceptibility to conditioning. The relationship between the present view and other views, particularly those that emphasize the role of catastrophic misinterpretation of somatic sensations, is discussed.     

Primary process thinking, divergent thinking, and coping in children

The relationships among primary process thinking, divergent thinking, and coping were investigated in fifth-grade children. Specifically, it was hypothesized from psychodynamic theory that access to and integration of primary process thinking would be positively related to divergent thinking and that both integration of primary process and divergent thinking would be predictive of coping ability. The Rorschach (Holt's scoring system) and Alternate Uses Test (spontaneous flexibility score) were administered to 53 fifth-grade children. Zeitlin's Coping Inventory, a teacher's rating scale, was the coping measure. Results confirmed the hypotheses for boys in that the percentage of primary process and the Adaptive Regression score on the Rorschach were significantly related to divergent thinking, r(27) = .33, p less than .05 and r(27) = .34, p less than .05, respectively. Divergent thinking was significantly related to teachers' ratings of coping ability for boys, r(27) = .58, p less than .01. There were no significant relationships among the variables for girls. These sex differences in the pattern of correlations are consistent with previous findings.