Thomas Verner Moore and the electronic road to the unconscious: A reminiscence

A number of contemporary commentators and observers have urged a rapprochement between customary methods of psychoanalytic treatment and other modalities in order to shorten the traditional duration of “standard” psychoanalysis. In particular, adoption or adaptation of treatment modalities drawn from the repertoire of behavior therapy has been advocated. This note recalls that nearly 50 years ago the remarkable priest-psychologist-psychiatrist Thomas Verner Moore proposed in The Driving Forces of Human Nature and Their Adjustment, his capstone work, an “electronic road” to the unconscious via the psychogalvanometer as an alternate to the “royal road” of dream analysis and free association, attributing its development to von Stauffenberg, who demonstrated the technique in Munich between 1913-1915. By such reckoning, the union between psychoanalysis and the psychogalvanometer may be nearing its 85th anniversary.     

Thomas Verner Moore and the electronic road to the unconscious: A reminiscence

A number of contemporary commentators and observers have urged a rapprochement between customary methods of psychoanalytic treatment and other modalities in order to shorten the traditional duration of “standard” psychoanalysis. In particular, adoption or adaptation of treatment modalities drawn from the repertoire of behavior therapy has been advocated. This note recalls that nearly 50 years ago the remarkable priest-psychologist-psychiatrist Thomas Verner Moore proposed in The Driving Forces of Human Nature and Their Adjustment, his capstone work, an “electronic road” to the unconscious via the psychogalvanometer as an alternate to the “royal road” of dream analysis and free association, attributing its development to von Stauffenberg, who demonstrated the technique in Munich between 1913-1915. By such reckoning, the union between psychoanalysis and the psychogalvanometer may be nearing its 85th anniversary.     

The Anomalous Foundations of Dream Telling: Objective Solipsism and the Problem of Meaning

Little sociological attention is directed to dreams and dreaming, and none at all is directed to how people tell one another about dreams. Ordinary settings in which dreams are told mimic the conditions of “breaching” experiments and should produce anomie, but dream telling proceeds without trouble. Foundational orientations of ordinary dream talk assimilate into professional dream studies, where dream narratives are “data” and the analysis of narratives is “dream analysis.” That such practices proceed without trouble poses some interesting problems for sociology in terms of how anyone experiences “constraint” in the telling and hearing of dreams.     

Resistance to Women in Ministry and the Psychodynamics of Sadness

The relationship between losses within mainline Protestant churches and the resistance to women in ministry is explored. Loss in congregations and denominations awakens an unconscious desire for a “dominant other” that will save the church from real or perceived loss or even the threat of death. Women are not seen as “dominant” and are thus overlooked when leadership for restoration is sought. Loss may also awaken unconscious resentment and hatred against women. Women are associated with the “wombishness” of Jesus, a trait historically rejected, but one that could not be destroyed even as it remained life-giving and nurturing.     

Therapeutic neurosis: The need to resist the healing process in psychotherapy

Client resistance to therapy is necessary and needed. In the Freudian view, “optimal resistance” provided therapeutic opportunity to help clients constructively work through issues instead of acting them out inappropriately. Although resistance seems to perpetuate neurotic defenses, successful analysis of resistance is the key to understanding clients' unconscious fears and wishes. As seen by the Bioenergetic analyst, clients' will- power to hold onto their neuroses, their resistance to the healing process, needs to be softened so as to allow full expression of their fears. Fear of life is likened to the wish to die. Resolution of resistance ultimately converts to client ability to live through the pleasure and pain of his/her true life reality.     

The Religious Content of Dreams: A New Scientific Foundation

Dream content is meaningfully related to waking life religiosity, so much so that reading a person’s dream reports “blindly,” without any other personal information or associations from the dreamer, can reveal with surprising accuracy his or her basic waking attitude toward religion and spirituality. Two long-term dream journals are analyzed in this manner, and the results demonstrate that dream content is an accurate reflection of a person’s religious beliefs, practices, and experiences. The significance of this for pastoral psychologists lies not in specific new techniques of dream interpretation but more fundamentally in supporting the practice of paying attention to dreams in the first place. The goal of the article is to build a bridge between pastoral psychological interest in dreams and the latest findings in the scientific study of dreaming. Contrary to the assumption that religion and science inevitably conflict with each other, dreaming offers an area of potential religion–science convergence.     

Why did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein?

Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus” is presented here as her encoded image of unconscious emotions too painful for her waking personality to deal with. Her innovative image of man-made life is taken as emerging from the confrontation of her hopes for secure love with painful events in her life with Percy Shelley. This paper proposes that her novel served as a waking expression of unconscious feelings of hurt in reaction to Percy. The monster’s role is here decoded as her way to consciously process the idea that parts of her relation to Percy were so hurtful as to deform it into a miscreant. It is further proposed that the losses and frustrations of her earliest years inclined her to accept Percy’s violations in the hope of the secure love she longed for. The answer offered to this paper’s title accounts for why “Frankenstein” is taken to refer to the unnamed monster and not its creator.Anthony F. Badalamenti is a research scientist in psychiatry. He has a private practice in psychoanalysis and works at quantifying psychiatric research with Columbia University Psychiatric Institute, The Nathan Kline Institute and The University of New England. He holds PhDs in mathematics from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and in systems from Bell Telephone Laboratories. He is a member of the Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, from whom he received a distinguished research award, the American Mathematical Society, the Society for General Systems Research and the New York Academy of Sciences. He has published over 60 papers in psychiatric research.     

The Spiritual Implications of Interpersonal Abuse: Speaking of the Soul

A holistic view of the person includes body, mind and spirit, or soul. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concepts of “soul” and “radical evil” within a conversation about destructive interpersonal abuse. Most religions and spiritual disciplines understand the human person, especially the human soul, as sacred. When the perpetrator, propelled by his own internal alienation, desecrates the soul of his victim through relational sexual abuse, the victim often experiences herself as a no-person. Her ongoing sense of identity is fragmented, her capacity for spiritual experience, for imagination, creativity, relatedness are deeply wounded. With the help of information from the field of neuroscience, as well as other theological perspectives, some pathways for healing of the soul are discussed.     

Meaning(fullness) Without Metaphysics: Another Look at Hume’s “Meaning Empiricism”

Although Hume has no developed semantic theory, in the heyday of analytic philosophy he was criticized for his “meaning empiricism,” which supposedly committed him to a private world of ideas, led him to champion a genetic account of meaning instead of an analytic one, and confused “impressions” with “perceptions of an objective realm.” But another look at Hume’s “meaning empiricism” reveals that his criterion for cognitive content, the cornerstone both of his resolutely anti-metaphysical stance and his naturalistic “science of human nature,” provides the basis for a successful response to his critics. Central to his program for reforming philosophy, Hume’s use of the criterion has two distinct aspects: a critical or negative aspect, which assesses the content of the central notions of metaphysical theories to demonstrate their unintelligibility; and a constructive or positive aspect, which accurately determines the cognitive content of terms and ideas.     

Merton’s “True Self”: A Resource for Survivors of Sexual Abuse by Priests

The toxic impact of clergy sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence can be complex and enduring. For some, a particularly painful consequence is noteworthy change in one’s personal identity or sense of self. Survivors frequently experience unrelenting grief over the loss of the “self” that was experienced as “real” prior to the onset of abuse. Memories of days and times when this self was “alive” are often accompanied by strong feelings of affection and joy. Despair over the loss of this identity contrasts sharply with the indifference or hostility felt for the self with which they have been burdened as a consequence of sexual abuse by clergy in childhood. Many struggle with the unbearable conviction that they are fated to live “in the skin” of an identity that is not an authentic expression of the person they were meant to be. This article suggests that the writings of Thomas Merton (1915–1968) may offer a hopeful resource for survivors of clergy sexual abuse and for those working in support of survivors’ recovery. Merton has been described as “the most influential Catholic author of the twentieth century” ). His writings touch the “deeper woundedness of spirit and psyche” (Kilcourse, Cross Curr, 49:87–96, 1999, p. 90) and his elegant examination of the true self lies “at the center of his teaching on the Christian life” (Conn, Pastor Psychol, 46:323–332, 1998, p. 327). For Merton, the true self is indestructible and, because it is “rooted in God” (Merton, The inner experience: Notes on contemplation, Harper Collins, New York, 2003, p. 2), always open to discovery, growth, and transformation. This framework may be especially useful for individuals whose personal identity, as a consequence of sexual abuse in childhood by clergy, is experienced as forever poisoned and beyond redemption.     

Mathematical Intuition and Natural Numbers: A Critical Discussion Charles Parsons, Mathematical Thought and Its Objects, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2008, xx + 378?pp

Charles Parsons’ book “Mathematical Thought and Its Objects” of 2008 (Cambridge University Press, New York) is critically discussed by concentrating on one of Parsons’ main themes: the role of intuition in our understanding of arithmetic (“intuition” in the specific sense of Kant and Hilbert). Parsons argues for a version of structuralism which is restricted by the condition that some paradigmatic structure should be presented that makes clear the actual existence of structures of the necessary sort. Parsons’ paradigmatic structure is the so-called ‘intuitive model’ of arithmetic realized by Hilbert’s strings of strokes. This paper argues that Hilbert’s strings, considered as given in intuition, cannot play the role Parsons assigns to them: the criteria of identity of these strings do not have the sharpness that Parsons wants to see in them, and Parsons inadvertently projects abstract structures into his ‘intuitive model’. This diagnosis is exemplified with respect to (a) Parsons’ distinction between addition and multiplication on the one hand and exponentiation on the other and (b) his analysis of arithmetical knowledge in simple cases like “7 + 5 = 12”. All in all, it is claimed that Parsons book contains many important insights with respect to, for example, different versions structuralism, the notion of “natural number” and its uniqueness, induction, predicativity and other things, for which he is rightly famous, but that his way of drawing on the notion of intuition leaves too many questions unanswered.     

Sacramental psychology: Treating intimacy failure in catholic priests

The treatment of intimacy failure in Roman Catholic priests in an outpatient program designed to treat sexual misconduct is discussed here. Three case vignettes highlight a particular feature of an intimacy deficit that sets the stage for the priests' sexual acting out. Intimacy, hypocrisy, and self-deception and the Catholic sacramental world view are discussed to shed light on the treatment of sexual addiction in the clergy. Tapping into a priest's beliefs regarding the divine power arising from his own ordination creates a nexus of healing where psychotherapy and spiritual direction join forces to produce a kind of “sacramental psychology.” This material was originally offered as part of a Grand Rounds presentation at St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center in New York City.     

Accessibility of the subliminal mind: Transcendence vs. immanence

It has long been taken for granted in modern psychology that access to the unconscious is indirectly gained through the interpretation of a trained psychoanalyst, evident in theories of Freud, Jung and others. However, my essay problematizes this very indirectness of access by bringing in a Yogācāra Buddhist formulation of the subliminal mind that offers a direct access. By probing into the philosophical significance of the subliminal mind along the bias of its access, I will argue that the different views of the subliminal consciousness correspond to different models of “transcendence” and “immanence.” We will see that the involvement of the transcendence principle in Freud’s and Jung’s conceptualizations of the unconscious results in the denial of direct access to the unconscious; only the Buddhist immanence-based formulation provides direct access. This East-West comparative approach is an attempt to examine how different models of reasoning, vis-à-vis transcendence and immanence, can lead to drastically different theories as well as the practices they instruct.     

The Memory Evolutive Systems as a Model of Rosen’s Organisms – (Metabolic,Replication) Systems

Robert Rosen has proposed several characteristics to distinguish “simple” physical systems (or “mechanisms”) from “complex” systems, such as living systems, which he calls “organisms”. The Memory Evolutive Systems (MES) introduced by the authors in preceding papers are shown to provide a mathematical model, based on category theory, which satisfies his characteristics of organisms, in particular the merger of the Aristotelian causes. Moreover they identify the condition for the emergence of objects and systems of increasing complexity. As an application, the cognitive system of an animal is modeled by the “MES of cat-neurons” obtained by successive complexifications of his neural system, in which the emergence of higher order cognitive processes gives support to Mario Bunge’s “emergentist monism.” Dedicated to the memory of Robert Rosen who kindly accepted to come to Amiens while he was very ill.     

How is God-talk logically possible? A sketch for an argument on the logic of ‘God’

In this paper I want to argue for the optimal way to characterise the logical and semantical behaviour of the singular term ‘God’ used in religious language. The relevance of this enterprise to logical theory is the main focus as well. Doing this presupposes to outline the two rivaling approaches of well-definition of singular terms: Kripke’s (“rigid designators”) and Hintikka’s (“world-lines”). ‘God’ as a “rigid designator” is purified from all real-life-language-games of identification and only spells out a metaphysical tag, which favours the view of “anything goes”. Instead, ‘God’ as a “world-line,” plus two ways of quantification, is much more flexible to theological traditions, teachings of the church, religious practices and personal feelings. Thus, it provides a sufficiently well-defined singular term for the purposes of logical theory. The whole sketch is based on Jaakko Hintikka’s logical ideas, mainly on his responses to different authors in PJH. I have systematically omitted direct references to his texts because I have modified considerably his ideas for my own purposes.     

Selfhood and Fiduciary Community: A Smithian Reading of Tu Weiming’s Confucian Humanism

Tu Weiming, as a leading spokesman for contemporary New Confucianism, has been reinterpreting the Confucian tradition in the face of the challenges of modernity. Tu takes selfhood as his starting point, emphasizing the importance of cultivating the human mind-and-heart as a deepening and broadening process to realize the anthropocosmic dao. He highlights the concept of a “fiduciary community” and advocates that, because of it, Confucianism remains a dynamic “inclusive humanism.” Tu’s mode of thinking tallies well with Wilfred C. Smith’s vision of religion, specifically the latter’s exposition of faith as a universal human quality and proposal of “corporate critical self-consciousness.” This article details the theories of both scholars, highlights their similarities, and contrasts their differences. It argues that Smith’s world theology provides a heuristic framework through which one understands how Tu has advanced his Confucian humanism from a Chinese philosophical or cultural tradition to the midst of world religions.     

Two for the show: Anti-luck and virtue epistemologies in consonance

This essay extends my side of a discussion begun earlier with Duncan Pritchard, the recent author of Epistemic Luck.Pritchard’s work contributes significantly to improving the “diagnostic appeal” of a neo-Moorean philosophical response to radical scepticism. While agreeing with Pritchard in many respects, the paper questions the need for his concession to the sceptic that the neo-Moorean is capable at best of recovering “‘brute’ externalist knowledge”. The paper discusses and directly responds to a dilemma that Pritchard poses for virtue epistemologies (VE). It also takes issue with Pritchard’s “merely safety-based” alternative. Ultimately, however, the criticisms made here of Pritchard’s dilemma and its underlying contrast of “anti-luck” and “virtue” epistemologies are intended to help realize his own aspirations for a better diagnosis of radical scepticism to inform a still better neo-Moorean response.     

W<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">ang</Emphasis> Yangming’s 王陽明 Philosophy and Modern Theories of Democracy: A Reconstructive Interpretation

Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919) was the first scholar to locate intellectual resources of modern democracy in Wang Yangming’s theory of the “original knowing” (liangzhi 良知). In the 1950s there was a debate between Taiwanese liberals and the “New Confucians” over the relationship between the traditional Confucianism and modern democracy. Like Liu Shipei, the “New Confucians” justified modern democracy by means of Confucian philosophy (including that of Wang Yangming). For liberals, however, the Confucian tradition encompassed only the concept of “positive liberty,” which was irrelevant to or even incompatible with modern democracy. In this article, I try to argue for the position of the “New Confucians” by reconstructing Wang Yangming’s theory of the “original knowing” from a communitarian perspective.     

��Justice is happiness��?��An analysis of Plato��s strategies in response to challenges from the sophists

The challenge from the sophists with whom Plato is confronted is: Who can prove that the just man without power is happy whereas the unjust man with power is not? This challenge concerns the basic issue of politics: the relationship between justice and happiness. Will the unjust man gain the exceptional “happiness of the strong” by abusing his power and by injustice? The gist of Plato’s reply is to speak not of “justice” but of “intrinsic justice,” i.e., the strength of virtue which, in his account, is the fundamental good of man. Nevertheless, many contend that intrinsic justice is actually injustice, for the division of power in the state is undemocratic while in the soul, the suppression of desire by the reason. Plato’s advocacy of hierarchical, elite political system has enraged democrats, while his idea of “philosopher king” has enraged the aristocrats as well. So, who will appreciate Plato’s effort?