A Review of “The Relational Origins of Prejudice: A Convergence of Psychoanalytic and Social Cognitive Perspectives”

Abstract

Key concepts in social welfare and clinical social work - concepts such as person-in-environment, women's rights, prevention and outreach-had as precedents the pioneering theory and practice of Europe's free psychoanalytic clinics of the 1920s. Sex-Pol, a Viennese community-based clinical network created in 1927 by Wilhelm Reich, perhaps the most overtly political of the first psychoanalysts, was motivated by reformist social goals he shared with Sigmund Freud. This historical study of Sex-Pol draws on Reich's own words to explore his use of the term “social work” where clinical work is predicated on an activist ideology of human liberation.     

The Rod of Discipline: Masochism, Sadism, and the Judeo-Christian Religion

Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, the scenario where a person, often a child, is being beaten by a parent, an authority figure, or even God, is often found. This essay searches for an explanation for this phenomenon by combining Sigmund Freud's thoughts on the masochism of the Oedipus complex and Martin Bergmann's belief that Western religion was impacted by the sadism of the Laius and Jocasta Complexes. The paper argues that, within the section of the Judeo-Christian tradition that sanctions the physical abuse of children, sadism and masochism find the perfect marriage.     

Freud–Ferenczi correspondence,revisited

Abstract

The article gives an overview of what Freud and Ferenczi had to say in their correspondence about their own relationship, and how they dealt with problems that arose between them. It includes a list of short selected quotes from the correspondence.     

Constructing an Aesthetic Weltanschauung: Freud,James, and Ricoeur

I will investigate in this paper what kind of Weltanschauung Freud suggests. Although Freud argues in the lecture XXXV, The Question of a Weltanschauung (1933), that psychoanalysis is incapable of creating a Weltanschauung of its own, I think that he has a certain Weltanschauung, i.e., the aesthetic worldview, which involves his scientific, psychoanalytic, and artistic principles. Furthermore, I will explicate that Freud's aesthetic worldview is ultimately related to the Weltanschauungen of William James and Paul Ricoeur. I will focus particularly on their terms, sympathetic and poetic, which are the crucial elements that constitute the aesthetic Weltanschauung. Finally, I will briefly present my intention in drawing this aesthetic Weltanschauung. I will conclude that throughout the aesthetic Weltanschauung we may accept that everything is precious, pertinent, and worthy to be viewed as a part and a whole, and as home (Heim).     

The way of authenticity and the quest for personal integrity1,2

The author reviews the respective conceptions of authenticity proposed by the existentialist philosophers, Fredrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, each of whom situate it in the inherent difficulty of resisting the herd instinct in one's interpersonal relationships, then sets out to show how, despite the absence of authenticity as a technical term in the psychoanalytic lexicon, the technical principles of psychoanalysis enumerated by Freud are compatible with the views of both Nietzsche and Heidegger. The author then gives examples of other psychoanalytic authors who similarly embrace the spirit of authentic relating in their conception of the clinical situation, including the work of D. W. Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, and Jacques Lacan. The author concludes that in the psychoanalytic context the imposition and experience of suffering are invaluable components of authenticity and therapeutic change.     

幽默广告诉求及其传播效

幽默是广告中最常见的诉求方式之一。通过综合分析现有相关研究,发现：(1)幽默诉求在吸引受众注意、增强对广告及其品牌的偏好度上存在优势,但对广告品牌信息的加工是否存在促进或妨碍作用则尚未获得较为统一的结论;(2)该诉求的传播效果明显受到产品类型和卷入度、受众的幽默和认知需求、性别、文化差异、已有的品牌态度以及幽默的类型和相关性等诸多因素的影响。同时,目前尚存在对广告环境因素、传播的整体过程研究不足及理论总结不力等问题     

Some Must Die

The transplantation and procurement of human organs has become almost routine in American society. Yet, organ transplantation raises difficult ethical and psychosocial issues in the context of “controlled” death, including the blurring of boundaries between life and death, self and other, healing and harming, and killing and letting die. These issues are explored in the context of the actual experiences of organ donors and recipients, brain death, the introduction of non‐heartbeating donor protocols, and the increasing reliance on living donors. The author draws on a thematic analysis of the way that organ transplantation is presented in the media, films, and science fiction and on his clinical experience as a psychiatrist working with transplant patients, their families, and the nurses and physicians who care for them.     

‘An unpublished letter by Sigmund Freud on the Shakespeare authorship question’

This article provides the text of the English translation of Sigmund Freud’s previously unpublished 1935 letter to Percy Allen, the only known letter in which Freud expresses his unqualified support for the theory that ‘William Shakespeare’ was the pen name of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550–1604). The article summarizes the literature on Freud’s authorship views, showing that scholars who disagree with Freud on this matter have minimized his opinion by pathologizing it, or emphasizing Freud’s reservations about the matter. The prevailing theory as to who wrote Shakespeare, on close examination, turns out to be based primarily on circular thinking, confirmation bias, tradition, authority, groupthink, and enforcement of a taboo against the presentation or objective consideration of conflicting evidence. In addition, it originated before we had a better understanding of the high frequency of anonymous, pseudonymous, and allonymous literature in Elizabethan England. The reputations enjoyed by leading Shakespeare scholars lead nonspecialists to assume that these experts can be trusted to tell us who wrote Shakespeare. Unfortunately, Shakespeare scholars falsely claim absolute certainty that they know that ‘Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.’ Freud’s dissenting opinion has been supported by increasing evidence since 1935.     

Fruits of Health; Roots of Despair: William James, Medical Materialism and the Evaluation of Religious Experience

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James introduces the term “medical materialism” to describe the fallacious attempt by some scientists to argue against the value of spiritual ideas. Two literary case studies will be considered for purposes of better understanding James’ idea. What’s more, it will be shown that, in addition to James’ three criteria for the appropriate evaluation of religious experience, there is another factor not made explicit, namely that of hopefulness. This factor serves to distinguish ordinary from pathological morbid-mindedness, the latter of which has no religious significance.Tadd Ruetenik teaches philosophy at Penn State Altoona. He received his Ph.D. from the English and Philosophy program at Purdue University. Correspondence to Tadd Ruetenik, tlr18@psu.edu.     

Images of the disciplining of psychology, 1890–1940

Over the course of psychology’s first several decades, the language used to convey the subject matter gradually shifted from being free and literary to being strictly constrained and disciplined by increasingly focused theoretical demands. The project described here, “Disciplining Psychology,” aimed to depict this transformation by generating images of the faces of three highly influential psychologists—William James, Sigmund Freud, and B. F. Skinner. Each image is composed of the words used in one of each individual’s most important books. The tightening of the disciplinary vocabulary is revealed in the differences among the three arrays of words themselves, but I have also striven to reflect it in the aesthetic aspects of each image. The method used here could easily be extended to a wider array of authors, texts, and psychological topics.     

'A serious venture': John Rodker (1894-1955) and the Imago Publishing Company (1939-60)

John Rodker (1894-1955) was the founder of the British publishing house--the Imago Publishing Company--which undertook the republication of the complete works of Sigmund Freud in German just before World War II. Rodker, himself a writer as well as a publisher, was initially tempted by a psychoanalytic career; numerous obstacles, however, lay in his path. War, along with the complicated management of the royalties from Freud's writings, compromised the progress of what seemed to him to be 'a serious venture'. Besides Rodker, we meet numerous actors of the psychoanalytic movement: Anna Freud, Marie Bonaparte, Ernest Jones, James Strachey, all of whom had worked for the dissemination of Freud's writings. This paper shows how the English language gradually became the 'official norm' for psychoanalysts. According to the editors of the Standard Edition, at that time 'nothing new [was] being written' in German or in French. The failure of the Gesammelte Werke project signalled the end of an era in which psychoanalysis was mainly written about in German.