Subjectivity as Encounter: Feminine Ethics in the Work of Bracha Lichtenberg‐Ettinger and Anne Enright

The fragility of the subject is a recurring issue in the work of Anne Enright, one of Ireland's most remarkable and innovative writers. It is this specific interest, together with her attempt to make women into subjects, that inevitably links her work to Bracha Lichtenberg‐Ettinger's theory of the matrixial borderspace, a feminine sphere that coexists with the Lacanian symbolic order and that, even before our entrance into this linguistic system, informs our subjectivity. By turning to a point in time before language—the encounter between “self” and “other” during pregnancy—both Enright and Ettinger test the boundaries of and the gaps within the linguistic system. It is the going before language that ultimately enables both to go beyond some of the most persistent dualisms present within the linguistic system and to create room for an alternative—a feminine—understanding of the ethical relationality between self and other.     

Daily Functioning, Health Status, and Happiness in Older Adults

The hypothesis that the degree to which disease disrupts daily functioning is inversely associated with happiness is widely accepted, yet existing literature offers little direct evidence in its support. This paper explores the hypothesized association in a community-based sample of 383 older adults. To assess the degree to which disease disrupts daily functioning we developed a measure—called the freedom-from-debility score—based on four Short Form-12 (SF-12) Health Survey questions explicitly designed to represent “limitations in physical activities because of health problems” and “limitations in usual role activities because of physical health problems.” The results were consistent with the hypothesis. When participants were divided into categories based on their freedom-from-debility score, median happiness scores were monotonically increasing across categories. Controlling for demographic and socio-economic factors as well as health status (measured both subjectively and objectively), a one-point increase in freedom-from-debility score (on a scale from 0 to 100) was associated with a three-percent reduction in the odds of lower-quartile happiness. The results support the contention that health status is one of the most influential predictors of happiness, that the association between health status and happiness depends greatly on the manner in which health status is measured, and that the degree to which disease disrupts daily functioning is inversely associated with happiness.     

Speaking of Possibilities: The Theistic Actualism of Anselm's Divine Locutio

In his Monologion, Anselm represents God's knowledge of his creative possibilities, not in the intellectualist and Platonic terms of Augustine's divine ideas, but in the linguistic, poetic, and semi‐Stoic terms of a divine “utterance” or “expression” (locutio). Through his shift in theological metaphor, Anselm makes a subtle yet significant departure from the prevailing, “possibilist” model of divine possibility in western theology—according to which God's possibilities are known prior to and independently of any act or intention to create—towards a radically alternate, analogical and “actualist” appreciation of God as the sovereign speaker and inventor of his own possibilities.     

Narrative, identity and mental health: How men with serious mental illness re-story their lives through sport and exercise

ObjectivesIt has been suggested that mental illness threatens identity and sense of self when one's personal story is displaced by dominant illness narratives focussing on deficit and dysfunction. One role of therapy, therefore, is to allow individuals to re-story their life in a more positive way which facilitates the reconstruction of a meaningful identity and sense of self. This research explores the ways in which involvement in sport and exercise may play a part in this process.DesignQualitative analysis of narrative.MethodWe used an interpretive approach which included semi-structured interviews and participant observation with 11 men with serious mental illness to gather stories of participants’ sport and exercise experiences. We conducted an analysis of narrative to explore the more general narrative types which were evident in participants’ accounts.FindingsWe identified three narrative types underlying participants’ talk about sport and exercise: (a) an action narrative about “going places and doing stuff”; (b) an achievement narrative about accomplishment through effort, skill or courage; (c) a relationship narrative of shared experiences to talk about combined with opportunities to talk about those experiences. We note that these narrative types differ significantly from—and may be considered alternatives to—dominant illness narratives.ConclusionThis study provides an alternative perspective on how sport and exercise can help men with serious mental illness by providing the narrative resources which enabled participants to re-story aspects of their lives through creating and sharing personal stories through which they rebuilt or maintained a positive sense of self and identity.     

Linguistic Acquisitional Style and Mentalising Development: The Role of Maternal Mind-mindedness

We investigated three main questions: (a) Is there consistency over time in mothers' mind-mindedness (the proclivity to treat one's child as an individual with a mind)? (b) Does mind-mindedness relate to children's subsequent mentalising development? and (c) Is mentalising development related to children's linguistic acquisitional style? Two measures of early vocabulary—proportion of common nouns and proportion of frozen phrases—were obtained at 20 months. Three measures of maternal mind-mindedness were taken: (a) mothers' reports of nonstandard words in their children's vocabularies; (b) mothers' meaningful interpretations of their children's early vocalizations; and (c) mothers' propensity to focus on their children's mental attributes at age 3. Children's mentalising abilities were assessed using the “false belief and emotion” task (Harris, Johnson, Hutton, Andrews, & Cooke, 1989) at age 5. There was clear evidence for consistency in mind-mindedness between 20 months and 3 years. All three measures of mind-mindedness were positively related to children's performance on the false belief and emotion task, but children's linguistic acquisitional style was not related to subsequent mentalising ability. These findings are interpreted as providing support for the view that caregivers' behavior is critical in helping children acquire a “theory of mind.”     

Towards a literary account of mental health from James' Principles of Psychology

The field of mental health tends to treat its literary metaphors as literal realities with the concomitant loss of vague “feelings of tendency” in “unusual experiences”. I develop this argument through the prism of William James’ (1890) “The Principles of Psychology”. In the first part of the paper, I reflect upon the relevance of James' “The Psychologist's Fallacy” to a literary account of mental health. In the second part of the paper, I develop the argument that “connotations” and “feelings of tendency” are central to resolving some of the more difficult challenges of this fallacy. I proceed to do this in James' spirit of generating imaginative metaphors to understand experience. Curiously, however, mental health presents a strange paradox in William James’ (1890) Principles of Psychology. He constructs an elaborate conception of the “empirical self” and “stream of thought” but chooses not to use these to understand unusual experiences – largely relying instead on the concept of a “secondary self.” In this article, I attempt to make more use of James' central division between the “stream of thought” and the “empirical self” to understand unusual experiences. I suggest that they can be usefully understood using the loose metaphor of a “binary star” where the “secondary self” can be seen as an “accretion disk” around one of the stars. Understood as literary rather the literal, this metaphor is quite different to more unitary models of self-breakdown in mental health, particularly in its separation of “self” from “the stream of thought” and I suggest it has the potential to start a re-imagination of the academic discourse around mental health.     

On Pretabular Logics in NExtK4 (Part I)

This paper partly answers the question “what a frame may be exactly like when it characterizes a pretabular logic in NExtK4”. We prove the pretabularity crieria for the logics of finite depth in NExtK4. In order to find out the criteria, we create two useful concepts—“pointwise reduction” and “invariance under pointwise reductions”, which will remain important in dealing with the case of infinite depth.     

Engagement and suffering in responsible caregiving: On overcoming maleficience in health care

The thesis of this article is that engagement and suffering are essential aspects of responsible caregiving. The sense of medical responsibility engendered by engaged caregiving is referred to herein as ‘clinical phronesis,’ i.e. practical wisdom in health care, or, simply, practical health care wisdom. The idea of clinical phronesis calls to mind a relational or communicative sense of medical responsibility which can best be understood as a kind of ‘virtue ethics,’ yet one that is informed by the exigencies of moral discourse and dialogue, as well as by the technical rigors of formal reasoning. The ideal of clinical phronesis is not (necessarily) contrary to the more common understandings of medical responsibility as either beneficence or patient autonomy — except, of course, when these notions are taken in their “disengaged” form (reflecting the malaise of “modern medicine”). Clinical phronesis, which gives rise to a deeper, broader, and richer, yet also to a more complex, sense than these other notions connote, holds the promise both of expanding, correcting, and perhaps completing what it currently means to be a fully responsible health care provider. In engaged caregiving, providers appropriately suffer with the patient, that is, they suffer the exigencies of the patient's affliction (though not his or her actual loss) by consenting to its inescapability. In disengaged caregiving — that ruse Katz has described as the ‘silent world of doctor and patient’ — provides may deny or refuse any ‘given’ connection with the patient, especially the inevitability of the patient's affliction and suffering (and, by parody of reasoning, the inevitability of their own. When, however, responsibility is construed qualitatively as an evaluative feature of medical rationality, rather than quantitatively as a form of ‘calculative reasoning’ only, responsibility can be viewed more broadly as not only a matter of science and will, but of language and communication as well — in particular, as the task of responsibly narrating and interpreting the patient's story of illness. In summary, the question is not whether phronesis can ‘save the life of medical ethics’ — only responsible humans can do that! Instead, the question should be whether phronesis, as an ethical requirement of health care delivery, can ‘prevent the death of medical ethics.’     

Public Discourse and Public Policy: Some Ways That Metaphor Constrains Health (Care)

Since the terms of the health policy debate in the United States and Canada are largely supplied by biomedicine, the current “crisis” in health care is, in part, a product of biomedical rhetoric. In this essay, three metaphors widely identified as being associated with biomedicine—the body is a machine, medicine is war,and medicine is a business—are examined with a view to the ways in which they influence the health policy debate, not only with respect to outcomes, but also with respect to what can be argued at all. The essay proposes that biomedical language itself be foregrounded as the constitutive material of public discourse on health policy.     

The “Enemies of God” in Luther's Final Sermons: Jews,Papists, and the Problem of Blindness to Scripture

Martin Luther's attack on the supposed “enemies of God” in his final sermons was part of the reformer's concerted effort to announce his last will and testament for evangelical Christianity. Chiefly, the article defines what made Jews and “papists” distinct from other enemies in Luther's view. Jews and papists both had possessed Scripture since ancient times; yet they remained unreceptive—for reasons Luther struggled to explain—to the Word therein.     

Can Multimodal and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy be Reconciled?

The purpose of this article is to determine whether two distinct modes of cognitive-behaviour therapy—Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) and Multimodal Therapy (MMT)—can be reconciled. This quest in the spirit of integrationism is pursued along three lines of inquiry: Do we talk about schools, approaches, or techniques? A reconciliation between MMT and REBT as systems seems not to be feasible, just because of the simple fact that MMT is not a new school with an idiosyncratic theory, whereas REBT is. However, REBT is also a congenial approach consisting of various eclectic techniques, as is MMT. It is explained how the A-B-C format and firing orders of the BASICI.D. modalities stem from an S-O-R model. Furthermore, the circular character of the various modalities (thinking, feeling, and behaving) is recognised both in MMT and in REBT. The techniques used in REBT and MMT overlap for 65–80%, according to a comparative perusal of Ellis's and Lazarus's presentations of preferred techniques. This means that MMT and REBT, as an approach with distinct techniques, “must” be very similar in practice. The conclusion is that philosophically Ellis and Lazarus see eye-to-eye and that MMT and REBT overlap a great deal. But a fusion is not yet at hand. At best the two can be described as two sides of one coin. “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what's the first thing you say to yourself?” “What's for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?” “I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It's the same thing,” he said. “What's that?” the Unbeliever asked. “Wisdom from a Western Taoist,” I said. “It sounds like something from Winnie-the Pooh,” he said. “It is,” I said. From The Tao of Pooh Benjamin Hoff (1982)     

The Epidemiology of “Regrettable Kinship”: Gender, Epidemic, and Community in Todd Haynes' [Safe] and Richard Powers' Gain

In “The Epidemiology of ‘Regrettable Kinship’: Gender, Epidemic, and Community in Todd Haynes' [Safe] and Richard Powers' Gain,” the author analyzes two contemporary cultural texts about women and environmentally-linked illnesses to rethink commonplace understandings of the relationship between gender, disease, and community formation. By reading these narratives side by side, Lynch is able to address difficult issues about gendered subjectivity and the fragile construction of collective political identity. While the female protagonists in the texts Lynch examines relate differently to their illnesses, both portray the ways in which women negotiate the potential and limitations of “illness communities.”     

New Foundations for Imperative Logic I: Logical Connectives,Consistency, and Quantifiers*

Imperatives cannot be true or false, so they are shunned by logicians. And yet imperatives can be combined by logical connectives: “kiss me and hug me” is the conjunction of “kiss me” with “hug me”. This example may suggest that declarative and imperative logic are isomorphic: just as the conjunction of two declaratives is true exactly if both conjuncts are true, the conjunction of two imperatives is satisfied exactly if both conjuncts are satisfied—what more is there to say? Much more, I argue. “If you love me, kiss me”, a conditional imperative, mixes a declarative antecedent (“you love me”) with an imperative consequent (“kiss me”); it is satisfied if you love and kiss me, violated if you love but don't kiss me, and avoided if you don't love me. So we need a logic of three‐valued imperatives which mixes declaratives with imperatives. I develop such a logic.     

“Putin,You Suck”: Affective Sticking Points in the Czech Narrative on “Russian Hybrid Warfare”

Using the case of the Czech narrative on “Russian hybrid warfare” (RHW), this article contributes to the broader question of why narratives succeed. Building on Lacanian psychoanalysis, narrative scholarship, and affect/emotions research in International Relations, we suggest that narrative success is facilitated also by two interrelated factors: embedding in broader cultural contexts and the ability to incorporate and reproduce collectively circulating affects. We develop a methodological framework for encircling unobservable affects within discourse via “sticking points”—linguistic phenomena infused with affective investment. We outline three categories of sticking points—valued signifiers, fantasies, and biographical narratives. Utilizing the approach in our case study, we focus on a narrative based around the notion that Russia waged a “hybrid war” against “the West” and that this should be faced with quasi‐military measures, which was successful in changing the language of Czech national security. We show that this narrative incorporated a range of sticking points, which contributed to its relative success. It utilized valued signifiers, such as “the West,” “the Kremlin,” “agents,” and “occupation,” weaved them together into a fantasy of a threat to the nation's “Western” identity, and intertwined this with the biographical narratives of history as a lens for world politics and East/West geopolitics.     

Phenomenology,behaviorism and psychotherapy

Abstract

t “Everything begins with subjective states,” is the basic position of Phenomenology, and only through subjectivity imate reality be reached. Behaviorism, on the contrary, sees “mind” as part of the material world—the and behavior as determining man's essence (man is what he does). “Change,” which is the goal of every therapy, is attend by altering behavior which leads to changes in attitudes. The best way to alter beliefs is by controlling the behavioral cognition itself.     

Rank on Emotional Intelligence,Unlearning and Self-Leadership

Propelled from the inner circle after publishing The Trauma of Birth (1924), Otto Rank jettisoned Freud's science of knowing because it denied the intelligence of the emotions. Transforming therapy from knowing to being-in-relationship, Rank invented modern object-relations theory, which advocates continual learning, unlearning and relearning: that is, cutting the chains that bind us to the past. Separating, no matter how anxiety-provoking, from outworn phases of life, including previously taken-for-granted ideologies and internalized others, is essential for self-leadership. In 1926, Rank coined the terms “here-and-now” and “pre-Oedipal.” By 1926, Rank had formulated a model of “creative willing”—self-leadership infused with the intelligence of the emotions—as the optimal way of being-in-relationship with others.     

KAUFMAN'S DEBT TO KANT: THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE “STRUCTURE OF THE WORLD WHICH ENVIRONS US”

Gordon Kaufman's “constructive theology” can easily be taken out of context and misunderstood or misrepresented as a denial of God. It is too easily overlooked that in his approach everything is an imaginary construct given no immediate ontological status—the self, the world, and God are “products of the imagination.” This reflects an influence, not only of theories on linguistic and cultural relativism, but also of Kant's “ideas of pure reason.” Kaufman is explicit about this debt to Kant. But I argue there are other aspects of Kant's legacy implicit in his method. These center around Kaufman's engagement with “observed patterns” in nature. With Paul Tillich's aid, I bring this neglected issue to the fore and argue that addressing it allows one to more readily capitalize upon the Kantian influence in Kaufman's method. This, in turn, encourages one to tap more deeply into the epistemic underpinnings of Kaufman's approach to the science–religion dialogue.     

Eta,disco, odisco,andF

Two coefficients are proposed for measuring the extent of overlap in distributions as a direct function of the variance between the arithmetic means (“disco” and “odisco”). They are designed to answer such questions as: “Given the value of a numerical variablex, to which population should an individual be assigned so that minimum error would be incurred?” This is just the reverse of the question addressed by ANOVA. These coefficients are shown to be analytic inx and they are related to Pearson's eta and Fisher'sF. Extensions of these coefficients (designed for univariate, one-way discrimination) tok-way and multivariate discriminant analysis and measurement of “interaction” are suggested.     

Rewriting the flesh of the world for the new human: Merleau-Ponty,Fanon, and Wynter on the ethics of futurity

This article reads Maurice Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the “flesh of the world” alongside the ontology that seems to undergird Frantz Fanon's sociodiagnostics as well as his theory of sociogeny. It argues that reading Fanonian sociogeny in terms of the ambiguity and intercorporeality of the flesh of the world renders the ethical and political imperatives of Fanon's decolonial project all the more pressing, since the “new human” is prefigured—if not totally determined—in the national consciousness obtained by “les damnés” through the decolonization process. It then examines how Sylvia Wynter's Fanonian call to (re)fashion the future of humanness through (re)conceptualizing “being human as praxis,” also seems to rely on this ontology of the flesh of the world. Bringing these arguments together, the article suggests that the conceptual content of the new human can be found in the liberation struggles of les damnés across what Wynter calls the “poverty archipelagos” wrought by colonial humanism. Hence, the “new skin” for which Fanon calls is fashioned through forming international solidarity with les damnés, with the conceptual content of the new humanism emerging sociogenically—and autopoetically—from those struggles themselves.