Playing God during the Pandemic

According to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in extraordinary situations, when the accepted norms of ethics do not provide clear-cut answers and even prevent responsible action, human beings must act freely in conformity to the incarnate, crucified, and risen Christ. Being conformed to his incarnation means being involved fully and vicariously in the life and struggles of the world; being conformed to his crucifixion means identifying with the suffering of the victims and being in solidarity with the oppressed; and being conformed to his resurrection means living and acting in hope for the sake of future generations. In seeking to express the love of Christ in the midst of our present-day pandemic, we are called to act in response to the question “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” In this way, “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity,” not just during a pandemic such as we have experienced, but also at this time in world history when enmity and discord have once again become rampant.     

Speaking with Frankenstein

This collaborative essay experimentally applies the insights of Mary Shelley's 1818 gothic fantasy Frankenstein to clinical interactions between present-day physicians and the patients they, akin to Shelley's human protagonist, so often seem to bring (back) to life. Because that process is frequently fraught with unspoken elements of ambivalence, disappointment, frustration, and failure, we find in Shelley's speculative fiction less a cautionary tale of overreach than a dynamic parable of the role that the unspoken, the invisible, and the unknown might play in contemporary physician/patient relationships. Playing with that parable, we consider its relevance to four often unacknowledged dynamics that shape physician/patient interaction: commitment to a false binary of life and death; the tyranny of normative aesthetics; shared negative affect; and the ethics of care and care-denial. To "speak with Frankenstein" is, we show, to make space for the otherwise unspeakable. The result is a more complete model of narrative medicine that accommodates to its ideal of open communication and full attention the persistence of what cannot be said, seen, or known--only imagined and approximated.

     

生命科学中的"扮演上帝":合理性与责任性

"扮演上帝"是一个主要用来描述生命科学及生物技术发展并对其进行社会评价的习语.在生存与发展意义上,人类有充分的理由去扮演上帝.随着越来越多的生命秘密被揭示,人类获得了越来越多的似神力量.人类应该扮演上帝,人类能够扮演上帝,人类不得不去扮演上帝,扮演上帝已成为人类的宿命.基于自然界和生命世界的复杂性以及知识的有限性,人们在扮演上帝时要有更多的耐心和责任.     

Playing in the Presence of God: wonder,wisdom and education

Biblical poetry provides a picture of Woman Wisdom or Sophia and her relation with God and humans which does not revolve around traditional notions of sin, guilt and redemption. Rather, it centres in joy, learning, wisdom, playing in God's presence and wonder. Exploring biblical wisdom and the human experience of wonder illumines the teaching‐learning relation and the importance of playful wonder in spiritual formation.     

Playing with reality

The authors explore the interpersonal aspects of the early development of an experience of external reality and the roots of this experience in primary intersubjectivity. They suggest some implications that this has for psychoanalytic work with the patient's experience of external reality. They argue that the external world is not an independently existing 'given', for the infant to discover, as is sometimes implicitly assumed. Infants acquire knowledge about the world not just through their own explorations of it but by using other minds as teachers. The experience of external reality is invariably shaped through subjectivities. The authors argue that at first the infant assumes that his knowledge is knowledge held by all, that what he knows is known by others and that what is known by others is accessible to him. Only slowly does the uniqueness of his own perspective differentiate so that a sense of mental self can develop. In clinical work we frequently observe the undoing of this process of differentiation, and understanding the underlying mechanisms can be helpful in managing the transference and countertransference consequences when the process has been derailed.     

Alone with God

A patient deals with her cancer and its treatment through a life of the imagination, dreams and God. The author observes a toughness in her and strong feeling. She struggles to bear the aliveness of God as she wrestles with childhood memories of her own mother's death from the same disease. Prayers for her are experienced as sunbeam fibers and a kind of transfusion.     

Why Frankenstein is a Stigma Among Scientists

As one of the best known science narratives about the consequences of creating life, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is an enduring tale that people know and understand with an almost instinctive familiarity. It has become a myth reflecting people’s ambivalent feelings about emerging science: they are curious about science, but they are also afraid of what science can do to them. In this essay, we argue that the Frankenstein myth has evolved into a stigma attached to scientists that focalizes the public’s as well as the scientific community’s negative reactions towards certain sciences and scientific practices. This stigma produces ambivalent reactions towards scientific artifacts and it leads to negative connotations because it implies that some sciences are dangerous and harmful. We argue that understanding the Frankenstein stigma can empower scientists by helping them revisit their own biases as well as responding effectively to people’s expectations for, and attitudes towards, scientists and scientific artifacts. Debunking the Frankenstein stigma could also allow scientists to reshape their professional identities so they can better show the public what ethical and moral values guide their research enterprises.     

God Diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder

This article endorses the contention that God suffers from a mental disorder, but challenges J. Henry Jurgens’ diagnosis of bipolar disorder as reported in The Onion (“God diagnosed with bipolar disorder”, 2001) and proposes narcissistic personality disorder instead. It uses the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder from The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, Washington, DC, 1994) and various biblical citations in support of this diagnosis. It rejects the idea that a major personality change is reflected in the New Testament and claims that God did not experience a major transformation of his narcissistic personality structure as described by Heinz Kohut (Forms and transformations of narcissism, in A. P. Morrison, Ed., Essential papers on narcissism, pp. 61–87, New York University Press, New York, 1966/1986). However, it concludes that God’s creativity accounts for the stability of his narcissistic personality structure and helps to explain his lack of empathy toward human beings.

Bioterrorism,embryonic stem cells,and Frankenstein

The stem cell controversy raises a fundamental question for humankind. Does science have a right to pursue knowledge whatever the cost? Our Enlightenment culture says yes. However, human history and literature are sending warning signals. Ethical issues impact the "knowledge for its own sake" imperative, and must be addressed.     

Bioterrorism, Embryonic Stem Cells, and Frankenstein

The stem cell controversy raises a fundamental question for humankind. Does science have a right to pursue knowledge whatever the cost? Our Enlightenment culture says yes. However, human history and literature are sending warning signals. Ethical issues impact the “knowledge for its own sake” imperative, and must be addressed.