Are you afraid of the dark? Notes on the psychology of belief in histories of science and the occult

Abstract

The popular view of the inherent conflict between science and the occult has been rendered obsolete by recent advances in the history of science. Yet, these historiographical revisions have gone unnoticed in the public understanding of science and public education at large. Particularly, reconstructions of the formation of modern psychology and its links to psychical research can show that the standard view of the latter as motivated by metaphysical bias fails to stand up to scrutiny. After highlighting certain basic methodological maxims shared by psychotherapists and historians, I will try to counterbalance simplistic claims of a ‘need to believe’ as a precondition of scientific open-mindedness regarding the occurrence of parapsychological phenomena by discussing instances revealing a presumably widespread ‘will to disbelieve’ in the occult. I shall argue that generalized psychological explanations are only helpful in our understanding of history if we apply them in a symmetrical manner.     

An Historical Overview of Basic Approaches and Issues in Ethical and Moral Philosophy and Principles

Summary

This article provides a condensed history of ethics development for the purpose of exposing psychologists and other mental health professionals to ethical and moral bases upon which modern psychological ethics are founded. In addition, it focuses on contemporary theories, with an emphasis on professional ethics.     

Hysteria and Self Psychology

ABSTRACT

The article uses a self psychological lens to explore the notion of hysterical personality from our earliest understanding of it as the root of all psychogenic disorders, as discovered by Breuer and Freud, to its present elimination in the DSM-V. Can hysteria still be considered an applicable diagnosis or character style in the modern time? Or is it a culturally and historically limited phenomenon that no longer holds validity? Considering the case of Dora from Heinz Kohut’s revolutionary view, which privileges the subjective and empathic stance in treatment, one can infer that Dora’s own hysterical symptoms were not pathological, as Freud thought, but rather healthy attempts to bolster an enfeebled self. Nevertheless, both Kohut and his followers conclude that from a self psychological perspective both object-instinctual understandings, and self-object transferences, are essential for successful analytic treatment.     

Editorial

Abstract

This essay takes a critical view of conventionally subdividing the span between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries into periods. It queries terms like ‘Middle Ages’, ‘late Middle Ages’, ‘Renaissance’, ‘Reformation’, ‘pre-modern’, ‘early modern’, and ‘modern period.’ These macro-historical constructs are misleading, it argues, for they create the illusion of European history as a succession of relatively uniform eras separated by clear breaks, revealing a purposeful, linear ‘development’ connecting medieval premodernity with Enlightenment modernity. It is sensible to contrast the Reformation with the previous Church, theology, and piety. However, it is illadvised to interpret this religious ‘system break’ as a change of eras beyond question. The Reformation sustained a pre-existing momentum of change, but also left much culture unaltered. Accordingly, it was neither medieval nor early modern, nor an independent period sandwiched between medieval and modern periods. Instead, it was a far-reaching reconfiguration of parts of the Western Church between 1520 and 1560 that was both deeply rooted in the past and pointing to the future.     

Howie’s Between Feminism and Materialism and the Critical History of Religions

This essay traces the notion of abstraction through the works of Gillian Howie as a means of thinking through the nature of critique within philosophy of religion. In particular, it argues that Howie’s recovery of a more productive conception of abstraction in her late Between Feminism and Materialism is closely linked to the resurgence of real abstraction in recent Marxist theory. From these shifts, one can derive both an enriched conception of religion as real abstraction and a method of critical history that offers a genuine alternative within the contemporary study of philosophy of religion.     

Probing the history of social psychology,exploring diversity and views of the social: Publication trends in the European Journal of Social Psychology from 1971 to 2016

The European Journal of Social Psychology (EJSP), as the voice of the European Association of Social Psychology, aims to promote diversity and a distinctively ‘European’, more ‘social’, social psychology (SP). However, whether and how these objectives have been accomplished over time remains controversial. This article enters this debate, tracing the history of SP as depicted by EJSP publications, via two types of lexicometric analyses of all abstracts of the Journal (1971–2016). Themes, processes, methods, and their organisation in cycles and clusters over time, were identified and analysed. Regarding diversity, findings indicate that the publications reflect several of the new theoretical proposals that emerged over the years, but do not fully reflect the variety of perspectives and methods of the discipline. It further indicates that lately the ‘social’ is predominantly present in attention to pressing social issues, albeit the processes involved in them are mostly theorised at an individualistic level. This pattern suggests the importance of keeping open the quest for epistemological and methodological diversity, and of re-problematising what the ‘social’ in SP means. By contributing to mapping the history of SP, offering a more comprehensive and reflexive view for it, the present analyses also help in forging a stronger discipline.     

Hegel: Death of God and Recognition of the Self

Abstract

This paper covers the theme of the death of God considered from a Hegelian standpoint. For Aristotle, the image of God as ‘thought thinking itself’ was an image of the knowledge aspired to in philosophy. With the notion of God becoming man and his insistence on the icon of the Cross, Hegel challenged the Aristotelian goal of philosophy as immutable knowledge of an ‘ultimate’ reality. Hegel viewed the crisis of normativity (the death of the Cartesian divine guarantor) as strictly linked to the conception of the self. It is Nietzsche who is best known for alluding to the full significance of this image for modern life, but Hegel’s thought on the complex relations of philosophy and religion in the modern world can be regarded as an attempt to think through this same historical phenomenon. In this paper, I focus on the philosophical relevance of Hegel’s notion of the death of God. I argue that unpacking the significance of the ‘truths’ presented symbolically in modern Christianity is crucial in understanding the requirements that an idealistic philosophy must meet.     

The I and World history in Hegel

In this paper, I investigate the relations between the notion of the I and the conception of World history in Hegel’s philosophy. First, I address Hegel’s account of the I by reconstructing its phenomenological and logical development from consciousness to self-consciousness through recognition with the other and arguing that the project of the Philosophy of Right is normative, as it provides an account of the logical process of affirmation of the I as the normative source of the realm of objective spirit. I then argue for an account of World history as the self-conscious development and liberation of the I in time and objectivity, and I consider Hegel’s philosophy of history in light of the Philosophy of Right as the historical emergence of the I through the forms of objective spirit in history. Finally, I focus on two of the allegedly most problematic issues related to Hegel’s conception of World history: the nature and very possibility of an ‘intersubjective consciousness’ and the notion of ‘World spirit’. I conclude by outlining how the conception of World history, if reconstructed in light of Hegel’s conception of the I, can have previously unnoticed political implications.     

Time after History: Derrida’s Two Readings of Heidegger

ABSTRACT

The essay situates and dissects Derrida’s two catalytic interventions into Heidegger’s thought on time and history—the seminar Heidegger: The Question of Being & History (1964-5) and the essay Ousia and Grammē (1968). The first aim is to explicate the relation of history to time in Heidegger’s seemingly untroubled passage from a textured and striated temporality into historicity, understood as structured, inscribed, and in a privileged sense, human time. Sustaining the difference of the inseparably intertwined notions of time and history is paramount for Heidegger, yet the place and function accorded to history will mark for Derrida, nothing less than the ultimate impasse of the project of Being and Time. Accordingly, the second aim of the essay is to present and question the productive elision of time and history that Derrida effects through narrative. On the one hand, this elision offers the ground of a forceful critique of the project of Being and Time. On the other hand, this pivotal gesture of deconstruction will always be compelled to seek, through a proliferation of names, those a-temporal and a-historical vanishing points for time and history that undercut the mutual conditioning of the two that it has laboured to effect.     

Early Tests of Piagetian Theory Through World War II

ABSTRACT

Psychologists recognized the importance of Jean Piaget's theory from its inception. Within a year of the appearance of his first book translated into English, The Language and Thought of the Child (J. Piaget, 1926) Piaget, J. (1926). The language and thought of the child. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace. [Google Scholar], it had been reviewed and welcomed; shortly thereafter, psychologists began testing the tenets of the theory empirically. The author traces the empirical testing of his theory in the 2 decades following publication of his initial book. A review of the published literature through the World War II era reveals that the research resulted in consistent failure to support the theoretical mechanisms that Piaget proposed. Nonetheless, the theory ultimately gained traction to become the bedrock of developmental psychology. Reasons for its persistence may include a possible lack of awareness by psychologists about the lack of empirical support, its breadth and complexity, and a lack of a viable alternate theory. As a result, the theory still exerts influence in psychology even though its dominance has diminished.     

From Gegenstand to Gegenstehenlassen: On the Meanings of Objectivity in Heidegger and Hegel

ABSTRACT

One of Heidegger’s enduring concerns was to develop an original meditation on the meaning of (the presence of) the present. Integral to this attempt is his critique of the understanding of the being of beings in terms of the objectivity of the object. In this paper, I trace Heidegger’s analyses of objectivity, through which Heidegger consistently establishes objectivity as non-primordial and derivative. In order to do this, however, Heidegger had to identify a specific, narrow (spatio-temporalized) conception of objectivity (in terms of Gegenstehenlassen and Vorstellen) as the hallmark of modern philosophy. I show that it is unclear whether that conception is a justified result or rather an unjustified presupposition of his approach. I then suggest what meanings of objectivity might be lost after Heidegger, by pointing to several aspects of Hegel’s notion of objectivity that are incompatible with Heidegger’s account, to wit: the lack of ‘subject-object’-terminology in his definitions of objectivity; the special language of ‘forms of’ objectivity; Hegel’s critique of representation; his notion of Gegenstand as a content with a categorical form, and, finally, that Aristotle’s notion of hypokeimenon might provide a clue as to how Hegel’s notion of object can be understood.     

Irreversibility of time and ontopotentiality of signs

Abstract

Time plays the central role in any developmental system. Its irreversibility contrasts with the functioning of the psychological realm that attempts to stabilize the real flow by means of perception/action constancies and signs. Efforts of apprehending the possible events of the next moment in ordinary life are paralleled by the focus on prediction in psychology as science. Signs operate as tools for reduction of the uncertainty of the immediate future. The notion of ontopotentiality of signs is introduced—it is the set of possibilities for creating quasi-stable meanings that would direct the flow of personal experiencing (in time) in a specific direction. This perspective advances further the notion of presentation (Vorstellung) that was worked through within the Brentano-Meinong tradition in philosophy and psychology. Narratives—and their corresponding notion of narrating—constitute macro-level stabilizing devices for individuals coping with uncertainty.     

Life,the Unhistorical,the Suprahistorical: Nietzsche on History

Abstract

Nietzsche was a philosopher who prided himself, in deliberate contradistinction with previous philosophers, on his ‘historical sense’. But this leaves many questions unanswered about the precise role of the historical in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, can the conception of genealogy in Nietzsche’s later philosophy, as a revised historical method, be taken to represent his mature philosophical methodology in general? I argue, firstly, that there is considerable continuity between Nietzsche’s conceptions of history in the early essay ‘On the uses and disadvantages of history for life’ and those of his later philosophy. The former can therefore be used as a resource for understanding the latter. Through a reading of the early history essay I demonstrate that Nietzsche’s conception of the historical here is intimately bound up with the notion of the ‘unhistorical’ and that it is precisely renewed access to the unhistorical which is required in order for history to be conducive to the flourishing of humanity. I go on to contend that this holds for Nietzsche’s later writings as well, and that genealogy, being purely historical, must therefore be seen as one subsidiary part of a broader philosophy in which the unhistorical will play, literally, a vital role.     

The muscular sense in Russia: I. M. Sechenov and materialist realism

Contemporary Russian sensory physiology and psychology uses the notion of a “dark sense,” referring to the background of bodily sensation, especially of the position and movement of the body. The physiologist Ivan Sechenov introduced this language in the 1860s in the context of arguing for a physiological basis for scientific psychology. The muscular sense (the term preceding modern notions of kinaesthesia and proprioception) thereafter featured in the many talks and journal articles he presented to spread scientific enlightenment. The paper describes the history and significance of this. It does so in the light of Soviet representations of Sechenov as a scientist who substantially contributed to the Leninist materialist–realist theory of knowledge. These representations assessed Sechenov’s discussions as a breakthrough in world science to the understanding of the human organism as a self‐regulating material system. It is necessary to understand the purposes and pressures driving Soviet historiography. The paper confirms the historical importance the sense of movement has had in realist theories of knowledge of the world; and it contributes a previously unknown chapter to the history of psychology.     

Order in the house?

Abstract

The notion that human life at Creation had been set into a series of ordered relationships was central for the Lutheran reformers’ understanding of Church, home, and state. Expositors developed this imaginative theological construct primarily out of the narrative of the Creation and Fall, and they used it as a framework for understanding the obligations of humankind in relation to the Creator, as well as for homes and societies rightly ordered. The Christian home, however, did double duty, serving as an archetype not only of life rightly ordered (law) but also of the love and freedom given by Christ in union with the Church (gospel). Lutheran expositors struggled to balance these two, especially when they derived the coercive authority of the state from parental, or paternal power. Could the institution of marriage simultaneously provide the foundation for state authority, and image the love between Christ and the Church?     

Desecularizing Secularism

Animated by a profound sense of complacency about history, rights and law, secularism has reached a dead end of political despair today. Thinking about this dead end will demand giving up certain cherished historicist claims to law and justice. The task of desecularizing secularism is one of dehistoricizing history. To relieve secularism of its appeal to the innocence of history, we need a conceptualization of time that folds the Nietzschean idea of active forgetfulness of history into the Derridian notion of the spectral present that is ‘out of joint with itself’. Such a notion of time/history may help us do the im-possible1 ?1. Throughout this paper I will use the words possibility and im-possibility interchangeably. Thus, when I say the possibility of non-juridical justice or active forgetting of history I also mean its im-possibility, because such a practice is not simply present out there, as an example or a case, under a sign. I am simply trying to imagine such an im-possibility. As will be clear, for Derrida the word im-possibility, as he wrote it, is irreducible to possibility or impossibility. work of thinking of inheriting the futures of democracy and justice irreducible to law and rights. The futures of the irreducible political, where we can neither forget our pasts nor remain bound to them, haunted by their ghosts, cannot be dictated by the apparatuses of the state or the politics of some non-state community. The futures are made possible by the very the non-contemporaneity of our living present, where historical disconnections defy ‘explanation’, opening up new political spaces of becoming.     

Social Responsibility and the Mental Health Professions

Summary

While mental health professionals tend to primarily focus on their professional responsibilities toward the specific members of the public whom they serve, many are also concerned about positively impacting the broader society or culture in which they live and work. This notion of social responsibility is addressed in the ethics codes of both psychologists and social workers. This article reviews how this notion is addressed for these two mental health professions and also examines the changes that have occurred for psychologists between the 1992 and 2002 ethics codes. Finally, some general issues regarding the role of mental health professionals in changing society are considered.     

The Theater of Terror

Summary

Modern terrorists became aware of the new opportunities for exerting mass psychological impact using the latest means of mass communications. Academic observers remarked increasingly on the theater-like nature of terrorist operations. According to this notion, modern terrorism can be understood in terms of the production requirements of theatrical engagements. Several terrorist organizations realized the potentials of media-oriented terror, in terms of effectively reaching huge audiences. This article examines the strategies and tactics of this new pattern of media-oriented terrorism and their impact on the audiences who, through the media's mediation, join the widening circles of victims of terrorism.     

Modern Moral Conscience

ABSTRACT

The article challenges the individualism and neutrality of modern moral conscience. It looks to the history of the concept to excavate an older tradition that takes conscience to be social and morally responsive, while arguing that dominant contemporary justifications of conscience in terms of integrity are inadequate without reintroducing these social and moral traits. This prompts a rethinking of the nature and value of conscience: first, by demonstrating that a morally-responsive conscience is neither a contradiction in terms nor a political absurdity; second, by suggesting how a morally-responsive conscience can be informed by the social world without being a mere proxy for social power or moribund tradition.     

Westernalization in the Mirror: On the Cultural Reception of Western Psychology

Miki Takasuna’s paper on “Proliferation of Western Methodological Thought in Psychology in Japan: Ways of Objectification” offers many significant clues for reconsidering the history and unity of psychology. Its treatment of the reception of psychology in Japan hints at the relevance of the models of the subject for psychology—including the allegedly “official” psychology. The aim of this paper is to suggest such reconsideration, on the basis of a distinction between psychology-importing and psychology-exporting countries, and provide a reflection on the cultural problems of assimilation by the latter of a discipline advanced by the former. This perspective leads us to acknowledge the existence of a variety of psychological programs corresponding to the transformation and modernization of different social realities. Also, an indication is offered of several possible levels of analysis of such programs, which are seen to be related with the emergence of psychology as the science of modernity.