Death and the value of life

The Epicurean argument that death cannot be a misfortune for the person who dies because, when death occurs, there is no longer a person to whom any misfortune can befall, fails to establish the conclusions which its defenders have sought from it. Beginning with the premise that death can be bad, either for the victim or in quasi-impersonal terms, the author seeks to define that badness through philosophical analysis. The belief that to have more life than is worth living is always better than to have less is reconciled with the notion that the badness of death increases with the degree of psychological connectedness, using the examples of the deaths of an unborn fetus and of a 35-year-old woman. The author contends it can be better for a person to suffer a worse death at 35 than never to have lived at all.     

Taking time: the tempo of psychoanalysis

In this article the author argues that in order to be psychoanalysis, the 'here and now' technical approach needs to be firmly grounded theoretically and technically in a practice that includes the notion of reverie or its equivalent. The author has argued previously that the analyst's theory is the essential 'third' of the two-person analytic situation. She now suggests that it is specifically the theories of temporality and the attitude of 'evenly suspended attention' or its more contemporary development, 'reverie', that are the crucial aspects of that theory. She refers to these essential aspects as the 'theory in practice' in so far as they are more than a technical approach or a theory of practice but reflect directly a particular analyst's internalisation of the whole psychoanalytic theoretical corpus. While she believes this to be an essential component in any true psychoanalysis, in developing her argument the author looks at situations in which the analyst is particularly prone to forgo this temporal aspect, as is the case when patients show an absence of symbolic thinking within the analytic situation. In fact, with those patients reverie and the visual images it produces within the analyst's mind offer perhaps the only hope of a meeting ground between the concrete and the symbolic and the possibility of avoiding an impasse. Impasse, she suggests, has at its root the absence of reverie as a third and temporal element, inevitably giving rise to concrete thinking on the part of patient and analyst and so to a situation that cannot evolve.     

How the brain understands intention: different neural circuits identify the componential features of motor and prior intentions

In this paper we present theoretical and experimental evidence for a set of mechanisms by which intention is understood. We propose that three basic aspects are involved in the understanding of intention. The first aspect to consider is intention recognition, i.e., the process by which we recognize other people's intentions, distinguishing among different types. The second aspect concerns the attribution of intention to its author: the existence of shared neural representations provides a parsimonious explanation of how we recognize other people's intentions (what they are doing), but in and of itself, is not sufficient to determine who the agent is. Once the intention has been recognized and attributed to an agent, the reasons for, and the aim of, the intention are to be considered. Hence, the third aspect concerns the aim-intention motivating the execution of a certain action. We discuss the neural basis of these three theoretical aspects suggesting a conceptual synthesis.     

You Say Oedipal,I Say Postoedipal A Consideration of Desire and Hostility in the Analytic Relationship

Using a case example, the author explores the complex and shifting boundary between aspects of oedipal regression and postoedipal phenomena. Particularly, during termination phases, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish among the hostility, frustration, and anger related to oedipal longings and scorn that is connected to realistic appraisals of the limits of erotic longings in the analytic situation. Scorn sometimes involves a kind of righteous indignation that results from the patient's awareness that analytic immersion in erotic longings toward unavailable others has aspects of erotic masochism. To some extent, the analytic situation itself contains aspects of erotic masochism that are important to try to reorganize during ending phases of analysis. The author argues that distinctions between oedipal and postoedipal are ever-shifting and difficult to make because the Oedipus complex is a lifelong process that is never resolved. Instead, we are always seeking new adaptations and new ways to organize our relationships against the background of a fluid boundary between oedipal and postoedipal phenomena.     

The Association of Fly-in Fly-out Employment,Family Connectedness,Parental Presence and Adolescent Wellbeing

Fly-in fly-out work patterns have become an integral part of employment in the Australian resource sector. When attachment to parents is disrupted by a parent working away from home on a regular basis, young people’s feelings of connection to their family may be impacted, as well as their mental and emotional well-being compromised. The objective of this study was to explore the mediation of parental presence and family connectedness on the association between fly-in fly-out employment and adolescent well-being. A cross-sectional survey of over 3,000 Grades 5–10 students from 40 Perth West Australian metropolitan and rural schools identified 618 students whose parents were involved in fly-in fly-out employment. Multi-level mediation analysis showed that the negative relationship between fly-in fly-out status and adolescent depressive symptoms and emotional and behavioural difficulties was fully or partially mediated by parent presence and family connectedness, controlling for both student and school level demographics. The intermittent absence/presence of fly-in fly-out employment patterns appears to create challenges for workers and their families, not experienced by non-fly-in fly-out families.This study highlights the importance of strengthening family connections within fly-in fly-out households. Suggestions have been made to help fly-in fly-out parents to stay in touch with their families.     

The Individuality and Connectedness Q-sort: A measure for assessing individuality and connectedness in dyadic relationships

A Q-sort, based on Grotevant and Cooper's (1986) model of individuation, was developed to assess individuality and connectedness in dyadic relationships. A criterion sort for each construct was developed on the basis of ratings from eight experts. The mean intercorrelation among the eight raters was .85 for individuality and .89 for connectedness. This Q-sort was then used to rate 46 middle-class Caucasian parents who were previously assessed on similar constructs using a micro-coding method, the Family Discourse Code (Condon, Cooper, & Grotevant, 1984). Correlations between similar constructs were significant. This Q-sort has five improvements over the Family Discourse Code: Behaviors representing the absence as well as the presence of a construct are coded; salience as well as frequency of behavior determines item placement; coders do not require knowledge of the theoretical underpinnings of items; there is less chance of response bias; and it provides a means of standardizing the assessment of individuality and connectedness across samples.     

Anomalous Monism: Oscillating between Dogmas

Davidson’s anomalous monism, his argument for the identity between mental and physical event tokens, has been frequently attacked, usually demanding a higher degree of physicalist commitment. My objection runs in the opposite direction: the identities inferred by Davidson from mental causation, the nomological character of causality and the anomaly of the mental are philosophically problematic and, more dramatically, incompatible with his famous argument against the third dogma of empiricism, the separation of content from conceptual scheme. Given the anomaly of the mental and the absence of psychophysical laws, there are no conceptual resources to relate mental and physical predicates. We fall in the third dogma if we claim that the very same token event is mental and physical. One of the premises must be rejected: I will claim that we do not need a law to subsume cause and effect to be entitled to speak of causation. Davidson has never offered an argument to back this premise. Against such a dogma I will sketch some ideas pointing towards a different conception of causality, singularist and undetachable from explanatory practices.     

Vocational Theories: Direction to Nowhere

There exists a literature about work that has been completely neglected by vocational psychologists and counselors. In this article the author discusses, in relation to vocational theory and career counseling, the implications of this literature, with its general conclusion that work for the great majority of people is not and never can be fulfilling.     

Early success in using the relation between stimuli and rewards to deduce an abstract rule: perceived physical connection is key

Are spatial proximity (0.10-12.5 cm), temporal proximity (0-, 2-, and 5-s gaps), and/or perceived connectedness of stimulus and reward key to infants' ability to deduce an abstract nonmatching rule from reward feedback? In this investigation, 3 conditions of the delayed nonmatching to sample task were administered to infants 9, 12, and 15 months old, and 5 more conditions were administered just to 12-month-olds. Results showed that connectedness is key. In its presence, neither close spatial or temporal proximity was needed. In the absence of the perception that stimulus and reward were components of a single thing, even close spatial and temporal proximity were insufficient for infants in the 1st year to grasp the rule-based association between stimuli and rewards.     

青少年自主-联结的发展及其与社会适应的关系研究

青春期是个体自主和联结的发展变化最为显著、最为突出的阶段。研究对424名中学生自主和联结的发展状况及其社会适应进行了调查,结果表明：（1）青少年具有高自治高联结、低自主低联结及个体化型三类不同的自主-联结发展水平;（2）三种类别随年龄增长呈现各自不同的发展态势,同时男生在三种类型上人数分布相对较为均衡,女生则较多属于高自治高联结类型;（3）高自治高联结者的社会适应和学业成绩最为理想。     

Meaning in Nature: Meaning in Life as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Nature Connectedness and Well-Being

Research has established nature connectedness as a reliable correlate of well-being. In the current research, we examined whether meaning in life mediated the association between nature connectedness and well-being. In Study 1, 311 undergraduates completed multiple measures of nature connectedness, multiple measures of meaning in life, and multiple measures of well-being. Mediational analyses revealed that meaning in life fully mediated the association between nature connectedness and well-being. In Study 2, we examined whether mediation of the association between nature connectedness and well-being by meaning in life could be demonstrated alongside a previously documented mediation of the association between religiousness and well-being by meaning in life. Undergraduates (N = 227) completed measures of nature connectedness, religiousness, meaning in life, and well-being. Mediational analyses revealed that meaning in life fully mediated both the association between nature connectedness and well-being and the association between religiousness and well-being.     

THE LINK AND THE OTHER1

The author begins by drawing attention to the current crisis in psychoanalysis, in which, following the great initial discoveries, he considers a certain solipsistic trend inimical to the role of the other and of the acceptance of innovation this entails has come to hold sway. This situation can in his view be overcome by the introduction of new applications and practices, as in the past with the acceptance of Klein's ideas in the field of child analysis. Theory is in the author's opinion always the product of clinical practice in our field, a thesis he illustrates by an account of his own work with couples and families, where the patient is deemed to be not any one individual in the group but the group itself considered as a nexus of links. The implications and theoretical repercussions of this link‐based conception are discussed at length and some novel terms are introduced ‐ for example, the link between subjects, imposition, the social subject, the subject relationship and the multiple subject. Alienness and the ‘other’, and presence and absence, are shown to be important concepts and are distinguished from object relations. The author concludes with a reference to a new resistance, namely to linking, and its implications in relation both to personality and to phenomena such as ethnic and religious conflict.     

The transformation of intercorporeality in melancholia

In this article the author seeks to highlight a specific disorder related to bodily experience in melancholia conceived as a severe form of clinical depression. The article is divided into three parts. In the first section, the author investigates the intersubjective dimension of bodily experience in light of the categories of Außen- and Innenleiblichkeit. In the second section, I explore a specific disturbance of the dimension of intercorporeality. The excessive feeling of the bodily (außenleibliche) visibility of his/her own sufferance is a fundamental aspect of depression. At a pre-reflexive level, we constantly assume the noncoincidence between one's own bodily expression and the Other's experience/reading of these expressions. An alteration of this (pre-reflexive) awareness occurs in melancholia. The patient feels as if the melancholic condition would be transparent to the other. In the third section, the author intends to show the alteration of the embodied communication between the melancholic person and the other investigating two particular phenomena: the exchange of gaze in a face to face encounter, and the disturbance of the oral sense, revealing a specific form of irresponsiveness and the experience of void.     

Psychological and behavioral implications of connectedness to communities with opposing values and beliefs

Without a doubt, people can feel simultaneously connected to multiple communities (e.g., Deaux, 1993; Roccas & Brewer, 2002). But, to what degree can people feel simultaneously connected to communities with opposing beliefs and values? And, more importantly, what are the psychological implications of being dually connected to these communities? Capitalizing on a sample of individuals positioned to potentially feel connected to two very distinct communities, we examined jail inmates' (N = 256) sense of connectedness to the criminal community and to the community at large. Results indicated that (a) connectedness to the community at large is orthogonal to connectedness to the criminal community, supporting the supposition that it is possible to be dually connected to opposing communities; and (b) connectedness to the community at large moderated the relationship between criminal connectedness and indicators of psychological distress, suggesting that connectedness to the criminal community is especially problematic when it occurs in tandem with connectedness to the community at large. These findings are consistent with predictions from the self-expansion model.     

Relation of career adaptability to meaning in life and connectedness among adolescents in Hong Kong

This study examined relationships among career adaptability, meaning in life, and connectedness in Hong Kong with Chinese male and female Grade 9 students (n = 543). The results indicated that presence of meaning in life positively predicted connectedness; and in the males career concern was predicted by presence of meaning in life. Also in males, career control was predicted both by presence and search for meaning in life, while career curiosity was predicted by connectedness to school, and by presence and search for meaning in life. Career confidence was predicted by connectedness to school, and presence and search of meaning in life. In the females, career concern was predicted by presence of meaning in life and connectedness to school, but negatively by connectedness to peers. Career control and career curiosity were predicted by presence and search for meaning in life. Career confidence was predicted by presence of meaning in life. Limitations of the study are identified; and implications for future research and guidance with Chinese adolescents in schools are discussed.     

Expectations and interpretations during causal learning

In existing models of causal induction, 4 types of covariation information (i.e., presence/absence of an event followed by presence/absence of another event) always exert identical influences on causal strength judgments (e.g., joint presence of events always suggests a generative causal relationship). In contrast, we suggest that, due to expectations developed during causal learning, learners give varied interpretations to covariation information as it is encountered and that these interpretations influence the resulting causal beliefs. In Experiments 1A-1C, participants' interpretations of observations during a causal learning task were dynamic, expectation based, and, furthermore, strongly tied to subsequent causal judgments. Experiment 2 demonstrated that adding trials of joint absence or joint presence of events, whose roles have been traditionally interpreted as increasing causal strengths, could result in decreased overall causal judgments and that adding trials where one event occurs in the absence of another, whose roles have been traditionally interpreted as decreasing causal strengths, could result in increased overall causal judgments. We discuss implications for traditional models of causal learning and how a more top-down approach (e.g., Bayesian) would be more compatible with the current findings.     

Better No Longer to Be

Abstract

David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a harm, and that – for all of us unfortunate enough to have come into existence – it would be better had we never come to be. We contend that if one accepts Benatar’s arguments for the asymmetry between the presence and absence of pleasure and pain, and the poor quality of life,² one must also accept that suicide is preferable to continued existence, and that his view therefore implies both anti-natalism and pro-mortalism³. This conclusion has been argued for before by Elizabeth Harman – she takes it that because Benatar claims that our lives are ‘awful’, it follows that ‘we would be better off to kill ourselves’ (Harman 2009: 784). Though we agree with Harman’s conclusion, we think that her argument is too quick, and that Benatar’s arguments for non-pro-mortalism⁴ deserve more serious consideration than she gives them. We make our case using a tripartite structure. We start by examining the prima facie case for the claim that pro-mortalism follows from Benatar’s position, presenting his response to the contrary, and furthering the dialectic by showing that Benatar’s position is not just that coming into existence is a harm, but that existence itself is a harm. We then look to Benatar’s treatment of the Epicurean line, which is important for him as it undermines his anti-death argument for non-pro-mortalism. We demonstrate that he fails to address the concern that the Epicurean line raises, and that he cannot therefore use the harm of death as an argument for non-pro-mortalism. Finally, we turn to Benatar’s pro-life argument for non-pro-mortalism, built upon his notion of interests, and argue that while the interest in continued existence may indeed have moral relevance, it is almost always irrational. Given that neither Benatar’s anti-death nor pro-life arguments for non-pro-mortalism work, we conclude that pro-mortalism follows from his anti-natalism, As such, if it is better never to have been, then it is better no longer to be.     

Social connectedness as a source and consequence of meaning in life

Multiple studies have shown that the sense of belonging and connectedness contribute to meaning in life, but does meaning also influence social connectedness? The present research examines the reciprocal relationships between meaning and different types of connectedness: intimate, relational, and collective. Analyzing data from a nationally representative longitudinal study (Study 1) with cross-lagged panel models, we found that only collective connectedness was prospectively associated with meaning, whereas meaning was prospectively associated with all three types of connectedness, controlling for life satisfaction. The beneficial effect of meaning extended to behavioral indicators of collective and intimate connectedness (Study 2). Higher levels of meaning in life were prospectively associated with an increased likelihood of joining voluntary associations and getting married, and, for people high in marital satisfaction, with a decreased likelihood of marital separation. Together, these findings suggest that the relationship between social connectedness and meaning in life is bidirectional.     

累积家庭风险与贫困儿童情绪问题的关系:有调节的中介模型

对468名贫困家庭儿童（平均年龄=13.76±2.88岁）进行问卷调查,探究累积家庭风险与贫困儿童情绪问题的关系以及学校联结的中介效应与自尊的调节效应。结果发现：（1）累积家庭风险能正向预测贫困儿童情绪问题;（2）学校联结在累积家庭风险和情绪问题之间起中介作用,即累积家庭风险可影响贫困儿童的学校联结,进而导致儿童情绪问题;（3）自尊在中介的前半路径“累积家庭风险→学校联结”路径上起调节作用。具体而言,自尊可以缓冲低累积家庭风险对学校联结的影响,但随着累积家庭风险水平的增高,自尊的缓冲作用也在逐渐减弱和丧失,符合“杯水车薪”调节模式。研究结果提示,累积家庭风险和学校联结均是贫困儿童情绪问题的重要预测因素。与此同时,对贫困儿童高自尊的保护作用可能不宜过分乐观。     

The concept of measurement-precision

The science of metrology characterizes the concept of precision in exceptionally loose and open terms. That is because the details of the concept must be filled in—what I call narrowing of the concept—in ways that are sensitive to the details of a particular measurement or measurement system and its use. Since these details can never be filled in completely, the concept of the actual precision of an instrument system must always retain some of the openness of its general characterization. The idea that there is something that counts as the actual precision of a measurement system must therefore always remain an idealization, a conclusion that would appear to hold very broadly for terms and the concepts they express.