Between Thanatos and Eros: Erich Fromm and the psychoanalysis of social networking technology use

Social networking technologies have become a ubiquitous framework for social interaction, serving to organise much of the individual’s social life. Such technological structuring affects not merely the individual’s psyche (as a psycho- technics), it also affects broader aspects of society (as a socio-technics). While social networking technologies may serve to transform society in positive ways, such technologies also have the potential to significantly encroach upon and (re) construct individual and cultural meaning in ways that must be investigated. Erich Fromm, who psychoanalytically describes humans as a product of their society and the economic systems within that society, may provide insight into the influence of social networking technologies in contemporary society. He sees the relationship between the individual and society as being in a constant state of dynamic change. Utilising Fromm’s psycho-societal insight, social networking technologies are shown to conflate and confuse the relation between Thanatos and Eros – the Thanatos of a lifeless and consumerist agenda-filled mechanisation, and the Eros associated with social engagement. Thanatos and Eros are tied together via social networking technologies. This results in, firstly, social networking technologies functioning predominantly to further capitalist agendas through the monetisation of these technologies – particularly in terms of linking commodity fetishism and the foundational social drive of the individual. Secondly, social networking technologies mechanise human action according to predictable behavioural paths through the use of these technologies, especially in terms of how socialisation is possible via these technologies (shaping how platonic and romantic relationships may take place in the contemporary world). Such a mechanisation of interpersonal engagement contrasts with Erich Fromm’s assertion that interpersonal relations (vis-à-vis love) are not “mere emotion”, but rather represent an interpersonal creative capacity and interplay. Fromm’s psycho-societal insights will show how contemporary individuals may take independent and responsible rational action to establish accountable and psychologically beneficial ways of engaging with others through social networking technologies.     

爱欲哲学的命运:从柏拉图到德勒兹

"爱欲哲学"肇始于柏拉图对古希腊爱若斯神话所进行的哲学化加工。柏拉图依据辩证法把爱欲主体分成灵魂和身体,把爱欲客体分成型相与具象,褒灵魂而贬身体,重型相而轻具象,并视"缺乏"为爱欲的结构性本质,标志着爱欲哲学的诞生。后世的西方形而上学亦步亦趋地继承了他的爱欲哲学。黑格尔和海德格尔以"缺乏"为原则组织自己的爱欲哲学,分别陷入了精神分析学所说的"哀悼"和"抑郁症"的魔咒。德勒兹重拾为柏拉图所贬抑的身体爱欲观,把欲望看作生产性的,彻底颠覆了柏拉图的爱欲哲学,根本反转了柏拉图所开创的理性欲望路线。     

The compulsion to confess and the compulsion to judge in the analytic situation

In this paper the author shows that human beings have two quasi‐instinctual primitive tendencies – namely, the compulsion to confess and the compulsion to judge (to condemn or to absolve). These compulsions are originally unconscious and become conscious during the course of the analytic process. The compulsion to judge is a natural consequence of the compulsion to confess. These two tendencies are intensified by the analytic situation. The patient has a compulsion to confess to the analyst and to himself, and likewise the analyst has a compulsion to confess to himself and to the patient. The patient therefore has a compulsion to judge himself as good or bad and to judge the analyst as good or bad while, on the other hand, the analyst has a compulsion to judge himself as good or bad and to judge the patient as good or bad. The task of analysis is to make both patient and analyst conscious of their compulsions to confess and to judge (to condemn or to absolve). The compulsion to judge in the analyst, particularly if unconscious, may give rise to mistakes in diagnosis, technique, treatment, and the assessment of analysability. The requirement of analytic neutrality in the analyst constantly conflicts with his compulsion to judge. If we are profoundly involved in our patient's dramatic conflict, we are bound to pass a judgement (condemnation or absolution); however, when we judge, we are not neutral and therefore become incapable of intellectual consciousness of the patient's conflict. Conversely, if we do not judge, we are neutral, but are then relatively uninvolved in the patient's conflict and are hence virtually unable to achieve emotional consciousness. The author attempts to show that neutrality cannot and must not be a preconstituted attitude in the analyst, but can and must be a point of arrival following a profound, intensely felt existential experience based on an attitude of non‐condemnation and non‐absolution.     

Getting to know you: From view-dependent to view-invariant repetition priming for unfamiliar faces

Recent research suggests that repetition priming (RP) for unfamiliar faces is highly view dependent and is eliminated when the viewpoint of target faces changes between study and test. The current research examined whether increased familiarity with novel faces from a single viewpoint at study would support RP from an alternative viewpoint at test. Participants passively viewed novel face images from a single viewpoint at study (i.e., either front or three-quarters), with half of the images seen once and half seen on five occasions. During a sex classification task at test, participants were faster to respond to face images seen from the same view as that at study than they were to previously unseen distractor faces for both single exposure faces and faces seen on five occasions (i.e., standard RP). When, however, face images at test were shown from a different viewpoint from that at study, RP only occurred for faces viewed on five occasions.     

From repetition to conviction: Attitude accessibility as a determinant of attitude certainty

The present experiment investigated the influence of attitude accessibility on several meta-attitudinal strength measures. It was predicted that certainty and perceived likelihood of change, i.e., commitment-related attributes of attitude strength, are influenced by changes in attitude accessibility, while no effects were expected for importance and perceived centrality to values and the self, i.e., centrality-related attributes. Accessibility was manipulated by having participants express their attitudes either repeatedly or only once. As hypothesized, accessibility and measures of commitment were enhanced after repeated expression compared to single expression. Furthermore, mediation analyses supported the idea that subjective commitment may be inferred from the ease of attitude retrieval. Centrality-related attributes were found to be unaffected by the accessibility manipulation. The results are discussed in the light of a multi-dimensional structure of attitude strength and antecedent processes of meta-cognitive attributes of strength.     

From "in the air" to "under the skin": cortisol responses to social identity threat

The authors examined women's neuroendocrine stress responses associated with sexism. They predicted that, when being evaluated by a man, women who chronically perceive more sexism would experience more stress unless the situation contained overt cues that sexism would not occur. The authors measured stress as the end product of the primary stress system linked to social evaluative threat-the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal cortical axis. In Study 1, female participants were rejected by a male confederate in favor of another male for sexist reasons or in favor of another female for merit-based reasons. In Study 2, female participants interacted with a male confederate who they learned held sexist attitudes or whose attitudes were unknown. Participants with higher chronic perceptions of sexism had higher cortisol, unless the situation contained cues that sexism was not possible. These results illustrate the powerful interactive effects of chronic perceptions of sexism and situational cues on women's stress reactivity.     

"绝地天通":论中国古代宗教多神性格之源

"绝地天通"是中国上古文明发展史上一件大事,本文以为:理解这一事件的关键乃在于"属神"、"属民"之"属"的意旨,证之古文献与民俗事象,"属"解为"连接"为最佳,此事件是中国古代宗教多神性格的直接来源.     

From domain-generality to domain-sensitivity: 4-Month-olds learn an abstract repetition rule in music that 7-month-olds do not

Learning must be constrained for it to lead to productive generalizations. Although biology is undoubtedly an important source of constraints, prior experience may be another, leading learners to represent input in ways that are more conducive to some generalizations than others, and/or to up- and down-weight features when entertaining generalizations. In two experiments, 4-month-old and 7-month-old infants were familiarized with sequences of musical chords or tones adhering either to an AAB pattern or an ABA pattern. In both cases, the 4-month-olds learned the generalization, but the 7-month-olds did not. The success of the 4-month-olds appears to contradict an account that this type of pattern learning is the provenance of a language-specific rule-learning module. It is not yet clear what drives the age-related change, but plausible candidates include differential experience with language and music, as well as interactions between general cognitive development and stimulus complexity.     

从“思想实验”到“科学实验”:道德研究的新路向

传统哲学借助哲学家的“思想实验”对道德进行研究,新近兴起的实验伦理学采用“科学实验”范式来探索伦理问题,特别是致力于道德判断、道德行为、道德责任和道德价值的心理模式与认知机制研究.作为一种用实证方式探索伦理问题的有益尝试,“科学实验”的应用能够拉近“应该”与“是”的距离,使科学与人文走向合流.     

从清谈到经世:晚明思想变迁的再检讨

关于明清思想的变迁与其复杂特性,余英时和萧萐父先生做出了重要探讨.在焦竑等人那里,清代思想的博学考据与经世致用之风便非常明显.思想史的复杂性为思想史研究提出了新课题.     

从"相"到"象"——熊十力哲学的易学归向

佛学中的“相”是纯粹形式,是无实质的空架子,“缘生说”将物我剖割为这些空架子,因而,物我之“现相”空、生命空、世界空。《易》之“象”是有生命意味、有实质的形式,它之生命意味源于物我本身固有的对立统一元素之间的相反相成。“象”有自体,因而,它不可还原为其他存在。物我所现之“象”皆真实不虚。熊十力由援“象”人“相”,到将“相”“象化”,展示了他出入佛老,彻底皈依儒宗的思想历程。     

从《存在与时间》到《哲学论稿》:海德格尔前后期思想关系疏解

<哲学论稿>是海德格尔在30年代的重要手稿,与晚期思想关系密切.如何解说<哲学论稿>与前期代表作<存在与时间>的关系,成为疏通海德格尔前后期思想联系的关键.这个疏通工作把Befragtes的问题作为引导性问题,以之为追问的线索,考察了两个问题:一、以此在为Befragtes如何决定了<存在与时间>必须以此在的生存现象学描述为主体内容;而直接"从Ereignis而来"如何决定了<从Ereignis而来>向哲学的投稿贡献是Ereignis的自行发生成文?二、是否借助一个Befragtes或以什么存在者为Befragtes在多大程度上决定了思想成文时的结构?     

Humanity and Paternal Eros: The Father-Son Relationship in Comparative Perspective

This paper examines the human relational patterns presented in the philosophical writings of the Confucian thinker Dai Zhen (戴震1724–77) and the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’s (1906–95) Totality and Infinity to uncover the ethical significance of the father-son relationship. I argue that for both thinkers the father-son relation is not just one type of human relationship among other social dyads, but rather, of greater significance, serves as the paradigmatic model of the ethical human relationship in bringing to light the idea of the ethical self as a responsible being in relation to others.     

From Sincerity to Authenticity: Adolescents'' Views of the "True Self"

This study examined age-related trends in adolescents' view of sincerity and of honesty towards oneself. Subjects were 84 high school students in grades 8 to 12 (age range 12-18). Semistructured interviews with preplanned probes were used and analyzed using content categories reflecting different emphases on disclosing "facts" versus internal events (for sincerity) and on recognizing conflicts with others versus recognizing internal divisions (for honesty towards oneself). Results indicate clear age trends on these two dimensions and a close association between them. The age trends suggest that for the younger adolescent, being "genuine" consists mainly in disclosing facts that are in principle accessible to others. For the older adolescent, being genuine more frequently implies recognizing and expressing one's "true" nature. The findings are discussed both in light of recent research on the development of self-understanding and as challenging traditional paradigms of studying the self.     

从法国马克思主义看基督宗教的价值——试论伽罗蒂的《从诅咒到对话:一个马克思主义者向大公会议说话》

马克思主义与基督宗教之间的对话已经有了很长的历史.在欧洲上个世纪60年代发生了共产党与天主教会的官方对话,两方派谴他们自己的最高知识分子来进行对话.通过伽罗蒂<从诅咒到对话:一个马克思主义者向大公会议说话>(1965年),本文介绍这种对话的历史思想背景,并分析这个对话在理论上所面对的困难.虽然对话在时间上比较短,不过,它有了长远的影响,在理论上有很高的价值.