Remembering Medard Boss

Abstract

The life and work of Medard Boss is reviewed. This overview includes the development of his daseinsanalysis, presenting its roots in psychoanalysis, existential phenomenological psychiatry, Heideggerian philosophy, and Indian thought. Also examined are Boss's contributions to the fields of psychotherapy, philosophy, and human scientific psychology. The latter contributions include Boss's explication of the meanings of three specific kinds of psychological phenomena: sexual disorders, bodily illnesses and injuries, and dreams. The article then concludes with the author's personal reflections on his experiences with daseinsanalysis and Medard Boss.     

Stripping the Boss: The Powerful Role of Humor in the Egyptian Revolution 2011

The Egyptian Revolution 2011 has shaken the Arab world and stirred up Middle-East politics. Moreover, it caused a rush in political science and the neighboring disciplines, which had not predicted an event like this and now have troubles explaining it. While many things can be learned from the popular uprising, and from the limitations of previous scholarship, our focus will be on a moral resource, which has occasionally been noticed, but not sufficiently explored: the role of humor in keeping up the spirit of the Revolution. For 18 days, protestors persevered at Liberation Square in Central Cairo, the epicenter of resistance; at times a few dozens, at times hundreds of thousands. What they did was to fight the terror of the regime, which reached absurd peaks during those days, with humor—successfully. We offer a social-functionalist account of the uprising, which includes behavioral as well as cultural levels of analysis, and illuminates how humorous means helped to achieve deadly serious goals. By reconstructing how Egyptians laughed themselves into democracy, we outline a social psychology of resistance, which uses humor both as a sword and a shield.     

When the Boss Feels Inadequate: Power, Incompetence, and Aggression

ABSTRACT— When and why do power holders seek to harm other people? The present research examined the idea that aggression among the powerful is often the result of a threatened ego. Four studies demonstrated that individuals with power become aggressive when they feel incompetent in the domain of power. Regardless of whether power was measured in the workplace (Studies 1 and 4), manipulated via role recall (Study 2), or assigned in the laboratory (Study 3), it was associated with heightened aggression when paired with a lack of self-perceived competence. As hypothesized, this aggression appeared to be driven by ego threat: Aggressiveness was eliminated among participants whose sense of self-worth was boosted (Studies 3 and 4). Taken together, these findings suggest that (a) power paired with self-perceived incompetence leads to aggression, and (b) this aggressive response is driven by feelings of ego defensiveness. Implications for research on power, competence, and aggression are discussed.     

Self-face advantage is modulated by social threat - Boss effect on self-face recognition

Human adults usually respond faster to self-face than to faces of others. The self-face advantage has been associated with an implicit positive association with the self. The current work investigated whether social threats modulate self-face recognition by asking graduate students to identify orientations of self-face in a high-threat context, in which self-face and a faculty advisor’s face were presented in one block of trials, or in a low-threat context, in which self-face and a face of another faculty member were presented in one block of trials. We found a self-face advantage in the low-threat context but a self-face disadvantage in the high-threat context (i.e., slower responses to self-face compared to the advisor’s face). Moreover, the self-face disadvantage positively correlated with the degree of fear of negative evaluations from advisors. Our findings suggest that self-face recognition is strongly modulated by social interactions with influential superiors within social hierarchies.     

Wanting to Be Boss and Wanting to Be Subordinate: Effects on Performance Motivation

Does dyad members' motivation to take on a high or low power position influence the dyad's performance motivation when assigned to hierarchical roles? Participants in 69 dyads (33 all‐women, 36 all‐men) indicated whether they preferred the high‐power role (owner of an art gallery) or the low power role (assistant to the owner). Power roles were then randomly assigned. The dyad's interaction during task solving was videotaped. Uninvolved coders rated performance motivation as the degree of quality of the superior's and the subordinate's task contributions and effort put into the task. Performance motivation was better if the boss preferred the high power to the low power role, irrespective of the subordinate's role preference. Leadership effectiveness is thus affected by the superior's power motivation.     

Moderating Role of the Experience of having had a Female Boss in Relationship between Neosexism and Unfavorable Attitudes toward Female Leaders

Modern sexist beliefs are currently emerging as one of the most important barriers to achieving gender equality in managerial positions in organizations. However, little research addresses the factors that can reduce or soften the negative effects that these beliefs have on unfavorable attitudes toward female leaders. In the present study, it is analyzed whether the experience of having a female leader moderates this relationship. Additionally, we sought to verify whether this moderation is found in both genders. A sample of 307 employees from various positions in Spanish companies participated in this study. We performed regression analyses in blocks. The results indicate that this moderating role emerges only among women. Nevertheless, the findings also indicate that coming into contact with female leaders can increase these attitudes when the level of neosexism is low. The results suggest that the organizational policies that are introduced with the aim of reducing unfavorable attitudes and discriminatory behaviors toward female leaders should take into account that the assignment of women to leadership positions may favor the achievement of this aim in, at least, female employees who highly adhere to neosexist beliefs. However, this could also lead to an increase of these attitudes in female employees who present a low adherence to them.     

From the fixity of the past to the fixity of the independent

There is an old but powerful argument for the claim that exhaustive divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A crucial ingredient in this argument is the principle of the “Fixity of the Past” (FP). A seemingly new response to this argument has emerged, the so-called “dependence response,” which involves, among other things, abandoning FP for an alternative principle, the principle of the “Fixity of the Independent” (FI). This paper presents three arguments for the claim that FI ought to be preferred to FP.

     

On the interaction of the subject and the experiment in the matching model

Two types of matching designs, static and dynamic, are differentiated. While all matching designs are logically the same in terms of the probability model which determines chance level of performance, an attempt is made to demonstrate that there is an interaction between the tactics, strategies, and actual knowledge ofS and the type of design used which will, in turn, lead to different results even whenS's knowledge is held constant. It is suggested that analogous situations may exist within the framework of the traditional psychometric model.The work reported in this paper was supported by a National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Participation Grant (NSF-G15797) to the senior author. The authors are indebted to Joel E. Greene for his advice and criticism.     

In the beginning was the doing: the premises of the practical syllogism

If practical reasoning deserves its name, its form must be different from that of ordinary (theoretical) reasoning. A few have thought that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action, rather than a mental state. I argue here that if the conclusion is an action, then so too is one of the premises. You might reason your way from doing one thing to doing another: from browsing journal abstracts to reading a particular journal article. I motivate this by sympathetically re-examining Hume's claim that a conclusion about what ought to be done follows only from an argument one of whose premises is likewise about what ought to be done.