What Does It Mean That “Space Can Be Transcendental Without the Axioms Being So”?

In 1870, Hermann von Helmholtz criticized the Kantian conception of geometrical axioms as a priori synthetic judgments grounded in spatial intuition. However, during his dispute with Albrecht Krause (Kant und Helmholtz über den Ursprung und die Bedeutung der Raumanschauung und der geometrischen Axiome. Lahr, Schauenburg, 1878), Helmholtz maintained that space can be transcendental without the axioms being so. In this paper, I will analyze Helmholtz’s claim in connection with his theory of measurement. Helmholtz uses a Kantian argument that can be summarized as follows: mathematical structures that can be defined independently of the objects we experience are necessary for judgments about magnitudes to be generally valid. I suggest that space is conceived by Helmholtz as one such structure. I will analyze his argument in its most detailed version, which is found in Helmholtz (Zählen und Messen, erkenntnistheoretisch betrachtet 1887. In: Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie. Springer, Berlin, 1921, 70–97). In support of my view, I will consider alternative formulations of the same argument by Ernst Cassirer and Otto Hölder.     

“If You Love Me Keep My Commandments”: Religiosity Increases Preference for Rule-Based Moral Arguments

Two experiments demonstrated that religiosity affects the way people resolve moral dilemmas. Participants were presented a series of immoral actions and were asked to justify the wrongness of the action by appealing to either the violation of a rule (rule-based argument) or the negative consequences resulting from the action (outcome-based argument). In Study 1, it was shown both among British and American samples that religious individuals preferred rule-based moral arguments to consequentialist moral arguments more than nonreligious individuals, and covariance with political conservatism did not account for this effect. Study 2 replicated these results with revisions to the materials and extended measures. In this study, dimensions of religiosity—particularly Christian Orthodoxy—predicted rule-based morality independent of a personal need for structure, need for cognition, and right-wing authoritarianism. These results imply that religious individuals who are committed to orthodox religious teaching display a deontological style of morality for reasons that extend beyond a need for structure, cognitive simplicity, or submission to authority.     

“If You Can’t Follow,You’re Out.” The Perspectives of People with Mental Health Problems on Citizenship

Applied Research in Quality of Life - The new paradigm of ‘community care’ promotes the integration of people with mental health problems in society. This reconversion in social care...     

“Why Can’t You Control Yourself?” Fat Should Be a Feminist Issue

This article is a comment on Fikkan and Rothblum’s (2011) article “Is Fat a Feminist Issue? Exploring the Gendered Nature of Weight Bias.” They argued that fat women in North America experience significantly more prejudice and discrimination than fat men do, marshaled evidence to support their argument in several domains (e.g., employment, education, romantic relationships, health care, the media), and wondered why feminist scholars have not paid much attention to the oppression of fat women. Here I suggest several reasons why fat women experience more prejudice and discrimination than fat men do: the objectification of women, gender-related aspects of health behavior and knowledge about health and illness, and the importance of self-control to the performance of femininity. I also suggest that there is some overlap in negative stereotypes of both feminists and fat women, which might lead to a desire to distance oneself from both. However, feminists should recognize the intersectionality of fat oppression and the way it colludes with the sexualization and objectification of women in popular culture. Thus, fat should be a feminist issue.     

“You make me sick”: Moral dyspepsia as a reaction to third-party sibling incest

A pilot study and two main studies lent support to the hypothesis that appraisals of consensual sibling incest as immoral may directly engender the phenomenological state of oral inhibition (OI), comprised of nausea, gagging, and diminished appetite. More specifically, the findings indicate that (a) OI is a central component of a third-party reaction to sibling incest (significantly more so than anger or fear), (b) that it is produced specifically by the morally proscribed aspect of the incestuous relationship (sex between two individuals with common ancestry), and that (c) it is produced so directly rather than as a by-product of a more immediate emotional response (say, intense anger or fear). Furthermore, Study 2 found equal levels of OI for individuals with and without opposite-sex siblings, indicating that third-party aversion to consensual incest is, most likely, a function of the culturally transmitted information regarding the inherent wrongness of such acts. John Sabini is deceased.     

“You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”: How Apartheid Was Lived and Learned on a South African Farm

After apartheid ended, many White South Africans asked themselves, over and over, “Who was I during apartheid?” and “How did I learn to live in that way?” This article is an attempt to address those questions. In the first part, a personal example is used to illustrate a life lived during the heyday of apartheid. There was a great silence between the races about race. In the second part, I discuss that life and the nature of embeddedness from a relational, hermeneutic perspective with a self psychological flavor. My doctoral dissertation, titled Race, Place and Self (Philips, 2007), was an attempt to examine the nature and influences over the years of different countries and contexts, and disentangle myself from the particular racialized beginnings that were uniquely mine. This article is one part of that journey.     

I Am,You Are,We … Are … Us! Discussion of “Culturally Imposed Trauma: The Sleeping Dog Has Awakened: Will Psychoanalysis Take Heed?” by Dorothy Evans Holmes,Ph.D.

Psychoanalysis is practiced in context. How relevant are our theories in addressing the psychological impact of disruptive, traumatizing effects of socio-cultural events? This is one of the many critical questions raised by Dr. Holmes in her very telling essay. Particularly on the question of race, Dr. Holmes outlines the shortcomings of our theories, but also challenges what she perceives as the reluctance of psychoanalytic training Institutes to address the traumas of race and racism. This discussion expands on Holmes’s position to wonder whether all psychoanalytic theories are equally remiss, and whether Institutes and psychoanalysts’ perceptions of, and responses to, social trauma are shaped by their particular theoretical orientation. Specifically, this discussion focuses on differences in orientation between Classical psychoanalysis and Interpersonal/Relational theories of mind. The author identifies Sullivan, Fromm, Ferenczi, and others as early psychiatrists and psychoanalysts for whom interpersonal and cultural contexts were central to their theories of human development.     

“If You Uproot a Tree You Leave a Big Hole Behind”: Systemic Interconnectedness in Emigration and Family Life

In this article, a systemic perspective compares emigration to a process of uprooting, because everyone is rooted in a particular social and cultural context. The act of emigration leaves behind an ecological gap or hole, requiring a process of re-defining, re-growth and re-distribution. This ecological analogy for the social world emphasizes that various systems are rooted in reciprocal relationships. I illustrate that emigration is never an isolated individual event, but rather a systemic phenomenon which affects several systems. This qualitative study explores the impact of emigration on South African emigrants’ family life and social networks. It clearly shows the systemic interconnectedness of the emigration process, providing a useful theoretical frame for those working in the field of emigration and family life. The results highlight the reciprocal, often conflicting, experiences of those who emigrate and of those who stay behind, underscoring the strong sense of ambivalence and loss that characterizes emigration. Ways in which family members attempt to re-negotiate relationships postemigration are also described, drawing attention to occasional ambivalence regarding the use of technology as a way of maintaining transnational relationships.     

“How Do You Know Unless You Look?”: Brain Imaging, Biopower and Practical Neuroscience

Brain imaging is a persuasive visual rhetoric by which neuroscience is articulated as relevant to the construction and maintenance of desirable selves. In this essay, I describe how "brain-based self-help" literature disseminates neuroscientific vocabularies to public audiences. In this genre, brain images are an authoritative visual resource for translating neuroscience into a comprehensive program for living. I use Foucault's discussion of biopower to describe the ways in which brain-based self-help literature enables self-constitution in a biosocial age where health is a central means of communicating personal worth, social value and political order. The implications of this continuous self-fashioning are not limited to the personal realm but have important political consequences.     

“You Just Know It’s the Only Thing You Can Think”: A Conversation with Chodorow

ABSTRACT

Nancy Julia Chodorow (1944–) is a pioneer feminist theorist who brought together academic fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis in her work related to feminist theories and psychoanalysis. Her first book, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978 Chodorow, N. J. (1978; second ed. 1999). The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]), gave primacy to a more generalized account of the developmental and familial origins of prevalent psychological differences between femininity and masculinity from a psychoanalytic sociological viewpoint. Her later books, Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond (1994 Chodorow, N. J. (1994). Femininities, masculinities, sexualities: Freud and beyond. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. [Google Scholar]), The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture (1999 Chodorow, N. J. (1999). The power of feelings: Personal meaning in psychoanalysis, gender, and culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]), and Individualizing Gender and Sexuality: Theory and Practice (2012 Chodorow, N. J. (2012). Individualizing gender and sexuality: Theory and practice. New York and London: Routledge.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), bring in a rich interplay among socio-structural influences (i.e., culture) as well as intra- and inter-psychic dynamic processes, emphasizing more the importance of individuality and subjectivity. Based on an interview I had with Chodorow on the development of her thought, this paper gives Chodorow’s account of her personal history and academic background, current manifestations in feminist social science research and feminist psychoanalysis based on her contribution and legacy, and reflective narratives on the unfolding of feminist and psychoanalytic theories from the 1970s onward. Chodorow’s note to the next generation of feminist psychotherapists is also included.     

“Internally Wicked”: Investigating How and Why Essentialism Influences Punitiveness and Moral Condemnation

Kant argued that individuals should be punished “proportional to their internal wickedness,” and recent work has demonstrated that essentialism—the notion that observable characteristics reflect internal, biological, unchanging “essences”—influences moral judgment. However, these efforts have yielded conflicting results: essentialism sometimes increases and sometimes decreases moral condemnation. To resolve these discrepancies, we investigated the mechanisms by which essentialism influences moral judgment, focusing on perceptions of actors’ control over their behavior, the target of essentialism (particular behaviors vs. actors’ character), and the component of essentialism (biology vs. immutability). Participants punished people described as having a criminal essence more than those with a non-criminal essence or no essence. Probing potential mechanisms underlying this effect, we found a mediating role for perceptions of control and weak influences of essentialism focus (behavior vs. character) and component of essentialism (biology vs. immutability). These results extend prior work on essentialism and moral cognition, demonstrating a causal link between perceptions of “internal wickedness” and moral judgment. Our findings also resolve discrepancies in past work on the influence of essentialism on moral judgment, highlighting the role that perceptions of actors’ control over their behavior play in moral condemnation.     

“I’ll Let You Be in My Dream if I Can Be in Yours.” Bob Dylan Talkin’ World War III Blues: ‘Dreaming’ Basilio Bonfiglio’s Paper

With this discussion, I dream Basilio Bonfiglio’s clinical narrative and discussion with an additional set of images and metaphors. I enter into his dreaming of considerations and reflections offering an alternative vision for the first glimmer of development, based on a sensitivity to the micro-moment polyrhythms of expression analyst and analysand weave out of experiences of emotional connection and disconnection to self and other. In this way, I dream the function of container as one kind of strategy for interactive emotional regulation. I consider emotional regulation from a vision of development as continuing experiences of first glimmers emerging out of a field of relations throughout the life span and not a developmental achievement marking a shift from primitivity to abstraction.     

“I’ll Let You Be in My Dream if I Can Be in Yours.” Bob Dylan Talkin’ World War III Blues: ‘Dreaming’ Basilio Bonfiglio’s Paper: Reply to Commentary

The majority of the analytic work is aimed to come into contact with undifferentiated areas of the mind, so as to produce transformations. A small part of these areas will reach awareness, whereas most of them will be deposited as implicit memories, which become part of the “unthought known.” In particular at the beginning of an analysis psychoanalyst and analysand work together with the area of the patient’s mind in which the boundaries of the Self are permeable so that “at-one-ment” states can arise. The shared experience allows the analysand to expand some areas of his mind and reach new levels of identity. The psychoanalyst allows the patient to “use” him as object.     

“I Will Be Your God and You Will Be My People”: Attachment Theory and the Grand Narrative of Scripture

In this article, we apply attachment theory to the grand narrative of Christian Scripture: creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. First, utilizing four key features of attachment theory—secure base, exploration, attachment behaviors, and safe haven—we attempt to integrate the “circle of attachment” with the biblical story of creation. Next, we explore the overlap between maternal deprivation, including the stages of protest, despair, and detachment, and the fall of humankind elucidated in the biblical storyline. Finally, we discuss the relationship between attachment theory and redemption and new creation within the grand narrative of Scripture. By focusing on the relationship between God and humankind found within the Old and New Testaments, we seek to expand the theological underpinnings of the attachment to God literature and conclude by offering suggestions for therapists and pastoral counselors working with Christians exhibiting disordered attachment patterns.     

“They Say That You Are a Danger But You Are Not”: Representations and Construction of the Moral Self in Narratives of “Dangerous Individuals” 1

This article is based on an analysis of narratives of 26 offenders with mental health problems living in the United Kingdom. It explores the impact of an ascribed dangerous status and the construction of the self as moral and responsible in response to this label with reference to the literature on denial, deviance disavowal and other “techniques of neutralization” and Goffman's presentation of self. Two dominant strands are identified in relation to the construction of moral self-hood: “Not my fault” and “Good at heart” narratives. “Techniques of neutralization” are widely drawn on, particularly denial of responsibility in the “Not my fault” narratives that seek to explain anti-social behavior with reference to external forces such as a hostile environment inhibiting their ability to control their lives. In contrast, “Good at heart” narratives draw on the essentially good and moral nature of the inner-self. Both are used as evidence of sharing and adhering to moral norms in order to present an acceptable and credible self.