Could Balint Have Done More for Ferenczi?

After Ferenczi's death of pernicious anemia in 1933 at the age of 59, Michael Balint became the greatest advocate of his late analyst, teacher, colleague, and friend. He was faced with widespread avoidance, a conspiracy of silence against Ferenczi in the psychoanalytic movement. Ernest Jones, in particular, an analysand of Ferenczi and fellow member of the Secret Committee founded by Freud before World War I, seriously attacked Ferenczi. In the third volume of the Freud biography, Jones alleged that in the last years of his life Ferenczi suffered mental deterioration caused by the pernicious anemia, and that this mental decline was the real cause of Ferenczi's technical experimentations, thereby belittling the importance of Ferenczi's independent work in the last phase of his life. This article answers whether Michael Balint, who later became the literary executor of Ferenczi, was devoted enough in countering the charges that lead to a fifty-year silence on Ferenczi's eminent place in psychoanalysis. Correspondence between Balint and Jones is cited, as are reports of Ferenczi's contemporaries; Balint's efforts are placed within the context of the psychoanalytic rivalries after Freud's death.     

Does Belief Have an Aim?

The hypothesis that belief aims at the truth has been used to explain three features of belief: (1) the fact that correct beliefs are true beliefs, (2) the fact that rational beliefs are supported by the evidence and (3) the fact that we cannot form beliefs `at will. I argue that the truth-aim hypothesis cannot explain any of these facts. In this respect believing differs from guessing since the hypothesis that guessing aims at the truth can explain the three analogous features of guessing. I conclude that, unlike guessing, believing is not purposive in any interesting sense.     

Does Hell Still Have a Future?

The vexed and ever‐controversial question of hell and the possibility of its final realization is the subject matter of this article. The current fading of belief, or at least serious interest, in this traditional aspect of Christian teaching is the starting‐point for a brief historical survey of the meaning of the term in general and its meaning within Christianity in particular. The article argues for a retention of the doctrine, albeit shorn of some of its more flamboyant, traditional attributes, as being of lasting significance to the Christian understanding of salvation.     

Malevolent Creativity: Does Personality Influence Malicious Divergent Thinking?

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between malevolent creativity and personality, with a specific focus on the traits of antagonism, aggression, and sympathy. Participants (N = 265) completed a series of personality measures and two divergent thinking tasks (uses for a brick and a pencil). Responses were coded for fluency and malevolent creativity. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that gender, conscientiousness, and trait physical aggression accounted for unique variability in malevolent creativity scores. These results confirm the link between personality and malevolent creativity, corroborating the General Model of Aggression and extending understanding of malevolent creativity, a new subfield of creativity research.     

Does Doxastic Justification Have a Basing Requirement?

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is the distinction between having justification to believe that P (= propositional justification) versus having a justified belief in P (= doxastic justification). The focus of this paper is on doxastic justification and on what conditions are necessary for having it. In particular, I challenge the basing demand on doxastic justification, i.e. the idea that one can have a doxastically justified belief only if one's belief is based on an epistemically appropriate reason. This demand has been used to refute versions of coherentism and conservatism about perceptual justification, as well as to defend phenomenal ‘conservatism’ and other views besides. In what follows, I argue that there is virtually no reason to think there is a basing demand on doxastic justification. I also argue that, even if the basing demand were true, it would still fail to serve the dialectical purposes for which it has been employed in arguments concerning coherentism, conservatism, and phenomenal ‘conservatism’. I conclude by discussing the fact that knowledge has a basing demand and I show why this needn't raise the same sort of problems for coherentism and conservatism that doxastic justification's basing demand seemed to raise.     

Does Forced Sexual Contact Have Criminogenic Effects?

Abstract

According to derailment theory, tactics girls and women use to survive a history of abuse, strategies shaped by their abuse, and societal reactions to it estrange them from non-deviant social networks and situations and increase the likelihood of criminal offending and the application of criminal labels. This process is self-reinforcing, with interactions of substance abuse, sexual deviance, criminal offending, and social control constraining choices through alienation and stigmatization. In short, a dynamic of cumulative disadvantage is set in place that puts some women at greater risk for involvement with the legal system. Empirical evaluation of this theory suggests that alienation from and marginal positions in pro-social networks have parallels in anti-social networks sufficient to decrease the likelihood of criminal offending and contact with crime control agencies.     

Does the Public Intellectual Have Intellectual Integrity?

This article is concerned with the devaluation of the work of public intellectuals within the academic community. The principal reason given for this devaluation is that the work of the public intellectual does not have intellectual integrity as independent thought and original scholarship. I develop three models of public intellectual work: the permanent–critic model, the popularizer model, and the public–theorist model. I then consider each model in relation to the concern with intellectual integrity and conclude that both independent thought and original scholarship are possible within work that is engaged with nonacademic publics.     

Supporting Creativity Or Conformity? Influence of Home Environment and Parental Factors on the Value of Children's Creativity Characteristics

Although creativity is a desirable skill, parenting for creativity may be quite a challenge and may be less favored than parenting for conformity. The present study aims to investigate parent-related factors that may support creativity versus conformity at home. To this end, this study examined how parents’ attitudes and values toward creativity, creative home environment, and mindful parenting style are related to parents’ perceptions of creative versus socially acceptable characteristics. Analyses of the data collected from 1324 parents (predominantly mothers) indicated that parents were more supportive of creativity traits than socially acceptable characteristics. Most importantly, parents’ attitudes and values toward creativity and creative home environment were significantly and positively related to support for creativity characteristics, whereas mindful parenting was significantly and negatively related to support for socially acceptable characteristics in children. Those findings show that parents who value creativity and set up a creative environment are more likely to support children's creativity. Mindful parenting style seems to indirectly support creativity because it is associated with lower respect for socially acceptable characteristics, some of which are at odds with creativity. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications for training programs that enhance awareness of creativity.     

Whence Creativity?

In this article, I explicate where my theoretical work on creativity has been and where it is going. I describe earlier three‐facet and investment theories, as well as a propulsion model. I then describe my new triangular theory of creativity.     

Are Religious Women More Likely to Have Breast Cancer Screening?

The study objective was to investigate whether women who frequently attend religious services are more likely to have breast cancer screening—mammography and clinical breast examinations—than other women. Multivariate logistic regression models show that white women who attended religious services frequently had more than twice the odds of breast cancer screening than white women who attended less frequently (Odds Ratio (OR) = 2.61; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 1.12, 6.06). The behavior of white women was different from African American women (religious attendance-race interaction term p-value = 0.008); African American women who attended religious services frequently were possibly less likely to have breast cancer screening (OR 0.49; CI = 0.19–1.31).     

Does Reductive Proof Theory Have A Viable Rationale?

The goals of reduction andreductionism in the natural sciences are mainly explanatoryin character, while those inmathematics are primarily foundational.In contrast to global reductionistprograms which aim to reduce all ofmathematics to one supposedly ``universal' system or foundational scheme, reductive proof theory pursues local reductions of one formal system to another which is more justified in some sense. In this direction, two specific rationales have been proposed as aims for reductive proof theory, the constructive consistency-proof rationale and the foundational reduction rationale. However, recent advances in proof theory force one to consider the viability of these rationales. Despite the genuine problems of foundational significance raised by that work, the paper concludes with a defense of reductive proof theory at a minimum as one of the principal means to lay out what rests on what in mathematics. In an extensive appendix to the paper,various reduction relations betweensystems are explained and compared, and arguments against proof-theoretic reduction as a ``good' reducibilityrelation are taken up and rebutted.     

Stimulating Children's Creativity and Curiosity: Does Content and Medium Matter?

Effects of print, television and content on children's creativity, and measures of possibility and curiosity were examined. Eight science TV programs were identified as low or high creative and eight illustrated booklets were developed to mirror the programs' content. Fifth and sixth on‐grade‐level‐readers were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: High Content TV, Low Content TV, High Content Print or Low Content Print. Students then completed the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, The Possibilities Index and The Children's Science Curiosity Scale. Low Content significantly outscored High Content on Visual Originality and High Content significantly outscored Low Content on measures of possibility and curiosity. Results suggest content has more effect on creativity and attitude than media.