Sartre,Developmental Psychology and Burgeoning Self-Awareness: Ricocheting from Being to Nothingness

While the genesis of self-awareness at approximately 18 months old is a dramatic landmark in human development, there is at this stage no explicit awareness on the toddler's part of his/her truly standing apart from others. Only much later does a distinct sense of self shift into focus, and here Sartre provides us with a compelling theory of a first reflective experience of self-awareness. He explains this phenomenon by emphasizing a violent shift in ontological status, one in which the pre-adolescent child is precipitated from functional unity with a primary caregiver to an individuated state involving self-awareness as privative, i.e. where the child becomes aware of existing only in the form of not-being-the-adult. For Sartre this new experience of self is not therefore positive but rather formal or empty; there has in fact been a psychic transition, from being to nothingness. In addition, Sartre also states that all children first explicitly experience themselves in this fashion. These claims find support in the work of developmental psychologist Margaret Mahler. In fact, in spite of the vast developmental discrepancies between toddler and pre-adolescent child, given the appropriate environmental triggers privative subjectivity will be shown to involve a regression to the much earlier rapprochement stage of development described by Mahler.     

Another Inconvenient Truth and the Developmental Role for Psychology in a Threatened World*

There is a reciprocal relationship between the external lifeworlds that human individuals and communities inhabit (psychospheres) and the inner psychological landscape of conceptual coherence, cognitive strategies, identity, and meaning. In times of cultural turbulence, when basic assumptions about reality are challenged, there is often a corresponding challenge to psychological coherence on a cultural scale. The 21st century global context is increasingly incoherent, disrupting previously coherent psychospheres and provoking a global conceptual emergency with widespread mental distress. At the same time, climate change, the most dangerous of a cluster of global threats, requires urgent and coordinated action. It is likely that a more mature psychology will be required for this than is currently the global norm. The key to making the changes to necessary avoid global catastrophe humanely and effectively will be more psychological than technical. In the mid-20th century, humanistic psychology founders hoped humanistic psychology would provide theory and praxis for an emancipatory social movement that would avoid the catastrophe of nuclear holocaust. In the face of today's threats, the need for such a project is now more urgent than ever. In light of this, the author proposes the best and highest goals of psychological practice and training should be to address the challenge of creating a new culture or psychosphere that both cultivates and sustains a psychologically healthy humanity long enough to address the potential planetary catastrophe that looms at the same time that it addresses the pain of the inevitable psychological disruptions and the opportunity for transformative growth.     

If Freud Were a Woman: Gender,Uncertainty, and the Psychology of Being Human

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relationships among gender, uncertainty, and the experience of being human by imagining how psychoanalysis might have evolved had Freud been born female. Since the uncertainty heard in many women’s voices goes hand in hand with their relational focus, I suggest that Freud, the woman, would have developed a trauma-centered theory with an ethical foundation reflecting our human relational longings.     

审视无神论研究与宣传教育的中国路径

无神论是从哲学上否定神的客观实在性,而不以否定宗教的客观功能为使命。以为无神论宣传教育就是充当反宗教政治工具的看法是对无神论作用、定位的夸大和意义理解的窄化。如果能在这样一种认识的延长线上去设置无神论在社会主义核心价值体系中的坐标,我们将重新审视如何建构一条无神论研究与宣传教育的中国路径,同时为在实践中坚持和发展马克思主义宗教观开辟新的契机。     

论罗马天主教关于世界与人的新神学

梵二会议以天主爱他的受造物为出发点,抛弃了仅仅推崇天国而一味否定和贬低世俗世界、人和人的努力的传统立场,肯定了世界上的好的价值以及人的主观努力并赞美世界的进步和人的智慧的积极成果,指出真理的源头在天主,随着真理的发展,世界与天国互相渗透,最终合而为一。同时,梵二会议认为世界和人有或好或坏两种前途,因而必须求得教会的帮助归向天主。     

The Sporting Exploration of the World; Toward a Fundamental Ontology of the Sporting Human Being

ABSTRACT

My perspective in this paper is to look at sport and other physical activities as a way of exploring and experimenting with the environing world. The human being is basically the homo movens – born to move. Furthermore, the homo movens is the homo ludens – an active and playful being that explores the world in different ways and in a variety of environments. The ludic exploration of the world starts with children’s play and goes all the way up to full-blown versions of rule-based sports, then on to various physical activities into old age. My point of departure is Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world which suggests that humans are never isolated individuals but are always in a deep way connected with a ‘world’. The ‘world’ of sport comes in different versions. By use of a phenomenological approach I try to show that the sporting exploration of the world takes place in four ontologically different dimensions or ‘worlds’. Here I distinguish between individual sports, encounter sports, team sports and nature sports, and I argue that the I-Me, I-You, I-Society and I-Nature relations that are exemplified in these four types of sports have different ontological characteristics. While the discussion is inspired by Heidegger’s ideas I argue that the ways of ‘worldmaking’ in sport are more ontologically diverse than Heidegger opened up for. Heidegger described the relation of Dasein to itself and to other human beings and argued that we deal with the environment in a practical and a theoretical mode. I expand on this and present a more coherent picture of four different dimensions in the human being’s sporting exploration of the world.     

Can Research in the Human Sciences Become More Relevant to Practice?

The threads of several arguments currently under consideration in various areas of research and practice in counseling are woven together to provide a slightly altered view of the scientist-practitioner model in counseling.     

Religion,Spirituality, and Positive Psychology in Adulthood: A Developmental View

For decades, psychologists have been interested in the question whether, and how, religious and spiritual behavior, in terms of beliefs, attitudes, practices, and belonging, could be scientifically studied and assessed in terms of their relative good, or ill, for human well-being. This article considers contributions of religious commitment and spiritual practice to well-being and cognitive-developmental theoretical models and related bodies of empirical and clinical research regarding religious and spiritual development across the life cycle, with particular attention to questions related to positive adult development.     

新儒家人文主义的生态转向:对中国和世界的启发

为了人类的绵延长存,无论在理论还是实践上,我们与自然的关系都需要有一个根本性的转变,这是一个紧迫的任务。有关人类和自然的关系的重新阐述要求我们有选择地回归世界各宗教传统的精神本源并做出有鉴别的重估。这样一个回归和重估的过程可能会自然而然地更新传统本身。从历史的角度地来看,富有活力的宗教传统总是在不时地发生重大转变,而这种转变往往是由经济、政治、社会和文化等因素所致的人们未曾预料的结果。今天,轴心时代的文明实际上都在经历着各自的转变,以各具特色的不同形式回应着现代性的种种挑战。①就目前日益严重的环境危机而言,轴心时代的各种文明面临的一个关键问题是,创造怎样的精神财富才能为现代世界人类的发展重新定向。     

Human Values, Global Self-Esteem, and Belief in a Just World

ABSTRACT Relations were investigated between global self-esteem, just world beliefs, and value priorities in two large samples of Australian high-school (N= 953) and university students (N= 361). Principal component factor analyses involving the importance ratings for each of the Rokeach terminal and instrumental values showed that values could be classified into the following eight value domains for both samples: positive affiliation, universal prosocial, mature accomplishment, comfort/stimulation, security/salvation, self-directed competence, restrictive conformity, and prosocial concern. These value domains overlapped with but were not identical to the classification of motivational domains proposed by Schwartz and Bilsky (1987). As predicted, global self-esteem (assessed by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale) was positively related to the importance of values in domains concerned with achievement, competence, and self-direction, and just world beliefs (assessed by the Just World Scale) were positively related to values in the restrictive conformity domain. Gender differences occurred in regard to the value domains and in the relation of prosocial values to global self-esteem in the older university sample. The results were discussed in relation to other studies of the structure of human values and other research on self-esteem and belief in a just world.