The research subject as wage earner

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - The practice of paying research subjects for participating inclinical trials has yet to receive an adequate moral analysis.Dickert and Grady argue for a wage...     

The disease-subject as a subject of literature

Based on the distinction between living body and lived body, we describe the disease-subject as representing the impact of disease on the existential life-project of the subject. Traditionally, an individual's subjectivity experiences disorders of the body and describes ensuing pain, discomfort and unpleasantness. The idea of a disease-subject goes further, representing the lived body suffering existential disruption and the possible limitations that disease most probably will impose. In this limit situation, the disease-subject will have to elaborate a new life-story, a new character or way-of-being-in-the-world, it will become a different subject.     

The rabbit as a subject in behavioral research

Domestic rabbits were exposed to a wide variety of variables employed in behavioral research. It was found that: (1) Although food could be used as a reinforcer, the long periods of severe deprivation required to reduce body weight made its use impractical. (2) Water was an efficient reinforcer in that it maintained high rates of behavior after 22 hr of deprivation. (3) Except that rates of responding were higher, fixed-ratio and variable-interval schedules of reinforcement produced patterns of behavior similar to those demonstrated by rats and pigeons. (4) Although the duration of the post-reinforcement pause was a function of the duration of the interval under fixed-interval schedules, scalloping, as defined as a gradually increasing rate of responding between reinforcement, was not evident. (5) When provided with the means to both turn on and turn off intracranial stimulation, the duration of the stimulation and the frequency with which it was turned on and off was a function of the intensity of the stimulation. (6) Electric shock could suppress behavior and maintain escape responding, but would maintain avoidance responding only in a few subjects.     

The wise baby as the voice of the true self

Sandor Ferenczi wrote about a typical dream of the "Wise Baby" and later used this figure to represent the child who is traumatized into precocious wisdom, who becomes "the family psychiatrist." We discuss Ferenczi's theory of traumatization and the "split self," noting how it was taken up in D. W. Winnicott's "True Self/False Self" conceptualization. We then present three patients' wise baby dreams to show how these trauma theories can be used in dream interpretation and how dream interpretation can support them.     

Danger and safety: The analyst as analytic subject

Abstract

This paper considers questions of danger and safety in the analytic relationship in light of the contemporary recognition of analysis as a co-participatory process. In the interest of safety, the psychoanalyst has the responsibility to be persistently curious, particularly about the problems derived from his contact with the analysand. Information about the analyst's impact must be taken to heart; it must be experientially considered. As the process unfolds, the analyst presumes that a portion of its effect will be negative. The analyst aspires not to preempt all negative impact but to create an analytic environment in which the analysand's conscious and unconscious communications about impact may be attended to. The analyst's ability to receive such information is crucial in the establishment of a reliable process capable of addressing and surviving the unanticipated dangers that inevitably emerge and securing the analysand for further self articulation. The analyst can simultaneously attend to being the analyst and being a subject of analysis by regarding all communications from the analysand as representing, at least in part, interpretations of the analyst and the analyst's participation. Illustrative material is presented.     

Thinking about the body as subject

The notion of immunity to error through misidentification (IEM) has played a central role in discussions of first-person thought. It seems like a way of making precise the idea of thinking about oneself ‘as subject’. Asking whether bodily first-person judgments (e.g. ‘My legs are crossed’) can be IEM is a way of asking whether one can think about oneself simultaneously as a subject and as a bodily thing. The majority view is that one cannot. I rebut that view, arguing that on all the notions of IEM that have so far been successfully defined, bodily first-person judgments can be IEM.     

The subject of attention

The absence of a common understanding of attention plagues current research on the topic. Combining the findings from three domains of research on attention, this paper presents a univocal account that fits normal use of the term as well as its many associated phenomena: attention is a process of mental selection that is within the control of the subject. The role of the subject is often excluded from naturalized accounts, but this paper will be an exception to that rule. The paper aims to show how we might reinstate the subject into the act of attention, endorsing the ordinary notion that attention is a direction of the mind by the subject, rather than a mere occurrence or happening. To do so, it lays out the best work of phenomenology, psychology, and neuroscience on specifying the ordinary notion of attention and, in finding them individually wanting, combines them into a unified view that avoids the problems of each. In this way the paper presents a ??how possible?? account of the ordinary notion of attention, wherein attention is enacted by a subject.     

Empathy and viewing the other as a subject

Empathy and viewing another person as a subject rather than an object are often associated in theoretical contexts, but empirical research of the relation is scarce. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the relationship between subject/object view and empathy. In Study 1, participants watched film clips and indicated their empathy for specific characters in the clips, as well as the extent to which they saw these persons as subjects and objects. The subject/object view explained some, but not all, of the differences in empathy, which raised the question of what else accounts for differences in empathy. A second study was conducted to investigate whether the difficulty of the other's situation also contributes. In Study 2, another group watched the film clips and rated the difficulty of the film character's situations in addition to empathy and subject/object view. The results of Study 2 revealed that subject view/object and perceived difficulty together explain a substantial part of differences in empathy. It was concluded that empathy is evoked primarily when a person in difficulty is viewed as a subject.     

Recognizing the infant as subject in infant-parent psychotherapy

Drawing on Winnicott's view of infants as subjects entitled to an intervention in their own right, infants as the referred patient have been seen in infant-parent psychotherapy for 20 years at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia. This is a radically different view of infant symptomatology than viewing it as only expressing an aspect of the mother's unconscious. The clinical pathway differentiates the therapy from much parent-infant psychotherapy. The author describes the theoretical model of a twofold approach to understanding the infant's experience through interactive dialogue between therapist and infant, and sharing this understanding with the parents, and illustrates it with cases of failure-to-thrive infants. She discusses two criticisms: first, that infant-parent psychotherapy may undermine the parents and, second, that brief parent-infant psychotherapy does not alter parents' insecure attachment status. Videotaped sessions often show rapid improvement; parents generally feel relieved. This approach potentially shapes not only parents' and infants' representations, but also their implicit knowledge of relationships-partly, it is suggested, through activating the mirror neuron system to bring about implicit memory change. Change may therefore be longer lasting than psychoanalytic theory presently conceives. The approach is relevant in an outpatient setting: gains were maintained long term in 90% of out-patient cases.     

Awareness of one's body as subject and object

Abstract

This paper rejects Hume's famous claim that we never perceive our selves, by arguing that, under conditions specified, our perception of our bodies is perception of our selves. It takes as its point of departure Quassim Cassam's defence of a position to a similar effect but puts a different interpretation on the distinction between perceiving the body as an object, having spatial attributes, and perceiving it as a self or subject of experiences.     

The psychological subject and predicate

The present study is a demonstration of the independence of the psychological subject-predicate (topic-comment) distinction from the notions of grammatical and logical subject and predicate.