Death of the Soviet regime: A study in American sovietology by a historian

Rapidly changing estimates on the Soviet régime's ability to survive show how difficult it is for American Sovietologists to grasp what is going on.The paper orginated from a series of informal debates and lunchtable conversations held at the Russian Research Center of Harvard University, over the future of the Soviet regime, around the time of its 50th anniversay. The essay was originally presented as a Russian Research Center Seminar paper on March 20, 1970. The author wishes to express his thanks to Professor Richard Pipes, Director of the Center, for permission to reproduce most of the content of the paper.     

Confidentiality in crisis counseling: a philosophical perspective

Crisis interventionists frequently confront a moral dilemma when violating client trust seems necessary if self-destructive behavior is to be prevented. Two fundamental moral values conflict in such cases: concern for client welfare and respect for client rights and autonomy. Each of these values is grounded in one of two important Western ethical traditions: Utilitarianism and Kantian Formalism, respectively. Following critical examination of each of these theories, attention is given to a series of hypothetical cases involving the confidentiality dilemma.     

The group psychotherapist as contemporary mystic: a bionic object relations perspective

Mysticism is a heightened awareness facilitating intuitive knowledge of group realities. In contrast to logical positivism, in which scientific knowledge consists of logic applied to a set of observations, the author holds that mystical awareness is pertinent to the conduct of therapy groups. The work of Bion, and also so-called "structuralist" theories, postulate pre-given templates that inform experience. The application of mystical thought to group consultation, leadership, and transformation of the self is discussed. The group context which allows for mystical experience is called the "sacred space." To emphasize the sacredness of the group, a kabbalist parallel to early development and projective identification is used to show how sacred metaphor and myth can enrich interpretation in groups.     

Edelson's contributions to group psychology: a contemporary perspective

If you are already familiar with Marshall Edelson's writings, you may be expecting this article to be difficult and challenging or outmoded. Since his work with groups began in the 1950s, so much has changed in how we treat the mentally ill, how we train mental health professionals, how hospitals are managed, and how treatments for patients are designed and delivered. This article was written in the belief that nothing is of more lasting relevance than a story of courage and commitment in the search for knowledge to relieve human suffering. Edelson's career is such a story. Intent upon advancing our understanding of groups and organizations, Edelson embodied a distinctive concern with values and boundaries. This article was begun when his physical health was in rapid decline and completed while he was still able to review it. He died January 17, 2005.     

Trauma and abuse in the case of Little Hans: a contemporary perspective

Newly available interviews with Max and Herbert Graf describe the severe pathology of Little Hans's mother and her mistreatment of her husband and her daughter, who committed suicide as an adult. Reread in this context, the text of "A Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy" provides ample evidence of Frau Graf's sexual seduction and emotional manipulation of her son, which exacerbated his age-expectable castration and separation anxiety, and her beating of her infant daughter. The boy's phobic symptoms can therefore be deconstructed not only as the expression of oedipal fantasy, but as a communication of the traumatic abuse occurring in the home. Through subliminal, indeed unconscious, injunctions conveyed in abusive behavior, parents can confirm the child's worst imaginings and immature views of the world and thereby render the child's oedipal conflicts and fantasies pathogenic.     

Existentialism and family therapy: a neglected perspective

This article describes an approach to therapeutic work with families based more on a value-system about persons in relationship than on an objectively validated scientific view and makes a claim for the contribution of existential philosophy to such endeavour.     

Conflict in contemporary clinical work: a self psychological perspective

The authors review the history of controversy regarding conflict versus deficit. They suggest that conflict, when conceptualized within the theory of self psychology, may arise in one of two ways, either: (1) along with deficit when caregivers are unable to provide developmentally needed selfobject functions, and, at the same time, these needed caregivers are also feared; these conflicts are unconscious and potentially pathogenic. Or: (2) conflicts may appear secondary to deficit. Such conflicts also require the analysis of selfobject transferences that have arisen on the basis of the underlying deficit. A clinical example demonstrates that deficit related to the oedipal phase may give rise to oedipal-selfobject transferences, requiring their working through for a successful termination.     

Disability in the family: a life span perspective

This article provides an overview of disability in families. The goal of the article is to raise awareness of the status of people with disabilities and their families to develop culturally relevant psychological support. Families have widely varying perspectives on disability; those perspectives influence responses to disability from the preconception and prenatal developmental stages through old age. An international literature review is provided with consideration of cultural meanings of disability, preparation for dealing with disability, coping strategies, support, developmental dynamics, competing needs of family members, and ethics. Voices of people with disabilities and their families are included.     

Undoing dissociation. Affective neuroscience: a contemporary Jungian clinical perspective

In the last ten years both analysts and neuroscientists have begun to challenge the analytic world to explore the analytic view of the mind in relation to knowledge emerging from the field of neuroscience. I find that 'in many ways it is Jung's understanding of the mind, the human condition, and the self, that is most compatible with the insights that are emerging from neuroscience today' (Wilkinson 2004, p. 84). In this paper I consider the insights that neuroscience has to offer us as we seek to work with those patients whose early experience has diminished their capacity to be 'in mind' and with it their capacity for reflective self-function, whose defences are dissociative, whose need has been to keep unbearable experience at bay, out of mind. I look first at dissociationist theory and its development, then focus on the insights to be gained from neuroscience with regard to early trauma and its effect on the encoding and recall of memory. Finally, I turn to the nature of cure and argue that hemispheric integration is the key to undoing dissociation and the prelude to individuation.     

The family of the severely handicapped child: the sibling perspective

The presence of a severely handicapped child is a source of prolonged crisis and stress for the child's family. Parents may redefine their roles and develop coping strategies aimed at responding to the needs of the handicapped child but which may hamper the development of well siblings. Two cases of siblings of severely handicapped children who developed adjustment difficulties are presented and discussed from a family system perspective.     

The cognitive and neural correlates of "tactile consciousness": a multisensory perspective

People's awareness of tactile stimuli has been investigated in far less detail than their awareness of stimuli in other sensory modalities. In an attempt to fill this gap, we provide an overview of studies that are pertinent to the topic of tactile consciousness. We discuss the results of research that has investigated phenomena such as "change blindness", phantom limb sensations, and numerosity judgments in tactile perception, together with the results obtained from the study of patients affected by deficits that can adversely affect tactile perception such as neglect, extinction, and numbsense. The similarities as well as some of the important differences that have emerged when visual and tactile conscious information processing have been compared using similar experimental procedures are highlighted. We suggest that conscious information processing in the tactile modality cannot be separated completely from the more general processing of spatial information in the brain. Finally, the importance of considering tactile consciousness within the larger framework of multisensory information processing is also discussed.     

Identity configurations: a new perspective on identity formation in contemporary society

This paper deals with the theoretical construct of "identity configuration." It portrays the different possible ways in which individuals configure the relationship among potentially conflicting identifications in the process of identity formation. In order to explicate these configurations, I analyzed narratives of identity development retold by individuals describing personal identity conflicts that arise within a larger context of sociocultural conflict. Thirty Jewish modern orthodox young adults were interviewed regarding a potentially conflictual identity issue (i.e. their religious and sexual development). Their deliberations, as described in the interviews, were examined, and four different configurations were identified: a configuration based on choice and suppression; an assimilative and synthesizing configuration; a confederacy of identifications; and a configuration based on the thrill of dissonance. The different configurations are illustrated through exemplars, and the possible implications of the concept of "configuration" for identity theory are discussed.     

The uses of Aristotle's Rhetoric in contemporary American scholarship

In contemporary American scholarship, interpretation of Aristotle'sRhetoric has become the locus of sustained and sharp controversy. Differing views of theRhetoric and its significance have become tokens in a more general dispute about what rhetoric is or ought to be. This essay examines three central issues that have emerged in this larger arena of controversy: the relationship between Aristotelian and Platonic conceptions of rhetoric, the relationships among rhetoric, ethics, and epistemology in Aristotle, and the placement of rhetoric within Aristotle's system of arts and sciences.