Man on a Pendulum by Israel J. Gerber

Group therapy provides the ideal arena for helping individuals cultivate the observing ego—that part of the sensorium that has the power of witnessing oneself in the world. The essence of our method is to employ the group as a temporary observing ego, out of which members may develop their own observing egos. A five-step process is presented to (1) help the members see how they are affecting others when they do not see this themselves, (2) help the members see how they produce this effect, (3) help the members see the self-injurious nature of their behavior, (4) resolve resistances to seeing any of this, and (5) help the members arrive at new modes of behavior.     

《长春真人西游记》的艺术特征

李志常所撰写的《长春真人西游记》是道教史上具有重要代表意义的一篇经典游记作品。本文在对其进行认真分析、研究的基础上,指出该游记具有“两种视角的独特写法”、“与政治同行的宗教游记”以及风俗人情的记载、科学不盲从的态度、语言简洁、优美,结构前后照应等艺术特征。     

Donald Mender. The Myth of Neuropsychiatry

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems,by J. J. Gibson

This paper examines the relationship of Jean-François Lyotard’s aesthetics to phenomenology, especially the works of Mikel Dufrenne and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It argues that this comparison allows a greater understanding of Lyotard’s late aesthetic writings, which can appear gnomic and which have received relatively little critical attention. Lyotard credits Merleau-Ponty with opening the theme of difference in the aesthetic field, yet believes that the phenomenological approach can never adequately account for it. After outlining Lyotard’s early critiques of Dufrenne and Merleau-Ponty, the paper will demonstrate how his late aesthetics can be understood as returning to phenomenological themes but in the form of a reversal. Lyotard’s “lesson of darkness” is that the secret power of art can never be brought into the light of phenomenal appearance, and that artworks do not testify to the birth of perception, but to its death and resurrection.     

The Two Faces of Man by Joost A. M. Meerloo

Abstract

The mystery of why some people are compelled to repeatedly engage in relationships with people who are cruel to them is frequently pondered in literature and psychology. The present paper posits that the etiology of this pathological relationship pattern derives from a parental relationship that was both highly exciting and highly frustrating. Spontaneous recapitulations of the passionate masochistic relationship in the therapy group allow the patient, the therapist and the group to appreciate the exact nature of the “bad” partner’s appeal for the patient and its link to parental antecedents. In addition, the author suggests, group therapy can provide attachment experiences that are stimulating and rewarding enough to override the patient’s attraction to the toxic partner(s) and build an enhanced capacity for intimacy. The cases of two patients are presented who spent three and a half years in the same long term psychodynamic group, and who, through the processes described above, successfully resolved their masochistic relationship patterns.