Intellectual disability and the myth of the changeling myth

This article investigates the historical sources for the idea of the "changeling" or substitute child as an explanation for congenital intellectual disability. Pre-modern sources for this idea are elite and theological as much as popular and folkloric, nor do they refer to intellectual disability in any sense recognizable to us. Rather, both the concept of intellectual disability and the notion of a transhistorical changeling myth emerge from the historical core of modern psychology.     

The myth of science education

It is argued that the manner in which we teach science in the high schools represents an outdated positivistic conception of science. The standard presentation of a year of each of chemistry, biology and physics should be replaced by an integrated science plus history, philosophy, and sociology of science which would take a total of three years to complete. A proper appreciation for the true nature of science is essential to the continued health of the scientific enterprise.     

The myth of peer pressure

The construct of peer pressure was examined as part of a qualitative study of the determinants of mental health for 41 high-risk adolescents. While the concept of peer pressure enables adults to explain youths' troubling behaviors, content analysis of the participants' accounts of their lives revealed peer pressure to be a myth. The youths indicated that adoption of the behavior and appearance of peers was a consciously employed strategy to enhance personal and social power. Association with peers was used to construct and maintain health-promoting identities that challenged the stigmatizing labels given to them by others. Three developmental stages to this process of identity construction were identified. During stage one, vulnerable youths learn to maintain a singular self-definition through interaction with peers. In stage two, youths purposefully use their peer relations to experiment with multiple identities. During stage three, youths collaborate with peers as equal partners in the construction of one or more identities for which they find acceptance.     

The myth of phenomenological overflow

In this paper I examine the dispute between Hakwan Lau, Ned Block, and David Rosenthal over the extent to which empirical results can help us decide between first-order and higher-order theories of consciousness. What emerges from this is an overall argument to the best explanation against the first-order view of consciousness and the dispelling of the mythological notion of phenomenological overflow that comes with it.     

The myth of the encoding-retrieval match

Modern memory researchers rely heavily on the encoding-retrieval match, defined as the similarity between coded retrieval cues and previously encoded engrams, to explain variability in retention. The encoding-retrieval match is assumed to be causally and monotonically related to retention, although other factors (such as cue overload) presumably operate in some circumstances. I argue here that the link between the encoding-retrieval match and retention, although generally positive, is essentially correlational rather than causal--much like the link between deep/elaborative processing and retention. Empirically, increasing the functional match between a cue and a target trace can improve, have no effect, or even decrease retention performance depending on the circumstance. We cannot make unequivocal predictions about retention by appealing to the encoding-retrieval match; instead, we should be focusing our attention on the extent to which retrieval cues provide diagnostic information about target occurrence.     

The myth of the encoding-retrieval match

Modern memory researchers rely heavily on the encoding-retrieval match, defined as the similarity between coded retrieval cues and previously encoded engrams, to explain variability in retention. The encoding-retrieval match is assumed to be causally and monotonically related to retention, although other factors (such as cue overload) presumably operate in some circumstances. I argue here that the link between the encoding-retrieval match and retention, although generally positive, is essentially correlational rather than causal—much like the link between deep/elaborative processing and retention. Empirically, increasing the functional match between a cue and a target trace can improve, have no effect, or even decrease retention performance depending on the circumstance. We cannot make unequivocal predictions about retention by appealing to the encoding-retrieval match; instead, we should be focusing our attention on the extent to which retrieval cues provide diagnostic information about target occurrence.     

The myth of the collective unconscious

This essay challenges the most basic tenet of Jung’s analytical psychology, namely, the existence of the collective unconscious. Despite the fact that there are purported to be universal processes and ontological features of mind throughout all psychoanalytical schools of thought, Jung’s is unique in the history of psychoanalytic ideas for positing a supraordinate, autonomous transpersonal psyche that remains the source, ground, and wellspring from which all unconscious and conscious manifestations derive. This bold claim is analyzed through a close inspection of Jung’s texts that questions the philosophical justification for postulating a supernatural macroanthropos or reified collective mind. Pointing out the problems of agency and fallacies of hypostatization, it is not necessary to evoke a transpersonal cosmogony to explain how universality suffuses individual subjectivity within social collectives. Here we may conclude that the collective unconscious construct is a signifier for the common psychological dynamics and characteristics of shared humanity. In this sense, the myth of the collective unconscious is better understood as a metaphor for a higher abstraction or ideal principle ordained with numinous value.     

Overcoming the myth of the mental

Can we accept John McDowell’s Kantian claim that perception is conceptual “all the way out,” thereby denying the more basic perceptual capacities we seem to share with prelinguistic infants and higher animals? More generally, can philosophers successfully describe the conceptual upper floors of the edifice of knowledge while ignoring the embodied coping going on on the ground floor? I argue that we shouldn’t leave the conceptual component of our lives hanging in midair and suggest how philosophers who want to understand knowledge and action can profit from a phenomenological analysis of the nonconceptual embodied coping skills we share with animals and infants, as well as the nonconceptual immediate intuitive understanding exhibited by experts.     

Narcissism and the personal myth

Kris (1956) described the concept of the personal myth as an autobiographical story built around a family romance fantasy seen specifically in obsessive characters and serving a defensive function. In this paper the concept of the personal myth was expanded to include similar defensive constellations originating from within the grandiose self, built around omnipotent and omniscient fantasies and occurring in character formations with pregenital, narcissistic pathology. The case of a known author and poet, Nikos Kazantzakis, was used to illustrate the thesis of the paper. The available biographical material and the work of the author offer evidence to support the claim that the author's personal myth was a protective shield against anxiety originating in early narcissistic traumata.