Going Deep,Going Wide

Contemporary theories of psychoanalytic action have for the most part shifted from an archeological model—analyst as objective scientist/detective in search of patients’ deeply repressed affective experience—to analyst as often unwitting co-participant in a relationship ultimately designed to broaden patients’ awareness and acceptance of their varied internalized self-other configurations. These sometimes dissociated configurations often emerge in the context mutual enactments between patient and analyst.     

Going Home

Today marks two months since the city was in flames. What happened here is important to me partly because, “Los Angeles is my city.” I am a native son, born 52 years ago in the Queen of Angels Hospital. I carry in me both the pride and the inferiority that go with being from L.A.     

Going Topless

The view that people go where their brains go remains popular in discussions of personal identity. But since the brain is only a small part of the body, defenders of that view need to provide an account of what it is that makes the brain specially relevant to personal identity. The standard answer is that the brain is special because it is the carrier of psychological continuity. But Peter van Inwagen has recently offered (in Material Beings ) an alternative account of the brain' special relevance. Those who reject the view that we go with our brains obviously need to respond to this new account. According to van Inwagen, there is an important difference between the life-support requirements of a severed head and those of a headless body: whereas a severed head would need only a pump to survive, a headless body would need the functional equivalent of a computer in its life-support system. It follows, according to van Inwagen, that we go with our brains. In this paper I argue that van Inwagen's argument is doubly defective: the inference from his premisses to his conclusion is dubious; and in any case his premisses misrepresent the relevant physiological facts.     

Learning By Going Inside

This story of the beginnings of a career in prison reform, is an example of the interplay between spirituality and mental health practices. Through anecdotes of actual experiences inside prison, Father Chinlund communicates a sense of life “inside” as it is for the most motivated prisoners. There were many in the prisons he visited who turned their incarceration into a good thing, transforming their prison cells into something like monastic cells.Stephen Chinlund, an Episcopal priest, was Chairman of the New York State Commission of Correction, responsible for advising the Governor on corrections policy, from 1976 to 1981. In 1981, he conceived and developed a prisoner-family program. From 1986 until recently he was Executive Director of Episcopal Social Services in New York City. Correspondence to Stephen Chinlund, 445 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA; e-mail: stephenchinlund@yahoo.com.     

Going beyond with Bayesian updating

It all started innocently enough. One spring-like winter day, I happened to ask Brendan whether economists ever dealt with escalation. “With what?” he replied. “A phenomenon where people keep investing in the face of continuing losses,” I answered. Then I described how industrial/organizational psychologists had become intrigued with situations in which investors seemed to throw good money after bad, how their explanations for the phenomenon centered on individual characteristics such as commitment, how Sonia Goltz (1992) used a standard bread-and-butter operant procedure—fixed and variable schedules of reinforcement—to explain their persistence, and how Goltz's experiments had shown that during the extinction phase investors even increased their investments for a while when the news was all bad. Without a moment's hesitation, he exclaimed, “I bet I can predict the turning point.” Another arrogant-economist remark, I thought to myself. “How?” “Bayesian updating.” Then we talked at length about Bayesian analysis techniques and how they could be used to predict the shape of extinction curves. I realized that these techniques might be just what psychologists needed as an enticement to study sequences of behavior over time. And that's how this commentary got started.     

欧洲人不爱上教堂了

[美国《华盛顿邮报》5月6日文章]题:空荡荡的欧洲教堂(作者T·R·里德) 900多年来,欧洲各地的朝圣者成群结队地来到坎特伯雷这个古老的城镇,来瞻仰这里雄伟的大教堂。在乔叟所著的第一部用英文出版的伟大著作中就描述了这种情形。 但在今天,那些朝圣者的热情大大削弱了。上周日的晨祷中,坎特伯雷大教堂雄伟的穹顶下,总共只有     

退步原来是向前

从契此的“手把青苗插满田,低头便见水中天,六根清净方为道,退步原来是向前”偈中,反映了退让并不是完全的消极,有时反而是一种积极的进取,从而揭示出丰富的人生哲理。     

Going forth in the laboratory

FORTH is a computer language that is useful for writing programs to control experiments. The language is extensible in that new capabilities may be added to FORTH by using FORTH. This article describes a FORTH application word set for animal psychophysics. The words in the application word set facilitate the translation from state diagrams of behavioral psychophysical procedures to experiment-control programs.     

Going Public: Good Scientific Conduct

The paper addresses issues of scientific conduct regarding relations between science and the media, relations between scientists and journalists, and attitudes towards the public at large. In the large and increasing body of literature on scientific conduct and misconduct, these issues seem underexposed as ethical challenges. Consequently, individual scientists here tend to be left alone with problems and dilemmas, with no guidance for good conduct. Ideas are presented about how to make up for this omission. Using a practical, ethical approach, the paper attempts to identify ways scientists might deal with ethical public relations issues, guided by a norm or maxim of openness. Drawing on and rethinking the CUDOS codification of the scientific ethos, as it was worked out by Robert K. Merton in 1942, we propose that this, which is echoed in current codifications of norms for good scientific conduct, contains a tacit maxim of openness which may naturally be extended to cover the public relations of science. Discussing openness as access, accountability, transparency and receptiveness, the argumentation concentrates on the possible prevention of misconduct with respect to, on the one hand, sins of omission??withholding important information from the public??and, on the other hand, abuses of the authority of science in order to gain publicity. Statements from interviews with scientists are used to illustrate how scientists might view the relevance of the issues raised.     

迷信与从众

安徽《文摘周刊》9月2日报道,近日,在河南某县有传言说:“外公、外婆给外孙、外孙女送把红伞能免灾”,整个县城陡然掀起抢购红伞的风潮,商家数万把红伞竟然迅速售罄。一条毫无根由的传言,何以有如此大的“威力”呢? 其一,传言击中了人们的从众心理。红伞抢购风潮的兴起, 仅仅源于一句传言。不少人是     

The Challenges Involved with Going Negative

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - One rather common way of doing philosophy involves what is called “the method of cases,” where philosophers design hypothetical...