Margaret Mead and behavioral scientists in World War II: problems in responsibility, truth, and effectiveness

In World War II, Margaret Mead and her behavioral science colleagues actively applied their science to the American war effort on issues such as morale, food habits, psychological warfare, and the evacuation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. Mead's participation or lack of participation in these activities, and her varying enthusiasms and misgivings about them, raise fundamental issues about the responsibility of behavioral scientists to warn the public against dangerous policies, as well as the ethics of behavioral scientists participating in deceitful psychological warfare and the extent of their effectiveness in contributing to public policymaking.     

Eyewitness performance in different psychological types

A study of 112 subjects examined the performance on a complex memory task by various Jungian psychological types. Although differences did not emerge in terms of overall accuracy, they did emerge in terms of susceptibility to postevent information. Introverts and intuitives, alone and in combination, were found to be more prone to accept both misleading and consistent postevent information, rendering them more likely to be inaccurate in the first case and more likely to be accurate in the second case. A variety of explanations are considered.     

Mead, Intersubjectivity, and Education: The Early Writings

This article seeks to reconstruct the early writings of George Herbert Mead in order to explore the significance of his work for the development of an intersubjective conception of education. The reconstruction takes its point of departure in Mead's claim that reflective consciousness has a social situation as its precondition. In a mainly chronological account of Mead's writings on psychology and philosophy from the period 1900–1925, it is shown how Mead explains the social origin of conscious reflection and self-consciousness. It is further shown, how Mead redefines the social in terms of meaningful, creative, radically undetermined, but not yet conscious, interaction. Mead's position thereby implies a reversal of the traditional way in which the relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity is conceived. The article ends with an outline of the main implications of this reversal for our understanding of education.     

Embodying the psychological attitude: types of consciousness in the transformation of culture

It is time to reclaim C.G. Jung’s vision of psychology as the foundational science upon which all sciences and institutions would be based, and as the discipline, theory, and practice necessary for fostering humanity’s overall psychocultural development. Jung identified eight distinct ‘types’ of consciousness through which humankind engages its emerging psychological attitude. Jung’s view of psychological development as hingeing on the differentiation of function-attitudes provides the means for understanding not only ourselves and each other, but our society as well. This paper offers an example of such an analysis by focusing on the current conflict within American political culture. The goal is as lofty as it is necessary: the operationalization of Jung’s vision of psychology as the powerful influencer of human cultural evolution that it has the potential to be. The immediate goal is to instigate the first step toward this vision of Jung’s ‘complex psychology’ by stimulating conversations among Jungians about how they can foster that vision, leading them towards taking up roles as ‘citizen therapists’, actively involved in their communities in cultivating greater empathy and the withdrawal of projections in the interest of furthering ‘collective consciousness’.     

Betrayal: A psychological analysis

Betrayal is the sense of being harmed by the intentional actions or omissions of a trusted person. The most common forms of betrayal are harmful disclosures of confidential information, disloyalty, infidelity, dishonesty. They can be traumatic and cause considerable distress. The effects of betrayal include shock, loss and grief, morbid pre-occupation, damaged self-esteem, self-doubting, anger. Not infrequently they produce life-altering changes. The effects of a catastrophic betrayal are most relevant for anxiety disorders, and OC D and PTSD in particular.Betrayal can cause mental contamination, and the betrayer commonly becomes a source of contamination. In a series of experiments it was demonstrated that feelings of mental contamination can be aroused by imagining unacceptable non-consensual acts. The magnitude of the mental contamination was boosted by the introduction of betrayal themes. Feelings of mental contamination can also be aroused in some ‘perpetrators’ of non-consensual acts involving betrayal. The psychological significance of acts of betrayal is discussed.     

Three types of skills for effective forensic psychological assessments

This article examines three types of skills required for effective assessments in the forensic arena. Forensic psychology is the application of scientific psychology to the resolution of legal conflicts. The first skill is knowledge of the legal issues to be addressed. Examples of such issues are criminal responsibility, legal competencies, and linking mental states to legal issues in question. The second set of skills comprises those skills often required by the demands of the legal system--specifically, gathering complete information about the case at hand, striving for neutrality, reconstructing the past, and predicting the future. The last set of skills includes practical ones required during the process of litigation--that is, supporting the retaining attorney's overall strategy, addressing the testimony to the appropriate audience, and deferring to the prerogative of the fact finder.     

Mary and femininity: A psychological critique

This essay uses Freud to interpret the symbolism and theology of Mary in modern Catholicism. In her role as the mother of believers, Mary functions to place the Christian in the position of a child who receives illusory gratification from the mother. In her role as model for Christians to emulate, Mary functions to place the Christian in the position of receptivity and dependence which Freud associated with femininity. Reinterpreting Freud from a feminist perspective, I suggest that the kind of femininity Mary represents serves to perpetuate patriachal social structures and to inhibit full psychological maturity.     

Paideia: Philosophy educating humanity through spirituality

The purpose of this paper is to provide the groundwork for a formal philosophical justification of the study of spirituality as a necessary co-requisite to the study of education. Consequently, much of the paper makes little direct reference to children's spirituality as such; instead it argues that spirituality per se is bound up with the education of self and personhood, irrespective of whether one is a child or an adult. Following MacIntyre's critique of morality, I contend that spiritual discourse and practice have become so fragmented as to be virtually meaningless; I maintain, therefore, that spirituality is an area ripe for, but largely neglected by philosophical inquiry. Drawing on the work of Hadot I argue for a reassessment of the importance of the spiritual exercises favoured by the four major philosophical schools of antiquity.