The Birth of Tragedy and The Trauma of Birth

This article examines the early writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Otto Rank in terms of Harold Bloom's notion of an "anxiety of influence." Like the "strong poets" in Bloom's theory, each of these innovators needed to resolve his ambivalence toward precursors to create new theories and approaches. Nietzsche and Rank are seen as "premature births," thinkers before their time; both went beyond their own early works and attempted self-creation. Through an emphasis on affirmation of life despite death's inevitability, both were able to free themselves creatively. Rank drew from Nietzsche's philosophy and his example in developing an early existential psychotherapy.     

Richard Wagner and the Birth of The Birth of Tragedy 1

Abstract

Nietzsche writes that the ‘real task’ of The Birth of Tragedy is to ‘solve the puzzle of Wagner’s relation to Greek tragedy’. The ‘puzzle’, I suggest, is the intermingling in his art and writings of earlier socialist optimism with later Schopenhauerian pessimism. According to the former the function of the ‘rebirth of Greek tragedy’ in the ‘collective artwork’ is to ‘collect’, and so create, community. According to the second the function of the artwork is to intimate a realm ‘beyond’ this world of pain and death. The audacity of The Birth is that it attempts to show that Wagner can have his cake and eat it: the ‘Dionysian’, musical, element provides a ‘metaphysical comfort’, while the ‘Apollonian’, verbal, element draws a ‘veil of oblivion’ over the metaphysical, thereby allowing the artwork to solidify community. Contrary to the standard Anglophone view, this perspective on The Birth shows that Nietzsche’s intimate association with Wagner during the period of its creation lies at the heart of its philosophical content.     

The Embodiment of Birth

This paper rejects dualism between mind and body toview the self as an embodied biological entity. Rather thanseeing the body operating by passive mechanisms as Descartesargues, it holds it actively moves in and even defines its world. Carrying this perspective to medicine presents an attempt toincorporate or work with internal processes of the body; it issensitive to how patients identify with their bodies. Thecurrent discussion over the extent to which women should try tohave natural childbirths provides a concrete example of thedifferences between mechanistic and embodied approaches tomedicine.     

The Birth Mother

No abstract available for this article.     

The Moral Significance of Birth

Does birth make a difference to the moral rights of the fetus /infant? Should it make a difference to its legal rights? Most contemporary philosophers believe that birth cannot make a difference to moral rights. If this is true, then it becomes difficult to justify either a moral or a legal distinction between late abortion and infanticide. I argue that the view that birth is irrelevant to moral rights rests upon two highly questionable assumptions about the theoretical foundations of moral rights. If we reject these assumptions, then we are free to take account of the contrasting biological and social relationships that make even relatively late abortion morally different from infanticide.     

Birth order and introversion-extraversion

The relationship between birth order and introversion-extraversion was investigated. Subjects were 70 male and 77 female undergraduates, all from three-child families. The measure of introversion employed was the Social Introversion Scale (Scale 0) of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. A two-way analysis of variance indicated that first borns were more introverted than either middle-horns or last-horns, with no difference between the latter two groups. It was suggested that inconsistent results in this area may be due to the use of different measures of introversion.     

Dilemmas of Difference

SUMMARY

This paper outlines a particular conceptual framework or working tool which individuals, couples and couples therapists have found useful in exploring the meaning of love and separateness, increasing the opportunities for love in couples relationships and reducing the potential for war in the intimacy zone. Three categories of difference between partners are outlined as an example both of specific couples therapy work in the microcosm, and of the relationships of nations in the macrocosm.     

弗洛伊德论上帝的形成（二）

上帝是西方宗教信仰体系中一个核心的概念,它是宗教信仰者将他们不能理性解释的各种恐怖力量人格化之后所形成的崇拜对象,同时信仰者也通过祈祷、牺牲、读经、参拜等各种宗教仪式来表达他们与上帝的联系。那么,在弗洛伊德的精神分析学说中这个上帝又是怎样形成的呢?弗洛伊德认为所谓上帝就是人类在原始状态中对父亲形象的一种扭曲的记忆和病态反应。他的这个结论来源于他对人类原始社会关系的猜测和对儿童普遍心理情结的分析,其意图是将个人行为的理论与人类古老的历史融合在一起,通过分析上帝的形成史来支持他在心理学方面的发现。在《图腾…