Adolescence: a literary passage.

Using Erikson's and Gilligan's theories of adolescent development, this paper presents a content analysis of the depiction of adolescent development in a sample of Newbery Medal winners and honor books. Some diversity was found among the major characters, but white males were overrepresented. Many of the characters underwent an identity crisis. Some passed through the identity versus role confusion stage; others, especially in the almost prototypical male-initiation-rite stories, discovered ways to deal with nature (industry) which engendered a far clearer sense of self (identity). The major female characters experienced the two phases more or less simultaneously, but a similar fusion existed for a number of the male characters. The themes of "separation" and "connection" were paramount in the stories, and what Gilligan has called "the ethic of care" was presented positively. Some main characters matured only when they recognized their responsibility to others.     

Relation between 22-kHz ultrasonic signals and sociosexual behavior in rats

The copulatory performance of male rats, tested in a large seminaturalistic environment, was assessed to determine the relation between 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations and a range of sociosexual behaviors. The male rats were tested until sexual exhaustion. Such ultrasonic signals were shown to occur in a wider range of sociosexual circumstances than previously reported; for example, the calls occcurred in particular social circumstances during the preejaculatory period as well as during the postejaculatory interval. There was no consistent evidence that the emission of this call during the postejaculatory period consistently functions to keep the female away from the male. The nature and occurrence of postejaculatory ultrasonic signals showed increasing variability in successive ejaculatory series. The results of this and previous studies are interpreted within a semiotic theory of communication. The 22-kHz call is described as a message that makes available the information that the sender is in a socially depressed and withdrawn state.     

Substituting new details for old? Effects of delaying postevent information on infant memory

How that which we remember is selectively distorted by new information was studied in 3-monthold infants who learned to move a particular crib mobile by operant foot kicking. Infants who were passively exposed to a novel mobile 1, 2, or 3 days later subsequently treated the novel mobile as if they had actually been trained with it. Also, after the longest exposure delay, they no longer recognized the original mobile. Likewise, when the novel mobile was exposed after the longest delay, it could prime the forgotten training memory in a reactivation paradigm, but the original mobile no longer could. These data reveal that what we remember about an event is selectively distorted by what we encounter later. Moreover, the later in the retention interval we encounter new postevent information, the greater is its impact on retention.     

The Political Is Personal: Narrating 9/11 and Psychological Well-Being

ABSTRACT Making meaning out of negative experiences is one of the primary psychological challenges in the wake of adversity. Much of the empirical attention that psychologists have paid to meaning making has focused on personal hardships, but national tragedies similarly pose a challenge to meaning making. In the present study, which is grounded in the theoretical tradition of the narrative study of lives, a nationally representative sample of 395 adults wrote accounts about the 9/11 terrorist attacks approximately 2 months after 9/11. Accounts were coded for 3 narrative themes: closure, redemption, and contamination. Psychological well-being was significantly related to accounts that were high in closure and national redemption and, among those more directly exposed to the attacks, accounts high in redemptive imagery. Psychological distress was significantly related to accounts that were low in closure and high in themes of personal contamination. Understanding the narrative styles that characterize personal accounts of political events has important ramifications for the study of the socially embedded individual.     

The practical absolute: Fichte’s hidden poetics

The following paper argues that J.G. Fichte, despite his apparent philosophical neglect of art and aesthetics, does develop a strong, original, and coherent account of art, which not only allows the theorization of modern, non-representative art forms, but indeed anticipates Nietzsche and Heidegger in conceiving of truth in terms of art rather than scientific rationality. While the basis of Fichte’s philosophy of art is presented in the essay “On Spirit and Letter in Philosophy,” it is not developed systematically either in this text or anywhere else in his writings, but must be reconstructed through a broad consideration of all his works, including, above all, his political and economic writings. For Fichte, the art-work does not exist as an object possessing “aesthetic value” and which can, in turn, be possessed, consumed, and enjoyed through the subjective act of aesthetic experience. Rather, it involves a mode of praxis which, grounded in a radical and original power of imagination, creatively discloses possibilities for future forms of existence, experience, and political community that cannot be theoretically anticipated. While Fichte cannot himself theorize specific forms of art, since the art that concerns him belongs to the future, we can, however, retrospectively try to understand non-representational painting and non-mimetic dance as concrete realizations of Fichte’s art-work of the future. In this way, Fichte’s philosophy of art ultimately suggests an alternative to Heidegger’s understanding of the work of art as a projective institution of truth. Fichte suggests that the human body, rather than human language, is the fundamental medium of art.