Philosophy of Education in a Poor Historical Moment: A Personal Account

Under the post-metaphysical sky “old” humanistic-oriented education is possible solely at the cost of its transformation into its negative, into a power that is determined to diminish human potentials for self-exaltation. Nothing less than total metamorphosis is needed to rescue the core of humanistic genesis: the quest for edifying Life and resistance to the call for “home-returning” into the total harmony that is promised to us within nothingness.     

Escaping the Dark Side of Curiosity

Curiosity as a clinical entity has been a neglected subject in the psychoanalytic literature. Freud never addressed the issue of curiosity systematically. His interest was in trying to account for children's sexual questioning. Nevertheless, hinderance to internal curiosity—this is to say, that which intimidates and abates the appetite for an exploration of one's motives—is part and parcel of psychoanalytic inquiry. And, arguably, there is no greater clinical challenge for the analyst than trying to treat an analysand who appears to lack an interest in the underlying causes of his unhappiness. The problem of impeded self-inquiry is usually exacerbated in people with more serious emotional disturbances. My position here is that in studying the conditions that mitigate against curiosity in a seriously disturbed patient, we gain access to an enlarged version of the curiosity problems of our less disturbed patients. Here I interpret my clinical impressions about problems with curiosity with ideas from the writings of Martin Buber and Albert Camus.     

Correlates and implications for agreeableness in children

This study is an examination of the relationship between agreeableness and other constructs related to children's social relationships. Third through 6th graders (N = 76; 46 boys, 30 girls) completed self-reports on agreeableness (based on the adult version of the NEO Personality Inventory Manual; Costa & McCrae, 1985), social skills (Social Skills Rating System for Children; Gresham & Elliot, 1991), empathy (Feshbach, 1990) and trust (Children's Trust Scale; Imber, 1973). Using multiple regression, agreeableness was predicted by social skills, empathy, and trust for girls. There were no significant predictors of agreeableness for boys. The discussion focuses on the mutability of childhood personality.