Human Rights and Religion: A Sociological Perspective

This essay aims to review mainstream literature and research perspectives on the sociology of human rights with the further focus on relationship between human rights and religion. We consider the challenges of late engagement of sociology with human rights and current narratives of the relationship of human rights and religion that encompass normativity as the central category of historically oriented sociology. We discuss the contribution of two empirical research mainstreams on human rights and religion and focus on a new field of study—sociology of religious freedom. A detailed new agenda for sociological research on human rights and religion is explored in the final part of our assessment.     

The adaptive value of personality differences revealed by small island population dynamics

Whether differences in personality among populations really exist and, if so, whether they are only due to cultural and linguistic differences or have a genetically selected adaptive value, is a controversial issue. In this research, we compared three Italian populations living on three small archipelagos in the Tyrrhenian Sea (n = 993), with their corresponding neighbouring mainlanders (n = 598), i.e. sharing the same geographical origin, culture and language. We used an adjective‐based Big Five questionnaire in order to measure personality traits in four categories of individuals for each archipelago/mainland population: (1) original islanders; (2) non‐original islanders; (3) mainlanders and (4) immigrants to the islands. We further analysed original and non‐original islanders who had or had not emigrated from the islands. We found that islanders had different personality traits from mainlanders, the former being more conscientious and emotionally stable and less extraverted and open to experience. We also found that the subgroup of islanders whose ancestors had inhabited their island for about 20 generations in isolation (original islanders, n = 624) were less extraverted and open to experience than immigrants (n = 193). In contrast, immigrants retained the typical personality profile of the mainland populations. Lastly, emigrants from the islands (n = 209) were significantly more extraverted and open to experience than original and non‐original islanders who had never left their island (n = 741). We hypothesise that population differences in extraversion and openness to experience are more probably related to genetic differences which evolved rapidly, presumably through an active gene flow produced by selective emigration from the islands. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial neglect, Balint-Homes' and Gerstmann's syndrome, and other spatial disorders

Brain-damaged patients with lesion or dysfunction involving the parietal cortex may show a variety of neuropsychological impairments involving spatial cognition. The more frequent and disabling deficit is the syndrome of unilateral spatial neglect that, in a nutshell, consists in a bias of spatial representation and attention ipsilateral to of extrapersonal, personal (ie, the body) space, or both, toward the side of the hemispheric lesion. The deficit is more frequent and severe after damage to the right hemisphere, involving particularly the posterior-inferior parietal cortex at the temporo-parietal junction. Damage to these posterior parietal regions may also impair visuospatial short-term memory, which may be associated with and worsen spatial neglect. The neural network supporting spatial representation, attention and short-term memory is, however, more extensive, including the right premotor cortex. Also disorders of drawing and building objects (traditionally termed constructional apraxia) are a frequent indicator of posterior parietal damage in the left and in the right hemispheres. Other less frequent deficits, which, however, have a relevant localizing value, include optic ataxia (namely, the defective reaching of visual objects, in the absence of elementary visuo-motor impairments), which is typically brought about by damage to the superior parietal lobule. Optic ataxia, together with deficits of visual attention, of estimating distances and depth, and with apraxia of gaze, constitutes the severely disabling Balint-Holmes' syndrome, which is typically associated with bilateral posterior parietal and occipital damage. Finally, lesions of the posterior parietal lobule (angular gyrus) in the left hemisphere may bring about a tetrad of symptoms (left-right disorientation, acalculia, finger agnosia, and agraphia) termed Gerstmann's syndrome, that also exists in a developmental form.     

Authenticity and the Analytic Process

In this paper we first make a differentiation between phenomena that can be defined as spontaneous and others that can be defined as authentic. We then attempt to present authenticity as a process rather than an outcome. Finally, we try to understand the location of authentic phenomena in the sensorial and pre-symbolic communicative register. We situate authentic phenomena in the register of sensorial and pre-symbolic communication. The authentic process becomes manifest, step by step in the analytic process (Borgogno, 1999), through the vivid iconic and sensorial elements that happen to cross the analytic field. Through two brief clinical vignettes, we seek to document the progression of the analytic process, in one case through the analyst's capacity for rêverie (Bion, 1962; Ogden, 1994, 1997; Ferro, 2002, 2007), and in the other through the sensorial elements with which analyst and patient are able to tune in to each other.     

Heart rate variability and drawing impairment in hypoxemic COPD

We studied 54 patients with hypoxemic chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The Mini Mental State Examination and the Mental Deterioration Battery were used for neuropsychological assessment. Heart rate variability (HRV) was assessed based on 24-h Holter ECG recording. Mann–Whitney test was used to compare HRV parameters of patients performing normally or abnormally on individual neuropsychological tasks. Spearman’s rho was used to investigate the correlations between HRV parameters and neuropsychological scores, indexes of health status or COPD severity. Patients with defective performance at copying drawings with landmarks (CDL) test (N = 23) had lower very low frequency (VLF) power with respect to patients with normal performance (N = 31) (24 h: median 213; interquartile range 120–282 vs. 309; 188–431 ms², p = 0.043; daytime: 202; 111–292 vs. 342; 194–397 ms², p = 0.039). The CDL score correlated with the VLF power (24 h: ρ = 0.27, p = 0.049; daytime: ρ = 0.30, p = 0.028), and the normalized low frequency/high frequency (LF/HF) ratio (24 h: ρ = 0.27, p = 0.05; daytime: ρ = 0.33, p = 0.015). Sympathetic modulation decreased for increasing severity of COPD. In conclusion, drawing impairment correlates with depressed sympathetic modulation in patients with COPD, and both might be indexes of COPD severity.     

Alienating identifications and the psychoanalytic process1

The transmission of psychic life from one generation to the next can result in unconscious, alienating identifications when the parents have not been able to elaborate a process of mourning for their own childhoods. In this article, the author describes the nature of these identifications, constructed around insufficiently symbolized experiences, as revealed during the psychoanalytic process. These unconscious, alienating identifications raise some arduous technical problems for the psychoanalyst as they lead the patient to carry out complex enactments that erase the normal transference markers. The psychoanalyst may then be tempted to resort to pejorative theoretical concepts, such as the death drive. And yet, unknown to the analysand, the insufficiently symbolized psychic elements contain a potential for transformation that may lead to reconstructions and dis‐alienating interpretations. The author distinguishes between alienating identifications and fantasies of identification when the latter transiently appear during the psychoanalytic process. These identification fantasies symbolically register the emotional experience undergone during the analytic sessions and contribute to the integration of insufficiently symbolized psychic elements. These theoretical considerations are fully illustrated by the clinical report of some analytic sessions.