Discussion of “Unraveling Whiteness”: Commentary on Paper by Melanie Suchet

In this discussion I consider several influences on the contemporary project of deconstructing racism and the concept of racialized subjectivity. This discussion applauds the turn in Suchet's work toward self-examination in a consideration of the experience of race and racism. Suchet's work moves the debates about racialized subjectivities into a deeper and more complex understanding of all the ways in which identifications and attachments cross race and class lines for many individuals. This discussion focuses on Suchet's treatment of the power of hybridic and biracial identifications, beginning with autobiographical material from Suchet's own childhood in South Africa. In this discussion of “Unraveling Whiteness” I integrate psychoanalytic concepts of enigmatic signification (the work of Laplanche) into a discussion of early attachment, and relational configurations with children and nonparental caretakers. The question of trauma or potential transformation in interracial experience is discussed, and some distinctions between American and South African experience are considered.     

Speech and Sensuality; Speech and Separation: Commentary on Paper by Sarah Hill

In this response to Bromberg, I note the ways in which his commentary has further stimulated and enriched my thinking.     

Introduction to Nina Farhi's “Hands of the Living God: ‘Finding the Familiar in the Unfamiliar’”

In this Introduction we set the project in a particular moment of mourning. We describe the experience of engaging with Nina Farhi to publish her paper, recounting and reworking an early and famous analysis conducted by Marion Milner. Farhi's unexpected and untimely death just at the point of developing this extended project has cast a pall over the subsequent work. We detail the history of Farhi and Milner's contribution; her influences from Winnicott, Klein, and Ghent; and her radical extension of Milner's own ideas. We survey, in this Introduction the dialogue, in two iterations, of Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, Dodi Goldman, and Avgi Sekatepoulou. We describe the distinct but interwoven dialogues among these three writers, each concerned in different ways with aspects of Farhi's and, earlier, of Milner's project. We record also the work of Jean White, who stakes out a less mournful and more celebratory aspect of Nina Farhi's and Marion Milner's work and the tradition in psychoanalysis that they represent.     

Coping Functions of Prayer and Posttraumatic Growth

Research on prayer and posttraumatic growth (PTG) indicates that those who pray report more PTG. Research is beginning to identify which types of prayer may be operating in this relationship. We sought to identify specific prayer functions related to PTG while considering differences due to the types of trauma experienced. Participants were trauma survivors from diverse, Midwestern Christian churches (N = 327). Participants completed questionnaires assessing trauma history, prayer coping functions, and PTG. Multiple linear regression analyses found that praying for calm and focus was independently related to higher levels of PTG. When considering all variables in the model, the relationship between prayer for calm and focus and PTG was not significant for those whose most significant trauma was interpersonal in nature, but significant for those with noninterpersonal trauma.     

The infant and the infinite: On psychoanalytic faith – Bion,Meltzer and Kierkegaard

This paper discusses the meaning of psychoanalytic faith as a useful developmental concept, which applies to the therapeutic process in the consulting room as to other intimate educational experiences. Faith is a concept which has been little considered in relation to psychoanalysis, partly owing to semantic confusion with ‘the Faith’ as in religious or psychoanalytic dogma, and partly owing to the difficulty of defining or describing what it is, outside accepted jargon. Yet, faith is traditionally the gateway to experiencing the unknown – a psychoanalytic goal-demanding negative capability. It is suggested that philosophy and poetry, where the concept is more familiar, can provide psychoanalytic parallels for this particular type of learning from experience. The viewpoints of Bion, Meltzer and Kierkegaard are taken as contributing to a picture of how, in the psychoanalytic session, there may be a developmental encounter between the infant (patient) and the infinite (the transference process, rather than the analyst as a person).     

The Role of Virtue in Xunzi’s 荀子 Political Philosophy

Although there has been a resurgence of interest in virtue ethics, there has been little work done on how this translates into the political sphere. This essay demonstrates that the Confucian thinker Xunzi offers a model of virtue politics that is both interesting in its own right and potentially useful for scholars attempting to develop virtue ethics into virtue politics more generally. I present Xunzi’s version of virtue politics and discuss challenges to this version of virtue politics that are raised by the Legalist thinker Han Fei. I show that not only is Xunzi’s virtue politics capable of surviving the challenges raised by his contemporary, he offers an account that is in many ways both attractive and plausible, one that may usefully be brought into conversation with contemporary visions of virtue politics.     

Understanding spatial transformations: similarities and differences between mental rotation and mental folding

Mental rotation and mental folding, two widely used measures of spatial ability, both require the dynamic spatial transformation of objects with respect to their internal spatial structure. Traditionally, however, these two skills have been considered quite distinct, based primarily on factor analyses of psychometric data. This paper reviews the similarities and differences between mental rotation and mental folding from a variety of perspectives, including their definitions, component cognitive processes, neurological bases, developmental trajectories, malleability, predictive validity, and psychometric properties. We conclude that mental rotation and mental folding are similar in many respects. However, the tasks differ in whether they require rigid or non-rigid transformations of objects. In addition, mental rotation shows robust sex-related differences whereas mental folding does not. We also identify specific questions for which research is lacking.     

Attentional bias for words and faces in social anxiety

Conflicting findings concerning the nature and presence of attentional bias in social anxiety and social phobia have been reported in the literature. This paper reports the findings of two studies comparing people with high and low social anxiety on dot probe tasks using words, faces photographed in front view, and faces photographed in profile as stimuli. In Study 1 those with high social anxiety displayed an attentional bias towards negative faces. The low social anxiety group showed an attentional bias towards positive faces. No significant effects were observed on the dot probe using words as stimuli. Study 2 used pairs of faces presented in profile as though looking at each other. One of the faces displayed either a positive, negative or neutral expression. The second face always had a neutral expression, and in half of the trials it was the subject's own face. The findings of this more ecologically valid procedure replicated those of Study 1. Facilitated attention to dots following emotional faces was specific to threatening facial stimuli. From these studies it appears that the facial dot probe task is a more sensitive index of attentional bias than the word task in a non-clinical sample with social anxiety.     

Anatomical limitations in mental transformations of body parts

Two experiments investigated whether possible and impossible body postures influence mental rotation processes differently considering that anatomical limitations constrain the way in which subjects perform mental transformations of body parts. In Experiment 1, mental rotation was performed on two stimuli presented simultaneously. Both possible and impossible body postures elicited mental rotation, although the mental rotation rate was slower for impossible postures. In Experiment 2, only one stimulus was presented at a time and subjects decided whether it represented a correct body-part configuration or not. A typical mental rotation function was only present for correct body-part configurations. The results are discussed in terms of the familiarity of the stimuli. Unfamiliar stimuli (physically impossible) are rotated via local representations of their parts, whilst global representations are used for rotating familiar (anatomically correct) stimuli.     

Quantifying violence in mental health research

Research into mental illness and its relationship with violence has been constrained by inconsistencies in the definition and measurement of violent behavior. We conducted a systematic literature search of Scopus, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and Ovid Medline with search terms relating to the measurement, rating and quantification of violent behavior in mentally disordered populations. We identified nine tools designed to assess violence and critically evaluated them. Broadly, measurement tools tended to focus on multiple, but different, facets of violence, which included: severity of act, severity of outcome, frequency and intent, with each suggested as a valid outcome measure for violent acts. The use of multiple sources of information to inform assessment appears to provide detail; however, that detail is then often diluted as a result of dichotomization of sample groups. This presents methodological challenges for the field. Future studies should give consideration to the trade-off between preserving the richness of data and the difficulties associated with recruiting large patient samples. Studies should move from simply defining violence towards quantification across different dimensions of violence and using multiple sources of information.