Erich Fromm’s concept of reactive violence

Abstract

This paper explores the current relevance of Fromm’s concept of reactive violence for understanding particular patients and for generating hypotheses about the world we live in. In his discussion of reactive violence, Fromm gives us a nuanced approach to forms of aggression that can be employed in the service of life. According to Fromm, the aim of reactive violence is preservation, not destruction. It is rooted in fear and, he believes, is the most frequent form of violence. This paper traces the evolution of Fromm’s concept of reactive violence, and considers how it might apply to today’s social and political challenges.     

The influence of natural contour and face size on the spatial frequency tuning for identifying upright and inverted faces

Psychological Research - It has previously been proposed that holistic face processing is based on low spatial frequencies (SFs) whereas featural processing relies on higher SFs, a hypothesis still...     

Dissociation and memory suppression: A comparison of high and low dissociative individuals’ performance on the Think–No Think task

The present study examined whether high and low dissociative individuals differ in their ability to keep target stimuli out of their awareness (suppression) and how this relates to their memory of those targets during a later cued recall task. The prediction was that high dissociators display a general inability to focus attention and that their distractibility undermines successful suppression, thereby enhancing memory for suppressed items. College students with high (n = 35) and low (n = 33) scores on the Dissociative Experiences Scale participated in a Dutch version of Anderson and Green’s (2001) Think–No Think (TNT) task. Overall, a significant suppression effect emerged. However, no differences between high and low dissociators were observed. Thus, the present results do not confirm that dissociation is linked to heightened distractibility.     

Reaffirming the poverty of the stimulus argument: a reply to the replies

Lidz, Waxman, and Freedman [Lidz, J., Waxman, S., & Freedman, J. (2003). What infants know about syntax but couldn’t have learned: Evidence for syntactic structure at 18-months. Cognition, 89, B65-B73.] argue that acquisition of the syntactic and semantic properties of anaphoric one in English relies on innate knowledge within the learner. Several commentaries have now been published questioning this finding. We defend the original finding by identifying both empirical and logical flaws in the critiques.     

A Structural Equation Model for the School Reinforcement Survey Schedule: Italian and American Early Adolescents

The School Reinforcement Survey Schedule (SRSS) was administered to 2,828 boys and girls in middle schools in the United States and an Italian translation was administered to 342 boys and girls in middle schools in Northern Italy. An exploratory factor analysis using half the American data set was performed using maximum likelihood estimation with a promax rotation. This analysis produced a structural equation model with six interpretable latent variables. This analysis was confirmed by results demonstrating a good fit with the other half of the American sample and separately with the Italian sample. Scores for the six latent variables were constructed and information about the distribution of scores was obtained. Multiple comparisons of the means were performed by gender, within each national sample, for each of the six latent variables. American and Italian girls report obtaining greater enjoyment from a wider variety of school activities compared to American and Italian boys.