Fight the power: A heuristic exploration of systemic racism through dreams

Systemic racism, like many forms of difference and diversity, is poorly understood within the realms of counselling and psychotherapy. Whereas our profession has shied away from using its skills to explore the meaning and relevance of racism, this author over a number of years has studied many forms of intersectional otherness and recognises that racism is as much a relational experience between subject and other, both internally and externally. This paper therefore explores how an internalised experience of systemic racism can be understood through client work and dreamwork, offering ideas as to how the dreams of the racialised other may be understood; the symbolism, and the relevance of the racial complex hidden within them.     

Identity,incarnation, and the imago Dei

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - A number of thinkers suggest that, given certain conditions, it’s possible that any concrete human nature could have been united...     

Weber's influence in Weimar Germany

The thesis that Weber was without influence in Weimar Germany is examined. It is shown that in contemporary published assessments and in private statements in interviews contemporary sociologists regarded him as important. The many dissertations on Weber and the enormous secondary literature are noted. This literature, which was contributed by some of the best minds of the day, included both the philosophical and sociological aspects of Weber's work. It is concluded that the thesis that Weber was without influence is false.     

The Occult Mind of Simone Weil

This article argues that Weil's interest in occult and esoteric subjects such as Gnosticism and Egyptian mystery religion was not an eccentric sideline to an otherwise ‘Christian’ mysticism but emerged necessarily out of her philosophical method, which, quite independently of those texts where Weil deals with esoterica, displays that pathos of hiddenness so characteristic of occultism: the notion, expressed especially clearly in her late work, that philosophy is the search for a truth hidden from the eyes of ordinary persons and accessible only to those able to endure the ordeals required to gain access into its mysteries. In the second part of the argument, I show that Weil's ‘occultism’ was not an isolated phenomenon but symptomatic of broader trends among intellectuals at the time.     

Imagined contact and mental illness stigma in an Asian context: Bolstering the effect and examining the impact of factual information

Imagined contact can be effective at reducing social stigma. However, the effect may depend on the strength of the stigma held. We tested the robustness of imagined contact in an Asian setting where stigmatization of mental illness is stronger than in Western countries. In Experiment 1 (n = 167) with five conditions, only an enhanced version of positive imagined contact was able to decrease stigma towards people with schizophrenia through decreasing intergroup anxiety. Given the potential discrepancy between imaginations and reality about experiences with stigmatized groups, in Experiment 2 (n = 121), we tested the hypothesis that after presenting participants with factual information about a mental illness group, imagined contact might backfire, resulting in more negative perceptions. However, enhanced imagined contact alongside factual message about schizophrenia did not increase stigma. The backfiring hypothesis was therefore not supported. Nevertheless, providing realistic information did negate the positive effects of enhanced imagined contact on stigma reduction. In both experiments, we also showed that intergroup anxiety mediated the effect of enhanced imagined contact on various measures of stigma.     

Modality effects and the development of the word length effect in children

Two experiments investigated the development of the word length effect in children aged 4 to 10 years, comparing auditory and visual stimuli. The question addressed was whether word length effects emerged earlier with auditory presentation or visual presentation, or whether they emerged at the same age regardless of presentation modality. Results provided evidence that word length effects emerge earlier with visual than auditory presentation. The implication of our results is that with visual presentation, 4-year-olds engage in some form of verbalization strategy that involves obtaining phonological representations of picture names and mapping them on to articulatory output plans. This strategy is clearly verbal in nature, but is not necessarily characterised as cumulative verbal rehearsal.     

Updating target location at the end of an orienting saccade affects the characteristics of simple point-to-point movements

Six results are reported. (a) Reaching accuracy increases when visual capture of the target is allowed (e.g., target on vs. target off at saccade onset). (b) Whatever the visual condition, trajectories diverge only after peak acceleration, suggesting that accuracy is improved through feedback mechanisms. (c) Feedback corrections are smoothly implemented, causing the corrected and uncorrected velocity profiles to exhibit similar shapes. (d) Initial kinematics poorly predict final accuracy whatever the condition, indicating that target capture is not the only critical input for feedback control. (e) Hand and eye final variability are unrelated, suggesting that gaze direction is not a target signal for arm control. (f) Extent errors are corrected without modification of movement straightness; direction errors cause path curvature to increase. Together these data show that movements with straight paths and bell-shaped velocity profiles are not necessarily ballistic.