Waking Dreams

Although they have been infrequently reported in the literature, spontaneous visual images in therapy sessions have a long history in psychoanalysis. In this paper, I present three clinical examples in which patients experienced such visual images. These images were spontaneous in that they felt like they emerged “out of the blue,” from another self-state. The person experienced the images while knowing they were images; for this reason, they might be called “waking lucid-dreams.” These waking dreams provided a channel for the expression and communication of emotional states otherwise excluded from our relationship, from the “me–you” patterns that had prevailed at the time of the images. These images, and their potential role in personal growth, have something to “say” not only about relatedness, meaning-making, and referential activity, but also about affect regulation and mentalization.     

Social and Behavioral Researchers' Experiences With Their IRBs

This article examines the responsibilities of researchers who conduct exploratory research to provide a service to vulnerable respondents. The term “service” is used to denote the provision of a tangible benefit in relation to the research question that is apart from the altruistic research benefits. This article explores what this “service” could look like, who might be responsible for providing it, and the challenges associated with such a service. The article argues that not providing a tangible benefit to vulnerable research participants is inconsistent with the principle of social justice that undergirds much of the rationale for conducting health disparities research.     

Community-Based Participatory Research for Improved Mental Health

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) focuses on specific community needs, and produces results that directly address those needs. Although conducting ethical CBPR is critical to its success, few academic programs include this training in their curricula. This article describes the development and evaluation of an online training course designed to increase the use of CBPR in mental health disciplines. Developed using a participatory approach involving a community of experts, this course challenges traditional research by introducing a collaborative process meant to encourage increased participation by special populations and narrow the parity gap in effective mental health treatment and services delivery.     

The effect of limb crossing and limb congruency on multisensory integration in peripersonal space for the upper and lower extremities

The present study investigated how multisensory integration in peripersonal space is modulated by limb posture (i.e. whether the limbs are crossed or uncrossed) and limb congruency (i.e. whether the observed body part matches the actual position of one’s limb). This was done separately for the upper limbs (Experiment 1) and the lower limbs (Experiment 2). The crossmodal congruency task was used to measure peripersonal space integration for the hands and the feet. It was found that the peripersonal space representation for the hands but not for the feet is dynamically updated based on both limb posture and limb congruency. Together these findings show how dynamic cues from vision, proprioception, and touch are integrated in peripersonal limb space and highlight fundamental differences in the way in which peripersonal space is represented for the upper and lower extremity.     

Gamma flicker elicits positive affect without awareness

High-frequency oscillations emerged as a neural code for both positive affect and fluent attentional processing from evolutionary simulations with artificial neural networks. Visual 50 Hz flicker, which entrains neural oscillations in the gamma band, has been shown to foster attentional switching, but can it also elicit positive affect? A three-faces display (2-female/1-male or 2-male/1-female) was preceded by a 50, 25, or 0 Hz flicker on the position of the odd-one-out (i.e., the target). Participants decided on the gender (Block 1) or on the subjective valence (Block 2) of this neutral target in an approach-avoidance task, which served as an implicit affective measure. Only the detection of 25 Hz flicker, but not of 50 Hz flicker, was above chance (Block 3). Faces primed by invisible 50 Hz flicker were explicitly evaluated more positively than with 25 Hz or 0 Hz. This gamma flicker also facilitated approach reactions, and inhibited avoidance reactions relative to 25 Hz and 0 Hz flicker in Blocks 1 and 2. Attentional switching was, moreover, enhanced by the 50 Hz flicker. According to the Affect–Gamma hypothesis, also in biological neural networks, high-frequency gamma oscillations may code for positive affect.     

Resource depletion does not influence prospective memory in college students

This paper reports an experiment designed to investigate the potential influence of prior acts of self-control on subsequent prospective memory performance. College undergraduates (n = 146) performed either a cognitively depleting initial task (e.g., mostly incongruent Stroop task) or a less resource-consuming version of that task (e.g., all congruent Stroop task). Subsequently, participants completed a prospective memory task that required attentionally demanding monitoring processes. The results demonstrated that prior acts of self-control do not impair the ability to execute a future intention in college-aged adults. We conceptually replicated these results in three additional depletion and prospective memory experiments. This research extends a growing number of studies demonstrating the boundary conditions of the resource depletion effect in cognitive tasks.     

Heidegger on Plato,truth, and unconcealment: The 1931–32 lecture on The Essence of Truth

This paper discusses Heidegger's 1931–32 lecture course on The Essence of Truth. It argues that Heidegger read Platonic ideas, not only as stage‐setting for the western philosophical tradition's privileging of conceptualization over practice, and its correlative treatment of truth as correctness, but also as an early attempt to work through truth as the fundamental experience of unhiddenness. Wrathall shows how several of Heidegger's more‐famous claims about truth, e.g. that propositional truth is grounded in truth as world‐disclosure, and including Heidegger's critique of the self‐evidence of truth as correspondence, are first revealed in a powerful (if iconoclastic) reading of Plato.     

A Formal Recognition of Social Attachments: Expanding Axel Honneth's Theory of Recognition

Axel Honneth draws a distinction between three types of recognition: (1) love, (2) respect and (3) social esteem. In his The Struggle for Recognition, the recognition of cultural particularity is situated in the third sphere. It will here be argued that the logic of recognition of cultural identity also demands a non‐evaluative recognition, namely a respect for difference. Difference‐respect is formal because it is a recognition of the value of a particular culture not “for society” or “as such”, but for the social group involved. Yet, although it is formal, difference‐respect cannot be reduced to respect for personal autonomy and its preconditions, as Honneth wrongly suggests in Redistribution or Recognition? It is argued here that difference‐respect is oriented towards another dimension of the person, namely social attachments. This kind of respect entails a separate register of formal recognition with a corresponding concept of personal identity and a parallel category of social disrespect. What morally justifies difference‐respect from a recognition‐theoretic approach is the practical relation‐to‐self that thus becomes possible, namely self‐respect as a sense of belonging. The formal conception of the good life that Honneth articulates should include the insight that this sense of belonging is as much a necessary condition for the good life as is personal autonomy.     

Imitating Christ's Cross: Lonergan and Girard on How and Why

The article begins with the gospels’ admonition to take up one's cross and asks how Christians might understand Christ's work on the cross so that we might better imitate or participate in it. Using tools from recent advances in literary analysis and systematic theology, the article attempts to provide some answer to this question. It considers contemporary feminist and liberation theologians’ criticism of the common but problematic interpretation of Christ's cross, what is often called ‘substitutionary penal atonement.’ It compares this with Anselm's atonement theory of satisfaction and Bernard Lonergan's and René Girard's analysis of the cross as a communication of love that invites others into loving relationship. With these interpretations of Christ's work, it concludes with some thoughts on how Christians might take up their own daily crosses.     

Reason,emotion, and love

Wittgenstein's private language argument is interpreted as an example of a kind of transcendental argument which, if valid, explains why a certain concept must possess certain features. Cognition and affect are shown to require each other by an application of Bennett's account of what beings capable of true cognition must be capable of, and the necessity of certain emotions to the existence of any rules in a community is argued in similar fashion. Hume's account of love and admiration being rejected, an account of love, intended to explain some of love's familiar features, is defended, and various proposed additions to the analysis are rejected. The idea of love is linked to those of value, agency, and the transcendental self by argument showing that each of these ideas requires all of the others. Finally, the idea of love is linked by a direct argument to that of the transcendental self.