A Quantum Biomechanical Basis for Near-Death Life Reviews

Near-death life reviews pose a challenge to current memory research in terms of the sheer amount of instantaneous and empathetic information recall. Advances in quantum physics, biomechanics, holographic information theory, and consciousness studies support for the first time a fully realizable quantum biomechanical basis for near-death life reviews. We introduce the unifying paradigm of the quantum hologram as a non-local carrier of information. We further investigate the interrelated phenomena of non-local communications, and the electromagnetic zero-point field. Recent confirmation of the zero-point field lends credibility to vast memory storage capabilities outside the physical body. Microtubules are considered to be key components in non-local, quantum processes critical to human consciousness. Discovery of the liquid crystalline nature of the human body provides further support for our model. Microtubules, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and the entire brain are described as communicating non-locally with virtually unlimited memory storage capacity.     

Adolescence and the Changing Context of Optimal Experience in Time: Italy 1986–2000

This study focused on the daily activities and related quality of experience of two distinct groups of Italian high school students analyzed in 1986 and 2000. Altogether, 120 participants, aged between 15 and 18, were administered the experience sampling method, a procedure providing on-line repeated samplings of daily time budget and associated quality of experience. In particular, attention was paid to optimal experience, characterized by a balance between environmental challenges and personal skills, intrinsic motivation, involvement, and well-being. In spite of the time gap, no major differences in the daily activity distribution were detected. Adolescents in both groups spent most of their time studying at school and at home, interacting, watching TV, carrying out maintenance, and engaging in structured leisure activities. The use of new technologies (computers, internet, mobile phones) emerged in the data gathered in 2000. As concerns the quality of experience, each daily activity showed a specific experiential profile recurring in both groups. Studying at home and engaging in structured leisure activities were primarily associated with optimal experience, as was using new technologies in 2000. These results shed light on students' preferential engagement in specific domains and allowed us to explore the active role of adolescents in shaping their future. Findings also highlighted the importance of providing adolescents with meaningful activities in order to foster their personal growth, well-being, and social integration.     

On the nature of intuitive and delusional thought: Its implications in clinical work with psychotic patients

The author tries to differentiate intuitive imagination from delusional imagination and hypothesises that psychosis alters the system of intuitive thinking, which consequently cannot develop in a dynamic and selective way. Scholars of different disciplines, far removed from psychoanalysis, such as Einstein, Hadamard or Poincar, believe that intuitive thinking works in the unconscious by means of hidden processes, which permit a creative meeting of ideas. Thanks to Bion's work, psychoanalysts have begun to understand that waking thinking is unconsciously intertwined with dream‐work. The delusional construction is similar to a dreamlike sensorial production but, unlike a real dream, it remains in the waking memory and creates characters which live independently of the ‘dreamer's’ awareness. It is a dream that never ends. On the contrary, the real dream disappears when it has brought its communicative task to an end. In the analysis of psychotic patients it is very important to analyse the delusional imagination which dominates the personality and continuously transforms the mental state, twisting emotional truth. The delusional imagination is so deeply rooted in the patient's mental functioning that, even after systematic analysis, the delusional world, which had seemed to disappear, re‐emerges under new configurations. The psychotic core remains encapsulated; it produces unsteadiness and may induce further psychotic states in the patient. The author reports some analytic material of a patient, who, after a delusional episode treated with drugs, shows a vivid psychotic functioning. Some considerations are added on the nature of the psychotic state and on the therapeutic approach used to transform the delusional structure. This paper particularly deals with the difficulty in working through the psychotic episode and in ‘deconstructing’the delusional experience because of the terror connected with it. In the reported case, the analytic work changed the delusional construction into a more benign one characterised by phobic qualities. The analysis of the psychotic transference allowed the focus to be on the hidden work which had been continuously influencing the transferential picture of the analyst and the patient's psychic reality.     

The Evidential Value of Near-Death Experiences for Belief in Life After Death

In this paper, I explore the issue of what evidential value near-death experiences (NDEs) offer for belief in life after death. I survey the major positions on this issue, ranging from writers who believe that NDEs already offer convincing evidence for life after death, to physicalists who believe that they offer, at best, a very weak case. I argue that the present NDE evidence does suggest the possibility of life after death; however, such evidence is not yet overpowering or convincing. However, I go on to argue that NDEs do offer persuasive evidence for life after death for the individual who has the NDE. I end by suggesting that further research should be done on the most impressive type of NDE evidence for life after death, veridical perceptions during an NDE.     

FROM KNOWLEDGE TO COMPETENCE: REFLECTIONS ON THEORETICAL WORK

In this paper, the author maintains that the language of the clinical situation is and should be that of common-sense psychology. The author argues that the languages of clinical theory and metapsychology are at a distinctive distance from clinical language. In fact, no theory could be produced, should this distance not be upheld. The function of clinical theory is to act as a corrective to the tendency of common-sense psychology to fall back into the banalities and prejudices of general ideology. In addition, the function of metapsychology is said to be that of scrutinising clinical theory and defining its range of operation. Due to the claimed distance between the common-sensical language of the clinical situation and the language of theory, the analyst must utilise specific 'techniques' to appropriate the theoretical material and make it part of his competence and capacity for psychoanalytic action. This aspect of theoretical work is given the name 'assimilation' and, in turn, relies upon a process where theoretical concepts are 'deconstructed' as to their knowledge content.     

Mysterium Tremendum

In recent years, interest in the scientific basis of religious experience has resurged. In particular, research and publications by V. S. Ramachandran and by Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg have sparked considerable curiosity and debate over the reality and basis of religious experience. This article puts such research into a broader context and examines the extent to which scientific research supports or undermines particular religious and theological claims. I argue that such experiments show that religious experience has some biological basis and is not simply a product of cultural suggestion. At the same time, such experiences are not completely self–interpreting, so that cultural context, including theological claims, are needed to make sense of such experiences. By itself, scientific research does not prove or disprove the reality of religious experiences generally, but it does shape how we think of the possibilities and interpretations of such experiences.     

When culture fails: coping with cultural trauma

The research into the phenomenon of cultural trauma is growing as the effects of historical transformations are recognized and analysed. The concept of cultural trauma and the analytic concept of the cultural complex is a suitable theoretical approach for this research. The Lithuanian experience of cultural trauma after the historical shifts indicates the importance of the interplay between societal and individual factors in coping with trauma. Academic psychotraumatological studies carried out at Vilnius University indicate a stronger traumatic experience by people who are survivors of direct political repression and even intergenerational transmission of trauma, but this group also seems to demonstrate an intergenerational transmission of resilience. Paradoxically, from a long‐term perspective, the victims of direct repression seem to have suffered less than the people who accommodated to the regime, and this applies also to their offspring. Analysis in terms of overcoming cultural trauma indicates that society is gradually integrating historic traumatic experiences, although a healthy cultural identity has not yet been restored.     

Psychologie du frisson esthétique

This study concerns the problem of aesthetic emotions and that of aesthetic chills in particular. We asked thirty subjects to describe a narrative structure (film, play, book) eliciting chills and the phenomenology of the aesthetic experience. A number of non-random redundancies are observable. The stimuli eliciting positive aesthetic chills in our population have a sensorial dimension and their particular properties are often the selfless actions, existential considerations of a very general nature (e.g., the meaning of life), moments of inner recollection or quiet reflection, situations of solidarity and communion (family, couple, friends) or, on the contrary, situations of violent separation (family, couple, friends). In general, when real events are at stake (and not fictional scenes as in a film or a novel), subjects describe situations where they are safe, where they trust the environment.