正确评估当前医院、学校的SCI论文热

《科学引文索引》 (science citation index, SCI) 论文从一个侧面反映了某一科研领域的前沿水平, 是衡量医师、教师业务水平的参照指标之一, 也有助于促进医疗、教学水平的提高;但科学技术的本质是实践, 科研成果不仅表现为学术论文, 更重要的是科研成果向实践的转化。SCI论文作为科研阶段性的学术成果, 还有待同行的评议与引用, 有待通过学术争鸣得到补充和完善, 有待实践证明其可重复性, 有待转化为实际的生产力;以SCI论文的多少判断医疗和教学实际水平, 是一种误判;以SCI论文的多少论英雄, 可能带来诸多不良后果;需要探索评价医疗、教学更为科学、全面的指标体系, 使医疗教学立于坚实之科学基础。     

试论《医林改错》中的实物观

清代医家王清任的《医林改错》自1830年刊行之时起即引起广泛关注, 究其原因不仅在于该书改正古人所记脏腑之错误, 关键在于其看待人体的视角及实践方法与传统中医不同——采用了实物观看待人体, 并且实施解剖观察实践, 这种革新举动挑战了传统中医的方法论。与西方近代科学相比较, 发现《医林改错》的思想萌芽和实践方法与之有相似处。结合医学史研习该著作, 看到中医学的方法论与历史环境不可分离, 随时代有所改变。《医林改错》的独特思维能够启发人们对中医方法论的认知。     

Metaphysics Within Science: Against Radical Naturalism

In Every Thing Must Go James Ladyman and Don Ross argue for a radical version of naturalistic metaphysics and propose that contemporary analytic metaphysics is detached from science and should be discontinued. The present article addresses the issues of whether (i) science and metaphysics are separable, (ii) intuitions and understanding should be excluded from scientific theory, and (iii) Ontic Structural Realism satisfies the criteria of the radical version of naturalism advanced by Ladyman and Ross. The point underlying those topics is that successful scientific research presupposes metaphysics, and that basic epistemic virtues common to metaphysics and science may allow us—as opposed to what Ladyman and Ross suggest—to increase our understanding of the world and to put constraints on allowable metaphysical theories.     

ENCOUNTERS WITH PSYCHOSIS

This essay offers a personal account of one physician's attempt to engage with psychotic patients in an inner‐city hospital. It considers some of the obstacles to psychoanalytic work with psychotic patients, including anxiety in the psychotherapist, anxiety in the patient, institutional resistances, and paradigmatic errors. A discussion of paradigmatic errors in Western mental health care is expanded upon. Rorty's ( 1979 ) critique of objectivity and Kuhn's ( 1962 ) work on scientific paradigm shifts are discussed in an attempt to demonstrate how we might better understand psychosis as an illness and connect with patients across the entire diagnostic spectrum.     

Is science like a crossword puzzle? Foundherentist conceptions of scientific warrant

This paper argues that the crossword puzzle analogy is great for scientific rationality, but not scientific warrant. It provides a critical analysis of foundherentist conceptions of scientific warrant, especially that of Susan Haack, and closely related positions, such as non-doxastic coherentism. Foundherentism takes the middle ground between foundationalism and coherentism. The main idea is that warrant, including that of scientific theories, is like warrant of crossword entries: the degree to which a theory is warranted depends on one’s observations, the extent to which it coheres with one’s other scientific theories and whether one’s evidence includes a sufficiently large portion of the relevant evidence. I identify three problems for a foundherentist conception of scientific warrant, two of which are also problems for the image of science as a crossword puzzle. First, Haack’s conceptions of personal and social warrant of scientific theories are incompatible. Second, the notion of warrant defeaters is crucial to any account of warrant, but foundherentism cannot accommodate certain warrant defeaters. Third, Haack’s treatment of inconsistent evidence renders her account of social warrant for scientific theories implausible. Finally, I suggest that switching from the objective notion of warrant to the subjective notion of rationality might save foundherentism about scientific theories and the image of science as a crossword puzzle. I also draw lessons for social epistemology generally by applying the distinction between warrant and rationality to non-doxastic coherentism and Paul Faulkner’s hybrid theory of testimonial warrant.     

Degrees of entrapment: living and dying in the claustrum

This paper explores Donald Meltzer’s concept of the claustrum, an unconscious phantasy of a space inside the body of the internal mother that has been forcibly entered and occupied. The author proposes that claustrophobic phenomena might be viewed on a continuum from the relatively ordinary to the severely pathological. Following a brief review of the characteristics of Meltzer’s claustral ‘compartments’, this continuum is explored through and illustrated by a psychoanalytic understanding of two films, Coraline, directed by Henry Selick and based on the novella by Neil Gaiman, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith and directed by Anthony Minghella. The degree of entrapment in a claustrophobic world and the possibility of emerging from it into a world of authentic intimate relationships is shown to be influenced by the internal relationship to a parental couple.     

Grounded Theory methods in child psychotherapy research

This article considers the place of qualitative research in psychoanalysis and child psychotherapy. It discusses why research methodology for many years occupied so small a place in these fields, and examines the cultural and social developments since the 1960s which have changed this situation, giving formal but also qualitative methods of research much greater significance. It reflects on the different pressures to develop explicit research methods which arise both from outside the psychoanalytic field, as a condition of its continued professional survival, and from within it, where its main aim is the development of fundamental psychoanalytic knowledge. It suggests that the conduct of mainly quantitative research into treatment outcomes is largely a response to these external pressures, whilst the main benefits to be gained from the development of qualitative research methods, such as Grounded Theory, are in facilitating the knowledge-generating capacities and achievements of child psychotherapists themselves. The paper describes Grounded Theory methods, and explains how they can be valuable in the recognition of hitherto unrecognised meanings and patterns as these are made visible in clinical practice. Finally, it briefly describes three examples of completed doctoral studies, all of which have added significantly to the knowledge-base of child psychotherapy, and which demonstrate how much can be accomplished using this method of research.     

Differences in children’s thinking and learning during attentional focus instruction

Considerable evidence supports the motor learning advantage associated with an external focus of attention; however, very few studies have investigated attentional focus effects with children despite individual functional constraints that have the potential to impact use of instructional content. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine the effect of attentional focus instruction on motor learning in children. Participants (n = 42) aged 9–11 years were randomly assigned to one of three gender-stratified groups: (1) control, (2) internal focus, or (3) external focus. Following initial instructions and task demonstration, participants performed 100 modified free throws over two days while receiving additional cues respective to their attentional focus condition and returned approximately 48 h later to perform 20 additional free throws. Results revealed no significant learning differences between groups. However, responses to retrospective verbal reports suggest that the use of external focus content during practice may have contributed to some participants’ superior performance in retention. Future research should continue to examine attentional focus effects across a variety of ages and incorporate retrospective verbal reports in order to examine children’s thoughts during attentional focus instruction.     

Can psychoanalysis help us to understand the causes and prevention of violence?

As the most adequate theory of human personality yet created, including our propensity for irrational, self-defeating, and self-destructive behavior patterns, psychoanalysis is in a unique position to help us solve the most serious crisis that the human species has been confronted by at any point in its evolutionary history: the threat to its own survival that is caused by its own behavior, namely the compulsion to engage in violence on the largest scale that its technology makes possible, even when that causes the death of the self as well as of others. This continually expanding behavior pattern, which reduces even genocide to a minor footnote compared with the self-extinction of our whole species, is created not only by “apocalyptic” fundamentalism and terrorism (“suicide bombers”), but also by the increasing and only partially preventable proliferation of thermonuclear weapons to national rulers of questionable sanity, and the apparently unpreventable continuation of industrial/economic policies and practices that will, if not reversed, make our own small planet uninhabitable. What makes people place a higher value on the continuation of these behaviors than they place on their own physical survival (or that of their children)? That is the question to which this article proposes at least the beginnings of an answer: that when a person feels shamed and humiliated to a degree that threatens the survival of that fragile and vulnerable psychological construct called his “self” (or of the religious or cultural group with which his self has identified), he will eagerly sacrifice his body (and other peoples’) in the attempt to, as he sees it, save his soul, i.e. his self and his self-esteem. The question then becomes: what are the social and psychological determinants of overwhelming shame and humiliation, and how can we protect people from being exposed to those conditions, or at least enhance their ability to respond to them in ways that are life-preserving rather than life-destroying?     

Approach motivation and cognitive resources combine to influence memory for positive emotional stimuli

Inspired by the elaborated intrusion theory of desire, the current research tested the hypothesis that persons higher in trait approach motivation process positive stimuli deeply, which enhances memory for them. Ninety-four undergraduates completed a measure of trait approach motivation, viewed positive or negative image slideshows in the presence or absence of a cognitive load, and one week later completed an image memory test. Higher trait approach motivation predicted better memory for the positive slideshow, but this memory boost disappeared under cognitive load. Approach motivation did not influence memory for the negative slideshow. The current findings support the idea that individuals higher in approach motivation spontaneously devote limited resources to processing positive stimuli.