Grace and Imagination: From Fear to Freedom

Creative use of our imagination is essential if we are to live a vibrant life. Although our use of imagination is often blocked by various fears, D. W. Winnicott's insights into play, aggression, and the use of transitional objects open up paths towards greater freedom. The sacred texts, symbols, and liturgies of our religious traditions can then become the toys which engage us in profound and re-creating soul play. Through grace and the evocative examples of our teachers, we can find ways to use our imagination more freely to deepen our spiritual life and psychological wholeness.     

Alcohol and nicotine intake and prenatal level of androgens measured by digit ratio

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between using unhealthy substances and the digit ratio (2nd to 4th digit length ratio, 2D:4D) which is supposed to indicate the prenatal testosterone level. The subjects were 455 students, 225 women and 230 men. Participants declared their frequency of smoking and alcohol drinking. There was no significant difference in digit ratios between subjects regularly using both nicotine and alcohol and those who took none of them. When analyzing the two substances separately, there was no relationship between 2D:4D and alcohol drinking, whereas left hand 2D:4D was positively related to smoking only for women (nonsignificant trend was observed for right hand). Contrary to the previous study, our results indicate that there is no relationship between 2D:4D and alcohol drinking. There is, however, a subtle influence of prenatal testosterone levels for cigarette smoking habits in the case of women.     

A simple analytical theory of localisation in 2D foam rheology

A very simple derivation is given for the dependence of localisation length on boundary velocity and various model parameters, in the continuum theory of 2D foam shear localisation. It is pointed out that the existence of distinct yield and limit stresses can complicate this theory for low boundary velocities, by introducing another mechanism for localisation, which does not depend on wall drag.     

Adolescent Decisional Autonomy Regarding Participation in an Emergency Department Youth Violence Interview

Much attention has been given to determining whether an adolescent patient has the capacity to consent to research. This study explores the factors that influence adolescents' decisions to participate in a research study about youth violence and to determine positive or negative feelings elicited by being a research subject. The majority of subjects perceived their decision to participate to be free of coercion, and few felt badly about having participated. However, adolescents who were alone in the room during the assent process were more likely to report that they chose freely to be a research subject. This study may influence the ways physicians communicate with adolescent patients around research assent within a clinical care environment.     

THE “AS‐YET SITUATION” IN WINNICOTT'S “FRAGMENT OF AN ANALYSIS”: YOUR FATHER “NEVER DID YOU THE HONOR OF”… YET

The author proposes a new hypothesis in relation to Winnicott's “Fragment of an Analysis”: that as early as 1955, in the case described in this text, Winnicott is creating the paternal function in his patient's psychic functioning by implicitly linking his interpretations regarding the father to the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit. The author introduces an original clinical concept, the as‐yet situation, which she has observed in her own clinical work, as well as in Winnicott's analysis of the patient described in “Fragment of an Analysis” (1955).     

Fetuses,corpses and the psychological approach to personal identity

Olson (1997a) tries to refute the Psychological Approach to personal identity with his Fetus Argument, and Mackie (1999) aims to do the same with the Death Argument. With the help of a suggestion made by Baker (1999), the following discussion shows that these arguments fail. In the process of defending the Psychological Approach, it is made clear exactly what one is and is not committed to as a proponent of the theory.     

The trouble with prudence

Standard discussions of prudence treat it as requiring time-slice management. That this is the standard view of prudence can be seen by its presence in two seemingly opposed positions on prudence, those of Thomas Nagel and Derek Parfit. I argue that this kind of view fails to properly appreciate the difficulty with being prudent, treating imprudence as a kind of theoretical mistake. I then offer a characterization of prudence as integrity, the holding together of disparate but temporally extended parts of the self in a manner that makes the act of reasoning possible.