Hard Luck: How Luck Undermines Free Will and Moral Responsibility

I reconcile the spatiotemporal location of repeatable artworks and impure sets with the non-location of natural numbers despite all three being varieties of abstract objects. This is possible because, while the identity conditions for all three can be given by abstraction principles, in the former two cases spatiotemporal location is a congruence for the equivalence relation featuring in the relevant principle, whereas in the latter it is not. I then generalize this to other ‘physical’ properties like shape, mass, and causal powers.     

Psychotherapy of an adolescent presenting a mystical delusion: an illustration of splitting processes and their consequences

The paper discusses the psychotherapy of an adolescent who, during a psychotic breakdown, developed a mystical delusion on a religious theme. Splitting processes and the narcissistic defences that accompany them are illustrated. After showing how the patient had recourse to splitting and how the split-off parts of the ego took refuge inside an internal object, the ego's efforts to make contact once more with these split-off aspects and to reintegrate them are highlighted. With the help of certain concepts developed by, for example, Rosenfeld and Meltzer - specifically those relating to the organization of internal groupings or 'gangs' and their destructiveness and the compartmentalization of internal objects - the author shows how certain particularities of the patient's internal world can be understood in terms of these splitting processes. In addition the clinical material presented raises several technical questions, in particular those relating to dissociative processes and delusion or delusional theories as they become manifest in the treatment.     

Some reflections on the origin of hate between man and woman

There is no love without hate and no hate without love; their opposite is indifference. According to Winnicott, human being’s deepest guilt evolves when his hate is stronger than his love. This paper will explore how the origin of hate may lie in early helplessness, in the difference between sexes and disturbances of developmental phases. Finally, it will be illustrated how hate can protect love in a relationship between man and woman.     

Entering Politics: General Self‐Efficacy and Voting Behavior Among Young People

Political science traditionally conceptualizes efficacy only in relation to politics and government. In this article, we look beyond political efficacy and examine the effect of general self‐efficacy on young adults' voting behavior. General self‐efficacy, an individual's estimation of capacity to operate successfully across a variety of domains, is often important to the behavioral decisions of individuals entering a new domain of activity. With data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, we examine the effect of general self‐efficacy on voting behavior among young, first‐time voters. We find that general self‐efficacy has a positive effect on voter turnout, and this effect is strongest for young people from low socioeconomic‐status families.     

Between the imaginary and the real: photographic portraits of mourning and of melancholia in Argentina

During Argentina's 'Dirty War' (1976-83), the military regime attempted to erase an entire population; today the photographs of the dead/missing stand in defiance, contradicting that attempted erasure of the desaparecidos. In this essay, I explain the connection between photography and loss, and how photography fits within Lacan's understanding of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, the Real, and the 'gaze'. I discuss complicated mourning (circumstances which inhibit/delay mourning) and the difficulties created by political disappearances: as long as the family members maintain the belief that their loved one(s) might still be alive, they cannot begin the process of mourning the permanently lost object. Beginning with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and, using the web-based art exhibits of Marcelo Brodsky and Inés Ulanovsky, I analyze the role of the photograph in Argentina, how it serves as a linking object, how it is used to symbolize the dead/missing, and how it can function to facilitate mourning, or to serve as proof of pathological melancholia. I argue that such artistic representations of loss function to reinscribe healthy mourning rituals within the Argentine society.     

Updating process of internal model of action as assessed from motor and postural strategies in young adults

Internal models are constantly updated based on the actions and experiences of a person in the world. In the present study, we proposed to assess the updating process of internal models of action by providing new environmental constraints for motor planning, postural control, and execution processes in daily tasks such as STS and BTS. STS and BTS tasks were performed with different inclinations of the support surface on which the participant and the chair were positioned: horizontal support, support tilted 10° to the right, or forward. Twelve healthy adults participated in this experiment. Kinematic characteristics were recorded using an optoelectronic motion analysis system. Movement duration and trunk inclination amplitudes were analyzed for STS and BTS as well as trunk orientation and strategies of head stabilization. Concerning the movement analysis our results showed (1) temporal asymmetry between STS and BTS, attributed mainly to the integration of the mechanical effects of gravity, and (2) a decrease of trunk movements when the support was tilted forward, attesting to an immediate adaptation process. Concerning the postural analysis our study revealed that adults adopted selective head stabilization on space strategy with respect to balance constraints. To conclude, young adults were able to immediately update their internal model of action in order to optimize motor control and vertical body orientation.     

What Can be Done with an Egg? Creativity,Material Objects,and the Theory of Affordances

This article offers a reflection on the role of material objects in the creative process and explores the potential links between creativity and the theory of affordances (Gibson, 1986 ), conceptualized from a sociocultural perspective. From this standpoint, creativity can be defined as a process of perceiving, exploiting, and “generating” novel affordances during socially and materially situated activities. Illustrations are offered for each of the above from a research project investigating traditional Easter egg decoration activities in rural Romania. This brief case study exemplifies the discovery of existing action potentials, the generation of objects with novel affordances, and the transgression of conventional procedures, all resulting in creative forms of expression. In the end, some conclusions are drawn regarding the ways in which an affordance theory of creativity can enrich our understanding of the phenomenon and contribute to the development of a new program of research concerned with situated and distributed creative acts.     

Spatial aspects of olfactory experience

Abstract

Several theorists argue that one does not experience something as being at or coming from a distance or direction in olfaction. In contrast to this, I suggest that there can be a variety of spatial aspects of both synchronic and diachronic olfactory experiences, including spatial distance and direction. I emphasise, however, that these are not aspects of every olfactory experience. Thus, I suggest renouncing the widespread assumption there is a uniform account of the nature, including the spatial nature, of what is experienced in olfactory experience.     

Hylomorphism without forms? A critical notice of Simon Evnine’s Making Objects and Events

Abstract

Simon Evnine’s Making Objects and Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts develops amorphic hylomorphism. I critically discuss three of its main themes. One theme is its attempt to do the work of form without forms. A second theme is the requirement that hylomorphs have ‘metabolisms at work’. A third theme is the use of artifacts as the paradigms for hylomorphs. I will raise some criticisms of each of these themes. Although the themes might at first appear disconnected, I believe the third underwrites the first two. So the criticisms of the third theme also bear on the rest.     

‘The newspaper reader’: On the meaning of concrete objects in a psychoanalytic treatment1

The author investigates the meaning of concrete objects in the psychoanalytic treatment of a severely disturbed patient for the development of his inner world and the analytic process. She includes a survey of relevant theoretical concepts with an emphasis on Winnicott and Bion. It is shown that the objects served basic defensive functions both within the analytic relationship and for the precarious intrapsychic state of the patient. The author describes the technical dealing that led to a structural change. From the comparison of the initial dream and a later dream, Mr N's inner development from total inclusion in the object to triadic reality of separated, repaired objects becomes discernible. The author shows how this progress was facilitated by his use of concrete objects as links between his psychotic and non‐psychotic parts, as well as by the specifi c way the analyst handled the paradoxical transference‐ countertransference. She also illustrates the thesis that the developmental steps described are crucial for the capability to digest psychic pain by symbolization instead of discharging it in a destructive‐violent way.