Auditory evoked potentials and sex-related differences in brain development

Auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were obtained to probe tones which were delivered during the presentation of complex verbal and nonverbal auditory stimulation to 3-month-old infants. Significant sex-dependent AEP amplitude asymmetries were found. Females produced higher-amplitude responses from the left hemisphere and males produced higher-amplitude responses from the right hemisphere during both the verbal and nonverbal presentations. No significant AEP asymmetries were obtained in an independent group of infants that received only the probe tones. These findings are consistent with theories and behavioral data suggesting differences between males and females in the development of language and spatial functions.     

Reinventing the Self in the Face of Received Transgenerational Hatred in the African American Community

There are many clinical methods for understanding and transforming the impact of historical trauma, and reinventing the self in the clinical process. However, the approach advocated here requires that regardless of what clinical method of intervention is chosen, a particular strand must run through the process of treatment to produce durable and meaningful change. This strand must run through psychoanalysis, creative and expressive arts therapies, as well as many forms of intervention in aggrieved communities. The strand includes understanding human suffering, the way that particular suffering is mentalized by the victimized group and subsequently reenacted by generations to come. In technical terms there must first be many profiles of understanding of the historical injury. Then there must be an understanding of how the aggrieved community has stored in their communal memory those psychological hurts—those feelings of humiliation and changing historical accounts of the actual injuries. Subsequently those sendimentations of historical grievances are enacted within the transference in the clinical situation where the grievances are not only staged, but re-staged, distorted or extended. Then comes the most decisive obligation the clinician has towards the analysand, patient, client or community that is attempting to transform itself. That decisive obligation is to extract the errand or ambush towards extinction and to undergo the unpleasant drudgery of constantly engaging the mandate to die or destroy oneself in order to find new and more flexible forms of adaptation.     

A Scottish Millennial Mission to Jews

This paper investigates how the missionaries of the Church of Scotland sought to convert the Jews in Hungary. The research studies carefully Adolph Saphir's change of faith, his theological views, and his work. His family was the first “fruit” of Scottish missionary activity among the Hungarian Jews in 1843. After scrutinizing his conversion, the study proceeds to map his sphere of work as a missionary. In particular, it examines his millennial views, which gave the impetus to his missionary activity. Finally, the paper demonstrates that he became an ardent supporter of mission to the Jews not only in Britain but also in Central Europe.     

On Art and Intention

The author discusses a puzzle about the place of intention in art, a puzzle first articulated by Richard Wollheim in his well-known lecture 'On Drawing an Object'. The puzzle arises if we try to hold jointly three commonly-held claims, viz. (1) Art is intentional; (2) The artist, in making a work of art, needs to observe what he has done, in order to know what he has done; (3) A necessary condition of intentional action is that when an agent acts intentionally then he knows what he is (intentionally) doing without observation, or any need for it. Prima facie it would appear that we cannot hold all these claims together.
The author spells out the problem, discusses Wollheim's own solution to it (which he rejects) and seeks to dispel the puzzle by closer attention to intention and action in relation to artistic production.     

Philosophy,writing, and liberation

In responding to the three creative interpretive discussions in the symposium on my book Philosophy and the Art of Writing, this paper explores the different styles of philosophical discourse and their role in the practice of philosophy as a way of life that extends beyond the discursive and that combines self-cultivation with care for others in the ethical-aesthetic pursuit of living beauty. In advocating this aesthetic model of philosophical life over a purely therapeutic model, I suggest how the former can incorporate the latter's concerns for spiritual health and liberation. In developing my response to the symposiasts while elaborating on the themes of my book, I consider issues of ineffability, creative performance, embodiment, truth, heroism, vulnerability, possession, art, spirituality, love, and liberation.     

Creativity: Celebrations and tensions

In 1950, the President of the American Psychological Association emphasised the economic and political importance of creativity for US society. His account of creativity exhibits a number of tensions that can be identified in other psychologists' theories and conceptualisations of creativity. This paper considers the tensions from the perspective of critical discursive psychology. In the terms of that approach, the tensions derive from multiple non-academic discourses around creativity, including popular discourses of creativity and art. The paper argues that conceptualisations of creativity from academic psychology have in turn entered wider discourses, invoked, for example, in recent celebrations of the global sector of the creative and cultural industries (CCI). The tensions within psychology's conceptualisations are significant, however, because they raise questions about the extent to which the psychology of creativity has a common reference and coheres around the study of a single phenomenon.     

Identification with arts‐based groups improves mental wellbeing in adults with chronic mental health conditions

People experiencing chronic mental health conditions (CMHC) often report feeling socially marginalised. There is emerging evidence that social and mental wellbeing can be enhanced through participation in arts‐based programmes. In this paper, a social identity theoretical approach was applied to explore how participation in the arts may improve mental health in a longitudinal study. A one‐year prospective study of 34 choir members and 25 creative writing group members (M_age = 46, 51% female) with CMHC, involved three assessments of participants’ group identification and mental wellbeing, measured by the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale. The programmes were community‐based and facilitated by arts professionals. Multilevel modelling analyses demonstrated that participants’ mental wellbeing significantly improved over time. Greater identification with their arts‐based group (ABG) was significantly related to an increased rate of improvement in mental wellbeing. The trajectory of improvement in mental wellbeing did not differ between participants partaking in the choir or creative writing group. This study demonstrates that participation in ABGs can be effective in improving mental wellbeing in adults with chronic mental health problems, particularly for those who strongly identify with the group. This study supports ABG participation as an accessible component of mental health services.     

Atmospheres of the other: Building and feeling Stockholm's orthodox synagogue

In this article, I use the concept of atmosphere to analyse disparate sources related to the process of sacralisation of the orthodox synagogue Adass Jisroel in modern Stockholm. Using the synagogue as an entry point, I explore the affective landscapes related to its unofficially sacred places in firstly a Pietist orphanage and secondly a cinema, and how they shaped inner-communal relations. The material components of Adass Jisroel's sites elicited different emotions from different visiting bodies: its orthodox members aimed to create a space of religious continuity and communal integrity, reformed guests othered the members, while poorer orthodox Jews felt alienated. By analysing these multiple affective experiences linked to material changes of set architectural designs, I outline, for the first time, the orthodox minority's unstable position between fragility and stability in Sweden's capital from 1870 until the 1940s. On a greater scale, through this case study, I propose that the concept of atmosphere provides the field of emotional geography with conceptual muscle to both excavate silenced minority voices, and explore the role of the built environment in eliciting emotions that shape, cement, contest and transform the inner-communal hierarchal landscape that unofficially sacred places are irrevocably situated in.     

Neural correlates of viewing paintings: Evidence from a quantitative meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data

Many studies involving functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have exposed participants to paintings under varying task demands. To isolate neural systems that are activated reliably across fMRI studies in response to viewing paintings regardless of variation in task demands, a quantitative meta-analysis of fifteen experiments using the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) method was conducted. As predicted, viewing paintings was correlated with activation in a distributed system including the occipital lobes, temporal lobe structures in the ventral stream involved in object (fusiform gyrus) and scene (parahippocampal gyrus) perception, and the anterior insula—a key structure in experience of emotion. In addition, we also observed activation in the posterior cingulate cortex bilaterally—part of the brain’s default network. These results suggest that viewing paintings engages not only systems involved in visual representation and object recognition, but also structures underlying emotions and internalized cognitions.