Preface to Opicinus de Canistris: concluding lecture by C.G. Jung,Eranos, Ascona, 1943 and Further studies on Jung's Eranos seminar on Opicinus de Canistris

In 1943, Jung held a seminar at Eranos for a limited number of students dedicated to ‘solar myths’, which were exemplified specifically in the cartographic art of Opicinus de Canistris (c. 1296–1352). This seminar has stayed out of print until a few years ago. Notes taken during the seminar by one of Jung's students, Alwine von Keller (1878–1965), were discovered in the Eranos archives and published. Now, for the first time ever, the notes of another of his students, Rivkah Schärf Kluger, taken during the same seminar, are being published. This second series of notes are more extensive. They complete the first series by adding many features and so allow us to put together a more complete picture of Jung's seminar. James Hillman, who received these notes from William McGuire in 1976, firmly believed that they were important enough to be published. Now, seventy years after this seminar, thanks to the support of the Stiftung der Werke von C. G. Jung, the Eranos Foundation and the Journal of Analytical Psychology, these notes are finally being published.     

Theme Articles: A Man Caught Between Bad Anthropology and Good Theology? Martin Luther's View of Women Generally and of Mary Specifically

Abstract : Martin Luther's view of women is as complex as his authorship is vast, encompassing a diversity of genres and purposes. Luther seems ambivalent toward women like the tradition before and after him. In his reformation enterprise he appears torn between his good theology and the bad anthropology that obscures his purportedly universal principles. This article uncovers some of the ambiguities in Luther's approaches to women, theoretically teaching men's authority over women yet simultaneously teaching the mutuality and equality of women and men; and practicing such mutuality and equality in his everyday life, not least in his marriage to Katharina von Bora. His good theology also comes to the fore in his Mariology, especially in his commentary to the Magnificat, in which Mary is not just a ‘woman’ but the human being par excellence in her truly faithful relation to God.     

Psychotherapy research: an interplay between inner and outer and a succession of meanings

Psychotherapy research is a rapidly developing area of study that aims to explore the integration of inner and outer conditions of an individual’s experience, the interplay between subjective and objective, as well as between individual and collective. Questions regarding a more integrative view and qualitative research in psychotherapy are discussed in the paper. The author introduces some ideas from the studies on psychotherapy effectiveness that were done at Vilnius University by a group of researchers who work in the ‘Centre for research on the psychodynamics of personality’. Clinical psychologists who hold a doctorate degree or who are in doctoral studies in the Department of Psychology at Vilnius University are members of this research group. The subjective understanding about healing episodes and the development of depth premises were the main tasks of these studies. Among other methods, the researchers used the drawing a picture of a healing moment and telling a psychotherapy story recalled by the client to collect data. Two examples of drawing a picture of a healing moment and one example of telling a therapy story are analyzed in the paper. The themes of subjective experience of renewal in psychotherapy as well as the multiplicity of experience and results in psychotherapy are discussed in the paper with case illustrations. This study showed that drawing a picture opens one more dimension of reflection and that it can be an appropriate tool for developing individual narratives as well. Authoring and re‐authoring one’s life narrative is accepted as part of a productive therapy as well as discovering one’s inner authorship. The ability to follow a succession of meanings, as well as a connection to nature and culture could be one of the ways of actualizing an integrative view in psychotherapy research.     

Finding Cybernetics

At mid-career as a tenured professor of modern literature, I finally found cybernetics. It was a slow-rolling revelation, a protracted unraveling, for it took me quite a while to unwrap cybernetics’ conceptual core from out of the layers of adjacent or covering discourses that had obscured or forgotten their own origins in the fecundity of cybernetic ideas. Heinz von Foerster’s relation to the Whole Earth Catalog and the systems counterculture around CoEvolution Quarterly were instrumental for my subsequent cybernetic development toward the work of Maturana, Varela, and Luhmann on the one hand, and Lovelock and Margulis on the other.     

Reconceiving the field: Infant mental health,intersectionality, and reproductive justice

The field of infant mental health is conventionally comprised of professional discourses including developmental science, psychology, and psychiatry, among others, and involves spheres of practice as wide-ranging as pediatrics, maternal/child health, early intervention, early care and education, and child welfare. The World Association of Infant Mental Health [WAIMH] put out its position paper on the rights of infants in 2014 (amended in March 2016) in recognition of the human rights implications of professional understanding of infants’ unique, yet universal, developmental capacities and needs. This article links the policy issues outlined in the WAIMH position paper with critical issues in the field of reproductive justice, extending the reach of WAIMH's call to action on behalf of infants’ rights, and pointing the way toward potent alliances among interconnected movements. Connecting the dots among economic injustice, race-based health disparities, and gender inequities, the article demonstrates that it is not possible to safeguard infant mental health unless we make reproductive justice a reality.     

Attachment and coparenting representations in men during the transition to parenthood

Coparenting is based on parents’ representations of themselves as coparents. Attachment theory can be a useful framework to understand the way that different coparenting representations are developed during the transition to parenthood. This study aimed to analyze the association between men's attachment and coparenting representations at the first trimester of pregnancy and from the first trimester of pregnancy to 6 months’ postpartum. A sample of 86 men was recruited and completed self-report measures of attachment and coparenting representations at the first and third trimester of pregnancy and at 1 and 6 months’ postpartum. At the first trimester of pregnancy, higher attachment avoidance was associated with higher lack of coparenting support. From the first trimester of pregnancy to 6 months’ postpartum, higher attachment avoidance was associated with (a) a steeper increase on lack of coparenting support, (b) an increase on coparenting conflict (while low attachment avoidance was associated with a decrease), and (c) a lower decrease on coparenting disagreement. This study may contribute to coparenting research by showing new evidence on attachment theory as a useful framework to understand how different coparenting representations are developed in men during the transition to parenthood.     

MOTIVES FOR PHILOSOPHIZING DEBUNKING AND WITTGENSTEIN'S PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

Abstract: In this article I contest a reading of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations —a reading of it as debunking philosophy. I concede that such a reading is not groundless, but I show why it is nonetheless mistaken. To do so, I distinguish two different ways of viewing Philosophical Investigations and its concern with philosophical problems, an External View and an Internal View. On the External View, readers of the book are taken to know ahead of time what philosophical problems are. On the Internal View, readers are not taken to know this ahead of time: the task of the book is to disclose what philosophical problems are, to show them coming into being. One thing disclosed is our participatory role in philosophical problems coming to be. Learning about the nature of philosophical problems is thus learning about our own nature; metaphilosophical knowledge is in part self-knowledge. If the Internal View is correct (as I believe it is), then Philosophical Investigations does not debunk philosophy but provides a different conception of philosophy and the philosopher's task.     

Style in Philosophy: Parts II and III

The essential task of the philosophy of style is to uncover the irreducibility of the singular to any kind of universal, static structure or metalinguistic code. Style is not only a surplus element that exceeds propositional meaning, but also a clue of the ineradicable contingency of "intersubjective"-communicational relationships. The receiver must respect the unique individuality of the sender's style as what demonstrates the cognitive inexhaustibility of the world. Consequently, philosophy can no longer regard literature as foreign and incorrigible by asserting a radical difference of genre and thereby reserving truth exclusively for itself. Rather, I go on to argue, the difference is merely one of quantity . The picture of the world drawn by literature is simply fuller and richer than any comparatively monochromatic system of philosophical propositions. However, within the history of philosophy, there have been instances when the philosophical import of literature has been accorded its due. One example is the dialogical approach of early German Romanticism. The other example is a writer most frequently considered the purest thinker of philosophical sense and meaning – namely, Ludwig Wittgenstein. I conclude by reading Wittgenstein as a philosopher concerned, above all, with the ineffable that style reveals.     

Observations on the development of reaching for moving objects.

How infants come to master reaching for moving objects was studied in a situation where the distance to and the velocity of the moving object varied. Eleven infants participated in the study. They were from 12 to 24 weeks old at the first session, were seen at 3-week intervals until 30 weeks old, and were finally seen once at 36 weeks old. The following behaviors were observed from video recordings: frequency of fixated and followed motions, latency to first goal-directed behavior, type of goal-directed behaviors, and type of reaches. It was found that by the time the infant masters reaching for stationary objects he will also successfully reach for moving ones. Eighteen-week-old infants caught the object as it moved at 30 cm/sec. The results suggest a basic human capacity to time-coordinate one's behavior with external events, and to foresee in one's actions future positions of moving objects.     

Predictive reaching for moving objects by human infants

To what degree do infants use a predictive strategy when reaching for moving objects? This question was studied longitudinally in five infants from 18 to 36 weeks of age. The aiming of 356 reaches were analyzed by a technique that took into consideration the three-dimensional properties of the reaches. Each reach was divided into ballistic steps and the aiming of each step was calculated and compared with an optimal value. It was found that the infants studied had an ability to reach for fast moving objects in a predictive way. Further, the results show that the predictive ability is remarkably good in the lowest age groups which suggests that it is, at least partly, prewired. What develops seems mainly to be the mobility aspects of reaching which makes for more economical and flexible reaching. Older infants reach successfully for the fast moving object also with a nonpredictive chasing strategy.