Beauty,ugliness and the sublime

Jung and Freud had very different ideas about the nature of analysis. This paper begins by exploring how Jung's gnostic approach, with its goal of individuation, is deeply informed by Buddhist and Taoist principles. His pluralistic, relational model regards truth as subjective and co‐constructed with the patient. In contrast, Freud's secular methodology has objective truth as its goal. His classical psychoanalysis is a form of reality testing where the analyst claims to know the painful, singular, objective reality which the patient tries to evade. The theory of aesthetic development (see Piaget 1951, Baldwin 1975, Parsons 1980, Housen 1992, Harris Williams 2010) proposes that artistic appreciation is linked to human development. The paper looks at how the apperception of beauty, related to both truth and meaning, acts as an indicator and facilitator of individuation in the clinical encounter. This is illustrated by a clinical case study. Through empirical research, support is given to the argument (Bollas 1978, Meltzer 1988) that our early experience of the feminine/maternal plays a central role in developing an aesthetic capacity. The experience of the sublime in analysis is examined and portrayed as a means by which aesthetic development may be reignited and narcissistic isolation shattered.     

Queer(ing) notions of Islamic authority: a methodological disposition in the work of Khaled Abou El Fadl

ABSTRACT

Queer approaches to Islam take a multitude of forms, and reflect queer lived experiences in a variety of ways. This article focuses on one particular form of queer approach to an aspect of the Islamic tradition, examining Khaled Abou El Fadl’s approach to the Shari’ah, focusing on his particular methodology of de-legitimization, re-presentation, and judgment according to the ethical standard of beauty. In doing so, its retrieval of internally queer aspects of the tradition come to light, including the focus on the nature of certainty within the Shari’ah as problematic, a strong emphasis on procedural non-finality, and the importance of the contextual nature of legal outcomes. Each of these aspects of the methodology have an impact on the lived experiences of Muslims within a community in which the law holds significant legal and social authority. In queering approaches to the Shari’ah, Abou El Fadl’s methodology simultaneously opens up space for a queering of contemporary norms of Muslim identity, society, and performance.     

The realization of absolute beauty: an interpretation of the fairytale Snow White

This paper interprets the fairytale Snow White (Bruder Grimm 1857) in terms of the realization of absolute beauty. Jung's understanding that ‘in myths and fairytales, as in dreams, the soul speaks about itself’ (Jung 1945, para. 400), underpins such an approach. From this perspective a fantasy image is not about us, not about our unconsciousness, but is essentially about itself. The idea of absolute beauty first arises in the Queen's mind as a wish. Despite the Queen's strong desire to be named as the most beautiful person in the world, her mirror reflects that it is actually her daughter Snow White who is the fairest. Snow White might be regarded in the language of Giegerich as her internal other. Effectively they are separated into the Real that conceives the idea of absolute beauty and the Ideal that embodies it. The exchange that takes place between the two – mediated by mirror and window – generates the corpse of surpassing beauty that never decays but lies inaccessible behind the glass coffin. However the loving and penetrating gaze of the Prince, representing masculinity, succeeds in reanimating Snow White. Thus the Prince as the Other that is completely external and unknown to both the Queen and Snow White, specifically to their femininity, facilitates the realization of absolute beauty as the Ideal in the Real.     

RE‐ENVISIONING HOPE: ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE,LEARNED IGNORANCE,AND RELIGIOUS NATURALISM

In this essay, I introduce religious naturalism as one contemporary religious response to anthropogenic climate change; in so doing, I offer a concept of hope associated with the beauty of ignorance, of not knowing ourselves in the usual manner. Reframing humans as natural processes in relationship with other forms of nature, religious naturalism encourages humans’ processes of transformative engagement with each other and with the more‐than‐human worlds that constitute our existence. Hope in this context is anticipating what possibilities may occur when human organisms enact our evolutionary capacities as relational organisms who can love, engaging in multilayered processes of changing behaviors, values, and relationships that promote the betterment of myriad nature.     

认知抑制对艺术创造力的影响:认知风格的调节作用

以114名大学生为被试, 采用Mittenecker指向测验和粘贴画任务考察了认知抑制能力与艺术创造力的关系, 并采用镶嵌图形测验考察了认知风格在其中所起的调节作用。研究结果表明:(1)认知抑制能力与艺术创造力之间呈现负相关, 认知抑制对于个体的创造程度、沟通传播水平和艺术创造综合印象可以起到显著的负向预测作用, 对于个体艺术创造的可爱程度和想象水平可以起到边缘显著的负向预测作用;(2)认知风格在认知抑制能力与艺术创造力的关系中起着调节作用, 主要表现为认知抑制能力对于场依存个体的创造程度、想象水平和沟通传播水平具有显著的预测作用, 对于场独立个体的艺术创造力则不具有预测作用。     

‘Sleeping beauties’: succession problems of adolescence

The author explores the succession problems of adolescence. She uses the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale Sleeping Beauty to consider various characters and narratives possible in the analytic field during the succession process. Use of the characters in a fairy tale allows an analyst to play with the different roles the patient unconsciously assigns her. The author conceives of the avoidance of adolescent turbulence as a common reaction to adolescence, but one that can also become entrenched, and result in a restriction of emotional growth. The paper explores the psychic isolation of adolescence and the splitting required to manage the conflicting desires of the phase. The persistent absence of passion, including in the analytic process, constitutes a psychic retreat from developmental turbulence. The analyst of such an adolescent may need to allow them to be ‘somnolent’ for some time, but may eventually need to wake them (metaphorically) or even pierce the somnolent, avoidant state. The author uses clinical vignettes of late adolescents to demonstrate such transitions, exploring her countertransference experience as well as the reaction of adults to the succession process of adolescence.     

艺术创造力的脑神经生理基础

艺术创造力(Artistic Creativity)是创造力领域特异性研究的重要成果。它是个体产生新颖、独特而具有审美或艺术价值产品的能力, 和科学创造力一样也属于个体创造力的范畴。研究通过对已有脑损伤研究和神经影像研究梳理, 归纳和总结了艺术创造力的脑神经基础, 指出艺术创造力与科学创造力的神经基础存在一定差异, 认为艺术创造力主要和大脑的额叶、颞叶以及颞顶联合皮层密切相关。未来研究则需进一步借助巧妙的实验设计, 在严格控制个体差异和文化效应的基础上来对艺术创造力的脑结构和功能基础进行更细致的探讨。     

‘Are you a woman—or a flower?’: The capacity to experience beauty1

Being surprised by beauty, being drawn to and moved by it and surrendering to its sensory nature are all part of beauty's emotionally transformative power. And yet, psychoanalysis has had little to say about such an enriching dimension of psychological life. The author highlights how experiencing beauty is a capacity that is not isolated but is part of the lifelong experience of being changed by and changing the experience of the world we live in. She suggests that the capacity to experience beauty takes different forms at distinct points in development and in psychoanalytic treatments. The author describes two clinical occasions from a case where an analytic pair struggled to develop a greater capacity to experience beauty over time. She discusses how a theory of the aesthetic conflict was useful in helping to understand her patient's inner object world but was not sufficient when it came to understanding the experience of beauty. She shows how for both patient and analyst, experiencing beauty's full effect required responding to the call toward emotional life, surrendering to the surprise and the unknown, and letting go of the mind's struggle to find meaning and opening up to transforming and being transformed through sensory experience.     

庄子"天地大美"思想的现代阐释

在知识学、美学、伦理学分科的学术背景下解读庄子思想,庄子以“道”为指归,批判现实人生中的知识、伦理因素,追求与“道”相融通的境界,向自身、向固有存在结构复归,具有美学内涵。“天地大美”作为其唯一肯定的通达于“道”的中介,在于使世界以其本来面目自然呈现,具有“美”的本体意义,成为体现庄子思想美学内涵的核心范畴。     

The Effects of Extrinsic Motivation on Scientific and Artistic Creativity among Middle School Students

The present study tested the effects of extrinsic motivation on scientific and artistic creativity among Chinese middle school students. In Study 1, a between-groups design was applied to examine the effects of expected rewards on scientific and artistic creativity among 123 students, and in Study 2 the same design was applied to examine the effects of expected evaluation from different raters on scientific and artistic creativity among 120 students. We also considered the effects of grade and gender in both studies. The results of Study 1 indicated that expected material reward had significant negative effects on scientific creativity for 7th graders, while expected social reward had significant positive effects on scientific creativity for 8th graders, and both expected material and social rewards had significant positive effects on artistic creativity. The results of Study 2 indicated that expected evaluation from teachers and classmates had significant negative effects on scientific creativity and significant positive effects on artistic creativity. These results suggest that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the effects of extrinsic motivation and creativity, Factors such as culture, type of extrinsic motivation, grade, and domains of creativity must be fully considered when cultivating adolescents’ creativity.