情绪具身观：情绪研究的新视角

情绪具身性有着广泛的理论假说与研究证据, 从情绪外周理论到面部反馈假说、躯体标记假说再到现在的情绪具身观, 都一致认为情绪是具身的。情绪具身观认为情绪是包括大脑在内的身体的情绪, 身体的解剖学结构、身体的活动方式、身体的感觉和运动体验决定了我们怎样加工情绪。相关的行为和脑机制研究均支持了情绪加工的具身性。目前关于具身情绪的理论解释主要有镜像神经元系统假说、具身模仿论和知觉符号系统理论等。作为一种新兴的理论观点, 情绪具身观为情绪研究提供了新的视角。     

Concept empiricism: a methodological critique

Thanks to Barsalou's, Damasio's, Glenberg's, Prinz' and others' work, neo-empiricism is gaining a deserved recognition in the psychology and philosophy of concepts. I argue, however, that neo-empiricists have underestimated the difficulty of providing evidence against the amodal approach to concepts and higher cognition. I highlight three key problems: the difficulty of sorting out amodal predictions from neo-empiricist predictions, the difficulty of finding experimental tasks that are not best solved by imagery and the difficulty of generalizing findings concerning a given cognitive process in a given context to other cognitive processes or other contexts. Finally, solutions to these three problems are considered.     

The Significance of the Emergence of Language and Symbol in the Development of the Young Infant

In this paper I have suggested that the mother–child dyad is the foundation for integrity between the psychic self and the physical self, and the capacity of these to relate to the external environment. I have also argued that the development of language and symbol are creative agents in the development of consciousness in the young infant, and that the emergence of language and symbol are an expression of the opening of a potential space which allows differentiation from the mother and facilitates the infant’s ability to distinguish fantasy from fact and self from other. Sharn Waldron is a psychotherapist residing and working in Suffolk, England and is a registered member with the UKCP through the Forum for Independent Psychotherapists. She has contributed numerous papers for international psychotherapeutic journals, is a contributor to Pear’s Cyclopedia and writes freelance for Penguin and the National Health Service in the United Kingdom.     

The Self as violent other: the problem of defining the self

This paper identifies the problem of arriving at a solid definition of C. G. Jung's notion of the Self, and seeks its resolution. The author first demonstrates how this problem is articulated by scholars of Jungian theory by showing that they have ultimately depended upon 'limited' definitions of the Self, where the Self is no more than a transcendental postulate, a simple derivative from the internal structure of Jungian argument. She then determines the reason for the problem by arguing that there can never be a complete definition of the Self for it encompasses that which is unconscious and is thus irreducible to ego-comprehension. By using a method of philosophical analysis (in the guise of Levinas) the author will show that through the Self's very need to evade comprehension the Self is essentially comprehended as an overpowering and violent entity. The author will argue that the Self as a force of violence is crucial to its definition, and scholars must not ignore the Self as numinous experience in favour of passive functionality. She will thus argue that through the adoption of a Levinasian critique, the Self can be defined and justified outside of the internally self-consistent system from which it is conventionally derived.     

The Narrative/Collaborative Process in Couples Therapy:

A narrative approach to couples therapy provides a glance at the emerging postmodern dialogue. This article discusses changes in the therapeutic relationship, content, and process, emphasizing a feminist perspective. The client/therapist relationship is viewed as a collaborative process by which hierarchical distinctions are decreased. Externalization, deconstruction, and re-authoring are described and demonstrated through a clinical vignette. Our own evolving story as couples therapists is also presented.     

Trauma and the symbolic function of the mind

The relationship between trauma and the symbolic function of the mind is discussed in three parts. First, a short outline is given of the long‐lasting split within the field of trauma: it consists in a dichotomy between the symbolic and anti‐symbolic reading of the traumatic experience – as I have called it in a previous paper. In the second part, it is maintained that the work of Ferenczi represents an attempt at overcoming this split. In the third and last part, the notion of symbolic adaptation is introduced. The process of adaptation has to ensure the survival of the individual along lines capable to foster the hope that the lost equilibrium between the individual and his environment will one day be restored. This function is performed by symbols: by linking together the lost satisfaction and the hoped‐for wish‐fulfillment, by creating bridges between past and future, symbols enable us to adjust to the new environment without renouncing hope. Symbols are mediators between the pleasure principle and the reality principle. When a person is struck by trauma it is precisely this unifying function which is broken. A typical consequence of this situation is described by Ferenczi as a rupture between feeling and intelligence.     

Scripture,Metaphysics, and Poetry: Austin Farrer's The Glass of Vision with Critical Commentary

This article reviews two books by Robert MacSwain, Assistant Professor of Theology and Christian Ethics at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, which present and examine the work of Austin Farrer, perhaps the greatest Anglican theologian of the twentieth century. In Scripture, Metaphysics, and Poetry, MacSwain offers a critical edition of Farrer's 1948 Bampton Lectures, The Glass of Vision, printed with six essays which assess and examine the Lectures. In Solved by Sacrifice, he considers how Farrer's conception of what faith contributes to reasoned reflection on the study of God changed over the course of his lifetime. After drawing on the work of Henri de Lubac, E.B. Pusey, and contemporary critics, to reflect on The Glass of Vision, this article will suggest how Farrer's presentation of the form of divine truth in the human mind can illumine MacSwain's discussion of Farrer's religious epistemology.     

Unconscious phantasy as an obstacle and as a stimulus to knowledge

This paper underlines and explores the connections between emotional and cognitive development at a very early stage, starting from the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a 4-year-old boy with autistic features. Development of the personality and development of the mind are shown to proceed together and to be interwoven when the therapist starts to help the child to modulate the terror and the rage related to separation. The development of the idea of a good nipple and the Introjection of it as a mental structure is considered an important step on the way towards separation between mother and baby and towards the formation within the baby self of a space where symbols of the external world can be placed. Autistic features are considered as an extreme form of denial of both internal and external reality.     

Conspiracies of immanence: Paul Tillich,Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and C.G. Jung

Jung's psychology proffers a sustained reflection on the traditional religious question of the relation of divine transcendence to immanence. On this issue his psychology affirms a position of radical immanence in its contention that the experience of divinity is initially wholly from within. Though this position remains on the periphery of religious and theological orthodoxy Jung is not alone in holding it among moderns. Paul Tillich adopts a similar stance with his controlling symbols of the divine as ‘Ground of Being’ and ‘Depth of Reason’. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin understands divinity as the experiential energy of evolution itself working within nature and humanity toward greater configurations of universal communion as the basis of community. All of Jung's master symbols of individuation assume such an understanding of immanence uniting individual and totality. His psychology strongly suggests and contributes to the current emergence of a new religious sensitivity based on the awareness of the intra‐psychic origin of all religions. In his later writings he held out such a position as a significant alternative to genocide.