Dante's Comedy: Precursors of psychoanalytic technique and psyche

This paper uses a literary approach to explore what common ground exists in both psychoanalytic technique and views of the psyche, of 'person'. While Western literature has developed various views of psyche and person over centuries, there have been crystallizing, seminal portraits, for instance Shakespeare's perspective on what is human, some of which have endured to the present. By using Dante's Commedia , particularly the Inferno , a 14th century poem that both integrates and revises previous models of psyche and personhood, we can examine what features of psyche, and 'techniques' in soul-healing psychoanalysts have inherited culturally. Discovering basic features of technique and model of psyche we share as psychoanalysts permits us to explore why we have differences in variations on technique and models of inner life.     

从张之洞、吴汝纶经学课程观看清末儒学传统的中断

清末新政教育改革使传统上处于核心地位的经学课程失去其重要地位 ,致使儒学面临中断的威胁 ,这是与权力中心接近、受经学熏陶的官绅亲手从正反两面促成的 ,他们在情理上必然处于紧张对立状态 ,在理性上吸收西方知识 ,在情感上对经学依恋不舍。通过对历史发展的理论预设和对张之洞、吴汝纶经学课程设置观的典型分析 ,既可以揭示他们心理趋向的异同 ,也可以反观中国近代文化发展的内在线索。     

The effects of lesions in the central nucleus of the amygdala on appetitive classical conditioning in rats

Abstract: Lesions in the central nucleus of the amygdala (cAMY) have been known to interfere with the acquisition of fear classical conditioning when footshock is used as an unconditioned stimulus (US). The present study examined whether or not a similar interference would occur with an appetitive US. Five rats with lesions in the cAMY (the cAMY group), and eight unoperated control rats were trained in an appetitive classical conditioning paradigm, which did not include elements of operant learning, using a visual conditioned stimulus (CS) (5 W of light for 10 s duration) paired with a food pellet US (45 mg, cheese flavor). The behavioral index of appetitive conditioning was an increase in rearing approach behavior to the CS after CS and US pairings. During CS and US pairings, the movement of the rat was limited so that this approach behavior could not occur. As a result, all control rats showed an increase in rearing, but the cAMY group did not. These results suggest that the cAMY is critical for appetitive as well as fear classical conditioning.     

DOWN TO EARTH WITH NIETZSCHE: The ethical effects of attitudes toward time and body

This paper is about the effects on people's lives of their attitudes towards time and their own embodiment. People commonly see time as biform; there is the time of bodily life and the eternal time which transcends mortal life. This division is deeply implicated in the dualistic values that pervade western thought. So, when Nietzsche substitutes a monist notion of time, he profoundly unsettles our cherished values (which, of course, are gendered). Nietzsche's major thrust, I argue, is to elucidate and advocate the more appropriate values that emerge when human existence is understood as entirely earthborn.I use two contrasting literary characters to show concretely how people's lives and relationships are affected negatively or positively according to the temporal perspectives they adopt (and thus the significance they give to their corporeality). I explain how acceptance of human finitude enables a fruitful and rewarding life, while its refusal is life-diminishing. This also makes conceivable a realm beyond gender.     

典型自立者人格特征初探

用包含 2个问题的开放式问卷对 2 1 5名被试进行了调查 ,结果如下 :①共获得 1 0 6位自立者 ,被试最认同的典型自立者是郝思嘉、简·爱、孙少平和保尔·柯察金 4人 ;②被试更喜欢选择与自己同性别的自立者 ;③坚韧性、独立性、成熟性、主动性、道德性和开放性是被试最看重的自立者人格特征。最后 ,还对自立与自强的关系以及自立者人格特征等问题进行了讨论 ,认为 :①独立性、主动性、责任性、开放性与灵活性大致是自立者的 5种基本人格特征 ;②从自立到自强是一个连续体 ,但他们有不同的人格特征 ;③自立可以区分为特质自立和情境自立。     

Stable Strategies for Personal Development

In her short story “Stable Strategies for Middle Management,” Eileen Gunn imagines a future in which Margaret, an office worker, seeks radical genetic enhancements intended to help her secure the middle-management job she wants. One source of the story’s tension and dark humor is dramatic irony: readers can see that the enhancements Margaret buys stand little chance of making her life go better for her; enhancing is, for Margaret, probably a prudential mistake. This paper argues that our positions in the real world are sufficiently similar to Margaret’s position in Gunn’s fictional world that we should take this story seriously as grounding an argument from analogy for the conclusion that radical genetic enhancements are, for us, probably a prudential mistake. The paper then defends this method. When the question at hand is one of speculative ethics, there is no method better fit to the purpose than argument from analogy to speculative fiction.     

After MacIntyre

In his influential book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre identifies Kierkegaard's view of ethics with that of Kant. Both Kant and Kierkegaard, according to MacIntyre, accept the modern paradigm of moral activity for which freedom of the will is the ultimate basis. Ronald M. Green, in Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt, accepts and deepens this alignment between the two thinkers. Green argues that Kierkegaard deliberately obscured his debt to Kant by a systematic “misattribution” of his ideas to other thinkers, and to classical philosophy in particular. This essay argues that MacIntyre and Green are mistaken in identifying Kierkegaard with the Kantian tradition of moral autonomy and that they overlook his debt to the classical conception of virtue. In casting Kierkegaard in the role of the quintessential exponent of a modern conception of freedom, they have perhaps overlooked one of the greatest critics of moral autonomy who has ever lived.     

The Implied Imperative: Poetry as Ethics in the Proverbs of the Tirukkuṟaḷ

The Tirukkuṟaḷ is a text of Tamil proverbs that circulates widely in South India today. While the first two sections of the text contain practical pieces of ethical advice, the third section contains an extended love poem. This variation in content has resulted in a dichotomous view of the text in which ethics and poetry are viewed as fundamentally distinct. This paper blurs the distinction between ethics and poetry by showing how the poetic form of the Tirukkuṟaḷ's proverbs not only enhances the text's ethical message but also participates in the ethical formation of the text's audience. Building on Geoffrey Galt Harpham's notion of sub-ethics, I argue that the Tirukkuṟaḷ uses three literary strategies—metaphor, inference, and suspense—to engage the audience in modes of “sub-ethical” reflection by raising ethical questions and framing ethical choices.     

试论《易传》对《文心雕龙》的影响

《文心雕龙》是中国文学史上第一部体大思精、具有完整体系的古代文学理论专著。本文依《彖传》、《象传》、《文言传》、《说卦传》、《序卦传》、《杂卦传》的顺序，分别论述《易传》七种对《文心雕龙》所产生的深刻影响。