‘We’ve shared a lifetime with one another’: using reflective visual/verbal journals to develop graduate student relationships

The success of graduate students relies on factors beyond mere cognitive ability, with fostering peer and professional relationships as definitive influences on achievement. Research shows that positive faculty/student relationships are a significant factor in the success of graduate students and that art-making is an effective way to encourage the reflective thinking needed to nurture these relationships. In this article, we examine the relationship between arts informed pedagogy, specifically the use of a visual/verbal journal, and the formation of graduate relationships. The majority of the students in this collaborative inquiry entered their doctoral program at the same time the research class began and all engaged in an artfully imagined introduction to qualitative research course.     

Modernity and Postmodernity: The Characteristics of Postmodern Cultural Media

From the academic frontier of modernity and postmodernity,the author aims at exploring the fission between modernity and postmodernity and also the characteristics of postmodern cultural media from a philosophical vantage point.This paper illustrates three aspects of Western modernity:individual modernity,social modernity,and instrumental modernity,and it also clarifies the issues in modernity,starting by explaining three forms of the cultural fission:avant-garde,modernism,and postmodernism.The paper then demonstrates that the rise of postmodernity represents a new transformation and new characteristics of contemporary Westem spirit,namely,the collision and compatibility of various concepts,in which popular culture and high culture,mass culture and elite culture,fashion and games as well as noise and silence have constituted an uncanny landscape of cultural media.This eerie landscape displays the indeterminacy of language,culture,art,consciousness,and aesthetics.From the perspective of theoretical innovation,the author proposes that the postmodem cultural media always displays its commodity and instrumentality,plays and entertainment,anti-culture and anti-art,replication and fabrication logically and practically as an outcome of post-industrial society.In conclusion,three critical issues are addressed:personal spiritual belief,the development of mass culture,and aesthetic principles.The postmodem cultural media has deeply influenced traditional culture,aesthetics,and how they are evaluated,resulting in cultural conflicts and a humanistic dilemma in the world of contemporary capitalism.     

‘For Beauty is nothing but the barely endurable onset of Terror’: Outline of a general psychoanalytic aesthetics

Even close to 80 years after Freud's words that psychoanalysis “has scarcely anything to say about beauty” (Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, SE 21, p. 82) the question of a specific psychoanalytic aesthetic is still faced with a deficit in theory. Since aesthetics is related to Aisthesis, the Greek word for ‘perception’, a psychoanalytic aesthetic can solely emerge from a psychoanalysis of perceptive structures. The term ‘kinaesthetic semantic’ is introduced in order to exemplify via music how perceptive experiences must be structured for them to be experienced as beautiful. The basic mechanisms – repetition of form (rhythm, unification) and seduction (deviation, surprise) – are defined. With the help of these mechanisms an intensive contact between perceiving object and kinetic subject, the physical self, is established. The intensive relatedness is a requirement for the creative process in art and also for psychic growth on the subject's level. The described basic mechanisms of the aesthetic process in music can also be encountered in painting and poetry. By the means of a self‐portrait by Bacon it will be examined how, in art, terror and traumatization are represented via targeted disorganization of beauty endowing mechanisms, hence finding an enabling form of confrontation and integration of fended contents.     

Analytical practice: do the new technologies have an impact?

Through commentary on four clinical vignettes, this article focuses on the anthropological transformations taking place in contemporary society, underlining their differences from the anthropologies of reference of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis. Hybridization between man and machine and the speeding up and alteration of communications which the new technologies promote are now crucial issues facing psychoanalysis. Social media and a 24/7 internet connection have produced deep changes in the way people live and perceive relationships. Analytical practice is not exempt from such issues, which can be particularly insidious, often subtle and difficult to recognize, or even underestimated or ignored by psychoanalysts outright, in order to preserve the illusion of a complete understanding of what unfolds in the analytical space. The authors suggest that such transformations, by (partially) rendering inadequate the theoretical and technical corpus on which the various depth psychologies are founded, require personal engagement on the part of psychoanalysts in the search for new strategies to treat their patients, with the consequent abandonment of the ‘certainties’ offered by sclerotic models of clinical procedure.     

Philosophy Makes No Progress,So What Is the Point of It?

Philosophy makes no progress. It fails to do so in the way science and mathematics make progress. By “no progress” is meant that there is no successive advance of a well‐established body of knowledge—no views are definitively established or definitively refuted. Yet philosophers often talk and act as if the subject makes progress, and that its point and value lies in its doing so, while in fact they also approach the subject in ways that clearly contradict any claim to progress. This article presents evidence for, and a theoretical explanation of, the view that philosophy makes no progress, concluding with an account of what philosophy is and what the point and value of it is. Philosophy should not be shy about being what it is, nor should it pretend to be what it is not. What it is should be reflected in philosophizing and the way it is taught.     

Black Mountain College: A Creative Art Space Where It Was Safe to Fail

Black Mountain College is remembered as an artistic utopian alternative to institutional learning. Its faculty and students included some of the most important creative thinkers of the 20th century. Its foundation was built on the philosophy of “learning by doing.” But what made Black Mountain such a dynamic educational environment? Today, the financial burden of higher education places a lasting strain on students that inhibits creative growth. Does the educational structure of the college system impede our learning? Black Mountain was a legendary educational experiment, which offers a model for contemporary art education.     

Aristotle,Kant, and …Facebook? A Look at the Implications of Social Media on Ethics

The purpose of this study was to explore if and how social media might come to bear on people’s understanding of ethics. Participants were asked to complete online surveys regarding social media interaction and respond to 14 scenarios depicting ethical dilemmas. Our results suggest that social media and people’s perceptions of ethics do share a relationship. Specifically, we found that people who reported being exposed to ethical violations on social media were more likely to find our unethical scenarios to be personally unacceptable, to be of lower ethicality, and to react negatively to the content. These findings suggest that mere exposure to ethical violations is enough to produce awareness in people regarding ethical issues, which carries significant implications for ethics education.     

艺术治疗的概念、发展及教育

综述了国内外近10年来关于艺术治疗的文献资料,回顾了艺术治疗的概念、学科范围界定、应用、发展,比较了中西方艺术文化差异,同时对于艺术治疗与健康和疾病的关系,及其机理等进行了探讨.也对国外艺术治疗在高等院校中的课程设置、讲解内容等进行了阐述.根据作者多年的研究和教育实践,试图探索出中国艺术治疗学科体系的构建框架.     

终末期癌症病人诊治中的心理特征与人文关怀

在诊治终末期癌症病人过程中不仅要关心他们的躯体方面,更要关心他们的心理方面,在诊治过程中要根据他们的独特的心理特征来进行人文心理关怀,维持生命质量和保证他们应有的人格尊严.