Book reviews

Books reviewed:
Hauke, Christopher and Alister, Ian (eds.) Jung and Film: Post-Jungian Takes on the Moving Image
Meador, Betty de Shong Inanna Lady of Largest Heart: Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna
Barnes, Fiona Palmer and Murdin, Lesley (eds.) Values and Ethics in the Practice of Psychotherapy and Counselling
Mitrani, Judith L. A Framework for the Imaginary: Clinical Explorations in Primitive States of Being
Mitrani, Judith L. Ordinary People and Extra-Ordinary Protections: A Post-Kleinian Approach to the Treatment of Primitive Mental States
Aulagnier, Piera The Violence of Interpretation: From Pictogram to Statement     

Internet Discussion Forum Summary

Article Discussed in this forum:
'Memories, fantasies, archetypes: an exploration of some connections between cognitive science and analytical psychology' by Jean M. Knox ( JAP , October 2001, 46:4)     

Negotiating the Boundaries of Science and Religion: The Case of Henry Margenau

The life of Henry Margenau (1901–1997) offers a case study in the complexity of the science-religion relation. As a physicist-philosopher at Yale University, he pursued a public program of "amalgamating religion with science." He drew upon his authority as a physicist and a tradition of philosophical idealism to advocate a "reciprocity" between the two spheres. He argued that a "new modesty" and "metaphysical attitude" among scientists created new opportunities for collaboration. At the same time, his view of faith and his sense of the religiousness of science created troubling ambiguities. In the end, Margenau embodied the ambivalent relation between science and religion while revealing the limits of renegotiating the boundaries.     

Metalexical Awareness: Development, Methodology or Written Language? A Cross-linguistic Comparison

This study explores the ability to access word boundaries of pre-school children, using an on-line methodology (Karmiloff-Smith, Grant, Sims, Jones, & Cockle (1996). Cognition, 58, 197–219.), which has hardly been used outside English-speaking countries. In a cross-linguistic study in the Netherlands and Norway, four and five-year-old children were asked to repeat the last word every time a narrator stopped reading a story. In total 32 target-words were used, both closed and open class words, and both monosyllabic and disyllabic words. The outcomes in both countries were different from those of the original English study (Karmiloff-Smith et al., 1996): four- and five-year-olds were successful in only about 26% of the cases, whereas the success rate in the former English experiment was 75% for the younger and 96% for the older children. No differences were found between age groups and between open and closed class words. This methodology does reveal the ability to access word boundaries, but probably not because of the ease of the on-line methodology in itself, but rather because literacy introduces new representations of language, even in on-line processing. The outcomes implicate that the ability to mark word boundaries does not seem to be a valid indication of who is ready for reading.     

Homily at the Opening Prayer of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches

This is the text of the homily at the opening prayer of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches on 31 August 2022. The homily was based on Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, a narrative in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John. Despite wide gaps of religious belief, gender, culture, and lifestyle, Jesus took the woman seriously and spoke to her on a personal level.     

Quality of life

This article gives an overview of the field of psychotherapy in relation to other relevant fields such as body-therapy and spiritual counselling. It is shown how psychotherapy defines itself in isolation from or in comparison with its sister disciplines. Political boundaries between professions are described. The field of transformation is shown to be encompassing not only the health professions, the psychotherapy professions, and the professions dealing with spiritual emergency, but it can also be seen to contain intra-personal, interpersonal and extra-personal (social) dimensions.     

Centered Selves Connecting with Each Other

SUMMARY

Featured is an excerpt from an edited, transcribed lecture presented August 1987 at Avanta Process Community VII in Crested Butte, Colorado. The lecture was part of a month-long seminar which also included demonstrations and exercises. The lecture includes preparing therapists for the first session with patients for maximum therapeutic advantage.     

Nature's Longing for Beauty: Elegance as an Evolutionary Attractor,with Implications for Human Systems

This article suggests that the tendency of living systems to move toward more practical and more aesthetically fitting states be hypothesized as an evolutionary principle. The viewpoints of scientists and systems thinkers on the place of elegance in nature are considered, along with a discussion of issues related to perception of beauty. Implications for human systems and for meeting the challenges we presently face are considered.