藏传佛教文化对藏药的影响

藏族宗教文化对藏药的影响是深远的,处于特殊地域环境及浓郁宗教文化氛围中的藏药,从它的用药思想,到其理论体系的形成,再到具体的临床实践过程,都无不渗透着藏族宗教文化的影子。其中重视“天人合一”的思想理念贯穿在藏药用药规律的始终,同时这一理念也引发我们对人与环境之间和谐统一关系的重新审视与思考。     

A cross-culture study of wife abuse

A study of correlates of the incidence of wife beating in primitive societies indicated that it was found to be more common in societies in which brutality and cruelty were more common. In addition, wife beating was more common in societies in which the status of women was considerably inferior to the status of males. Societies with a high incidence of wife beating also had a high divorce rate.     

From psychic holes to psychic representations

Abstract

In this essay, I will explore the term “psychic hole,” and compare it to similar terms from the world of astrophysics and terms used in the psychoanalytic literature. I will then present my own conception of the “psychic hole” in cases of Holocaust survivors' offspring. I will explain how this “hole” is created, and describe a particular aspect of the “psychic hole” that is unique to Holocaust survivors' offspring, namely the enactments (termed “concretization” by Bergman) generated by the negated traumatic themes that reside in it. I will illustrate these enactments using clinical material taken from case studies of Holocaust survivors' offspring that I have previously published. The clinical vignettes reveal the transgenerational impact of the memory hole resulting from negation of survivor parents on the lives of their offspring, up to the third generation. They also show the painful journey from enactments to psychic representations, a journey which exposes the traumatic events that have been denied or repressed, and facilitates the work of mourning and the eventual achievement of a better integrated self. Finally, I will offer technical suggestions for analysts to help patients transform psychic holes into psychic representations.     

Towards a New Kind of Semantic Normativity

Abstract

Hannah Ginsborg has recently offered a new account of normativity, according to which normative attitudes are essential to the meaningful use of language. The kind of normativity she has in mind –– not semantic but ‘primitive’ — is supposed to help us to avoid the pitfalls of both non-reductionist and reductive dispositionalist theories of meaning. For, according to her, it enables us both to account for meaning in non-semantic terms, which non-reductionism cannot do, and to make room for the normativity of meaning, which reductive dispositionalism cannot do. I argue that the main problem with Ginsborg’s account is that it fails to say what makes it possible for expressions to be governed by conditions of correct application to begin with. I do believe, however, that normative attitudes are essential to meaning, but they have to be thought of as fully semantic. And I suggest that conditions of correct application can be present only when those attitudes are present.     

湘西少数民族原始宗教伦理的现代审视

湘西少数民族原始宗教作为文化原型,已化为民风民俗,进入当代民族民间文化生活。对湘西少数民族原始宗教伦理的文化特性、道德选择及其精神内核的现代审视,必须坚持中国化马克思主义宗教观,批判地发掘其当代价值。     

Confidentiality, privacy, and the facilitating role of psychoanalytic organizations

Burgeoning external threats to confidentiality by claims to clinical information create unprecedented challenges for psychoanalysts. Internal threats arise from the use of clinical material for educational, scientific and historical purposes. Traditionally, confidentiality is considered a patient's right and an analyst's obligation; privacy is not usually stated as a professional requirement. Little consideration has been given to the impact of the confidentiality and privacy dilemmas that analysts encounter throughout their careers. There has been no systematic examination of the confidentiality policies of psychoanalytic organizations, nor has their role in facilitating maintenance of patient confidentiality and analysts' privacy been made explicit. The research reported here was undertaken to address these issues and to obtain baseline information about the current confidentiality policies and practices of psychoanalytic organizations in three English-speaking countries (Britain, Canada and the USA). The author discusses survey results in the light of the challenges which arise at each phase of the analytic career. She makes suggestions as to how psychoanalytic organizations can and should facilitate analysts' resolutions of contemporary confidentiality and privacy dilemmas.     

Territories of schooling and schooling territories in contexts of extreme urban poverty in Argentina: Between management and abjection

We are living in a time when large masses of workers have become large masses of the unemployed and, to borrow Butler’s term, their bodies constitute an army of bodies that don’t matter. This is probably one of the greatest dilemmas in our society, in the globalized world and in regions like Latin America in particular. In the framework of governmentality studies, this paper presents advances in research geared towards characterizing schooling practices in contexts of extreme urban poverty, specifically in an area on the outskirts of Buenos Aires (Argentina) with one of the highest concentrations of shantytowns. Starting in the late 1960s with the crisis in Fordism and the closing of factories, a dense population has come to inhabit these urban spaces in the midst of a process of extreme decay. I will focus, in this work, on the characteristics that I understand to distinguish the pedagogical devices and processes of subjectivation bound to the configuration of these abject territories.     

Neuromuscular Control of Posture in the Infant and Child

This study explored the effects of vision and maturation on the characteristics of neuromuscular responses underlying balance control in both seated and standing children of five age groups (3½–5 months, 8–14 months, 2–3 years, 4–6 years, and 7–10 years). A platform was used to unexpectedly disturb the child’s balance in the anterior or posterior direction. Responses of the leg, trunk, and neck muscles were recorded using surface electromyograms.

Vision was not required for the activation of these responses in any of the age groups tested. However, comparison of muscle response latencies of standing children to posterior platform translation in the two visual conditions showed a significant reduction in latency for neck flexors in the 2- to 3-year-olds with vision removed and an increase in the total number of monosynaptic reflexes. No reduction in latency was found in the older age groups. The hypothesis of a shift from an early long latency visual dominance to a shorter latency proprioceptive one during childhood is discussed.

Postural control showed a cephalo-caudal developmental gradient with postural responses appearing first in the neck, then trunk, and finally, legs, as children developed from 3 to 14 months of age. A wide variety of response patterns was seen in the 3- to 5-month-olds, indicating that postural responses are not functional prior to experience with stabilizing the center of mass.     

Image and identity: Religious symbols and symbolic representation on European Masonic nineteenth-century certificates

Masonic certificates have a fascinating and unique iconography. Many of the documents possess great artistic value. Other certificates, like the one drawn during the Napoleonic wars by a French prisoner of war in Okehampton, Devon, testify to how readily the language of Masonic symbolism was used and understood during this time. The spiritual, mystical and extremely eclectic character of Freemasonry presented a challenge for artists who tried to give the ideas of the Craft artistic form. It became their charge to develop a whole new iconographic system in order to present the unique social and moral identity of this fraternal society, and they drew their inspiration from sources as varied as Egyptian, Jewish, Christian, Greek and Roman mythology, religion and architecture.