New frontiers in psychoanalysis – in our international community

The paper discusses what the author calls “The seduction by the father”. It would occur when, in the Oedipus complex, the father reverses his role: instead of being the one who castrates, he seduces. Seduction here is understood in the sense that he does not act as the one who imposes limits to the child. Consequently the child can not project his hostile impulses onto the father.

Based on clinical data, the Author says that, in the male child, the seduction by the father hampers the transformation of the two Oedipal attitudes towards the father into identifications. The consequences of this fact upon the construction of the “nostalgia of the father's protection” are discussed, so as the transformation of this father into the symbolic father.     

THE ELUSIVENESS OF MASCULINITY: PRIMORDIAL VULNERABILITY,LACK, AND THE CHALLENGES OF MALE DEVELOPMENT

Reaching beyond the Oedipus prototype to address the unrepresentable vulnerability founded on the boy's infantile helplessness in contact with the mother's body, the author aims to identify the inherent tensions and enigmas of being male. He proposes that both the repudiation of femininity and the overvaluation of phallicity are unconsciously constructed to withstand the fundamental deficiency grounded in the asymmetry of the boy's prephallic relation with his primary object. This bodily based primordial vulnerability, marked by absence and lack, remains elusive—an unsymbolizable experience that provides the archaic matrix for adaptive and defensive phallicism, the oedipal complex, and genital progression. A clinical vignette is presented to illustrate these concepts.     

Finding unconscious phantasy in the session: Recognizing form

The concept of unconscious phantasy has played – and still does play – a central role in psychoanalytic thinking. The author discusses the various forms by which unconscious phantasies manifest themselves in the analytic session as they are lived out and enacted in the transference relationship. This paper also aims at expanding the kleinian theory of symbol formation by exploring the impact that emotional aspects connected to early “raw’, “pre‐symbolic’ phantasies have in the analysis and how their corporeal elements interlock with the signifying process. The author follows the expressive forms of primitive unconscious phantasies as they appear in a psychoanalytic session and proposes that the emotional effect that can be experienced in the communication between patient and analyst depends in great measure on “semiotic’ aspects linked to primitive phantasies that are felt and lived out in embodied ways. Rather than a move from unconscious phantasies that typify symbolic equations to those showing proper symbolization, these can coexist and simultaneously find their way to what is communicated to the analyst. As early phantasies bear an intimate connection to the body and to unprocessed emotions when they are projected into the analyst they can produce a powerful resonance, sometimes also experienced in a physical way and forming an integral part of the analyst's counter‐transference.     

On being, knowing and having a self

This paper(1) takes the distinction between being conscious ('core consciousness') and knowing that one is conscious (self-reflexive consciousness) as a starting point for differentiating between three different aspects of the self: 1) the overall process of psychosomatic being which we share with all living creatures and which expresses itself through action (self as totality), 2) the conscious awareness of knowing the self that is a peculiarly human phenomenon consequent on the development of symbolic imagination (sense of self including numinous experiences of the self) and 3) having a self (or soul) as an essential attribute of being human that can only be achieved through being endowed with a self in the mind of others (self-identity leading to the self as the centre of the personality). Some clinical implications of these distinctions are considered including the role of interpretation as fostering integration through the provision of alternative self-images, the loss of self-reflexive consciousness in states of overwhelming affect and the attack on the spontaneous psychosomatic being of the self in states of self-hatred and self-division.     

The Prodigal Son: Some Psychological Aspects of Augustine’s Conversion to Christianity

Augustine’s conversion is considered exemplary for its Christian testimony. However, the psychological aspects are also relevant, for Augustine’s conversion to Christianity was as much inspired by personal and cultural ambitions as by religious convictions. For Augustine, the conversion to the Christian faith spelled a life of asceticism—a life of celibacy, a virtuous and chaste existence, which also offered him a means of escape from the threatening ambiguity of parental relations and a chance to realize the cultural ideal of the civilized philosopher who has subjugated the passions of the flesh. In this paper we explore the psychological dynamics of the absent father, the suffering mother and the prodigal son and the role they played in Augustine’s conversion to Christianity.     

SIMONE WEIL'S SPIRITUAL CRITIQUE OF MODERN SCIENCE: AN HISTORICAL‐CRITICAL ASSESSMENT

Simone Weil is widely recognized today as one of the profound religious thinkers of the twentieth century. Yet while her interpretation of natural science is critical to Weil's overall understanding of religious faith, her writings on science have received little attention compared with her more overtly theological writings. The present essay, which builds on Vance Morgan's Weaving the World: Simone Weil on Science, Necessity, and Love (2005), critically examines Weil's interpretation of the history of science. Weil believed that mathematical science, for the ancient Pythagoreans a mystical expression of the love of God, had in the modern period degenerated into a kind of reification of method that confuses the means of representing nature with nature itself. Beginning with classical (Newtonian) science's representation of nature as a machine, and even more so with the subsequent assimilation of symbolic algebra as the principal language of mathematical physics, modern science according to Weil trades genuine insight into the order of the world for symbolic manipulation yielding mere predictive success and technological domination of nature. I show that Weil's expressed desire to revive a Pythagorean scientific approach, inspired by the “mysterious complicity” in nature between brute necessity and love, must be recast in view of the intrinsically symbolic character of modern mathematical science. I argue further that a genuinely mystical attitude toward nature is nascent within symbolic mathematical science itself.     

全球化背景下的文化排斥反应

全球化导致文化价值观的跨国界传播, 也可能因为侵蚀地方(local)传统文化使人感到恐慌。文化排斥现象就是人们对全球化过程的反应之一, 它是指人们为了使传统文化免遭污染而可能对外来文化表现出的排斥。文化排斥反应出现的前提是双文化启动效应, 即在两种或多种文化共同出现的情境中文化的类别属性被凸显出来。其中, 厌恶性情绪是双文化情境激发出文化排斥反应的中介机制。文化排斥反应具有的边界属性：内群体象征性文化被污染、人们感知到外来文化的入侵性、或存在性动机被唤起、具有较高认知需求、受类别化思维启动、对外来文化认同较低或对内群文化认同较高时, 人们更倾向于对外来文化表现出排斥性反应。未来研究将借鉴文化排斥研究范式探讨更广泛的群际关系问题。     

The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics: From the Perspective of Theory of Baudrillard Contractual Approach Based on Rawls’ Device of the “Original Position”

In this article, I discuss Baudrillard’s critique of metaphysics based on his work The Mirror of Production, in which he stresses the principle of production—i.e., dichotomy and derivation. In the development of classical German philosophy, the principle of production was speculatively established, first as Descartes’ cogito, then as Fichte’s Tathandlung, and finally as Hegel’s labor, and grew to be a major principle of modern metaphysics. At the article’s conclusion, the meaning of Symbolic Exchange—Baudrillard’s utopian condition lying beyond the principle of production—will be discussed.     

大学生心中父亲形象的结构分析

通过对当代大学生心目中“父亲”的概念表征进行研究,采用字词联想法进行数据收集,以父亲形象为刺激,让231名被试进行自由联想,选出前43个联想频率在4.7%以上的高频词语（概念）作为分析单位,做成卡片。另请100名被试进行分类,然后根据它们之间的关系亲疏程度实施系统聚类分析。结果发现,“父亲”概念在大学生的心目中可以从以下4个方面进行表征: (1)“依靠性”;(2)“情义性”;(3)“自律性”;(4)“阳光性”。     

内源性注意定向对立体视觉加工影响机制的ERP研究

本研究采用行为测量与ERP分析相结合的范式,以视差分离方式、线索提示有效性为自变量,考察三维空间中内源性注意定向对立体视觉加工的影响及其脑电机制。结果发现：无论是短SOA还是长SOA,3D空间中预测性中央符号线索对后续辨认任务均产生了启动效应,且启动效应量不随SOA延长而变化。短SOA下,经典提示效应和跨深度提示效应均表现为有效提示下的N1波幅大于无效提示条件;长SOA下,线索提示效应则表现出了无效提示条件诱发较大N1波幅的趋势。