Technology,gender, and history: Toward a nonlinear model of social evolution

This paper presents a new nonlinear cognitive map of social evolution— sharply departing from the conventional 19th century‐based theories of linear stages from barbarism to civilization. It draws from a data base that includes the whole of humanity (both its female and male halves). And it takes into account new data from archaeology indicating that civilization is not only thousands of years older than previously thought, but originally oriented more closely to what the author calls a Partnership rather than a Dominator model of social organization. Covering over 25,000 years of social history, this article charts major technological phase changes—from the agricultural revolution circa 10,000 years ago to the industrial and more recently electronic revolutions or modern times—from the perspective of the tension between the Dominator and Partnership models. Most critically, it shows how the present period of social disequilibrium leads us to either an evolutionary breakdown or breakthrough, with the determining factor not technology per se, but rather how effectively and quickly we shift to a social organization orienting primarily to partnership rather than domination.     

I feel good,therefore I am real: Testing the causal influence of mood on state authenticity

Although the literature has focused on individual differences in authenticity, recent findings suggest that authenticity is sensitive to context; that is, it is also a state. We extended this perspective by examining whether incidental affect influences authenticity. In three experiments, participants felt more authentic when in a relatively positive than negative mood. The causal role of affect in authenticity was consistent across a diverse set of mood inductions, including explicit (Experiments 1 and 3) and implicit (Experiment 2) methods. The link between incidental affect and state authenticity was not moderated by ability to down-regulate negative affect (Experiments 1 and 3) nor was it explained by negative mood increasing private self-consciousness or decreasing access to the self system (Experiment 3). The results indicate that mood is used as information to assess one's sense of authenticity.     

The Effects of Assertive Training on Sex Role Concept in Female Agoraphobics

Agoraphobia in women has often been associated with a restricted, "overly-feminine" sex role definition. We investigated whether assertiveness training from a female therapist would benefit agoraphobic women not only by teaching skills but incidentally by modeling a broader feminine gender role. Of 14 clients from an agoraphobic treatment program seven received assertiveness training as an adjunct to regular therapy. Sex role definition and assertiveness attitudes were measured with the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1974) and the Rathus Assertiveness Schedule (Rathus, 1973), administered before and following a 7-week treatment period. All the agoraphobics initially had significantly lower Masculinity scores on the PAQ than did large normative samples. T-tests performed on the data indicated that the assertiveness group's Masculinity scores increased after treatment to the level of the normative samples, while the comparison group did not change. Results supported the clinical observation that many agoraphobic women have limited gender role definitions, and indicated that this limitation consists of a deficit of masculine traits rather than a surplus of feminine ones.     

UNTANGLING FALSE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING ATHEISM AND HEALTH

Abstract In the past decade, the cognitive science of religion has worked to find an evolutionary explanation for supernatural belief. The explanations are convincing, but have created the stereotype that atheism is unnatural. In a similar way studies linking religious belief and health have vilified atheism as unhealthy. But belief is too complex, health is too nuanced, and the data are too varied to draw such a generalization. Catherine Caldwell‐Harris has developed a psychological profile to understand nonbelief as an expected outcome of individual difference and therefore natural. In a similar manner I argue that we should study the relationship between belief and health through the lens of individual differences. This approach is especially promising given recent research which indicates personality fully accounts for the relationship with well‐being previously attributed to belief. This approach has the added benefit of neutralizing the conversation by understanding atheism as the healthy expression of a natural personality.     

Why Ferenczi today? The contribution of Sándor Ferenczi to the understanding and healing of psychic suffering

A society undergoing rapid change, which doubts its own possibilities of survival, calls into question the worth of psychoanalytical theory and practice. The author emphasizes that the Ferenczian clinical evolution could be a source of inspiration for reinvigorating our trust in the prodromes of the Freudian paradigm, and thus for relaunching the authoritativeness of our thought and our psychotherapeutic method. In this light the author examines the affective and cognitive qualities that render Ferenczi a mentor of our possible future development, taking into consideration the following aspects: the communicative and intersubjective perspective that denotes Ferenczi's thought since his first writings; the receptive, reflective, and self‐reflective capacities which have progressively accompanied his own commitment and clinical attitude; and his elective work on trauma and “the traumatic”, including the algogenic messages transmitted during the healing process by analysts in fear (and perhaps terror) of their own regression and countertransferential catastrophe. In particular, these last events (central in the Ferenczian vision) are today specifically stimulated by new forms of pathology which search for, with our help, a resolution of the apathetic pain and the tearing apart of the identity that characterize the suffering of patients.     

Conceptualising Decadent Technology: A Case Study of Path Dependence in Radiotherapy

Abstract

Large-scale investments in health technologies often have limited evidence for effectiveness when first introduced. Nevertheless, professional and public discourses often present the advantages of such investments, with unknown risks, as necessary and entailing significant improvement. Such discourses are evident with the introduction of the Linac Adapted Conebeam Imager (LACI), introduced to improve the accuracy of radiotherapy treatments. From one perspective, the introduction of such technologies can be considered to be decadent since there is limited, if any, evidence of improvement of current standards and procedures, yet they are promoted as the latest and best technologies for solving societal problems. Connecting the concepts of decadence to those of path dependence, through the case of the LACI, enables the exploration of the ‘technical interrelatedness’ of technological changes. Building on the concept of path dependence, it is possible to demonstrate how introducing a closely related technology does not only become a low-risk course of action. Rather change is demanded (but not determined) as well as potential alternative systems being obscured. With decadent technologies, any future changes are not only dependent upon past introductions; but also they create a need for future changes. Such a view demonstrates how these technologies may not necessarily offer any improvements, but rather contribute to the creation of ongoing demand for unproven technologies. As a result they may encourage the introduction of increasingly complex technologies.     

Hutcheson on Natural Religion

Recent scholars have examined the important role of English Deism in the formation of a modern naturalistic approach to the study of human religiosity. Despite the volume of important studies of various aspects of his thought, the role of Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) in this development has been overlooked. The aim of this paper is to show how Hutcheson develops his own account of the origins of religion, consonant with his more well-known theories in aesthetics and moral philosophy, that diverges sharply from the then-prevailing Deist views. Hutcheson pioneers a psychological account of religion that anticipates the work of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars in important ways. At the same time, Hutcheson incorporates his account of the origins of religion into an overall vision of human flourishing.     

Herder's Moral Philosophy: Perfectionism,Sentimentalism and Theism

While the last several decades have seen a renaissance of scholarship on J. G. Herder (1744–1804), his moral philosophy has not been carefully examined. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap, and to point the way for further research, by reconstructing his original and systematically articulated views on morality. Three interrelated elements of his position are explored in detail: (1) his perfectionism, or theory of the human good; (2) his sentimentalism, which includes moral epistemology and a theory of moral education; and (3) his theism, which deepens and justifies these other elements.     

The Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms: Miracles,Monotheism, and Reason in Spinoza

Spinoza insists in the Theological Political Treatise that philosophy and theology are two separate kingdoms. I argue here that there is a basis in the psychology of the Ethics for one of the major components of the doctrine of the two kingdoms. Under the kingdom of theology, religion's principal function is to overcome the influence of harmful passion that prevents people from living life according to a fixed plan: people can live according to a fixed plan because they can obey. Through a series of arguments I show that Spinoza takes obedience to arise through devotion; devotion to associate with ideas of miracles and imaginative monotheism; and these ideas to be imaginative ideas of singular objects. On the psychology of the Ethics, ideas of this sort, although highly irrational, nevertheless give minds a power to resist harmful passion similar to that of ideas of reason. Although problems remain for the interpretation of the doctrine of the two kingdoms, this argument shows that Spinoza's psychology grounds his claim that theology, although different from philosophy, can help us to live well.