The role of perspective in identifying domains of reference

We used the contrastive expectation associated with scalar adjectives to examine whether listeners are sensitive to the distinction between common and privileged information during real-time reference resolution. Our results show that listeners used this distinction to narrow the set of potential referents to objects with contrasts in common ground from the earliest moments. These results extend previous evidence that ground information influences real-time language processing by showing that the distinction between common and privileged information is used without being triggered by unusual circumstances.     

亚健康的相关概念比较

结合医学的发展轨迹,在对相关文献进行系统疏理中发现,一些曾经或正在风靡的病症概念中或系统或散在地涉及了亚健康的相关问题。就亚健康与慢性疲劳综合征、神经衰弱、神经官能症及中医未病等相关概念作一比较分析,希冀有助于亚健康概念与范畴的研究及确定。     

Transference symptom

Transference symptom is a hazy notion in Freud's writings. The notion is presented here as a particular moment in the crystallization of the transference neurosis. It results from a double cathexis of the analytic frame and the analyst resulting in a symbolic distortion that is represented plastically within the session, as occurs in dreams. The transference symptom proceeds from two different preconscious cathexes, one attached to the reality of the frame, the other to the drive linked to the analyst. A psychic space is thereby opened up for interpreting both the resistance and the unconscious derivatives of infantile conflict. The transference symptom is a compromise formation that includes the analyst and questions the countertransference stance. Three different analytic situations give rise to transference symptoms according to the relative balance between frame and process in the analytic encounter. The concept is compared with enactment.     

Little Hans and the thought police: the 'policeman fantasies' as the first reported supervisory transference fantasies

The ‘policeman fantasies’ in Freud ’s case of Little Hans, famous for being Freud ’s most direct evidence for specifically sexual oedipal desire by Hans for his mother, are reconsidered. The Hans case is the first recorded instance of psychoanalytic supervision, and recent studies suggest that it is common for patients in supervised treatment to experience fantasies about the supervisor. It is argued that the policeman fantasies are the first recorded instances of such transference fantasies about psychoanalytic supervision and the patient–therapist–supervisor triangle. The explanatory power of this interpretation is supported by the nuances of the features of the fantasies themselves, as well as by the context in which they occurred that might serve as ‘day residues’. Moreover, this interpretation provides an answer to the central mystery of the two fantasies, which goes unaddressed by Freud ’s oedipal interpretation: Who is the policeman?     

Aesthetic experience

An initial clinical question, ‘Why does an analysand talk about his/her relationship with an aesthetic object?’ opens an investigation into the nature of aesthetic experience. Three principal aspects of the psychoanalytic approach are presented: sublimation, a Freudian concept concerning the vicissitudes of the drives; reparation, a Kleinian concept linked to depressive anxiety; and transformation, a concept of object‐relations theory about primitive ego‐states. The article discusses the psychic function of aesthetic feelings in mastering anxiety as related to ego, id and superego. The transformation of the experience of passivity is a common link underlying these aspects. Such transformation relies on tolerating ambiguous and contrary feelings within the self, fostered by contact with an aesthetic object. This balance can, however, be upset: two excessive forms of aesthetic experience ensue, namely, fascination and bewitchment. The first belongs to the experience of awe; the second can lead to claustrophobic anxiety. The initial clinical question requires an elaboration of aesthetic transference, a variant of the narcissistic transference, whereby the analysand invites the analyst to share his/her internal state as a common unspoken object.     

Trauma and traumatic neurosis: Freud's concepts revisited

The authors examine Freud 's concepts of 'trauma', 'protective shield against stimuli ' and 'traumatic neurosis' in the light of recent findings. 'Protective shield against stimuli' is regarded as a biological concept which appears in mental life as the striving to avoid unpleasant affects. 'Trauma' is a twofold concept in that it relates to mental experience and links an external event with the specific after-effects on an individual 's psychic reality. A distinction needs to be made between mentally destructive trauma and affective trauma. A destructive trauma does not break through the protective shield but does breach the pleasure-unpleasure principle, so that in the course of its subsequent mastery it leads to a traumatic neurosis. An affective trauma can be warded off under the rule of the pleasure-unpleasure principle and leads to a psychoneurosis.     

Evil acts not evil people: their characteristics and contexts

Abstract: The problem of evil has vexed philosophers and theologians for centuries and anthropologists, sociologists, psychoanalysts and analytical psychologists in more recent times. Numerous theories have been proposed but there is still little agreement on such basic questions as the nature of evil, what constitutes and motivates an evil act, and how we resolve conflicts between individuals and groups in which evil acts are being committed. I am proposing that evil should be used as an adjective, and not as a noun. As such it should be employed to qualify acts of persons rather than their character. This change would enable us to eschew foundational explanations of evil and, therefore, to examine evil acts in their contexts and so better discern their nature and motivation. I will contend that evil acts begin when an individual makes, or members of a group make, assertions about the ‘naturalness’ of their own acts and, correspondingly, the ‘unnaturalness’ of the acts of others. I will suggest that this results from the anxiety that ensues when they cannot adequately signify their experience of these acts. When this occurs, those so treated are dispossessed of their ‘personhood’, allowing members of the ‘natural’ group to violate their ‘boundaries' with impunity. These violations can range from the relatively innocuous such as being ignored to the extreme such as genocide. I am asserting that all these acts should be termed evil as they derive from the same semiotic process of ‘naturalizaton’. I will discuss ways of preventing individuals or groups from embarking on the process of ‘naturalization’ and describe the types of contexts that might reduce or eliminate the commission of evil acts by those already engaged in their perpetration. To demonstrate these ideas I will use examples from my personal experience, from analytic theory and from the ‘troubles' in Northern Ireland.     

The interplay between semantic and referential aspects of anaphoric noun phrase resolution: Evidence from ERPs

In this event-related brain potential (ERP) study, we examined how semantic and referential aspects of anaphoric noun phrase resolution interact during discourse comprehension. We used a full factorial design that crossed referential ambiguity with semantic incoherence. Ambiguous anaphors elicited a sustained negative shift (Nref effect), and incoherent anaphors elicited an N400 effect. Simultaneously ambiguous and incoherent anaphors elicited an ERP pattern resembling that of the incoherent anaphors. These results suggest that semantic incoherence can preclude readers from engaging in anaphoric inferencing. Furthermore, approximately half of our participants unexpectedly showed common late positive effects to the three types of problematic anaphors. We relate the latter finding to recent accounts of what the P600 might reflect, and to the role of individual differences therein.     

汉语焦点信息影响代词回指的电生理机制

作为话题延续和语篇衔接的重要手段, 代词是最为重要的回指形式之一。目前虽然有关代词回指的研究有很多, 但这些研究主要关注句法和语义因素如何影响回指加工, 很少考察话语(语用)层面的信息结构, 尤其是焦点结构, 如何影响回指解读, 也没有考察不同类型的焦点信息如何通过与句法角色、动词语义以及距离远近等因素的相互作用来决定回指解读。为此, 本项目将在以往研究的基础之上, 选择两种不同的焦点结构—— 自上而下的焦点(语言焦点)和自下而上的焦点(非语言焦点), 并借助高时间分辨率的ERP技术, 考察这两种不同类型的焦点信息对代词回指影响的异同, 以及它们与句法、语义和距离等因素相互作用于回指加工的认知和神经机制, 从而揭示在汉语句子理解中来自语言和非语言的信息通过何种关系模式影响回指加工和句子表征。具体研究问题包括：1)自上而下的焦点信息如何影响回指加工; 2)自下而上的焦点信息如何影响回指加工; 3)焦点结构、句法角色和动词语义对回指加工的综合影响。     

At‐one‐ment,intuition and ‘suchness’1

Many senses exist for perceiving sensory experience; there are in turn others which make it possible to perceive emotional experience: intuition is one of these. The author, using W. R. Bion's work, studies intuition psychoanalytically, considering it to be a powerful ‘sense’ in clinical work. He describes the metapsychology of intuition, and proposes models that make it possible to think—from different perspectives— about how to make use of it in an analysis. To this end, he examines a series of useful processes and concepts: growth, tolerance, ‘suchness’, suffering and courage. The author defi nes the intuitive mechanism as a derivation of the renunciation of memory, desire and understanding; such a renunciation, learning from the experience of suffering the pain of facing the Truth in at‐one‐ment, makes it possible to tolerate the frustrations associated with observing the analysand ‘such‐as‐he‐is’. Finally, once immersed in the intelligence of intuition, the author considers ways in which intuition might be linked with concepts, with a view to interpreting the facts that must be transformed in the analysis.