On neuropsychoanalytic metaphysics

Neuropsychoanalysis focuses on the neural counterparts of psychoanalytically interesting phenomena and has left the difference in the metaphysical presuppositions between neuroscience and psychoanalysis unexamined. The authors analyse the logical possibilities concerning the relation between the brain and the mental unconscious in terms of the serial, parallel, epiphenomenalist and Kantian conceptions, and conclude that none of them provides a satisfactory ground for neuropsychoanalysis. As far as psychoanalytic explanations refer to the mental unconscious, they cannot be verified with the help of neuroscience. Neither is it possible to form a picture of how a neuro-viewpoint might be of help for psychoanalytic theorizing. Neuropsychoanalysis has occasionally been seen as a reductionist affair, but the authors suggest that neuropsychoanalysts themselves lean on the hybrid conception, which combines neuroscientific and psychoanalytic viewpoints. The authors state arguments in favour of the interfield conception of neuropsychoanalysis that takes seriously the metaphysical tensions between neuroscience and psychoanalysis.     

无意识信息加工中的“完型”——无意识捆绑假说的新证据

采用连续闪烁范式(Continuous Flash Suppression,CFS)考察了无意识状态下完型能否发生.研究通过2(线条完整性)×2(意义破坏)×2(熟悉性)的被试内实验设计考察了8种条件下图片的突破抑制时间(Suppression Time,ST).结果发现:线条完整和意义未破坏的图片能更快地克服噪音图片的抑制进入意识;熟悉性不影响突破抑制时间.重要的是,不完整的图片也可以出现意义破坏效应.这表明即使在被抑制的状态下,不完整图形的信息也能够传达至与完型相关的高级视觉区域形成客体表征.研究为无意识捆绑假说(The Unconscious Binding Hypothesis)提供了新的实验证据.     

无意识目标启动的定义、机制及应用

无意识目标与社会态度、刻板印象和图式等一样, 是行为的满意状态或结果在个体头脑中的一种表征, 包含有目标设定、追求情境和追求手段等内容。这些内容能够被环境中的刺激自动激活, 在意识不到的情况下影响人的心理和行为。无意识目标启动的概念和其他心理表征的启动不同, 无意识目标启动能够促使带有动机性的行为出现, 启动线索的影响不会随着时间的推移而消失。无意识目标启动的自变量与自身心理状态和环境中他人的影响有关, 无意识目标启动的因变量与任务表现和社会关系的处理有关。“知觉-行为模型”、“无意识行为选择模型”、“评价准备模型”和“情感因素模型”能够分别从“无意识”和“目标”两个角度对无意识目标启动的心理机制进行解释。无意识目标启动原理在商业、教育、医疗等领域当中有着广泛的应用前景, 为了更好地完善理论研究和进行实际应用, 今后应该更加重视无意识目标启动的脑机制研究。     

无意识情绪研究的新方向

首先介绍关于“无意识情绪”的两种概念。接着介绍可较好地对该两类无意识情绪概念进行整合的无意识情绪信息加工模型--Wiens模型(Wiens & Öhman, 2007), 分析了Wiens模型中“刺激聚焦途径”与“体验聚焦途径”两条途径下的无意识情绪的基本观点、相关实证研究、分别面临的研究难题或受到的质疑, 及不同途径下无意识情绪的本质。在此基础上指出, 传统情绪理论下情绪的意识属性或可与Wiens模型中体验聚焦途径下情绪的无意识属性互为补充, 相辅相成; 无意识情绪研究的新方向是体验聚焦途径。最后, 对未来研究提出了展望。     

Philosophy, the “unknown knowns,” and the public use of reason

There are not only true or false solutions, there are also false questions. The task of philosophy is not to provide answers or solutions, but to submit to critical analysis the questions themselves, to make us see how the very way we perceive a problem is an obstacle to its solution. This holds especially for today’s public debates on ecological threats, on lack of faith, on democracy and the “war on terror”, in which the “unknown knowns”, the silent presuppositions we are not aware of, determine our acts.     

‘Minimal Religion’ and Mikhail Epstein’s Interpretation of Religion in Late-Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

This is an examination of two essays on minimal religion by Mikhail Epstein (1982 and 1999), assessing the usefulness of the term ‘minimal religion’ for the analysis of religion in contemporary Russia. An adapted version of a paper delivered at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University of London, on 8 December, 2003. Note regarding Mikhail Epstein’s use of the words ‘religion’, ‘religiosity’ and ‘spirituality’: Epstein uses the word ‘religion’ to signify ‘mainstream’, church-based manifestations of religion and also the institutional, hierarchical structures related to those. Although in English usage the word ‘religiosity’ has negative connotations – signifying either a superficially felt religious sentiment or a somehow false and insincere expression of religious feeling, intended for outward show – Epstein appears to use the term entirely neutrally. For him it simply serves as a synonym for the word ‘spirituality’. In the two essays examined in the present article the word ‘spirituality’ signifies the whole inner spiritual life and aspirations of the individual and her/his reflection on an ethical way of living, whether the person concerned is a committed, church-going believer, or someone engaged in a personal spiritual or philosophical quest for meaning, or else someone who has experienced what Epstein refers to as ‘the wilderness’ of the Soviet years and has learnt of a spiritual dimension to life through that formative experience.     

人格特质对意识提取和无意识提取影响的实验研究

运用加工分离程序,该研究考察了神经质和内外倾对意识提取和无意识提取的影响,结果表明:1)被试的意识提取和无意识提取均存在显著个体差异;2)当意识与无意识分离以后,所有被试的无意识提取贡献都显著大于意识提取;3)神经质被试对正性词以及内外倾被试对外向词的无意识提取均有明显个体差异;4)内—外倾被试对相关特质词的意识提取的个体差异不如无意识提取显著。     

Where are you,my beloved?: On absence,loss, and the enigma of telepathic dreams

The subject of dream telepathy (especially patients' telepathic dreams) and related phenomena in the psychoanalytic context has been a controversial, disturbing ‘foreign body’ ever since it was introduced into psychoanalysis by Freud in 1921. Telepathy ‐ suffering (or intense feeling) at a distance (Greek: pathos + tele)‐is the transfer or communication of thoughts, impressions and information over distance between two people without the normal operation of the recognized sense organs. The author offers a comprehensive historical review of the psychoanalytic literature on this controversial issue, beginning with Freud' years‐long struggles over the possibility of thoughttransference and dream telepathy. She then describes her own analytic encounter over the years with five patients' telepathic dreams' dreams involving precise details of the time, place, sensory impressions, and experiential states that the analyst was in at that time, which the patients could not have known through ordinary sensory perception and communication. The author's ensuing explanation combines contributory factors involving patient, archaic communication and analyst. Each of these patients, in early childhood, had a mother who was emotionally absent‐within‐absence, due to the absence of a significant figure in her own life. This primary traumatic loss was imprinted in their nascent selves and inchoate relating to others, with a fixation on a nonverbal, archaic mode of communication. The patient's telepathic dream is formed as a search engine when the analyst is suddenly emotionally absent, in order to find the analyst and thus halt the process of abandonment and prevent collapse into the despair of the early traumatization. Hence, the telepathic dream embodies an enigmatic ‘impossible’ extreme of patient‐analyst deep‐level interconnectedness and unconscious communication in the analytic process. This paper is part of the author's endeavour to grasp the true experiential scope and therapeutic significance of this dimension of fundamental patient‐analyst interconnectedness.     

应当关注时间心理无意识的研究

随着心理无意识研究在记忆、学习和思维等领域的兴起,内隐时间认知也逐步成为时间心理学中的一个研究热点。本文分析了探究内隐时间认知的四种方法:分离范式、序列学习范式、表征动量范式和计时分布相关范式,指出内隐时间认知实验范式在无意识时间人格与社会心理学中的研究也是有相当前景的。     

QUANTUM REALITY AND ETHOS: A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT REGARDING THE FOUNDATION OF ETHICS IN COSMIC ORDER

The authors undertake a thought experiment the purpose of which is to explore possibilities for understanding moral principles in analogy with cosmic order. The experiment is based on three proposals, which are described in detail: an ontological, a neurological, and a moral proposal. The ontological proposal accepts from the phenomena of quantum physics that there is a nonempirical domain of physical reality that consists not of material things but of what is philosophically conceptualized as a realm of nonmaterial forms. This realm of forms is the realm of potentiality in physical reality that quantum physics posits as an indivisible Wholeness—the One. It is the ultimate reality because everything empirical is the actualization of its forms. The neurological proposal is the hypothesis that the brain is sensitive to the potentiality waves in the cosmic field, as ordinary measuring instruments in physics are sensitive to potentiality waves at the quantum level, so that the cosmic field can communicate with the human brain. The third proposal assumes that the communication with the cosmic field can translate into moral ideas and actions. Even though the three proposals underlying the thought experiment are highly speculative, they lead to definite implications that make sense in their own right and can be applied in a useful way. From the order of reality some simple rules of conduct follow that are identical with traditional moral rules but have the character of rules of well‐ness, leading to new aspects of Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia and Kant's concept of the highest good. In analogy with the structure of physical reality, where all empirical phenomena are actualizations of nonempirical forms, it is suggested that the structure of morality, too, is that of a tacit, nonempirical form that actualizes in explicit principles and moral acts through our consciousness. The tacit form is thought to exist in the realm of cosmic potentiality, together with all the other forms that the empirical world actualizes. It can appear spontaneously in our consciousness when needed, offering its guidance to our judgment and free will. Because it does not appear in the form of commandments accompanied by threats, the actions of the tacit moral form define a higher level of morality, similar to that offered by some aspects of the Christian teaching, where one acts not out of fear but on the desire to do things right.