Monstrous infants and vampyric mothers in Bram Stoker's Dracula

Bram Stoker's Dracula continues to fascinate and horrify audiences, inviting a psychoanalytic explanation. While previous interpretations have emphasized oedipal dynamics and perverse sexuality, this paper proposes that early developmental issues are central. Vampires and the state of being 'undead' are representations of intense oral needs, experienced in a context of passivity and helplessness. Aggressive invasion and possession of the other, with a colonization of body and soul, offer a solution to this dilemma but one devoid of true object-relatedness. The imaginative source of the Dracula fi gure is posited as Stoker's early invalidism and his later idealization of a powerful and charismatic actor. Implicit in the Dracula story are ideas of intrusively experienced 'monstrous' babies and intrusively controlling 'vampyric mothers'. The author offers studies of key passages from Dracula in support of this reading, followed by comparative material to illustrate the spectrum of vampyric mothering: a clinical example and excerpts from a modern novel. The horror of the vampire myth is located in the unending internal attachment to a deeply needed but problematic object.     

Does the Early Bird Get the Worm? An Analysis of Academic Success,Early Placement Preparation,and Hiring

Ability and effort, two aspects of Weiner's theory of resultant achievement, were examined in relation to success in securing full-time employment. Using grade point average as a measure of ability and early credential preparation as a measure of effort, effort was found to be a significant predictor of employment.     

Differential parenting and sibling jealousy: Developmental correlates of young adults’ romantic relationships

Data from a survey of 200 young adults assessed whether the early nonshared environment, specifically parental differential treatment, was associated with romantic relationship distress through its effects on sibling jealousy, attachment styles, and self‐esteem. Individuals who received equal affection from their parents in comparison to their sibling reported equal jealousy between themselves and their sibling, had higher self‐esteem, more secure attachment styles, and less romantic relationship distress. Receiving differential parental affection, regardless of whether the participant or their sibling was favored, was associated with more negative models of self and others, which in turn were associated with greater romantic relationship distress. Results indicate that early within‐family experiences may be particularly relevant for later healthy romantic relationship functioning.     

Meditation: The Forgotten Western Tradition

In this article we discuss aspects of the history of the demise of meditation in the West and its recent re-emergence as an Eastern system. Reasons for this phenomenon will be explored. The differences between Eastern and Western meditation, the psychology of meditation, research in the field, as well as applications of meditation to counseling will be discussed.     

Human Bonds

ABSTRACT There are three kinds of bonds between human beings: biological and natural; legal and artificial; social and voluntary. Marriage can be seen as an artificial and legal means of shifting the loose bonding of the third category of relationship into the deep and inescapable bonding of the first. The desire to create bonds of this type is widespread, but non-bonding, too, has been recommended either as good in itself—a way of achieving peace of mind or personal emancipation through wider relationships—or as necessary self-denial for some higher cause. In the latter case, the bonds of family are seen as a positive good, a view shared, though for different reasons, by religious and political conservatives and by revisionist feminists.
In contrast to this, three philosophical conceptions which would favour unbonding, or detachment from emotional ties, are categorised here as (a) the Stoic, (b) the Existentialist and (c) the Feminist. Within the Feminist ideal, it is radical, rather than liberal or socialist feminism that has most in common with Stoic or Existentialist ideals. These ideals are considered, together with various alternatives to marriage, and are judged not to override the need for deep personal bonds between human beings. These personal bonds of love and commitment are compared with the alternative bonds of religion and politics and it is concluded that, whatever forms they take, personal bonds have fundamental moral priority in the lives of human beings.