Transactional and Contextual Invalidation between the Parents of Disturbed Families: A Comparative Study

This study was based on a standard task — the discussion of the question, “How, out of all the millions of people in the world, did the two of you get together?”— administered to the parents in “disturbed” and “non-disturbed” families. The family disturbance in the 46 families was classified according to its presence or absence, its degree, and its kind. The diagnoses were: schizophrenias (S), delinquency (D), under-achievement and/or enuresis, or psychosomatic complaints (U), ulcerative colitis (UC), and non-disturbed (N). Seven scales were used to score the parents' verbal exchanges. Three scales that measure transactional and contextual validation and invalidation significantly differentiated the groups. Mutual validation was maximal in the N couples and minimal in the D and S couples. Invalidation between the D and S couples appeared to arise from their unsuccessful metacommunications.     

SOSA'S MOORE AND THE NEW DOGMATISTS

Abstract: Some seventy years ago, G. E. Moore invoked his own sensory experience (as of a hand before him in the right circumstances), added some philosophical analysis about externality, and took himself to have offered his "Proof" of the existence of an external world. Current neo-Mooreans either reject completely the standard negative assessment of the Proof or qualify it substantially. For Sosa, the Proof can be persuasive, but only when read literally as offering reasons for the conclusion that there is at least one external object—rather than that the prover is justified in believing, or even knowing, that there is at least one external object. Sosa, then, is a neo-Moorean—though not of the sort we might expect in light of the ongoing debate about the Proof. I argue that Sosa needs to say more about the circularity often thought to vitiate the Proof before we can accept his view.     

Oneiric activity and the analytical process A semiotic perspective on Willy Baranger's theory of dreams1

This author reconsiders, from a semiotic perspective, the theoretical and technical ideas developed by Willy and Madeleine Baranger, especially W. Baranger's views on the function of dreams, the status of oneiric symbols and the further clinical‐technical use of dreams in the context of the intersubjective dynamic fi eld, together with the basic unconscious fantasy that emerges in the analytic situation. She attempts to relate the Barangers' ideas to others arising from Peirce's analytic semiotics that would support a triadic conceptualization of dreams. The need to incorporate a pragmatic view of communication and of the processes of production of sense as contributions to dream metapsychology and interpretation in the case of non‐neurotic patients is particularly emphasized. On the basis of the hypothesis of a described series of triads underlying the production and retelling of dreams, the acknowledgment of these produced/told dreams as intentional signs allows the presence of a continuous process of semiosis to be proposed. The author introduces clinical material to illustrate the communicative value of dreams through the textual analysis of the report and accompanying associations of three dreams. Such analysis takes a linguistic pragmatics approach that examines those aspects of meaning not accounted for by a restricted semantic theory.