bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Transition Considerations for Children
Authors: Key Aidan
Published: June 2023

Chapter 6 explores the simple steps that are part of a child’s social transition, while also providing a more in-depth discussion of the medical components that may or may not be part of that child’s overall gender transition. While this information may seem less relevant to a teacher or principal in their day-to-day experience with students, it is important because it serves to clarify the possible steps a youth may undergo as they explore and define their gender over time. Just as importantly, this information addresses the intense curiosity often associated with a child’s transition. The emphasis in this chapter is to provide adults with a more comprehensive picture of the many variables that could be part of a child’s transition in the hopes of greatly diminishing the fear that comes with the inaccurate and indiscriminate approach of “Do I or don’t I allow my child to transition?”
Challenges Faced by Trans Children
Authors: Key Aidan
Published: June 2023

Chapter 7 focuses on the experiences of gender-diverse children as they explore and/or embrace their gender identity. While much of this book addresses the societal tension that is prevalent today, the daily pressures, barriers, and challenges these children face is often overlooked, diminished, or misunderstood. This chapter brings these challenges into focus and allows us to see the impact of the internal and external pressures on a child’s health and well-being. Educators and parents will better understand the significant burden that is inadvertently placed on the child and gain increased awareness of the need for adults to begin to shoulder the lion’s share of that burden.
How to Talk to Children about Gender
Authors: Key Aidan
Published: June 2023

Chapter 8 guides us on a path of remembering what gender meant to us when we were children. The reader is able to return to the simplicity of how any of us experienced gender at the youngest of ages and how that evolved, shifted, and gained complexity as we matured. A return to that simplicity provides us with the tools needed to discuss gender—and gender differences—with children of any age and in developmentally, age-appropriate ways. With concrete examples provided throughout, we better understand not only how to meet children where they are but also provide them context for the experiences of their transgender peers. This chapter guides the reader on how to not only discuss gender diversity but how to create an expansive conversation that includes the experiences and identities of all children.
How to Talk to Parents about Gender
Authors: Key Aidan
Published: June 2023

Chapter 9 delves into an area of top concern—the parents of school-aged children. Addressing the questions and inquiries of youth regarding their transgender peers is largely a matter-of-fact dialogue compared to navigating the complexities that adults bring to the table. In this chapter, we explore these complexities, some of which include parents with heightened emotions, apprehension, and misperceptions, and how to acknowledge and respond to them. The author identifies many of the common areas of contention that arise and provides concrete steps to engage in respectful dialogue with parents that centers the needs, safety, and privacy of all students.
Parental Advocacy for Gender-Diverse Children in School
Authors: Key Aidan
Published: June 2023

Chapter 12 delivers essential guidance for parents who are navigating their child’s gender journey. This chapter provides unique standalone content, including a checklist of questions to ask school administrators. As crucial as family support is for children, parents also need to build a strong network of support and this chapter outlines resources that will assist parents in building a foundation of support as they advocate for both their children and themselves. This foundation will give parents the confidence to successfully advocate for their child’s safety, privacy, and well-being.
Epilogue
Authors: Key Aidan
Published: June 2023

The epilogue challenges the notion of a post-gender world. Learning is a process of discovery—for educators, for families, and for the children themselves. What comes next is listening and learning. This book can help educators, families, and teaching institutions to look beyond personal experience, belief systems, and familial constructs to see the world in a much more empathic way. This chapter is really a call for new beginnings, for embracing change.
Augustine, Martyrdom, and Classical Rhetoric
Authors: Ployd Adam
Published: June 2023

This book places Augustine’s martyr discourse in the context of classical rhetoric in order to flesh out the claim that such discourse is inherently rhetorical. It is argued that Augustine’s martyr discourse can be understood as rhetorical in three ways: First, Augustine develops and deploys his understanding of martyrdom within particular rhetorical contexts. This is the weakest and most general sense of “rhetorical” that will appear in this study, falling short of, yet providing the necessary context for, the more technical analyses that make up the heart of the book. Second, Augustine uses techniques of classical rhetorical argumentation to construct his martyrs and to create their theological significance. This claim refers less to techniques of ornamentation or style than it does to those techniques more associated with the category of inventio and to some degree dispositio. Third, in Augustine’s depiction, the martyrs themselves are ideal Christian rhetors.
The Context of the Martyrs
Authors: Ployd Adam
Published: June 2023

This chapter establishes the rhetorical contexts for Augustine’s martyr discourse by tracing the history of the cult of the martyrs in North Africa from the late second century up to Augustine’s own day. It highlights the particular zeal for the cult in this region through discussions of the Scillitan martyrs, Perpetua and Felicity, Tertullian, Cyprian, and the Donatists, as well as excerpts from Augustine’s own testimony to practices related to the cult. The chapter concludes by examining the role of martyr rhetoric in two polemical contexts not usually associated with martyrdom: Manichaeanism and Pelagianism. This analysis provides the background for the chapters that follow.
The Example of the Martyrs
Authors: Ployd Adam
Published: June 2023

This chapter examines Augustine’s use of the martyrs as rhetorical exempla, that is, models for virtue. It first explicates the nature of exempla within classical rhetorical theory before analyzing Augustine’s use of Christ as the model martyr, the martyrs as model Christians, and especially the martyrs as models for proper cultic practice. The chapter concludes with a look at nominal etymology—Augustine’s explanation of the significance of the martyrs’ names—as a further illustration of the importance of exempla in his martyr discourse. Exempla represent a primary way in which Augustine deploys the martyrs in his rhetoric and will therefore reappear through the book.
The Rhetoric of the Martyrs
Authors: Ployd Adam
Published: June 2023

This final chapter argues that Augustine’s martyrs should be understood as Christian versions of the classical ideal of the rhetor and statesman. After tracing the origins of these civic ideals in Plato, Cicero, and Quintilian, this chapter shows how Augustine transforms his inherited tradition on ideal rhetors and statesmen before arguing that the martyrs, in his telling, conform to this Christian version of the ideal. The chapter concludes by crafting a theological vision of the martyr as a Christian rhetor and statesman calling into being and converting people to the virtues of the church, all as part of God’s providential ordering of salvation.
Conclusion
Authors: Ployd Adam
Published: June 2023

The conclusion restates the three main ways in which Augustine’s martyr discourse may be considered rhetorical: (1) it takes place within significant rhetorical contexts; (2) it deploys argumentative techniques drawn from the canon of classical rhetoric; and (3) the martyrs themselves become, in Augustine’s hands, ideal rhetors and statesmen. To demonstrate that Augustine is not entirely unique, the chapter provides a reading of three martyr texts from fourth- and fifth-century Greek Christian authors: Asterius of Amasea, John Chrysostom, and Basil of Caesarea. These comparative examples allow us to see that Augustine is part of a larger rhetorical project in late antique Christian martyr discourse, though his contribution may make the most theologically substantive contribution.
The natural science study of so-called psychic activity in higher animals
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The specific title of my lecture today, dedicated to the memory of Thomas Huxley—the great natural scientist and a most vigorous champion of the greatest biological concept, the theory of evolution—is The natural science study of so-called psychic activity in higher animals. Allow me to begin from a little story about something that happened in my laboratory several years ago. Among my laboratory colleagues, one young doctor stood out. He showed a lively mind that appreciated the joys and triumphs of research. Great was my astonishment at seeing this true friend of the laboratory reveal a genuine and deep indignation when he first heard of our plans to study canine psychic activity in the same laboratory and using the same methods we had used to solve various physiological questions. No arguments we provided worked with him; he predicted and wished us all sorts of failures. And all this, as we were able to understand, was because in his view those exalted and inimitable things he presumed to exist in the spiritual world of man and the higher animals not only could not be studied effectively in our physiological laboratories, but the crudeness of our actions was practically an insult to them.
On Dr. Gorshkov’s cortical taste centers
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

In his 1901 dissertation Dr. Gorshkov reached the conclusion, based on his experiments, that the anterior regions of gg. sylviatici and ectosylvii are the place where the taste centers are located. After the cortex of these gyri was removed bilaterally, claims the author, the dog peacefully ate meat sprinkled with powdered table salt, citric acid, or quinine, or soaked in solutions of 32% salt, 9.6% acid, or 5% quinine. Dr. Tikhomirov, planning to use the results of these experiments for his own analysis of conditional salivary reflexes, began by repeating Dr. Gorshkov’s experiments, but did not find anything of the sort the author had described.
Some most general points regarding the mechanism of the highest parts of the central nervous system as revealed by the study of the conditional reflexes
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Six or seven years ago I and my colleagues made our first attempt to subject the whole nervous activity—without the slightest omission—of higher animals (specifically, dogs) to an objective investigation, absolutely excluding any conclusions whatsoever about animal activity that would be based on an analogy with our inner world. From our point of view, all the nervous activity of an animal could be viewed as a reflex, more specifically, as two types of reflex: the common one, which had been studied for a long time and which we dubbed unconditional, and a new one, which subsumed all the remaining nervous activity and which we called conditional.
Toward establishing the general characteristic of complex-nervous phenomena
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

As we work on the conditional reflexes, we have observed for quite some time that various agents that are made into conditional stimuli first work in a more general way and only later, as reinforcement by the unconditional reflex continues, become more and more specialized. This must be considered the rule, the law for all the stimuli that are delivered through all analyzers (sensory organs). This gradual specialization, differentiation of conditional stimulating agents seemed most naturally explained as inhibition of all the remaining parts of the analyzer activity except the given one.
General comments on the centers of the cerebral hemispheres
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The brain, of course, is a giant topic, which—both the brain structure and brain functions—will obviously keep many, many generations of researchers busy. For this reason, talking about some final conclusions about a certain type or layout of the brain and so on is not only premature now, but will be so for a long time to come. Consequently, at present everything we do amounts to gathering empirical material. At any time, however, we need a certain general conception of the subject, so that we have something to peg our data onto so as to move forward with something in hand, something to hypothesize for the next step in our research. Such hypothesizing is a requirement in scientific endeavor.
The challenges and operation of a state-of-the-art research laboratory for the normal activity of the highest part of the central nervous system in the higher animals
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

First of all I feel obligated to express my deepest gratitude to the Regents of the Khristofor Semenovich Ledentsov Society for the Advancement of Experimental Sciences and Their Practical Application for the great honor granted me by the invitation to participate in today’s celebratory session of the Society to commemorate its founder Khristofor Semenovich Ledentsov. A year ago, also here in Moscow, at the first plenary meeting of the XIIth Congress of Russian Naturalists and Physicians, I had the honor and opportunity of drawing the audience’s attention to the question of methods for researching the highest and the most complex activity of animals, which until recent times was usually examined using subjective methods, namely, by analogy with the inner state of man. In my presentation then, based on my decade-long work with my numerous coworkers.
About the food center
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Within these walls, numerous reports on the conditional salivary reflexes have been presented. Our claims about them assume one critical point that so far has remained in the shadows and that is nevertheless always inextricably connected with the conditional reflexes; not a single conditional reflex ever occurs without its participation. This point pertains to one department within the central nervous system that is as real as the respiratory center, to which it is fully analogous, although you will probably never see anything about it in any physiology textbook or even in a professional handbook. Oddly enough, if you ever do come across it, you will find it in old rather than new textbooks.
The dog with the cerebral skin analyzer destroyed
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Our report today will consist primarily of a series of experiments. First let’s familiarize ourselves with and take a careful look at the following situations. The dog is placed on the floor and, as you see, it remains like this in the same spot for a very long time, as if its feet are frozen to the floor. A minute, 5 minutes, 20 minutes can pass like this. The dog moves its head, but does not move its legs or does it very rarely. A very special reason would be needed for the dog to move away from this spot. The next symptom: I stroke the dog very lightly, the dog barks and growls. I can keep doing this for hours, and it will keep evoking this threatening barking reaction. And this is how it has been for months. When this animal was normal, it had a number of conditional reflexes developed: two kinds of skin reflexes—one thermal and one mechanical—and then one sound reflex. The oldest of these conditional reflexes was the one tied to the mechanical skin stimulation, so that at each application of the pricker to the skin, saliva flowed.
Summary of results of experiments with extirpation of different parts of the cerebral hemispheres: The conditional reflex method
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

When the question of today’s presentation came up, I spent some time pondering what to do: should I focus on a small topic within the subject, should I describe and discuss the results of a series of some related experiments, or should I present a general overview of a large number of our researches? I decided to do the latter. A general survey, it seems, will be more instructive for my listeners, and it will be useful for us as well. It’s surely quite beneficial, after all, to summarize what has been done over the many years of our work, to draw some conclusions, to correlate the results obtained, to think them through, to determine more clearly what’s still lacking, and to set our goals and tasks for the future.
Internal inhibition as a function of the cerebral hemispheres
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

It has been more than ten years since I took my chances and began to study the most complex nervous relations of a higher animal (the dog) to the surrounding world. These relations had normally been understood and analyzed by analogy to our own inner, subjective life, and were therefore called psychic. I set a goal to pursue them objectively, purely from the outside, the way we physiologists do with regard to all other physiological phenomena. For over ten years I and my coworkers have been vigorously working on this problem. We have collected considerable data, but they have been published only in Russian, in the form of doctoral dissertations and not very extensive reports to scientific societies.
Objective research on the higher nervous activity of animals
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

This is the second time that I have been granted the high honor and deep gratification of participating in celebrating the opening of activities of the extraordinary Russian societies born here in Moscow and testifying to the great and active appreciation by the Moscow community of the powerful impact of science on life. I have in mind the Ledentsov Society and the Society for the Institute of Science. At this momentous celebration of Russian science today, I beg your permission to draw your attention to Russian research on one of the most exciting chapters in modern biology.
The laboratory for research on activity of the central nervous system of higher animals constructed according to plans by Academician I. P. Pavlov and E. A. Ganike, using resources donated by the Kh. S. Ledentsov Society
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The said laboratory is attached to the physiology department of the Institute of Experimental Medicine. At present, the building has been roofed. It has three stories. The first and third floors are designated for animal experiments. There are a total of eight laboratory rooms; stalls for the animals are marked on the floor plan with the letter a; b is the corridor with electrical and other equipment. The middle, or second, floor has lower ceilings but an identical floor plan, except for the stalls; it houses the hydraulic and other test instruments. The guiding principles for the construction of the laboratory involved the following measures with the goal of eliminating vibration and extraneous sounds in the rooms where animal experiments take place.
Researching the higher nervous activity
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The year 1870, with the work by Hitzig and Fritsch, was a most remarkable landmark for the physiology of the central nervous system. The research produced by these authors became the starting point for a tremendous number of extremely important experiments in the physiology of the cerebral hemispheres. Amazingly, it helped diagnose and even treat some pathological symptoms related to certain illnesses of the cerebral hemispheres in humans. And what made it all possible? It seems to me that the reason was that these were all purely physiological facts, residing fully within the realm of physiologists’ competence.
The special lability of internal inhibition in conditional reflexes
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The theory of conditional reflexes, to which I and my many colleagues have already devoted more than 10 years of our research activity, consists of several chapters. In the chapter dealing with the inhibition of conditional reflexes, we distinguish three types of inhibition: soporific, external, and internal. Today’s report will be on the general characteristics of the internal inhibition. The internal inhibition occurs every time when an established conditional stimulus of some physiological work is temporarily or always (in the latter case, under a certain clearly defined condition) repeated without being accompanied by the unconditional stimulus which was used to develop it.
The “real physiology” of the brain
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The president of the Organizing Committee of this congress has invited me to make a presentation at the psychology section about the research on the activity of the brain carried out in the laboratories I direct. I accepted this invitation with great enthusiasm, feeling a great need to exchange ideas on this burning question of our days with the representatives of psychology. Several years ago our esteemed president wrote these lines: “When physiologists create alongside psychology a physiology of the brain—I mean a real physiology, rather than a copy of psychology they offer to us under this name, a physiology that is capable of speaking for itself and without being prompted by psychology word for word what to say—then we will see if it makes sense to abolish human psychology and, hence, comparative psychology.
Data for the physiology of sleep
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

I have entitled my talk “Conditions for the active and restful states of the cerebral hemispheres”. By the restful state I mean the somnolent state, as opposed to the state of alertness. The whole question is obviously enormous in scope, and all I have in mind here is to formulate it in general terms, to problematize it for science. What I will say will only be small fragments of this vast topic, which will eventually emerge in its full enormity ready to be fully worked on. In his classic work “The Reflexes of the Brain”, 50 years ago, Prof. I. M. Sechenov anticipated the gist of the main requirement implied by this topic with astounding intellectual acuity.
The purpose reflex
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

In our research on the so-called conditional reflexes we often came across the phenomena of sleep. Since these phenomena seriously complicated the experiments we were conducting, disturbed them, disrupted their usual progression, we naturally ended up being forced to take on these sleep phenomena directly. Besides collecting isolated facts, two of our colleagues—N. A. Rozhanski? and M. K. Petrova—delved into this question especially systematically. N. A. Rozhanski? researched that type of sleep, that somnolent state of the animal which occurs, evidently, under the influence of monotonous indifferent stimuli, such as the isolation of the environment in which the animal finds itself during the experiments.
Psychiatry as a helper for the physiology of the cerebral hemispheres
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

It’s fair to say that in the process of analyzing normal nervous activity physiology has finally succeeded in establishing a different reflex type in addition to the inborn reflex, a long-accepted basic and elementary nervous activity; what we established is just as basic but a somewhat more complex kind of reflex—the acquired reflex. At this juncture, further research can conceivably be pursued along the following lines. On the one hand, we now need, first and foremost, to define and systematize all the inborn reflexes, as they form the basic permanent foundation on which the gigantic structure of the acquired reflexes is built. The systematization of the acquired reflexes will inevitably have to rest upon a classification of the inborn reflexes. This amounts, so to speak, to the particular morphology of reflex activity. On the other hand, what must be pursued is the laws and mechanisms of reflex activity for both the inborn and the acquired reflexes. Needless to say, the study of inborn reflex activity has been going on for a long time and will continue; the study of acquired reflex activity, on the other hand, being a novel subject that was launched only recently, should naturally command the main attention, as it promises quick and most abundant results.
The characteristics of the cerebral cortex in terms of changes in the excitability of its various points
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Almost from the very beginning of our objective study of the higher nervous activity (behavior) of animals, as it shows in conditional reflexes, we faced in our experimental setting the unpleasant fact of our subjects’ drowsiness and sleep. The animals (dogs) were normally put in an upright position on a stand with loops, stabilized by suspenders for their legs and a rope for their necks, which were all fastened to a top cross-beam of the stand. In this way our animal’s movements were restrained. The stand with the animal was located in a special room, with the experimenter also there, positioned in front of the dog. Later the experimenter was moved to a space outside the room, from where he manipulated the animal in various ways and also observed its reaction.
Another question to be addressed in the physiology of the cerebral hemispheres
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The physiologist faces the colossal challenge of having to make sense of the functioning of the cortical mass of the cerebral hemispheres. At present, of course, only preliminary attempts can be made to characterize separate features of this mass, attempts of a purely empirical nature. One of these attempts I take the liberty to make in this paper, based on many years of earlier and current research by me and my co-workers. We have long been engaged in the study of the reflexes we called conditional, that is, those formed under certain conditions in the course of the individual existence of the animal. Their formation is tied to the existence of the cerebral hemispheres; this means that they constitute a special function of these hemispheres.
The latest advances in the objective study of the higher nervous activity of animals
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Among the questions to be addressed next in the developing strictly objective physiology of the cerebral hemispheres is the question of the paired nature of the cerebral hemispheres. What is the significance of them being a pair? How are we to understand, to picture the simultaneous activity of the cerebral hemispheres? What in it is meant to be compensatory, and what—what benefits and redundancies—are obtained by the constant joint activity of the two hemispheres? Based on the existing scientific data, we know that there exists a certain division of labor between the two hemispheres. But the existing data also tell us that the absence (extirpation in experimental animals) of one hemisphere, with time, is almost or even fully compensated by the work of the remaining one. In the physiology of the conditional reflexes there is a series of experiments that puts the question of the pairing of the hemispheres’ activity point-blank.
Relations between excitation and inhibition, delimitation of excitation and inhibition, and experimental neuroses in dogs
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

It is with special pleasure that I take part in the celebration of the work begun 30 years ago by the distinguished scholar and passionate teacher, Petr Frantsevich Lesgaft, with support from an enlightened donor, work that has now been brought to a splendid conclusion. I proceed to the topic of my report. Strange as it may be, it was only recently that physiology came into full possession of the animal organism. The problem was that one of the most complex and most important parts of this organism, namely, the uppermost end of its nervous system—the cerebral hemispheres—was, despite the exceptional interest it presents, outside the uncontested sphere of competence of physiology.
Healthy and pathological states of the cerebral hemispheres
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

All the data introduced below concern the work of the cerebral hemispheres and were obtained using the method of conditional reflexes, reflexes formed during the individual existence of the animal. Since the concept of conditional reflexes hasn’t yet become generally known and accepted among physiologists, to avoid repetition, I refer the reader to my recent articles that appeared in this Archiv (1923). In the work of the cerebral hemispheres, based on clear empirical differences, we had to posit two kinds of inhibition, external and internal, to use our terminology. The former shows up in our conditional reflexes right away; the latter takes time to develop and is established gradually.
A trial excursion of a physiologist into the field of psychiatry
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

At the present time, based on the nearly 30-year-long trial carried out by me jointly with my numerous co-workers, I feel fully justified in asserting that all the external activity of a higher animal like the dog, just like its internal functions, can be studied with full success in a purely physiological way, that is, using physiological methods and physiological terminology, the terminology of the physiology of the nervous system. Our jointly developed empirical material presented below should serve as a proof of this assertion. The activity of the nervous system is directed, on the one hand, toward unification, integration of all parts of the organism, and, on the other, toward connecting the organism with the surrounding environment, toward balancing the organism’s system with external conditions.
On the physiology of the hypnotic state in the dog
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

For the last 30 years, I and my numerous co-workers have focused on the study of the activity of the higher parts of the brain—mainly the cerebral hemispheres—following a strictly objective research method, the method of the so-called conditional reflexes. By now we have collected considerable empirical data. These data pertain not only to normal activity of the parts I just mentioned, but to some extent also to their pathology and therapeutics. We have already experimentally created some indubitable neuroses in our experimental animals (dogs) and have treated them, and it already seems possible that we can reproduce in the same animals something analogous to what is called psychoses in humans. This motivated me to acquaint myself more seriously with psychiatry, of which practically no traces were left, so to speak, after I studied medicine as a student. Thanks to the kindness of my medical colleagues, especially Prof. P. A. Ostankov and Dr. I. O. Narbutovich, I have now been systematically observing various forms of mental disorders. The first of those I observed and studied was schizophrenia.
On neuroses in humans and animals
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Besides the routine historical method of hypnotizing animals (putting them on their backs and holding them for a while in that unnatural position), which amounts to producing a cataleptic hypnosis, our laboratories have had the possibility—while studying the normal activity of the higher parts of the brain—of investigating all sorts of very subtle manifestations of the hypnotic state in greater detail. As we have already established, the basic condition for this state to happen is a continual repetition of the same stimuli, which finally puts the receiving cortical cells into an inhibitory state, which, on the one hand, may have different degrees of intensity, and on the other, a different scope of spread over the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres and farther down into the brain. The pertinent facts are discussed in a book by one of us (I. P. Pavlov, Lectures on the Work of the Cerebral Hemispheres of the Brain).
On the possibility of merging the subjective and the objective
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

In The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol. 70, there is a paper by Dr. P. Schilder entitled “The somatic basis of the neurosis”, in which the author recognizes that in what we, I and my co-workers, called neurosis even in our experimental animals (dogs) studied by the conditional reflexes method, “all the phenomena of the neuroses are found”. This recognition by a specialist, of course, is very much appreciated by us. But I must emphatically disagree with what the author says further about the contrastive studies of these neuroses in humans and in animals. The author makes the following statement: “These important experiments of Pavlov and his school can be understood only if we look upon them in the light of our experiences in the neuroses. We cannot interpret the neurosis by means of the conditioned reflex, but by means of the psychic mechanisms we have studied in the neurosis we can certainly very well interpret what takes place in a conditioned reflex.”
A case of an experimental neurosis and its treatment in the weak type of nervous system
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

I suppose that this is my last opportunity to address a general meeting of my colleagues, and so I will take the liberty of presenting to your attention a general, maximally systematic and brief summary of my—jointly with my dear co-workers—last research project, which comprises fully half of my total physiological research; I will naturally repeat a lot of what has already been published. I pass this summary on to you together with my ardent dream of the majestic horizon ever-expanding before our field and of its increasingly profound influence on human nature and its destiny.
Feelings of possession (les sentiments d’emprise) and the ultra-paradoxical phase
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The cerebral hemispheres ceaselessly receive countless stimulations of differing nature and intensity from both the external world and the internal environment of the organism itself. Some of them are only checked out by them (the orientational reflex), others already have the most diverse unconditional and conditional effects established. All these meet up, bump against one another, interact, and must in the end fall into place achieve balance, end up, so to speak, as a dynamic stereotype.
An attempt at a physiological interpretation of obsessive neurosis and paranoia
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Would you be interested in printing this letter in your journal and in commenting on the considerations that occurred to me when I carefully studied your paper published last year entitled “Feelings in the mania of persecution”? I am a physiologist, who has lately been engaged, with his co-workers, in studying exclusively the physiological and pathological work of the higher part of the central nervous system in higher animals (the dog), work that corresponds to our higher nervous activity normally called psychic. You are a neurologist, psychiatrist, psychologist. One would think that we should pay attention to each other and join our efforts—for, after all, we study the activity of one and the same organ (concerning this last point there could hardly be any doubt nowadays).
Shared types of animal and human higher nervous activity
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The starting point for a physiological interpretation of these disorders were some new laboratory facts obtained during our research on conditional reflexes in dogs. When conditional stimuli are formed from various external agents (for example, in the conditional food reflexes), the animal’s first reaction to the newly established conditional stimulus is usually a movement toward this stimulus, i.e., the animal moves toward the place where the stimulus is. When the stimulus is within its reach, the animal even tries to touch it, and specifically with its mouth; for example, if the conditional stimulus is the turning on of an electric bulb, the dog licks it, and if the conditional stimulus is a sound, then (when food excitability is very high) the dog even snaps at the air with its mouth. In this way, as far as the animal is concerned the conditional stimulus has really become like a full surrogate for the food. When different conditional stimuli come from different parts of the surrounding space, the animal naturally turns to each one of them.
On the establishment of a new department at the Leningrad Postgraduate Medical Institute
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Out of the enormous amount of material generated by the research on the higher nervous activity in dogs using the method of conditional reflexes, I will discuss three points today, specifically related to pathological disorders of this activity. They are: the strength of the two basic nervous processes of excitation and inhibition, then the correlation of their strengths—their balance—and finally their mobility. These points, on the one hand, form the basis of the typology of higher nervous activity—and types, notably, play a big role in the genesis of nervous and so-called psychiatric diseases; on the other hand, they make it possible to capture the characteristic changes that occur in the pathological states of this activity.
The physiology and pathology of the higher nervous activity
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The Institute for Physicians’ Refinement received a very exciting gift for its fiftieth anniversary—a new Department of Physiology and Pathology of Higher Nervous Activity, or, to put it in a more understandable way, an independent department dealing with neuroses based on a solid physiological foundation. The situation of the clinic of neuroses among other clinics can in all fairness be considered unfortunate. As far as their subject matter goes, neuroses should be closer to the department of psychiatry, as is already indirectly acknowledged by their nickname “little psychiatry”.
Navigating Cultural Memory
Authors: Mwambari David
Published: June 2023

This book analyzes how a master narrative of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi evolved into a hegemonic narrative. It identifies key actors of the evolution and enforcement of the master narrative in the first two decades after the genocide and civil war ended. Primary and secondary sources and rarely analyzed Rwandan folklore examine how Rwandans—identified as Champions, Antagonists, and Fatalists of the master narrative—responded through language; physical symbols of memory and art; and traditional and new media. It is argued that what has emerged as the master narrative and, over time, as the hegemonic narrative of the Genocide Against the Tutsi, was created from plural and fluid memorialization approaches, debates, tensions, and contradictions among mnemonic actors in Rwanda and beyond. It indicates that Champions struggle to maintain power to shape and classify responses to the master narrative, Antagonists and Fatalists equally mobilize tools to contest that power. The transmission of these debates within online “conversable spaces” potentially can fuel further tensions or present an opportunity for compassionate transformation. A relational approach to dignity and its significance is needed to transform polarizing narratives away from sources of competition, exclusion, and silence toward facilitating the construction and more peaceful relationships. Political conversations around the master narrative and violent histories are important for not only contemporary politics but also the key to Rwanda’s present and future peace and stability. The book contributes to postgenocide literature and policy debates on memory politics and scholarship on meanings of dignity.
Decolonial Approaches to Memory
Authors: Mwambari David
Published: June 2023

Chapter 1 focuses on major shifts in memory studies that have led to the transcultural and decolonial turns, opening avenues for scholars to examine Global South contexts in memory studies. The book addresses the wider debates of the interdisciplinary field of memory studies, which is still evolving. As a place to begin for interested readers, key concepts and ideas are analyzed that have informed the vast literature on acts of remembering the past, around the world. It is through examining these debates that Agaciro, or dignity, emerges as an alternative to current approaches. This chapter situates this book in the evolving debates within memory studies around decolonization and decentering Global North perspectives, to which this book hopes to contribute.
Rwandan Narratives and Rwandan Pasts
Authors: Mwambari David
Published: June 2023

The second chapter provides a historical background of Rwanda. This chapter argues that in order to understand the emergence, evolution, enforcement, and responses to the current master narrative of the genocide, it is important to locate present-day tensions into a longue durée analysis of previous master narratives in Rwanda and how they relate to power, violence, and marginalization. It focuses on the role of master narratives in governance and legitimacy and examines how previous master narratives evolved into hegemonic narratives, as well as how these hegemonic narratives sometimes became dissident narratives through political developments. The chapter highlights the fluidity with which narratives have evolved from marginalization to dominance and then back again.
Imprinting the Land with the Materials of Memory
Authors: Mwambari David
Published: June 2023

Chapter 4 then shows how the hegemonic master narrative gained prominence in Rwanda through the construction of physical symbols and through institutions and laws created to guard it from denialism. While physical symbols such as memorials might seem permanent, they also have evolved to serve different and sometimes contentious political, community, and individual purposes. They are also at the center of debates between local and international actors as well as among Champions, Antagonists, and Fatalists. This chapter examines how some memorials emerged and evolved using the universalized Holocaust model and other international approaches to reconciliation, and then the chapter analyzes the community-level official commemorations observed during fieldwork. The chapter shows how the master narrative was enforced during ceremonies and around memorials during the first two decades after the genocide. This is especially the case for the mainstream Kigali Genocide Memorial, which has become the center stage of genocide memory politics in Rwanda.
Expressing Memory after Genocide
Authors: Mwambari David
Published: June 2023

Chapter 6 builds on the previous chapter to provide concrete examples of this reward and punishment approach to enforcing the official narrative in the first 20 years after the genocide. It examines how three individual artists emerged as prominent Champions, Antagonists, and Fatalists, respectively. One of them, Kizito Mihigo, was a genocide survivor who became an Antagonist, while Edouard Bamporiki—who identified as being from a radical Hutu family—became a Champion. Dorcy Rugamba’s artistic output categorized him as a Fatalist, speaking to both local and diaspora communities and to international audiences without capitalizing on genocide memory to pronounce a political position in support or against the hegemonic master narrative. This chapter brings a much-needed analysis of artists and art to memory studies, where such analyses have been historically neglected. It develops a nuanced discussion of postgenocide Rwanda to show that when it comes to youth, who are the majority in the country, it is not about their identity backgrounds. Instead, there are many other economic, social, and political factors that inform one’s position as a Champion, Antagonist, or Fatalist, and that can shift one’s position over time. This discussion contributes to growing debates in memory studies that challenge the concepts of perpetrators, survivors, and bystanders as fixed categories that explain people’s relationship to mass violence. It also contributes to the evolving literature on intergenerational memory politics in the digital age.
The Media, Commemoration, and the Enforcement of the Master Narrative
Authors: Mwambari David
Published: June 2023

Chapter 7 evaluates how various actors used the evolving media landscape to communicate their positions as Champions, Antagonists, or Fatalists. It shows how the government and its representatives rewarded Champions who used the media to spread the hegemonic master narrative globally and punished Antagonists through the implementation of genocide denial laws. This chapter argues that the media remains a crucial and influential space for narratives about the genocide—much like it was in promoting violence leading up to and during the 1994 genocide. It is a space where the malleability of the master narrative and its purpose are both evident and its interactions with the dynamic landscape of the digital age. The chapter relies on primary and secondary sources, including social media, to argue the wildfire nature of these evolving digital cultures—that afford the hegemonic narrative an opportunity to evolve further and spread but simultaneously threaten its very durability by making people vulnerable to “fake news” and the limits of enforcement. These questions are especially salient given that, as described in Chapter 2, previous master narratives in Rwanda emerged, evolved, and were enforced for a period of time but eventually became marginalized and considered dissident. This analysis contributes to emerging debates in memory studies, especially in an age of dissident and often decolonial movements that are using online spaces to challenge hardened hegemonic master narratives around the world, including in the Global North. These dissident narratives are sometimes silenced despite assumptions that democratic countries do not suppress dissident narratives.
Conclusion
Authors: Mwambari David
Published: June 2023

This chapter revisits the core arguments and proposes opportunities for future research in Rwanda and beyond. An analysis of sources over the first two decades postgenocide shows that Rwanda’s approach to coming to terms with its violent past is characterized by contradictions. When it comes to Rwanda’s memory politics, especially current tense debates among memory actors in both Rwanda and among the diaspora, it is argued there are crucial spaces toto foster such debates into peaceful conversations. Proposed is an Agaciro approach from Rwandan philosophy that centers an understanding of dignity that is not only about the individual’s rights but also relating to another’s dignity and “utu” (or being). This makes space for compassionate discussion of what a dignity-centered approach in memory studies would mean for examining multiple narratives about past violent events, regardless of geography or a country’s (un)democratic status. Such an approach allows locating and studying interlinkages between memory forms emerging from mourning experiences from the Global South and those in the Global North. It also allows interrogating the power dynamics between these different approaches when actors crafting narratives about recent or distant violent histories. A relational dignity turn advocates for each context to first look within its own history and philosophy for coming to terms with the past while recognizing other approaches in circulation in other contexts but without insisting on one being superior than than the others. The localized forms of remembering should be included in universal or international practices of mourning.