bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conduct Without Belief and Works of Art Without Viewers
Authors: Veyne Paul
Published: March 2007

It is said that reality is stronger than any description we can make of it, and we must admit that atrocities, when we see them, go beyond any idea we may have had of them. On the other hand, when it is a question of values and beliefs, the contrary is true: reality is much less than its representation and the ideas it professes. This loss of energy is called indifference. Madame Bovary believed that in Naples happiness was as firmly rooted as the orange trees and as strong as stone. The wisdom of nations knows that that is not the case: “We hope for Paradise but as late as possible,” affirms a Christian proverb. This indifference poses a problem or an entire series of problems (Georg Simmel's work could be considered from that point of view) unless it arises from all our errors, spontaneous or scientific, concerning man and society. I do not know where I read, or dreamed, the story of a young ethnologist who went to study a tribe that was said to believe that the world would come to an end if the priests let the sacred fire go out. He assumed that the priests were as anxious as though they controlled the detonator of an atomic bomb. Admitted into the temple of the fire, he saw the peaceful religious going about routine tasks. Reality is rarely emphatic. Rites and customs, for example, reflect the beliefs of a society. Paintings and sculptures show what the society believes or serve to make it believe what it sees. Sculpture in cathedrals were the bible of the illiterate. Is that really certain? We notice that most often people perform the rites without believing in their significance and, in any case, without interest in them, because the liturgy is not a means of communication giving information. They do not look at the images. (How many Parisians have looked at the Napoleonic bas-reliefs on the Vendôme column?) and if they tried to do so, they would not be able to decipher their iconography or even see them: placed too high, the images are often undecipherable. So it is necessary to sketch out a sociology of art in which the art work, far from conveying an iconography and an ideology, is a decor that we do not even look at, that we can hardly see and that is however very important. The study of all these insufficiencies would be a vast program. Here we will confine ourselves to art.
“Theory Incommensurability” and Kuhn's History of Science
Authors: Keita Lansana
Published: March 2007

Kuhn's theory of scientific change is founded on the idea that there are minimal defensible grounds for the claim that the history of science is characterized by the cumulative growth of knowledge. According to Kuhn, revolutionary theories in the history of science cannot be perceived as logical and empirical derivations from their predecessors since, quite often, the research methods, theoretical assumptions and the empirical findings of the former are incompatible with the latter. Thus, the analysis of each novel scientific theory must begin with a recognition of the epistemological and ontological independence of that theory's paradigm.
Alternative Models of Scientific Rationality: Theorisation in Classical Indian Sciences
Authors: Shekhawat Virendra
Published: March 2007

The roots of scientific epistemology have generally been recognized in the Greeks, Aristotle and Euclid,—the former representing an empiricist trend whereas the latter representing a rationalist trend. Very little is known about classical Indian scientific epistemologies which are generally considered at least two centuries earlier than Aristotle. Inspired by the Aristotelian and Euclidean models of scientific rationality, various new models have flourished in contemporary Western thought, the prominent ones being the logical-empiricist-inductivist model (Reichenbach), the hypothet-ico-deductivist-falsificationist model (Popper), conventionalist-rationalist model (Pioncaré, Duhem), dialectical-historicist model (Kuhn), and rationalist-historicist model (Lakatos, Feyerabend). While the researches in and debates about these models are still going on, it may be profitable to examine the models of scientific rationality that are presupposed in the most prominent classical Indian sciences such as Yoga, Vyākarana, Jyotisa Siddhānt, and Ayurvijñan. All these sciences have enjoyed an uninterrupted continuity ever since their origin although their evolution has suffered generally after 1200 A.D. (save Yoga) due to cultural-historical vicissitudes.
The Invention of America Imaginary Signs of the Discovery and Construction of Utopia
Authors: Ainsa Fernando
Published: March 2007

“The ships that invented regions were directed toward the West”, announced Juan de Castellanos in 1587 in his Elegías dedicated to Christopher Columbus, and at the beginning of the 16th century Hernán Pérez de Oliva wrote a Historia de la invención de las Indias. The use of the word invention when speaking of the discovery of America may seem to be a semantic confusion or poetic license, viewed from the contemporary perspective of a discipline with well-defined limits, such as geography, since we usually understand invention as the transformation of things by man's intervention, while discovery is finding something that already existed so as to make it known to others.
Man of Light or Superman? a Problem of Islamic Mystical Anthropology
Authors: Schimmel Annemarie
Published: March 2007

What is man? “The feather of an angel was brought and tied to a donkey's tail that the donkey perhaps might turn into an angel”.

Thus writes the greatest of all Persian-writing mystical poets of Islam, Maulânâ Jalâladdân Rûmî (1207-1273) in his conversations, Fîhi mâ fîhi, when pointing to the mystery of man's existence : man is able to attain a rank superior to that of the angels (who have no free will and are eternally good) provided he develops his God-given faculties of reason and love; but he can sink lower than a beast if he neglects his spiritual powers and falls a prey to sensual pleasures and crimes owing to the misuse of his rational faculties.
The Time-Like Nature of Mind: On Mind Functions as Tem Poral Patterns of the Neural Network
Authors: Fischer Roland
Published: March 2007

It follows from the temporal nature of mind—the main concern of this essay—that mind functions are not localized in brain space.“ Time is extendedness, probably of the mind itself”, concludes Saint Augustine in Book XI of his Confessions (26.33), and, in our days, this extendedness can be made visible through an oscilloscopic “line” or trace of slow potentials. These graded, additive (not all-or-none) autorhythmic and seemingly self-generating potentials are primary events recorded at synapses. Autorhythmic brain structures (Zabara, 1973) appear to be the source of time frames, while a change in time frames (as reflected in the EEG) leads to synchronization and desynchronization of brain structures respectively. Synchronization forms a homogeneous time domain, such as obtained during rhythmic exercises, chanting, listening to music and mental processes that are the hallmark of religious practices (Rogers, 1973). Desynchronization of brain structures on the other hand marks a functional independence of neuronal elements with each element available for separate channels of data processing, for example, during hallucinogenic drug-induced central sympathetic arousal, that is, a waking dream state (Fischer, 1979).
Fin De Siècle, End of the “Globe Style”?
Authors: Por Peter
Published: March 2007

Using this bit of dialogue from Oscar Wilde as introduction, we propose to demonstrate the pertinence of the hostess’ remark and to show that the “Fin de siècle” really did mark a certain “Fin du globe”, connoting as it does the decline of art, the end of an era and of the eras in which artistic experience, and even experience of the world, was realized in a specific style. It was indeed the end of what we will here call “globe style”.

For a long time the notion of style had a very general significance. The origin of the word can no doubt be traced back to the term stilus, designating the punch that monks used for writing, and also probably an Egyptian etymon signifying a pillar. Through metonymic extensions the name of the instrument (an instrument, nevertheless, used in a highly intellectual activity) and the name of the individual work (but a work of cultural and artistic nature) have been subject to generalization and ultimately designate the specific quality of a phenomenon. Obviously it was necessary that this phenomenon be confirmed and made official through imitation and tradition. As for generalization of the phenomenon of style, its scope has become almost unlimited, taking in all forms of creative activity whether artistic or not, and ultimately almost all beings as long as they have assumed a form hallowed by tradition.
The French Revolution and the Education of the Young Marx
Authors: Rubel Maximilien
Published: March 2007

The confession quoted above by way of introduction reveals with tragic sincerity the fatal passion of an overly avid reader, unlimited in curiosity certainly but fully conscious of the demanding finality of the work he had to accomplish: the scientific critique of an international system of social organization, “in which man is a humiliated, enslaved, abandoned and scornful being” (1844). Cultivating poetry and philosophy in a world felt to be unlivable meant becoming an accomplice of those individuals and institutions principally responsible for the barbarity called modern civilization. But to combat this, it was necessary to scour the murky historical horizon issued from a distant past where only great social revolutions marked the stages of a progression seen as ambiguous because realized by means of unspeakable phenomena of regression. Only one revolution took place under the contradictory sign of an emancipation with universal ambitions and of a decline with indelible consequences: the French Revolution. Conclusion as well as beginning, it was studied by Marx as a unique event, both in relation to its antecedents as well as its liberating promises. Although it is true that Marx “never wrote a history of the ancien régime”, a hardly significant remark, it is no less true that he studied and compiled, with the eagerness of a schoolboy enthralled by history, an enormous mass of documentation that can “help understand how (the ancien regime) gave birth to the Revolution”, despite what François Furet might think (Marx et la Révolution française, Paris, 1986, p. 79). Moreover, the author of Das Kapital drew from the revolutionary history of France the inspiration for a “poetry of the future” in which the following vision was designed:

“The old bourgeois society, with its classes and its class antagonism, gave way to an association in which the free development of each individual is the condition for the free development of the whole” (1848).
Romanticizing the Tribe: Stereotypes in Literary Portraits of Tribal Cultures
Authors: Rath Sura P.
Published: March 2007

Every civilized society treasures through its folk tales and folk myths the elements of its native tribal life as points of cultural reference. The tribe not only acts as a foil to our culture, but also sustains its very being and gauges the degree of progress and change in the civilization that we uphold. This interdependence has a vital force: insofar as civilized societies define themselves by the distance they have built up between themselves and their respective primitive societies, a civilized culture without its indigenous tribal past risks the authenticity of its process of change to challenge and doubt. Hence, our adulation of distance in both time and space between ourselves and our tribal forefathers, and our eagerness to recognize, maintain, and even glorify our tribes—a necessary syllogism in our postulation of a self-preserving argument. In a peculiarly chiastic way, we thrive on our existential reliance on the very primitiveness that we seek to repudiate as characteristic of a world past. We celebrate our present by eulogizing our past, and to fit the tribes in the large scheme of our self-definition we iconize them. These idealized images hide a creative mask through which we embrace the romantic myths of our respective origins and progress; the parades we arrange for our tribal history—through performance on our streets, or through semantics in our literature—subtly embody this dependence.
Language Death and Disappearance: Causes and Circumstances
Authors: Wurm Stephen A.
Published: March 2007

Well over five thousand languages are known to exist or to have existed in the world, but hundreds of these are no longer living languages used by speakers and speech communities in their day-to-day activities and lives. Some of them lead a pseudolife as revered monuments of the past which still have some restricted and specialised roles to play today, such as Latin, Ancient Greek, Church Slavonic and others, but most of them are of interest and concern only to a small group of linguists, historians and some other experts who look at the past. Many languages have disappeared without being known to us in any great detail, with only some fragmentary materials in them - written or noted down by speakers or observers of them hundreds or even thousands of years ago - at our disposal to give us some idea as to what those languages were like. Others have disappeared without even that scanty information about their nature being available to us; only their names are known from historical records, or perhaps some remarks were written down by someone many years ago and were preserved over the ages to tell us something about some special features of such a language or such languages and who and what kind of people their speakers were. Many other languages, certainly a much larger number than the dead languages about which we know something, have disappeared without our knowing anything of or about them.
The Problem of Endangered Languages in the USSR
Authors: Kibrik Aleksandr E.
Published: March 2007

About 130 languages are currently spoken in the USSR. These languages differ considerably in their numbers of speakers, social status, scope and viability. Our primary interest in this paper will be with those languages that are in extreme danger of extinction in the near future.
From Passions to Drives
Authors: Pot Olivier
Published: March 2007

The eighteenth century, having inherited a pessimism from classical anthropology that its own ideology of progress had to absorb, seemed to have invented le mal de vivre. Clues to this condition are suggested by the etymology of the term vacuus: vacuousness of existence (“Everywhere I find a terrifying emptiness,” asserted the hero of a novel around 1769), and “a vague disquiet which permeates everything and finds nothing to calm it,” according to the definition of Jacques the Fatalist. Le mal de vivre was indeed an invention because, despite a terminology that was inspired by the theory of humors (“hysterical vapors” among women; “hypochondriac melancholy” for men), the philosophers and doctors of the Enlightenment already had envisaged the fatality of an anatomical “limit” for the etiology of “afflictions of the soul.” In this way, according to the Eléments de Physiologie (Elements of Physiology) of Diderot, the agitation of the imagination actually represented the degree of irritability, or of erethism, of the nervous system: “the dreams of young people in a state of innocence come from the extremities of the fibres (meaning the nervous fibres) which are the original carriers of obscure desires, vague disquiet, a melancholy whose cause they do not understand.” If we believe the article on “delight” (jouissance) in the Encyclopaedia, a “vague and melancholy disquiet,” which is linked in particular with the physiological changes occurring at puberty, constitutes a general and “normal” state of sensation, all “delight” implying by this definition the absence of disquiet in comparison with its external object. Reduced to its vibratile intensities, the “perceiving body” that is deprived of its totalizing metaphor becomes pulverized and fragmented into so many “desiring monads.” Like Condillac's statue, it destabilizes itself through the fields of force of the phenomenal world, completely obedient to the energy economy of other bodies that define its external frontier, left to the contradictory universal laws of attraction and repulsion that govern them: “Here below, each part, through a higher impulse, combines toward the central harmony of a whole. We collide with one another and are thrown backward and forward by the force maintaining a general equilibrium and order, in which we participate mechanically.”
Kuhn and His Critics on Normal and Revolutionary Science
Authors: LaLumia Joseph
Published: March 2007

There is ample evidence that Professor Thomas S. Kuhn's concept of scientific paradigms has been accepted as an important, original, and permanent contribution to the discussion and writing on the logic of scientific change, but nevertheless there is something unsatisfactory about it for philosophers in particular.
The Emergence of Thought
Authors: Morin Edgar
Published: March 2007

If we consider human thought as the, so far, ultimate, if not supreme, stage in the evolution of life on Earth, we must also try to understand the evolutionary conditions that allowed it to emerge, and that leads us to look again at living organization.

Whatever the origins of life (cf. the text of Jacques Reisse, p. 53), it is clear that the oldest living organization, that of a protobacteria, is extremely complex in its functional and complementary association of extremely diverse macro-molecules, and that this complexity includes in particular: a) the organization of exchanges with an environment from which it draws both matter-energy and organization ; b) a permanent process of self-reorganization through the replacing of molecules that have deteriorated and through the production of new ones; c) the organization of the self-reproduction of the creature through division. An organization of this kind includes a quasi-informational dimension (the hereditary message inscribed in the genes and the capacity to extract information from the environment), a quasi-computational dimension (the processing of data, via indices or quasi-signs from the interior and exterior), and a communicational dimension (internal RNA-protein communication and external communication with its congeners). In short, from the beginning, a living being is the product/producer of a self-eco-organization the nature of which is at the same time computational, informational, and communicational. In other words, within every living organization, there is a cognitive dimension, but this cognitive dimension is undifferentiated within it.
Natural and Philosophical Foundations of Ethics
Authors: Abou Sélim
Published: March 2007

Guilt and fear today have developed an unexpected quality: they contribute powerfully to the survival of humanity. The feeling of guilt proceeds from an elementary awareness: although the unequaled progress of science and technology in the twentieth century has undoubtedly ameliorated the conditions of human life, it also has given rise to an infernal logic of genocide and crimes against humanity, in which almost all nations, directly or indirectly, have participated and participate still. This awareness is joined to another, which is itself accompanied by a primordial fear: for the first time in history, science and technology have endowed humanity with the power to destroy itself and the planet, without furnishing humans with the means of escaping their destined role as sorcerer's apprentice, for no science can tell us what to do with science. It is this double feeling of guilt and fear that pushes contemporary man to search feverishly for ethical foundations capable of furnishing discreet regulatory principles to underpin decisions and actions. From the point of view of contemporary humanity, ethics must be able to confer meaning and perspective on an existence which apparently has neither: “Now,” writes Hans Jonas, “we shiver in the nakedness of nihilism in which near-omnipotence is paired with near-emptiness, greatest capacity with knowing least for what ends to use it.”
The Theory of the "Internal Colony" and the Political Economy of Wales
Authors: Levering John , Lovering John
Published: March 2007

The development of Wales is currently being reappraised in terms of the model of 'Internal Colonialism'. This model assumes that spatial inequali ties are primarily due to political intervention in the form of the subordination of a distinct society (Wales) to a central elite (the English ruling class). It follows that only a nationalist or separatist path can remove the obstacles to develop ment. This paper examines the theoretical and empirical aspects of this theory in relation to Wales. It shows that the conceptions of economic exploitation' and the State employed in the model derive from an eclectic, ahistorical approach with no firm material basis. The empirical predictions are not borne out by an in spection of reality, and they actually obscure important aspects of the present conjuncture. An alternative approach, developed from an analysis of the domi nant tendencies of capitalist production in different historical phases, makes it possible to understand the transformation in the articulation of the Welsh economy that is occuring in the present period. This approach also reveals that the State is at present a major factor inhibiting the internal disintegration of the Welsh economy. The theory of 'Internal Colonialism' fails to reveal this or to provide a basis for understanding historical and contemporary Welsh develop ment. In particular, it obscures class relationships. Welsh development can best be understood as a particular instance of capitalist uneven development.
Unequal Exchange: Theoretical Issues and Empirical Findings
Authors: Gibson Bill , Gibson Bill
Published: March 2007

Recent critics of unequal exchange have argued that not only does the theory critically depend upon the unrealistic assumption of complete speciali zation (no nonspecific commodities) but also that unequal exchange tends to be self-cancelling and empirically insignificant. Each of these criticisms is examined and found to be lacking. The theory is first extricated from the confusing and ir relevant environment of the labor theory of value and a price-denominated fun damental theorem is stated and proved. Unequal exchange is then generalized to account for nonspecifics in a logically consistent way. Though the fundamental theorem does not hold for nonspecifics, a numerical example in which surplus is transferred shows that any criticism of unequal exchange based on its alleged in ability to handle nonspecifics must be empirical in nature rather than logical. It is next shown that while unequal exchange may indeed disappear in the long run for a variety of reasons, nothing in the theory itself implies that it is necessarily self- cancelling. It is argued that capitalists are not attracted to the periphery by low wages but by high profits which depend upon transportation costs and nontraded goods as much as low wages. Finally a 67-sector model of world trade is intro duced in an attempt to assess the empirical relevance of unequal exchange. It is shown that some 38% of the value of peripheral exports is required to equalize the rate of profit under existing wage differentials.
Class Struggle and Economic Transformation
Authors: Hart-Landsberg Martin , Lembcke Jerry
Published: March 2007

This article begins with the observation that a restructuring of social relations basic to capitalism is necessary to end the nation's economic crisis. It argues that free market solutions to the crisis have proven their bankruptcy, making it likely that capital will eventually pursue statesupported strategies of "reindustrialization." The article focuses on the ways in which the contradictions in capital's strategical shift can be exploited by labor and'the Left. It argues for a socialist strategy based on an expanded public sector work force and a reformed trade union movement.
Marx on the Rate of Interest
Authors: Lianos Theodore P.
Published: March 2007

The paper presents a synthesis of Marx's views on the rate of interest as they appear in Capital. It explores the relationship between the rate of profit, the rate of profit of enterprises and the rate of interest. It attempts to unify Marx's comments on the demand for and supply of money capital in a framework that relates the movements of the rate of interest to those of income and production.
A Monetary Labor Theory of Value
Authors: Bellofiore Riccardo
Published: March 2007

A critical survey of the recent literature on the labor theory of value is offered, focusing upon the view of Marnian labor theory of value as a macroeconomic theory of exploitation within the money circuit of capita L The traditional and the 'new" solutions of the so-called transformation problem are rejected, and it is argued that the purely monetary reading of value and the revived clasical Marxist approach have mirror-like weaknesses. The paper claims that Rubin's insight - that in the end value is created in exchange but that the substance of value is latently present in production - can be pursued within a theory of money as a symbol. In this perspective the concept of exploitation as the extraction of surplus labor can be seen to be compatible with the concept of a non-commodity money. This reading of abstract labor theory of value argues that the quantitative aspect of Manes argument is relevant not for the setting of prices of production but rather for shedding light on the actual process of incessant change in the economic structure.
Women's Unemployment Patterns in Postwar Business Cycles: Class Difference, The Gender Segregation of Work and Deindustrialization
Authors: Miller John A.
Published: March 2007

This paper argues that the gender difference in unemployment rates over postwar business cycles and the changes in that differential in the 1980s (women's unemployment rates dropping below men's rates during the recession) can be explained by the continuing gender segregation of work and deindustrialization. My version of the segmentation hypothesis finds empirical support in the average pattern of men's and women's total unemployment rates, in the gender unemployment rate patterns for major occupational groups and in the fact that working-class women's unemployment rates have dropped below working-class men's rates during most postwar recessions. In addition, econometric analysis shows a tight fit between the gender differential in unemployment rates and deindustrialization, a variable whose explanatory power is rooted in the gender segregation of work. The final section of the paper assesses the implications of my findings for the other two major explanations of the effect of recessions on women: the buffer hypothesis and the substitution hypothesis.
Under-Consumption and the Accumulation Motive
Authors: Palley Thomas I.
Published: March 2007

This paper presents a theory of individual behavior in which the drive to accumulate wealth is a critical motive behind economic action. The suggested theory is fully consistent with the neoclassical approach to choice, subject only to displacing the traditional hedonistic interpretation. When this theory of individual behavior is placed in the context of a self-interest private property economy in which individuals accumulate wealth in the form of financial claims (intermediated accumulation) and firms maximize profits, it generates a logical explanation of the causes of effective demand failures.
Quo Vadis, Sefior Brady? The Brady Initiative: A Way Out of the Global Debt Crisis?
Authors: Peters Enrique Dussel
Published: March 2007

This article examines the relation between the global debt crisis and the accumulation crisis of the capitalist system, in both peripheral and core countries. In contrast to the 1950s, since the 1970s despite its hegemony the U.S. has been unable to bear the costs of stabilizing the capitalist world market and has taken a selective approach to the solution of the global debt crisis, as the case of Mexico clearly shows. This article argues further that the U.S. attempts to socialize the loan losses of private creditors through the instrumentalization of multilateral agencies and the Brady Initiative, shifting the costs from private creditors and debtors to civil society. However, this strategy has shown few signs of success, and the creditor banks and the indebted countries are far from solving their global contradictions. In Latin America, after the "lost decade" of the 1980s, the possibility of total collapse and pauperization in the 1990s cannot be dismissed.
Military Spending and Differential Accumulation: A New Approach to the Political Economy of Armament — The Case of Israel
Authors: Bichler Shimshon , Nitzan Jonathan
Published: March 2007

This paper offers a new approach to the political economy of armament, focusing on the relationship between military spending and differential accumulation in mature capitalist economies. Applied to the "model" case of Israel, our analysis suggests that the militarization of Israel's economy since the late 1960s occurred within a growing dichotomy between large and small firms. The econometric model shows that the "military-bias" of Israeli industry raised the profits of the large corporate conglomerates but constrained and even lowered those of smaller companies.
Group Dynamics of a Research Team Working in the Field of Migration
Authors: Michel Luc
Published: March 2007

This article discusses the dynamics of a research team working on a Swiss National Foundation project, `Migrants and a health network: towards intercultural adaptation'. The focus of the study is to assess a healthcare network and its use by a migrant population and the influence on it by the introduction of cultural mediators. The methods are based on qualitative and action research. The research team is interdisciplinary (somaticians, psychiatrists, sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, nurses) and the healthcare network studied includes public and private, specialized and general institutions. It was observed that problems (power struggle, exclusion, etc.) partly related to the problems of migration arose in the research team, which gradually became `paralysed' in its work. The team transformed itself into an `anti-group' marked by conflicts and ruptures. The decision to analyse its own behaviour and the underlying conflicts has allowed the research team to recover its sound working basis.
The Concept of Matrix: A Metaphysical Enquiry
Authors: Powell Andrew
Published: March 2007

Trying to find the right title for a paper on the matrix I had recently begun writing, suddenly it seemed of the essence to decide whether to refer to `the matrix' or `matrix'. Why this should make all the difference I could not at first understand. By the end of the paper I felt sure that this was not a problem of obsessionality but concerned a metaphysical proposition which had been thrown up, apparently inadvertently, by a small linguistic pointer. My final choice of title ('Matrix, Mind and Matter' [Powell, 19911) was sufficiently ambiguous to allow me to complete the paper I had in mind but since a novel train of thought had been set in motion with this `accident' of syntax, I decided that an attempt to follow it through would have the merit of consistency, even if its construction was rough hewn. What little I know about syntax I owe to school, when I gave no thought to why or how the rules came to be made. Now, thirty years on, I dare to play a bit with the rules and put forward an idea, which follows.
Measuring Progress in Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy: A Pilot Study
Authors: Sheehan J.D. , Fitzgerald M.
Published: March 2007

Six patients in individual psychoanalytical psychotherapy and ten patients in group psychoanalytical psychotherapy were assessed using two self-report questionnaires. The questionnaires were administered pre-therapy, after three months and after six months. A statistically significant improvement occurred in both groups but important differences were found between the groups.
Psychotherapy with Manic-Depressives: Problems in Interaction between Patient and Therapist
Authors: Winther Gerda
Published: March 2007

Psychotherapy with manic-depressives, whether individually or in groups, has not had the interest of most psychotherapists. Apart from the suicide risk and the manic chaos, the reasons for this seem to lie in the dynamics and special mode of communication of the manic-depressive and in the personality and training of the psychotherapist. Awareness of this combination of factors is essential in understanding the problems of interaction between the manic- depressive and the therapist.
Object-Relations in the Service of Coping and Defence in the Therapeutic Group
Authors: Battegay Raymond
Published: March 2007

Interactions among group members exist on three levels: the narcissistic-fusional level; the level of active ego-performances, and the level of free decisions. The active ego-performances contribute most to coping and defence within a therapeutic group. There is a constant oscillation between the different levels of object relations. In regressive episodes there is a preponderance of the narcissistic-fusional level. It is the function of the therapist to observe these shifts and bring the members step by step to the level of active ego-performances, contributing thus to an inner maturation and to further coping strategies in the here-and-now.
Group-Analytic Family Psychotherapy: A Transcultural Perspective
Authors: Pontalti Corrado , Menarini Raffaele
Published: March 2007

Group-analytic family psychotherapy is a methodology based on a development of Group-analytic theory. The family is defined as a mental field formed by the symbolic plot of `us' in a double relationship: with the cultural history of the family group on one side, and with external groups on the other. The symbolic plot thus has a tribal characteristic which connects the genealogical trees to the ancestral foundation of the group.

In cases of psychotic and borderline patients, Group-analytic family psychotherapy has indicated two types of family: those that are embedded in the past, or families that are cut off from the past. After outlining the circumstances of Italian families, this article presents two clinical cases which exemplify the theoretical concepts previously set forth. The final thesis of the article relates the current international situation to such family psychopathology: the global village contrasted with a planet fragmented into ethnic groups.
Group Therapy within the NHS V: Patients' Views on the Benefit of Group Therapy for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
Authors: Hall Zaida , King Elizabeth
Published: March 2007

This article reports on a study of how members of a slow-open analytic group for women survivors of childhood sexual abuse felt about the helpfulness of the group. The respondents' views and comments are analysed and related to their age, their termination of the group, length of follow-up, number of sessions, final stage of depression and overall change in depression since before the group. The proportion of patients who found the group helpful (46 percent) was significantly higher than those who found it unhelpful (19 percent). The length of time since the group made no difference to satisfaction with the group. Satisfied patients tended not to lapse but to plan their departure from the group. They were more likely than dissatisfied patients to have depressive ratings which had improved considerably since before the group and were now within the normal range. A descriptive account is presented of patients' comments, giving an insight into their views on the group and on the therapists, and their thoughts about themselves in the years afterwards. Their views were, on the whole, positive, though negative views were also clearly stated. A quarter of those responding felt they needed further help. Group analysis appeared to be an effective method of treating women survivors who benefited from their acceptance by the group and the mirroring back to them of their worth. Group therapy diminished their sense of isolation, guilt and shame. It increased their well-being and confidence, enabling them to make positive changes in their lives.
Phallus and Kunta
Authors: Yannitsi Stavroula , de Mare" Patrick
Published: March 2007

There is no equivalent word for women corresponding to the phallus of men. Our language therefore is phallocratic and has disempowered women. The authors suggest we introduce the old Norse name of Kunta to address this omission which is monistic and to reclaim the universal binary system as an essential stepping stone to authentic dialogue.
Siblings
Authors: Brunori Luisa
Published: March 2007

Original Italian translation by Paul Foulkes The sibling relationship consists of a complex web of emotions and feelings, linked to elements of a cognitive, cultural and social kind which are not easy to disentangle. Yet it deserves far more attention than it has received until now. Its wide spectrum of significance depends on many variables such as difference of age, gender, social status, religion, cultural and economic values. It is a relationship that springs from the earliest history of the individual and which plays a vital part in determining characteristics of identity and personality. Yet more complex and wider-ranging meanings concerning the symbolic value of the sibling relationship become apparent when looking at the family as a group, a web of primary relationships with aspects both intrapsychic and those relating to wider social stratifications. It is this very richness which causes difficulties when we consider which elements to use in research. Complex methods of research are required in this neglected field, and this article sets out key elements as a basis for future investigation and debate.
Life is long, art is short
Authors: Weinrich Harald
Published: March 2007

The title says the contrary of what Hippocrates (around 400 BC) stated in his famous aphorism: life is short, art is long. This aphorism has been commented upon from Seneca's time till a recently created column on the “uncertain art” of medicine in the journal “The American Scholar”. In modern times, more and more evidence has come up to show that nowadays, as a beneficent result of scientific progress, man's lifespan has been extended considerably, and the arts (in the old sense of the word, including most sciences) have often been shortened - but not in all cases. Thus, the advantages of the “longevity program” on one side and those of the “acceleration program” on the other side of the old asymmetry of life and art are asymmetrically distributed themselves.
Les mots du psychanalyste
Authors: Pontalis Jean-Bertrand
Published: March 2007

L'actualité des problèmes soulevés par J.-B. Pontalis et l'experience acquise par l'auteur « sur le terrain » nous font considérer son texte comme particulièrement propre à provoquer une discussion intéressant toutes les sciences de l'homme. Peut-être pourrait-on formuler déjà quelques-unes des questions à débattre :

1) La description du « vocabulaire » d'une science quelconque doit-elle être identifiée avec une analyse sémiotique de cette science ou de sa terminologie? 2) Les différentes terminologies sont-elles comparables? — Leur description relève-t-elle d'une méthodologie unique ? — Quels en seraient les principes ? 3) Le langage psychanalytique possède-t-il une spécificité irréductible ? — En quoi consiste-t-elle ? 4) Convient-il de conserver cette spécificité, telle, par exemple, qu'elle se manifeste au niveau des dénominations méta phoriques?- Ou faut-il chercher à promouvoir une terminologie, sinon commune aux sciences de l'homme, du moins dépourvue de connotations?

La participation aux discussions peut être envisagée soit sous forme de réponses aux questions ainsi posées, soit sous forme d'observations indépendantes. — Le dossier des débats sera publié à partir du prochain numéro. (Note de la rédaction).
Rural development, technical knowledge and shifting boundaries: the shaping of “progress” and “crisis” in developing countries
Authors: Adhikari Kamini
Published: March 2007

This paper has two aims. (i) It demonstrates how a constitutionist understanding of the relation of socially induced change to the transformation of third-world rural society overcomes the limitations of outcome-centred approaches, which concentrate on the manifest phenomena of the “progress and crisis of development”, when it makes the processes of transformation themselves the central target of inquiry. (ii) It illustrates the approach by an empirical analysis of the Indian experience of the technologies of cereal seed development and deployment, as an example of socially induced change based on the production and use of technical knowledge. The constitutionist perspective is identified as an analytical position from which to explore how the dynamics and mechanisms of change are generated and become organized within society to produce consequences and secondary effects. Drawing from recent advances in the sociology of science and technology, a concept of the construction and actuation of seed technologies is formulated. An application of the combined conceptual-analytical scheme makes it possible to examine, in sequence: the character, positioning and results of the dynamics of cereal seed technologies in four distinguishable contexts - local, state, world-scale, and knowledge-led micro-settings; the course of transformation in terms of outcomes, technology spread and reach, the nature of “progress” and “crisis” produced; and finally, the expansion and contraction of the different dynamics and the direction of these shifts. In conclusion, the explanatory potential of the perspective is identified and a view of technological determinism formed.
Reasoning patterns and innovation management in a neuro-embryology laboratory
Authors: Grison Benoît , Lestel Dominique
Published: March 2007

An ethnographic case study of a group of neuro-embryologists is described. We focused on the study of uncertainty management and innovation in the reasoning of those experts, tackling a complex, “ill-structured” problem. The problematics of uncertainty become a tool for investigating the dynamics of distributed reasoning in a natural setting. During the research task, the sequence of predefined methods, which constitute the loosely planned portion of the subjects' cognitive process, is studied: it emerges that the contextual contingencies gave rise to unforeseen strategies. The field study of “thought in action” requires examining the process of problem-generation as well as problem-solving.
Is the European Monetary System converging to integration?
Authors: Leydesdorff Loet , Oomes Nienke A.
Published: March 2007

The emerging system at the European level can be conceptualized as a pattern of relations among member states that tends to be reproduced despite disturbances in individual trajectories. The Markov property is used as an indicator of systemness in the distribution. The individual trajectories of nations participating in the European Monetary System are assessed using an information theoretical model that is consistent with the Markov property in the multivariate case. Economic and monetary integration are analysed using independent data sets. Increasing integration can be retrieved in both of these dimensions, notably since the currency crises of 1992 and 1993. However, the dynamics for countries which have strongly coupled their currency to the German Mark are different from those which did not. Additionally, developments in inflation and exchange rates at the European level are assessed in relation to global developments.
A dynamic, multifactorial model of alcohol, drug abuse, and crime: linking neuroscience and behavior to toxicology
Authors: Masters Roger D. , Coplan Myron J.
Published: March 2007

Although there is increasing recognition that many dysfunctional behaviors and diseases require multifactorial explanations that integrate biological and socio-cultural variables, such an approach requires fundamental conceptual changes. To explain geographical and temporal variations in alcohol and drug abuse and in criminal behavior, we propose a dynamic, multifactorial model that integrates findings in neurobiology and social science with toxicology. This model is based on a sequence of probabilistic relationships. (1) Some individuals are potential alcoholics or drug addicts for genetic or developmental reasons that may also be associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), antisocial personality, or other traits that have been linked to criminal behavior. (2) Uptake of lead, manganese, and other neurotoxic substances from the environment can downregulate dopamine, glutamate, serotonin, and other neurotransmitters necessary for learning and normal impulse control. (3) Uptake of lead and other neurotoxins is increased by dietary deficits in calcium, zinc, and iron which in turn are associated with poverty, stress, and lactose intolerance. (4) Additional environmental factors, such as silicofluoride use in treatment of public water supplies, also increase uptake of lead. (5) Fetal and childhood uptake of lead and other toxins is associated with both developmental and learning deficits and with continued neurotoxicity during teenage and young adult years. (6) Alcohol and drug abuse can function as crude self-medication to compensate for downregulation of serotonin, dopamine and other affected neurotransmitters. (7) Lead neurotoxicity increases the market for alcohol and hence the total number of active alcoholics. (8) This increase in a community's market size reflects prolonged recruitment of potential alcohol users (higher average age of first use of alcohol is correlated to size of market for alcohol). (9) Larger markets for alcohol lead to larger markets for cocaine and crack. (10) These linked markets are a key factor in different rates of crime, since higher average age of first use of alcohol, of cocaine, or of crack is associated with a higher rate of crime and more criminals who were using cocaine or crack at the time of their offense. When otherwise unexplained geographical and historical differences in rates of crime are analyzed from this perspective, environmental pollution and the use of silicofluorides in water treatment seem to play a critical role in triggering social dysfunction. This dynamic, multifactorial approach may provide a model for studying the epidemiology of other dysfunctional behaviors and diseases, such as ADD/ADHD, asthma, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease, which have been traced to varied combinations of genetic vulnerabilities, toxic metals, developmental insults, and social stresses.
The measurement of cognitive structures: a constructivist approach
Authors: Oerter Rolf
Published: March 2007

This article considers the investigation of cognitive structures in a constructivist perspective, using the example of the measurement of the concept of human nature (Menschenbild). It is argued that the instruments used (adulthood interview and dilemma stories) elicit the subject's short-term (actual) and long-term (available declarative knowledge) constructive activity. However, the investigation includes at the same time the pre- and post-constructive activity of the researcher and interviewer, who introduce their own knowledge, opinions and theoretical concepts. The results presented are: general levels of the concept of human nature, some specific structures produced by the subjects, content analytical categories, patterns, and figures of reasoning. The outcome of the investigation is interpreted as a co-construction of both the subject and the researcher (interviewer/rater), indicating shared cultural knowledge that is brought via the research process to a more explicit and clear structure.