Emergent Self Research Articles

The coherence of creation in the word: The rhetoric of lines 1–34 of Chaucer’s General Prologue

Geoffrey Chaucer’s introduction of the pilgrimage motif in lines 1–34 of the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales combines the pursuit of the beatific vision with an evident interest in life in this world. Participation in God as coherence in Christ, who addresses and sustains the created order, informs the rhetorical structure and intensifying themes and playfulness of these lines. Resonant with the first sentence, the second performatively displays an obediential quality and emergent self and sociality, as Chaucer responds to the demands that the Incarnation places on the Christian poet.

Resonances of Subjectivity: Hegel's Concept of Sound and Di Scipio's Audible Ecosystemics

This article deals with the idea of an emergent self, constituted through a process of self-reference or self-reflexion, in Agostino Di Scipio's series of works entitled Audible Ecosystemics. This paper is not an attempt to reconstruct the composer's intentions, but to formulate an idea of the emergence of subjectivity, and its connection to sound on the basis of the series of works in question. In doing so, the paper heavily relies on G. W. F. Hegel's concept of sound as developed in his Philosophy of nature (1970. London: George Allen and Unwin), which it tries to re-actualise as a resource for thinking contemporary music. Furthermore, the paper points towards the conceptual proximity of Hegel's concept of organic life and contemporary biological concepts of autopoiesis and emergence developed by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, which Di Scipio himself draws upon.

Evolution and the emergent self: the rise of complexity and behavioral versatility in nature

Evolution and the Emergent Self is an eloquent and evocative new synthesis that explores how the human species emerged from the cosmic dust. Lucidly presenting ideas about the rise of complexity in our genetic, neuronal, ecological, and ultimately cosmological settings, the author takes readers on a provocative tour of modern science's quest to understand our place in nature and in our universe. Readers fascinated with Big History and drawn to examine big ideas will be challenged and enthralled by Raymond L. Neubauer's ambitious narrative. How did humans emerge from the cosmos and the pre-biotic Earth, and what mechanisms of biological, chemical, and physical sciences drove this increasingly complex process? Neubauer presents a view of nature that describes the rising complexity of life in terms of increasing information content, first in genes and then in brains. The evolution of the nervous system expanded the capacity of organisms to store information, making learning possible. In key chapters, the author portrays four species with high brain:body ratios-chimpanzees, elephants, ravens, and dolphins-showing how each species shares with humans the capacity for complex communication, elaborate social relationships, flexible behavior, tool use, and powers of abstraction. A large brain can have a hierarchical arrangement of circuits that facilitates higher levels of abstraction. Neubauer describes this constellation of qualities as an emergent self, arguing that self-awareness is nascent in several species besides humans and that potential human characteristics are embedded in the evolutionary process and have emerged repeatedly in a variety of lineages on our planet. He ultimately demonstrates that human culture is not a unique offshoot of a language-specialized primate, but an analogue of fundamental mechanisms that organisms have used since the beginning of life on Earth to gather and process information in order to buffer themselves from fluctuations in the environment. Neubauer also views these developments in a cosmic setting, detailing open thermodynamic systems that grow more complex as the energy flowing through them increases. Similar processes of increasing complexity can be found in the self-organizing structures of both living and nonliving forms. Recent evidence from astronomy indicates that planet formation may be nearly as frequent as star formation. Since life makes use of the elements commonly seeded into space by burning and expiring stars, it is reasonable to speculate that the evolution of life and intelligence that happened on our planet may be found across the universe.

Indianizing Psychiatry - Has the Case Been Made Enough?

Byline: Anindya. Das, Urvashi. Rautela Sir, We congratulate Professor Avasthi (2011) [sup][1] on his award paper published in the Journal of Psychiatry (Vol.53, pp.111-120) for a fresh look on the importance of culture in psychiatry and its practice in India. He has pointed out the uniqueness of the discipline; the distinctiveness of psyche; the ill-fitted-ness of Western described clinical syndromes in India; cites certain biological differences implicating mental health of Indians; and discusses various other issues related to service provision and treatment. To us, the paper brings out the importance of culture in psychiatry but its arguments are weak. Such as the case for uniqueness of the discipline, Avasthi argue that similar chronic incurable physical conditions (such as diabetes) have vast differences in terms of diagnostic uniformity and treatment. Yet, we know the assumed diagnostic uniformity in chronic physical disorders often do not reflect as uniformity of practice (in diagnosis and more often in treatment) in widely different cultures, social settings, over different time periods, and in different health systems. On the other hand, expert-driven diagnostic (and management) uniformity is also a truth for psychiatric problems. Similarly, Avasthi constructs the psyche as fragmented, multifaceted due to and [sup][2] brought about by the onslaught of British colonialism. But the discipline of discursive psychology shows these processes to be universal. In fact, it particularly focuses on how identity, subjectivity, and agency are constructed within available personal, familial, social, and cultural discourse, opening up various interpretive repertoires making way for a socially emergent self. [sup][3] Thus, we see compartmentalized and often mutually contradictory ways of dealing with various social and personal situations that define self and identity. Moreover, the distinctive Indian influence on compartmentalization and contextualization is not just colonialism, traditional values, and modern ways of life but institutional structures, networks, and social movements. [sup][4] Thus, issues of social position/hierarchy, class relations, caste dimensions, religious affiliation, and the political trends of the time needs to be considered to understand the influence of culture on psyche and collective identity. On the other hand, Avasthi rightly points out the incongruence in Western diagnostic systems and ways of manifesting psychological distress, described as category fallacy. [sup][5] But it confuses us who does the author imply to wield the power to characterize problems. Kirmayer (2006) [sup][6] warns that the ways, by which psychological decompensation is defined, needs evaluation within the context of global systems of knowledge generation and power. Thus, psychiatrists talk about validating (Western) diagnostic systems. Avasthi also notes people's preference for folk medicine to be partly traditionally inspired and partly due to the lack of availability/affordability of health services. We would in addition like to impress on the cultural incongruence of mental health services as a vital reason for this. [sup][7],[8] In addition, the consideration of Indianization of psychotherapeutic practice lacks consideration for the need to understand how the culture perpetuates certain power differentials between the client and the healer (of biomedical kind or otherwise). Culturally appropriate forms of healing (e.g., faith healing, shrine healing, etc.), and their dynamics in terms of power differentials, meaning generation, family role, and manipulation of psyche need consideration for the above task. …

Text mining with emergent self organizing maps and multi-dimensional scaling: A comparative study on domestic violence

In this paper we compare the usability of ESOM and MDS as text exploration instruments in police investigations. We combine them with traditional classification instruments such as the SVM and Naïve Bayes. We perform a case of real-life data mining using a dataset consisting of police reports describing a wide range of violent incidents that occurred during the year 2007 in the Amsterdam-Amstelland police region (The Netherlands). We compare the possibilities offered by the ESOM and MDS for iteratively enriching our feature set, discovering confusing situations, faulty case labelings and significantly improving the classification accuracy. The results of our research are currently operational in the Amsterdam-Amstelland police region for upgrading the employed domestic violence definition, for improving the training of police officers and for developing a highly accurate and comprehensible case triage model.

"Il tue l' Ame sans sejour": Locating the Subject in a Chanson Spirituelle of Marguerite de Navarre

Marguerite de Navarre's understudied Chansons spirituelles incorporate an underlying fascination with how a work of literature constructs and simultaneously undermines (or kills) its subject. Many of the chansons accomplish this by describing the narrator's spiritual experience and religious longing for death and rebirth. Multiple layers of meaning, however, also allow the poems to be read as an exploration of the blurry spaces between authority and authorship in the text, between the self and God and between literary subject and object. The texts present a contradictory and multi-layered image of an emergent self that leaves the reader simultaneously more and less sure of the soul's relationship to the divine. What promises to be a simple contemplation of Christ's worthiness to be desired becomes a boundary-blurring dialogue that erases the limits between self and the Divine Other to whom it purports to point. The idea of authority and who has the right to speak in the text lies at the heart of this enigma. Marguerite's theology at once dominates and submits to her poetry. The image of the self moves from object to subject and back to object as it seeks to differentiate itself from and define itself in relation to God. Using and manipulating pre-established poetic codes from the medieval tradition, the text creates a circle that further pixilates an already protean image of the self. Unable to resolve its true position in the poem, the soul is forced to accept the constraints placed on it from within and without. Ultimately, the soul fails in its attempt at complete unity with Christ, but this failure only serves to highlight a basic personal awareness of 'self' in the poem and confirms the view of the idea of 'subjectivity' as elusive, indeterminate and prone to conflict.

The relevance of adolescence: Using McConville’s writings across the lifespan

Research Article| January 01 2011 The relevance of adolescence: Using McConville’s writings across the lifespan Adolescence: Psychotherapy and the Emergent Self (1995), by McConville, Mark Peter Motola, Ph.D. Peter Motola, Ph.D. pmortola@lclark.edu Peter Mortola, Ph.D., is Professor of Counseling Psychology at Lewis and Clark's Graduate School of Education and Counseling and Co-Director of the university's nationally approved Educational Specialist degree program in School Psychology. He is the author of Windowframes: Learning the Art of Gestalt Play Therapy the Oaklander Way (2006) and the co-author of BAM! Boys Advocacy and Mentoring: A Leader's Guide to Facilitating Strength-based Groups for Boys (2008). Both of these texts focus on relational methods of working with children and youth in therapeutic settings. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Gestalt Review (2011) 15 (2): 159–171. https://doi.org/10.5325/gestaltreview.15.2.0159 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Peter Motola; The relevance of adolescence: Using McConville’s writings across the lifespan. Gestalt Review 1 January 2011; 15 (2): 159–171. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/gestaltreview.15.2.0159 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressGestalt Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2011 The Pennsylvania State University2011The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The effect of neurodegenerative disease on representations of self in discourse1

Four incontrovertible ‘facts’ are assumed for human emergence, survival and notion of a self: (1) the existence of neurobiological structures and mechanisms, (2) employment of cognitive problem solving mechanisms, (3) adoption of physiologically based emotional displays, and (4) aquisition of communal socio-culture knowledge through caregiver ‘scaffolding’ activities and situated practices. The ‘self’, therefore, is only viable with the simultaneous evolution of neurobiological, cognitive, emotional, and socio-cultural structures and processes. An emergent self presupposes an integration and continual interaction of a developing memory system, continual acquisition and reproduction of cognitive problem solving mechanisms and emotional displays, and acquisition and loss of distributed socio-cultural knowledge. The inability to reproduce coherent local displays of self becomes acutely evident in patients diagnosed with fairly advanced Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and related insults to the brain. Ten minutes of discourse between spouses with diagnoses unknown to the author are used to illustrate linguistic scaffolding provided by caregivers to simulate appropriate socio-cultural interaction; the value of such exchanges for diagnosing human brain dysfunction and loss of self is discussed.

Concept Relation Discovery and Innovation Enabling Technology (Cordiet)

Concept Relation Discovery and Innovation Enabling Technology (CORDIET), is a toolbox for gaining new knowledge from unstructured text data. At the core of CORDIET is the C-K theory which captures the essential elements of innovation. The tool uses Formal Concept Analysis FCA), Emergent Self Organizing Maps (ESOM) and Hidden Markov Models (HMM) as main artifacts in the analysis process. The user can define temporal, text mining and compound attributes. The text mining attributes are used to analyze the unstructured text in documents, the temporal attributes use these document’s timestamps for analysis. The compound attributes are XML rules based on text mining and temporal attributes. The user can cluster objects with object-cluster rules and can chop the data in pieces with segmentation rules. The artifacts are optimal zed for efficient data analysis, object labels in the FCA lattice and ESOM map contain an URL on which the user can click to open the selected document.

Personality Science: Exploring Boldly, Integrating Creatively

Personality Science: Exploring Boldly, Integrating Creatively

Urban data-mining: spatiotemporal exploration of multidimensional data

‘Urban data-mining’ describes a methodological approach to reveal logical or mathematical and partly complex descriptions of patterns and regularities inside a set of geospatial data. The cyclical methodology procedure is characterized by six main tasks following the initial step of data collection: data inspection, structure visualization, structure definition, structure control, operationalization, and knowledge conversion. Geovisualization and spatial analysis supplement the process of knowledge conversion and communication. The multidimensional mining approach is presented as a case study applied to 12 430 German communities to analyse multidynamic characteristics between 1994 and 2004. In particular, Emergent Self Organizing Maps (ESOM) are performed as an appropriate method for clustering and classification. Their advantage is to visualize the structure of data and later on to define a number of feasible clusters. A good evidence-base for decision-makers and the implementation of planning tools would be the spatiotemporal exploration of multidimensional data leading to specific details, explanations and abstractions in the context of dynamic community behaviour. The presented techniques are expected to be of increasing interest for the management and development of building stocks, as well as for urban and regional planning processes. «L'exploration de données urbaines» décrit une approche méthodologique qui vise à révéler les descriptions logiques ou mathématiques et partiellement complexes des schémas et régularités au sein d'un jeu de données géospatiales. Cette procédure qui suit une méthodologie cyclique se caractérise par six tâches principales suivant la tâche initiale de collecte des données: inspection des données, visualisation des structures, définition des structures, contrôle des structures, opérationnalisation et conversion en connaissances. La géovisualisation et l'analyse spatiale complètent le processus de conversion en connaissances et de communication. Cette approche faisant appel à l'exploration de données multidimensionnelles est présentée sous forme d'une étude de cas appliquée à 12430 communes allemandes afin d'en analyser les caractéristiques multidynamiques entre 1994 et 2004. Il est en particulier réalisé des cartes auto-organisatrices émergentes (ESOM), s'agissant d'une méthode adaptée au groupage et à la classification. Elles ont pour avantage de visualiser la structure des données et de définir ultérieurement un certain nombre de groupes réalisables. L'exploration spatio-temporelle de données multidimensionnelles conduisant à des détails, des explications et des abstractions spécifiques dans le contexte d'un comportement communautaire dynamique constituerait une bonne base probante pour les décisionnaires et pour la mise en œuvre d'outils de planification. Il est attendu des techniques présentées qu'elles soient d'un intérêt croissant pour la gestion et le développement des parcs bâtis, ainsi que pour les processus de planification urbaine et régionale. Mots clés: parc bâti, exploration de données, Systèmes d'Information Géographie ou géomatique (SIG), analyse spatio-temporelle, analyse urbaine

Gaining insight in domestic violence with Emergent Self Organizing Maps

Topographic maps are an appealing exploratory instrument for discovering new knowledge from databases. During the past years, new types of Self Organizing Maps (SOM) were introduced in the literature, including the recent Emergent SOM. The ESOM tool is used here to analyze a large set of police reports describing a wide range of violent incidents that occurred during the year 2007 in the Amsterdam-Amstelland police region (the Netherlands). This article aims to demonstrate that the ESOM tool provides a valuable exploratory instrument for examining unstructured text in police reports. First, it is shown how ESOM was used to discover a range of new features that better distinguish domestic from non-domestic violence cases. Second, it is demonstrated how this resulted in a significant improvement in classification accuracy. Third, the ESOM tool facilitates an in-depth investigation of the nature and scope of domestic violence, which is particularly useful for the domain expert. Interestingly, it was discovered that the definition of domestic violence employed by the management was much broader than the definition employed by police officers. Fourth, the ESOM tool enables an accurate and automated assignment of either a domestic or a non-domestic violence label to unclassified cases. Finally, ESOM is a highly accurate and comprehensible case triage model for detecting and retrieving wrongly classified cases.

Therapeutic Groundhog Day – exploring the impact of the theory/approach on the self of the therapist

The ‘use of self’ of the therapist is a concept that can be considered from numerous directions. An underrepresented aspect of ‘the self of the therapist’ is the influence of the theoretical orientation and associated skills. As part of a recursive process, the theory and techniques shape the therapist's emergent self in the therapeutic relationship. This teaching event was designed to provide an opportunity for trainee therapists to experience contrasting ‘selves’. This is developed through role play where ‘family’ and ‘therapists’ attempt to reproduce the same episode but each is responded to with a different model and skill.

Postfoundationalist themes in the philosophy of education: festschrift for James D. Marshall

Introduction: Michael A. Peters and Paul Smeyers. 1. Jim Marshall: Foucault and disciplining the self: Tina Besley. 2. Autonomy, Agency and Education: He tangata, he tangata, he tangata: Nesta Devine and Ruth Irwin. 3. The Paradox of the Excluded Child: Bruce Haynes. 4. Emergencies and Emergent Selves: Felicity Haynes. 5. Education as Liberation: The politics and techniques of lifelong learning: Bert Lambeir. 6. Testing Resistance: Busno-cratic power, standardized tests, and care of the self: Cris Mayo. 7. Foucault, Educational Research and the Issue of Autonomy: Mark Olssen. 8. Marshalling the Self: James D. Marshall as Educational Philosopher: Michael A. Peters. 9. Marshall-Making Wittgenstein Smile: Robert K. Shaw. 10. The Labouring Sleepwalker: Evocation and expression as modes of qualitative educational research: Paul Smeyers. 11. 'What it Makes Sense to Say': Wittgenstein, rule-following and the nature of education: Nicholas C. Burbules and Richard Smith. 12. Lightning and Frenzy: Music education, adolescence, and the anxiety of influence: Paul Standish. 13. Break with Tradition: Marshall's contribution to a Foucauldian philosophy of education: Lynda Stone. 14. Photograph and Curriculum Vitae and Major Works of James D. Marshall. 15. Interview with James Marshall: Paulo Ghiraldelli Jr. 16. James D. Marshall: Philosopher of Education: Michael A. Peters. 17. For Jim: My friend: Kevin Harris. 18. Stone/Marshall Wedding Address: D. C. Phillips. 19. Fragments of Life before Foucault: Colin Lankshear. 20. James D. Marshall Reply. Notes on Contributors. Index.

Teaching and Ethics in Complexity Science: The Ethics of Absolute Unitary Being

The paper argues for the significance of complexity science and its role in the ethics of teaching that is not based on moral codes. Through the work of Varela on human consciousness, and the work of Newburg and his colleagues on neurotheology, the paper explores the elements of human consciousness that are relevant for characterising an ethical act. Varela’s concepts of emergent self and autopoiesis as well as Newburg’s concept of Absolute Unitary Being provide the necessary conditions for characterizing an ethical act as essentially unconscious. Finally the paper discusses the implication of these contentions for ethics in teaching.

Mother-child play and emerging social behaviors among infants from maltreating families.

Mother-child play of 12-month-old infants (N=130) from maltreating (N=78) and non-maltreating (N=52) families was analyzed as a context that integrates infants' developing social and cognitive skills. Play was coded from semistructured and unstructured play paradigms. No group differences were found in infants' play maturity. Infants from abusing families demonstrated more imitative play than infants from non-maltreating families, and engaged in less independent play than infants from both neglecting and non-maltreating families, suggesting a delay in emerging social behaviors. Mothers from abusing and non-maltreating families differed in attention directing behaviors. Maternal behaviors predicted child play style variables, but did not mediate the effects of maltreatment. Findings discuss the influence of an early maltreating environment upon the development of the emergent self. Implications for early intervention are underscored.

Emergencies and Emergent Selves

) article used Wittgenstein to argue that self functions as an explanation for a name rather than a referent. This brief response tries to rescue Marshall from an apparent reduction of self to material body without returning him to the mind/body dualism that he, with Wittgenstein and Dennett, seeks to avoid. It treats ‘I’ as an emergent institutional fact, not inconsistent with a constructed explanation or narrative, but emerging from shared social practices rather than an abstracted agent.

The Shattering of the Self: Violence, Subjectivity, and Early Modern Texts (review)

At the center of Cynthia Marshall’s The Shattering of the Self: Violence, Subjectivity, and Early Modern Texts lies the proposition that the pleasures of Renaissance literature are inextricably bound up with the pleasures of sadomasochism, a notion that specialists in this literature can hardly be expected to read with equanimity. In other hands, the idea that readers of early modern texts are hooked into a sadomasochistic dynamic might signal a moralistic tirade or, conversely, a celebration of erotic transgression, but thankfully, Marshall’s book is neither of these things. Her claim is instead part of a subtle, sophisticated, and wide-ranging meditation on the allure of violence in Renaissance texts and on the complexities of early modern subjectivity. In Marshall’s study, sadomasochism signifies neither the ritualized erotic practices of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch nor the more everyday pathologies of self-punishment. Rather, it concerns the new subjectivities possible in the early modern period and the proliferation of Renaissance texts registering an “impulse to undo or negate the emergent self ” (7). Taking issue with the model of autonomous subjectivity she perceives to be the legacy of Stephen Greenblatt, Marshall argues that early modern subjectivity was riven by contradiction and was constituted partly by “an undertow that pulls against the drive Greenblatt identified as . . . ‘self-fashioning’” (30). Rejecting a humanist paradigm that, in her view, dominates Renaissance literary scholarship, she describes early modern subjectivity as fragmented, volatile, and— above all—defined by masochism’s characteristic “movement of the self against the self ” (35–36). Drawing on a range of criticism—not least Greenblatt’s suggestion that the Renaissance experienced selfhood as onerous—Marshall argues that, in an era marked by a new emphasis on individuality, violent literature may have proffered an intensely desired emotional release. Having set out an intricate argument about the “fundamentally paradoxical notion of pleasure” (10), Marshall goes on to explicate how Renaissance texts offered opportunities for dispersing— rather than affirming or stabilizing—a sense of selfhood. With chapters devoted to the language of extremity in Elizabethan sonnet sequences, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1570, 1576, and 1583), Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (1592), and John Ford’s The Broken Heart (ca. 1629), she forcefully advances the claim that Renaissance texts were compelling to their first readers and audiences precisely because they enabled an experience of “psychic fracture or undoing” (1).

The mind-brain relationship: the emergent self.

This paper explores the mind-brain relationship, using insights from contemporary neuroscience. It seeks to investigate how our brains become who we are, how subjective experience arises. In order to do this some explanation is given of the basic concepts of how the brain produces our subjective mental life. Current neuropsychological and neurobiological understanding of early brain development, memory, emotion and consciousness are explored. There is also an attempt at mapping the mind-brain-self relationship from a uniquely Jungian perspective. Clinical material is included in order to show the relevance of these insights to our work in the consulting room, arguing the value of the affect-regulating, relational aspects of the analytic dyad that forge new neural pathways through emotional connection. Such experience forms the emotional scaffolding necessary for the emergence of reflective function.

Gaia as a complex adaptive system.

We define the Gaia system of life and its environment on Earth, review the status of the Gaia theory, introduce potentially relevant concepts from complexity theory, then try to apply them to Gaia. We consider whether Gaia is a complex adaptive system (CAS) in terms of its behaviour and suggest that the system is self-organizing but does not reside in a critical state. Gaia has supported abundant life for most of the last 3.8 Gyr. Large perturbations have occasionally suppressed life but the system has always recovered without losing the capacity for large-scale free energy capture and recycling of essential elements. To illustrate how complexity theory can help us understand the emergence of planetary-scale order, we present a simple cellular automata (CA) model of the imaginary planet Daisyworld. This exhibits emergent self-regulation as a consequence of feedback coupling between life and its environment. Local spatial interaction, which was absent from the original model, can destabilize the system by generating bifurcation regimes. Variation and natural selection tend to remove this instability. With mutation in the model system, it exhibits self-organizing adaptive behaviour in its response to forcing. We close by suggesting how artificial life ('Alife') techniques may enable more comprehensive feasibility tests of Gaia.