External Reality Research Articles

Visualization and inquiry into mental content in design activity: a case study of design interpretation

AbstractThe study of interpretation is of major importance for our understanding of design cognition. When interacting with design representations, designers often rely on metaphorical descriptions as interpretive devices, which aid in coping with the task at hand. Consequently, such descriptions can enlighten us regarding the designer's perspective of the situation, and their analysis can deepen our knowledge of design cognition. We observe designers as they metaphorically interpret design representations during a simple task of spatial configuration, and introduce an approach for modeling this practice, as a means for getting insights into the designer's mental world. In this, we draw on traditional practices of protocol analysis, as well as on state-of-the-art theoretical frameworks for situated design and discourse analysis. Our integrated approach demonstrates how important relations between external and internal reality in design activity can be mapped and visualized. This sheds some light on the cognitive process of interpretation in design. The proposed method can both serve as a basis for detailed analyses of design cognition and for the enhancement of current models for situated design agents.

Why is it so difficult to film Gogol’s Overcoat

Nikolai Gogol’s prose conceals semantic hidden agenda safely disguised by grotesque fabula and metaphorics. We can find the phenomena in Gogol’s early works but this multilevel approach is even more elaborately designed in his later period when his attention was occupied with St Petersburg material. The Overcoat contains a complex system of codes. Unless a reader is aware of them the story may produces on him an illusory impression of a realistic composition (indeed, it was even mistaken for a kind of manifesto of Russian realism). Its symbolism is hidden, but amenable to reconstruction. The whole plot of Gogol’s story is a woeful parody on Christianity. Gogol’s Petersburg here is intentionally presented as a city inhabited by the dead. A special place in The Overcoat is occupied by the figure of the tailor Petrovich: it contains both a demonic component, supported by many signs of the devil, and an indication of the name of the founder of St Petersburg, Peter the Great. A significant role in The Overcoat is played by connections with E.T.A.Hoffmann’s Golden Pot and F.M.Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: as a copyist, Akakii Akakievich Bashmachkin is involved in mysticism. The deep plan of the story is connected with the transition from sign to meaning. But the acquired meaning turns into a temptation for the hero: the overcoat leads Akakii into the realm of temptations, awakening a previously unknown attraction to external reality. All of this makes it extremely problematic to make an adequate film adaptation of The Overcoat.

Психологическая концепция типов научной рациональности Часть 1. Идеальные объекты и типы рациональности

The article presents a psychological concept of the scientific rationality types, which is based on the constructivist version of the Self-Determination Theory. In part 1, the author shows that the scientific rationality type of a particular theory is determined by the content features of used ideal objects. Depending on the contribution of two components – elements of sensory experience and “free fiction” of the researcher – it is proposed to distinguish eight types of ratio­nality. The conditionally objective type assumes that scientific knowledge is mathematized and is constructed using ideal objects that do not have a scientific sense. Within the framework of three externalized types of rationality, ideal ob­jects created in three different ways have both a scientific sense and perceptual counterparts. The three internalized types of scientific rationality are associated with ideal objects also constructed in different ways that have a scientific sense, but do not have perceptual counterparts. All of these variants assume that ideal objects describe the reality being studied. In contrast to them, the eighth, con­structivist type of scientific rationality involves the use of ideal objects that are fundamentally unrelated to external reality.

СОЦИАЛЬНО-ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИЙ АКТИВИЗМ МОЛОДЕЖИ РОССИИ В УСЛОВИЯХ ИНФОРМАЦИОННОГО ОБЩЕСТВА

The rapid development of digital technologies and their mass application in all areas has a significant impact on the forms of the socio-political activism of young people, as well as on the formation of young people's civic and political stances. Currently, the classical institutions of civic participation are being transformed under the influence of the digital environment, which leads to the emergence of new formations, which cover increasingly broad cohorts, have specific functioning features and tools. In the study, the author considers various approaches to work and forms of socio-political activism in the modern digital environment, identifies signs of the classification of the digital institutions of civic participation, as well as the subjects of the socio-political activism of youth in information society. The very notion of the digital institution of civic participation as a form of interaction between individuals through the digital environment is defined, which is used to implement joint goals and objectives that are relevant to all community participants. The author concludes that the interaction of traditional and digital tools, their mutual supplementation will allow to realize the socio-political needs of young people at a much more effective level, which are due to both objective age and psychophysical factors and the conditions of the external environment and current political reality.

Infinite Singletons and the Logic of Freudian Theory

The aim of this paper is to advance a formal description of the implicit logic grounding of the psychoanalytic theory. We therefore propose a new interpretation of the logical features of the Freudian unconscious process, starting from the Bi-logic formulation put forward by the Chilean psychoanalyst Matte Blanco. We conceive the universal undifferentiated state of the deep psychoanalytic Unconscious in terms of particular sets named infinite singletons, and we show how they can represent the logical foundations for a formal description of the Primary process. We first disclose some implicit assumptions underlying the common logical language. In doing so, we discover an unexpected presence of symmetry even in the most basic of logical and verbal structures. In the approach derived, we show that infiniteness, not finiteness, is the primary mode of sets, and therefore, of thinking. The pivotal consequence of this model is that the unconscious elements cannot be characterised in the absence of external reality, which produces the collapse of infinite sets and allows for the emergence of linguistic representations. Finally, we discuss how the model could represent a platform to formalise further developments of psychoanalytic theory, in particular with respect to the shift from the First to the Second Topics in Freudian theory.

Being Carried Away. Fink and Winnicott on the Locus of Playing

Abstract The article investigates the question of the experiential location of the area of play, comparing the accounts of Eugen Fink and Donald Winnicott. It argues that while Fink builds on the phenomenological distinction between subjective phantasy and external perception, and accordingly introduces the area of play as a hybrid realm, a peculiar combination of the two, Winnicott considers the area of play as something that underlies and developmentally precedes the experiential differentiation between phantasy and external reality. While from Fink’s viewpoint Winnicott’s model neglects a central phenomenological distinction, from Winnicott’s viewpoint Fink’s account, in turn, appears adultomorphic. Elaborating on these viewpoints in detail, the article ends up considering the conditions on which the seemingly contradictory accounts of playing could be reconciled. This at once opens a new way to assess the compatibility between phenomenology and psychoanalysis.

The relationship between early symptom severity, improvement and remission in first episode psychosis with jumping to conclusions

It is suggested that Jumping To Conclusions (JTC) reasoning bias might contribute to the distortion of external reality. However, the association between psychotic manifestations and JTC is obscure, especially if general intelligence is considered as a mediator. The aim of this study is to investigate the relation between severity, early clinical improvement and remission of symptoms in First Episode Psychosis (FEP) with JTC as an explanatory factor. One hundred seventy-one FEP individuals were evaluated with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) at baseline and one month after treatment initiation. Clinical improvement was ascribed as symptom change one-month post-baseline measurements. Symptomatic remission was assessed with the Andreasen severity criteria and JTC with the Beads Task, operationalized through Draws To Decision (DTD) (the lower the number of DTD, the higher the JTC bias). Regarding symptoms severity, total psychotic, total positive psychotic, and hallucinations-item PANSS scores showed a negative association with JTC after controlling for IQ. Regarding early clinical improvement, the association with JTC was non-significant. No significant association was detected between one month remission status of FEP and JTC. Our findings indicate that severity of positive symptoms is not associated with hastiness in decision-making, but rather with a heightened conservatism in terms of increased data gathering. Further research is required to replicate the results and clarify the cognitive processes involved.

Authority And Freedom.

Authority and freedom are connected, and both have external and internal forms. External authority, political or institutional, can impinge on internal freedom in ways that matter to psychoanalysts. Internal freedom requires an internal authority that can be trusted. The superego is an external authority masquerading as an internal one. The ego, with its compliance toward the id, the superego, and external reality, operates like a false self in the psyche. In Lacanian terms, it is of necessity alienated from itself. By contrast, the true self as described by Winnicott, and the "subject" as theorized especially in French psychoanalysis, represent an authentic conscience that allows us to become the authors of our at one's authority. This implies two sorts of freedom: freedom from narcissistic self-investment, and the forward-looking freedom of psychic growth. The latter occurs only in a context of relatedness to others, and it entails caring for the interests of others-if necessary at one's own expense. This vision of human beings as having an innate impetus toward psychic growth makes psychoanalysis a fundamentally optimistic endeavor. Clinical and nonclinical examples show, however, that it demands a perpetual readiness to let go of apparent certainties.

Who Says Only Men Have a Beard?

Abstract The presence of male homoeroticism in Persian poetry has long been noted. This sexual configuration is largely based on the conventional manner in which the beloved is described with male attributes, including a hairline above the lips or sideburns. Such readings assume a direct relationship between poetic topoi and external reality, and project, ahistorically, a modern aesthetic assumption onto premodern gender norms. This article argues that a male-associated rendition of the beloved, specifically in the case of the rhetorics of the facial hair that permeates the description of patrons, the divine and women alike, reveals not necessarily the sweetheart's gender, but dominant perceptions of praiseworthy characteristics and the power dynamics that rule the rhetorics of premodern gender norms.

“Natural” in the philosophical and moralistic literature of the XVII century

In philosophy, “natural” is viewed as an ontological characteristic of the objects of internal and external reality along with the concept of “artificial”. However, in the XVII century, the philosophical and moralistic literature undergoes aestheticization. Numerous appeals of the writers, moralists and philosopher, as well as dialogues and arguments on the topic of “natural” indicate that this was of crucial importance for the aesthetic thought of the XVII century. The answer to the question ‘what natural is’ has become the cornerstone of the new gallant aesthetics, and in behavior was associated with fluency and aristocratic inattention, which are opposed to pomposity and affectation. In art, “natural” was perceived as a desire to purge from the Baroque ostentation. In literature, it is the result of hard work on the language that allows achieving lightness and fluency. Ultimately, in the philosophical thought, “natural” is perceived as the correspondence with truth. Until the present, the question of aestheticization of the “natural” did not draw the attention of Russian researchers. This is partly explained by the historical tradition. Russia enters the European philosophical thought only in the Era of Enlightenment in the XVIII century; thus, the XVII century seems somewhat archaic on the background of the topical issues. However, the XVII century is the advent of the history of modern philosophical and aesthetic thought, and creates the foundation of modern European mentality. This period marks the formation of the new aesthetic ideal, new aesthetic norms, and the system for assessing the work of art, which assign an important role to the “natural”.

THE PROBLEM OF THE UGLY IN THE CONTEXT OF HUMAN PERSONIFICATION IN THE MODERN SOCIO-CULTURAL SPACE

The process of personification accompanies a person throughout his life in a tense conflict between the individual-special internal needs of the individual and the socio-general requirements of external reality. The socio-cultural environment largely determines the direction, possibilities and content of a person's personification, forming a pattern of personal formation and self-determination, acting at the same time as an overwhelming, constraining and structuring principle. The article is devoted to the problem of the ugly as a universal philosophical category reflecting negative cultural and aesthetic content. The author reveals the meaning of the ugly in the personification of a person as an element of protest against the classical requirements of ethics and aesthetics, in response to the oppressive social mechanisms of reproduction of “predictable” individuals. The close connection of a person's cultural and aesthetic preferences with the content of his personal uniqueness is substantiated. The article examines the social and spiritual prerequisites for turning to the ugly as an instrument of personification of a person, including from the positions of poststructuralism and postmodernism. The typology of the ugly as a socio-cultural phenomenon proposed in the article can be used in further theoretical development of the problem of personification.

Creative illusion in couples: thoughts about the value of transitional experience for couple relationships

This article explores the importance of transitional experience—the intermediate area between internal and external reality, and a necessary and vitalising arena throughout life—in couple relationships. It considers the relationship between containment, transitional experience, and creativity, and how these ideas might add an element to Morgan's "creative couple" concept. Enlisting the thinking of Winnicott, Bion, and more current thinkers such as Goldman, Ogden, Peltz, and others, technical implications such as the importance of flexibility in emphasis between prioritising interpretation of projective processes and in non-verbal avenues of containment are explored.

The Implantation Argument: Simulation Theory is Proof that God Exists

AbstractI introduce the implantation argument, a new argument for the existence of God. Spatiotemporal extensions believed to exist outside of the mind, composing an external physical reality, cannot be composed of either atomlessness (infinite divisibility, atomless gunk), or of Democritean atoms (extended simples), and therefore the inner experience of an external reality containing spatiotemporal extensions believed to exist outside of the mind does not represent the external reality (inner mind does not represent external, mind-independent, reality), the mind is a mere cinematic-like mindscreen (a mindscreen simulation), implanted into the mind by a creator-God. It will be shown that only a creator-God can be the implanting creator of the mindscreen simulation (the creator of reality), and other simulation theories, such as Bostrom’s famous account, that do not involve a creator-God as the mindscreen simulation creator, involve a reification fallacy.

La pandemia nei sogni

The pandemic within dreams. The article aims to analyse different representations of the pandemic within dreams to trace correspondences between the symbolic expressions of the oneiric language and the sociology of the imaginary. The theoretical-methodological framework of Carl G. Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz guides the articulation of the essay. The unconscious lived through the memory of dreams has the typical and strong tendency to be projected externally, hence the hypothesis that it is possible to grasp its reflections in external reality and the social world. The question to be answered concerns which shared movements are present in the unconscious of individual subjects during the current period dominated by the pandemic and which relationships can be detected between the symbolic material emerging in individual dreams and some contemporary cultural phenomena. The empirical material is drawn from a series of interdisciplinary meetings regarding patients' dreams during the pandemic.

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On the Veiling and Unveiling of Experience: A Comparison Between the Micro-Phenomenological Method and the Practice of Meditation

Abstract Both Buddhist meditation and micro-phenomenology start from the observation that our experience escapes us, we don’t see it as it is. Both offer devices that allow us to become aware of it. But, surprisingly, the two approaches offer few precise descriptions of the processes which veil experience, and of those which make it possible to dissipate these veils. This article is an attempt to put in parentheses declarative writings on the veiling and unveiling processes and their epistemological background and to collect procedural descriptions of this veiling and unveiling processes. From written and oral meditation teachings on the one hand, micro-phenomenological interviews applied to meditative experience and to themselves on the other hand, we identified four types of veiling processes which contribute to screen what is there, and ultimately to generate the naïve belief in the existence of an external reality independent of the mind: attentional, emotional, intentional and cognitive veils. The first part of the article describes these veiling processes and the processes through which they dissipate. It leads to the identification of several “gestures” conducive to this unveiling. The second part describes the devices used by meditation and by micro-phenomenology to elicit these gestures.

WHO ARE THE HUMANITIES FOR? DECOLONIZING THE HUMANITIES

AbstractDrees makes a strong case for the importance of the humanities in the university, providing an excellent resource for anyone in the Western Academy. Its usefulness for those who want to work outside the West is limited, however, because he does not engage with literature that challenges its methods and disciplines. If we are to have a positive global impact, we need to do more than clarify existing boundaries, we need to blur them, beginning with an examination of inherent biases reflected in its history, structure, and content. This article focuses on one critique, a decolonial critique of the Western view that ontology precedes epistemology (an external reality produces knowledge). Outside the modern Western Academy, epistemologies create ontologies (epistemic creations/stories about the world give us a sense of the world and its materiality). I describe a relational understanding of knowledge and how this changes our understanding of the humanities and our epistemic responsibilities.

Dancing in War. Perception of Theater in Wartime Sarajevo: Pippo Delbono, Giorgio Strehler and Peter Schumann

„When I went to Sarajevo, I met a boy“, Pippo Delbono tells us. They talked, and suddenly the boy told him, „I saw an entire city in anger. I’ve seen people become monsters“. And Delbono replied, „And I’ve seen people look at me like I’m a monster. And all the things that turn into monstrosity“. Traveling, for Delbono, is a life experience that turns into a theatrical one at the same time. In 1998, Delbono created a play called War. The story of the boy he meets during his trip to Sarajevo is an introduction to Delbono’s magical world of theater through which he expresses the need to present a life that is born from suffering, illness, war, but in which we still „dancing“. Danzare nella guerra, „dancing in the war“, for Delbono means to oppose the war to the beauty, joy, and poetics of the movement. In 1995, Strehler directed a play called Mother Courage of Sarajevo based on the text written by Bertolt Brecht. For Strehler, Mother Courage of Sarajevo is not just a play, it is a symbol, a political act that portrays war as a human failure. Strehler based his vision of theater on Brecht’s epic theater. One year before, in 1993, with his puppet troupe, The Bread and Puppet, Peter Schumann came to Sarajevo to provide his support. In the first place, we want to show how Delbono’s conception of theater and experience during his trip to Sarajevo intertwine with the primary goal of Sarajevo theater in those years, as „spiritual resistance“, „spiritual needs“, „call to heal wounded souls“, a „super theater“, as Izudin Bajrović calls him, in which theater and life were the same. Through Strehler’s theater, his relationship with Sarajevo, and the breaking of the „fourth wall“, we will talk about theater as research of those eternal human values, but also returning to humane theater. In the third place, through Schumann’s work, we will show how the external theatrical reality intertwines with the internal one as a feature of strong political engagement.

Neuroscientist Details the Pandemic Stress We Have All Endured

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article APA & MeetingsFull AccessNeuroscientist Details the Pandemic Stress We Have All EnduredMark MoranMark MoranSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:13 Jul 2021https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2021.7.29Abstract“People hate ambiguity,” said Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D., yet it has been a defining feature of life in the face of global COVID-19 pandemic.Fear, uncertainty, ambiguity, unpredictability, lack of autonomous control, and deprivation of social contact—the past pandemic year has been a perfect stew activating the hormonal and neurobiological mediators of chronic stress, said Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D., in a closing address at APA’s online 2021 Annual Meeting.“We have been asked not to assemble, not to congregate, not to hang out and hook up, not to be social primates,” says Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.“There is a beautiful and large literature by pioneers in [the field of psychological stress] going back decades showing precisely what the building blocks for psychological stress are,” Sapolsky said. “For the same external reality, you will feel more subjectively stressed, you are more likely to activate a stress response, and you are at more risk for stress-related disease if you feel like you have no outlet for the frustrations [you are experiencing]. Moreover, you will be more at risk if this circumstance is occurring [in a situation] where you feel like you have no control, no predictability, no information about how bad it will be. Additionally, psychological stress is built on a subjective perception that the external reality represents things getting worse. Finally, the absence of social support is perhaps the most central feature of all.”Sound familiar? It’s the nearly universal experience of the human race in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Sapolsky said. He is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery at Stanford University. His 2017 book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Our Worst, won the Phi Beta Kappa Award for Science and was listed among Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.He described laboratory experiments that have highlighted the distinction between risk—to which people have a wide variety of responses—and ambiguity, underscoring the special disdain humans have for uncertainty. “People across the board hate ambiguity,” Sapolsky said. “When you perform neuroimaging [of peoples’ brains] when they are dealing with ambiguity, ambiguity is preferentially lighting up the amygdala and insulate cortex, areas having to do with negative affect, fear, anxiety, disgust. We don’t like ambiguity.“What we have been facing this year is ambiguity, over and over,” he said. “How bad is this? How many are going to die? How long until there is a vaccine? Do you have immunity after the vaccine? Can you get infected again? We have spent the past year with the best of experts telling us, ‘It’s not clear.’”Most consequential of all has been the prohibition on social connectedness and Sapolsky showed images of COVID-19 youth parties (featuring Corona beer) and protests at state capitols against mask wearing and social distancing. These are evocative (horrendously, in this case, he said) of the human resistance to not being allowed to socialize. “We have been asked not to assemble, not to congregate, not to hang out and hook up, not to be social primates,” he said. “One of the most defining things about us being a primate is our profound sociality. This profoundly primatological trait of ours is what we have been asked to give up this year.”Sapolsky took his audience through a tour of 40 years of research exploring the relationship between chronic stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. Most recently, this research has shown in laboratory studies that chronic stress can blunt emotional empathy.He closed his remarks with a reflection on this year’s Annual Meeting theme, “Finding Equity Through Advances in Mind and Brain in Unsettled Times.”“An entire literature has shown that unequal societies make for unhealthy ones, more violent ones and that unequal societies are ones that are less kind,” Sapolsky said. “We have seen the last year expanding our inequality in every possible way—who dies from this virus, who is shot unarmed by the police, who makes a fortune off of others during this pandemic. This has been a year of bringing out the worst of some of our behaviors.“I think the fact that it also brought out some of the most caring, some of the most extraordinarily self-sacrificial, altruistic behaviors is a mark of just how good we have been in the face of one of the worst types of stress you can imagine—and how tough it is going to be to lessen that inequity.” ■“Racial Inequality in Psychological Research: Trends of the Past and Recommendations for the Future” is posted here. ISSUES NewArchived

Mentalizing in Clinical Practice: Working with Children Whose Mother is Suffering from Psychotic Symptoms

This paper considers whether the psychotic illness of a mother impacts on the development of the mentalizing capacity of her offspring and the consequences this may have for clinical practice as a child psychotherapist. It focuses on the current theoretical understanding that the secure state of mind of a mother with respect to attachment, as well as her mentalizing ability, influences the development of the child's mentalizing skills. After summarizing and evaluating evidence associated with the attachment behaviour and mentalizing capacity of a psychotic mother, the paper gives evidence that there is a strong association between mothers on the psychotic continuum and insecure‐avoidant or disorganized attachment behaviour and impairment of the reflective function. This puts the infant at elevated risk of not fully developing mentalizing abilities. The issue of acquiring hypermentalization or undermentalization patterns is highlighted. In clinical practice, marked mirroring and transparency about the therapist's mental state allow the client to feel seen and to discover his or her own inner experiences in relation to external reality.