Outer World Research Articles

Gaia, psyche and deep ecology.

This article identifies a remarkable degree of consilience between aspects of classical Jungian theory, dual-aspect monism, Earth System science and deep ecology, despite their mostly independent formulation. The resulting synergy offers a radically different and urgently needed worldview based on respectful relationship with, rather than hubristic domination of, the other-than-human world. This metanoia, rooted in psychology, science and metaphysics, informs practical change without being conventionally political or moralistic. Circumscribing the Pauli-Jung conjecture to our inner and outer worlds - the human psyche and this planet respectively - reveals qualitative correlations between their dynamics, structure and pathologies. In particular, the comparable roles of ego in the psyche and of humankind in the Earth System link our modern monotheism of consciousness, that Jung decried, with the advent of the Anthropocene epoch. This connection is explored over time by applying Jung's stages of life developmental theory, with its crucial mid-life enantiodromia, to our civilization. It contrasts our heroic development to date with future adaptation through what I call frugal individuation, and attributes our persistent failure to address dangers such as the climate emergency to a combination of inertia, nostalgia and hubris. Finally, parallels are drawn between Jungian individuation and the philosophy of the long-range deep ecology movement.

Dark feet and dark wings: penetrating the depths of the Earth.

The author, although an analyst, is an initiate into the topic of environmental destruction. Following Wendell Berry, she enters the dark and begins a journey of dream-like reflection, weaving images from her own dream and drawing on the work of Vaughan, Bernstein, Soloveitchik and Sacks. She asks, 'not if but where does climate change enter the room?'. The second half of the paper focuses on the manifestations of environmental destruction in dreams and sandplay from three patients and one dream group participant. The paper argues that the analyst must see and intuit before our patients can access the objective layer of environmental destruction in dreams and symbolic material. In this way, the climate becomes the wounded patient, and the analyst as wounded healer must first access his/her own relationship to the wounds inside. Finally, using an ancient Jewish mythological story of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the author argues that Jungian analysts must work to find balance between the inner world of depth psychology and the outer world with its challenges and problems that include environmental destruction.

“PLAY ME”

Created during the COVID-19 pandemic, “PLAY ME” is a video work that discusses the difference between physical-perceptual experience and our limited understanding of the outer world. The artwork uses a first-person walking practice in combination with narration and sound as a mapping tool, and public pianos as a guide for exploring our cities and the aesthetics of digital culture. The purpose of this short manuscript is to analyse the role of the narrator in the self-referential storytelling of my video work “PLAY ME.” I will discuss self-referentialism as a creative tool, and the role of the narrator as a portal for connecting materials with ideas. To do this, it will be helpful to divide and analyse the plot of this work into parts, so the following analysis in artist’s voice will be clearer.

From Forgotten to Ignored: Herstory of Involutional Melancholia, Menopause, and Cognition

The role of the ego in melancholia is sadistic, or, rather, the ego allows the conscience (superego) to torture it because of the guilty withdrawal to narcissistic isolation. The outer world is given up. Love objects are lost and recreated in the ego, and then treated by the ego in a sadistic way.—Arnold Palmer and Stephen Sherman, 1938

“Bodyheartminding” (xin 心): Reconceiving the Inner Self and the Outer World in the Language of Holographic Focus and Field

“Bodyheartminding” (<i>xin</i> 心): Reconceiving the Inner Self and the Outer World in the Language of Holographic Focus and Field

Deadly idyll: how Thomas Mann and Stephen King celebrate love upon the world’s ruin

Thomas Mann’s famous novella “Death in Venice” is more than social critics or metaphor of artistic search for means. Its ambiguous poetry of forbidden longing offers a game we play ever since, a drama of strange, dreamlike romance unfolding itself in a highly troublesome atmosphere of ordinary life succumbing to the oncoming devastation and catastrophe of the outer world that inexplicably links with the wishes of a soul. This plot became a focus of ideas, a web of meanings covering more and more areas of mentality and imagination while living on. One of the latter writers rarely compared to Mann, a popular American author Stephen King, master of macabre fantasy, suddenly shows some extraordinary level of coincidence of his works’ throughout motives/invariants with those of the European classic. The answers both of them are chasing after lie in the mysterious character of the Whole of the world denying any isolate and solid sense, medium lands of affection and connection, Gordian knots of disastrous dialectics interweaving will and passivity, creation and destruction. Why dark fantasy (that King embodies) constantly insists on destroying, erasing the entire world for the sake of some bittersweet heroic pathos upon its ruin, as before Mann unleashes the epidemics to his story’s bourgeois backgrounds to celebrate the phantom love of his characters? Why does Beauty transgress the borders of subjectivity very much like Death does the borders of physicality, and they both lead us to the same revelation of some great apophatic quasi-Platonian chora at the core of our being where everything is born and we are all one?

Human Soul in the Light of Czesław Stanisław Bartnik’s Universalistic Personalism

The article presents a contemporary understanding of the human soul according to Czesław Stanisław Bartnik (1929–2020), the founder of universalistic personalism. The term “soul” has been understood in many different ways throughout the history of human thought, hence it still raises confusion today. It is sometimes dismissed as too “religious” and replaced by the word “ego” or “person.” It seems that a successful attempt to link the history of human thought with a contemporary understanding of the person is Bartnik’s personalistic system. The article groups Bartnik’s thoughts on the “human soul” into four main blocks: personalistic reflection on the history of the concept of “soul”; place of the soul in the structure of the contemporary person (real being); clarification of the significance of the soul’s “function” in the inner and outer world of an individual; the existence of a “social person” and – in a sense – a “social soul” i.e., the spiritual self-awareness of society (although there is no single common soul for all people). The analysis leads to the following conclusions: the terms “soul” and “person” are not synonymous today; the meaning of “person” is broader than that of “soul,” however, the “person” does not displace the “soul.” Putting it positively, the soul together with the body constitutes human nature, and thanks to this nature, there is a metaphysical personal “self” (ontic ego) which can be described as a “spiritual soul” or “spirit” (whereby the metaphysical “self” is inseparable from the “soul”) Man as a person expresses himself through body and soul, as well as the metaphysical self (which is present in the consciousness). Because of its “spiritual soul,” a person is constantly in development, transcends reality and is moving towards its ultimate fulfilment in the Communion of the Divine Persons. This is done by making the right moral choices, in conjunction with the Person of Jesus Christ.

A new view at the “Chinese model”: lessons for Russia, the Union state and the world

The paper provides a systemic-synergetic study — from a new conceptual stand — of the lessons of reform policy and openness to the outer world in the PRC after December 1979 through the lens of “the Chinese model” theory and practice for socio-economic, spiritual and materialistic progress of Russia, the new Union state (NUS) and the world at large. As a methodological basis of the work, the author first critically explores recent literature on this subject drawing on personal multi-decade research in this area. He then formulates a new conceptual view on the problem, provides a new periodization of the main socio-economic stages of development of the PRC; systematizes some of most important lessons of the “Chinese model” for Russia and the NUS; defines the current strategy of socio-economic development of the People’s Republic of China. The analysis concludes with an examination of the advancing socio-progress model towards a sustainable-optimal society, (bio)economy and (bio)finance and then the good-economic management. The findings will contribute to the development of optimal political economy and, more specifically, to a number of promising directions in the strategy of social sphere and the entire life order of Russia, the NUS and the world.

The immune system as a system of relations.

Progress in neuroimmunology established that the nervous and the immune systems are two functionally related physiological systems. Unique sensory and immune receptors enable them to control interactions of the organism with the inner and the outer worlds. Both systems undergo an experience-driven selection process during their ontogeny. They share the same mediators/neurotransmitters and use synapses for intercellular communication. They keep a memory of previous experiences. Immune cells can affect nervous cells, nervous cells can affect immune cells, and they regulate each other. I however argue that the two systems differ by three major points: 1) Unlike the nervous system, the immune system has a loose anatomical structure, in which molecular and cellular events mostly occur at random; 2) The immune system can respond to molecules of the living world whereas the nervous system can respond to phenomena of the physical world; 3) Responses of the immune system act both on the organism and on the stimulus that triggered the response, whereas responses of the nervous system act on the organism only. The nervous and the immune systems therefore appear as two complementary systems of relations that closely work together, and whose reactivities are well-suited to deal with physical and biological stimuli, respectively. Its ability both to adapt the organism to the living world and to adapt the living world to the organism endows the immune system with powerful adaptive properties that enable the organism to live in peace with itself and with other living beings, whether pathogens or commensals.

The mediating role of basic psychological needs satisfaction in the relationship between trait mindfulness and psychological distress in clinical trainees

ABSTRACT Clinical trainees are especially prone to psychological distress. Mindfulness has shown to promote well-being among health care professionals, yet the mechanisms through which it reduces psychological distress are still uncertain. Self-determination theory suggests that mindfulness allows individuals to be more open and receptive to information from their inner and outer worlds, which facilitates satisfaction of their basic psychological needs (BPNS), considered essential to optimal functioning. However, studies investigating whether BPNS is an actual pathway through which mindfulness reduces psychological distress are limited to cross-sectional designs. This longitudinal study tested a mediation model using data collected among 27 clinical trainees at the beginning (T1) and mid-point of the academic year (T2). Results indicated that BPNS (T1) partially mediates the relationship between trait mindfulness (T1) and psychological distress (T2). Both the direct (β = −.36, 95%CI [−.67; −.05]) and indirect (β = −.27, 95%CI [−.58; −.05]) effects were significant. This model explained a large portion of variance for both needs satisfaction (R 2 = .30) and psychological distress (R 2 = .61). Our results not only yield support to the role of basic psychological needs in clinical trainees’ well-being, but also contribute to the understanding of mindfulness and one of its mechanisms of action.

Digigram by Barbara Henning

Reviewed by: Digigram by Barbara Henning Kit Robinson (bio) digigram Barbara Henning United Artist Books https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9780935992502/digigram.aspx 92 Pages; Print, $16.00 For a long time, the poet, novelist, and teacher Barbara Henning has made a career of violating genre boundaries, mixing fact and fiction, prose and poetry, autobiography and chance procedure to compile an utterly original body of work. Written in the pre-COVID teens during the hellish rise of Ubu Trump, her new book, Digigram, is an homage to public life, a celebration of the energy, movement, community, anonymity, and freedom afforded by our erstwhile urban existence. At the same time, through memory, dream, and reflection, Henning opens the door to her private world, a realm of love, joy, sorrow, and deep, if fraught, relationship. Digigram is a sequence of prose poems titled and dated from 25 February 2016 to 24 April 2018. Each entry is a verbal construct of phrases recording the events of one day through a series of flashes. Henning's use of the em dash to link the phrases frees her from the constraints of standard syntax and creates an equivalency across disparate referents—public and private, personal and political, past and present, dreaming and waking life. We join her on her bike, in cabs, on the subway, and in apartments and restaurants while she makes her way around the New York City of her continuous present, as well as the Detroit of her youth. Interspersed among her daily observations and encounters, news items appear like a running subtext injected into the flow. Trump, a looming, ominous presence throughout, is named only as "the bully." Strains of racism, oligarchy, and corruption interlace with verbal snapshots of quotidian events. As inner and outer worlds collide, feelings of anxiety, tenderness, and outrage animate the narrative. Two aspects of city life permeate the text: simultaneity and coincidence. One has the overwhelming sense of innumerable things going on at once. Street scenes commingle with states of mind in a kaleidoscopic mélange navigable [End Page 135] only by a quick-witted, intuitive narrator. Coincidence, a natural by-product of complexity, arrives early and often, as identical structures of feeling coincide: —an old female orangutan—locks eyes—with a young woman—breastfeeding a baby—yes, she nods, me, too–("Me, Too") Henning often uses words as hinges to swing from one realm of consciousness to the next and back again. In "Let Me Know," the narrative shifts from a bike ride by the shore of Lake Superior to immigration law to a soccer match to electoral politics. Each shift is triggered by the word or concept "pass": —as I pass the woman on the bike … many mothers are unable to pass on—their citizenship … when a pass is made—four defenders charge … a committee of American men—will meet to decide—the rights of women ("Let Me Know") The em dashes remind one of William Burroughs, but with an important difference: Henning's work is proudly feminist. The poems act as both argument and anthem: —the outlook for 2016 somewhat gloomy … a NYC policeman forces a man to stand—outside—in his underwear … another bully wants—to be liked by the alpha bully … ugly and frightful haters, bashers, hucksters—he-who-must-not-be-named … tear gas fired at children … 14,000 Syrian migrants—in desperate condition ("Wham!") "River God" begins with a description of the book's cover image, a 1984 photograph of the author's young children posing on the "belly of a river god," a statue at the Detroit Institute of Art, "looking over a baby angel—then over—the ruins of Detroit." The poem ends with "the boys reclining—beside my grown daughter—watching TV—feet overlapping." Past and present cohabit in Henning's kaleidoscopic prosody, which morphs and spreads in all directions, only to execute a poignant return: —at night—a cold-air bath—thunder—the sound of rain on the pavement—turn off the lights—lie in bed—in the dark—and [End Page 136] listen—my arms crossed—over my bare chest—the child I was—am now—Mama and Daddy—I say out loud—("A...

Everything Connects

Electronics play the central role in implementing new features in mobile machines, raising their performance, flexibility and reliability. A current trend is the connection of on-board electronics to the outer world. The advantages range from preventive maintenance and optimising the operation modes to implementing machine learning and autonomous operation

Staging Depth: Eugene O’Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse

Staging Depth: Eugene O’Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse

Workplace spirituality and employee commitment; ‘a critical review of contemporary literature

For a long time, the Western idea of life has kept the outer real world away from the inner world of spirituality. I have always felt that combining two could be damaging. There is a growing realization by the modern management think tanks that workspace spirituality has a definite role in improving performance and productivity while still ensuring employee engagement, motivation, commitment, and fulfilling his individual spiritual needs. Loyal personnel are the greatest treasured means to achieve a feat in the long run for any enterprise. Having committed employees enhances the competitive edge of any organization by lowering the rates of people leaving the organization and quitting their jobs. There has been limited work done to study the interplay of spirituality at the workplace and organizational commitment of employees how one correlates with the other. This work attempts to review the contemporary peer-reviewed literature on the association between workplace spirituality and organizational commitment. In this critical appraisal of contemporary literature, we look at the role of workspace spirituality in improving employee commitment. Our review looked at various measurable dimensions of workspace spirituality and employee commitment, which have been used by recent empirical questionnaire-based studies and their findings.

Calling situated: a survey among medical students supplemented by a qualitative study and a comparison with a surveyed sample of physicians

BackgroundCalling within the medical context receives growing academic attention and empirical research has started to demonstrate its beneficial effects. The purpose of this study is to investigate what motivates students to enter medical school and what role calling may play (i), to evaluate if calling influences the way in which they experience their studies (ii), and to compare medical students’ experience of calling with those of physicians.MethodsA questionnaire survey was distributed among medical students (N = 1048; response rate above 60%) of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. It was supplemented by a group discussion between bachelor medical students (N = 8) and senior physicians (N = 4), focusing on different facets of calling. An existing data set of a survey among physicians, addressing calling with the same questionnaire, was used to compare students’ and physicians’ attitudes towards calling. Survey data were analyzed with the habitual statistical procedures for categorical and continuous variables. The group discussion was analyzed with thematic analysis.ResultsThe survey showed that experiencing calling is a motivational factor for study choice and influences positively choice consistency. Students experiencing calling differed from those who did not: they attributed different definitions to calling, indicated more often prosocial motivational factors for entering medical school and perceived the learning context as less burdensome. The analysis of the group discussion revealed that the concept of calling has a fluid definition. It was conceived as having the characteristics of a double-edged sword and as originating from within or outside or from a dialectic interplay between the inner and outer world. Finally, calling is experienced less often by physicians than by medical students, with a decreasing prevalence as the immersion in the clinical years of the study of medicine progresses.ConclusionsCalling plays an important role in study choice and consistency of medical students. Given its relevance for medical students and its ramifications with the learning context, calling should become a topic of the reflexive parts of the medical curriculum. We critically discuss the role played by calling for medical students and provide some perspectives on how calling could be integrated in the reflection and teaching on physicianhood.

The environments of reproductive and birth defects research in the U.S. and West Germany (c. 1955–1975)

Most historiographies of the crossroads of environmental and reproductive health in 20th century start and end with the case of thalidomide. Despite its global scope, thalidomide today stands for sharp contrasts: in the numbers of victims, in institutional responses to the disaster, and also—more generally—in regulatory approaches to potential risks and national cultures of reproductive justice and disability rights. This paper takes a closer look at two countries that have been seen as emblematic of this divide in regulatory frameworks, despite similarities and interconnections in other areas, such as (pharma)industrial production, science, and robust feminist environmental health movements: the U.S. and West Germany. It argues that thalidomide needs to be historically contextualized within a broad framework of concepts and models of environment from research on exogenous reproductive effects. To do so, it reconstructs what counted as environment in research on reproductive health and birth defects in these two national settings in the postwar decades. It looks at transformations made across multifaceted initiatives, studying collective landscapes and workplaces as potentially dangerous “outer worlds,” as well as smaller scale and more individualized environments, i.e., the maternal metabolism, uterus, lifestyle, or social interactions. The article thereby aims to explicate concepts and debates about the environment that influenced later national divisions in politics of science and technology, hinting of the democratic challenges these posed.

Pedagogical Approaches to Responsible Entrepreneurship Education

This article explores innovations in and pedagogical approaches to Responsible Entrepreneurship Education (REE), with a specific focus on how to advance responsible entrepreneurial competencies (“know-how”) and entrepreneurial practices (“know-that”). Consequently, this article proposes the “4Rs” framework (re-imagining, reconfiguring, reshaping, and reforming) to guide entrepreneurship educators’ actions. Firstly, it is necessary to “re-imagine” the intended and enacted curriculum to develop a contemporary awareness and knowledge of social and environmental enterprises. Secondly, it is essential to “reconfigure” teaching pedagogies to problematize the entrepreneurship environment and outer world. Thirdly, it is required for educators to “reshape” the attained curriculum with the stakeholders to offer learners co-curricular and extracurricular experiences. Finally, pedagogical “reforms” provide an opportunity to incorporate innovations into the discovery of new knowledge and paths of responsibilities. These pedagogical approaches support entrepreneurial learning as “processes” and entrepreneurship as a “process” aligned to the achievement of responsible entrepreneurial behavior.

“Only Daughter”: A Perennial Message for Empowerment of Females

Women perform their works from domestic to any outer world. In spite of being active within the territory of their household works, they have set several significant examples in political, economical, social, literary and other fields. In this context, Mary Wollstonecraft, Lydia E. Pinkham, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Mahasweta Devi, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sandra Sisneros, Susri Parijat and Anuradha Koirala are a few examples of women activists who have contributed to the society and nations performing their best works in their respective fields. Their involvement, perhaps, was not as easy as we understand today; they must have undergone several complicated circumstances to work with patriarchal society. Such action and result oriented females' strategies and contributions/works can be fruitful for empowerment of women even today. This study tries to find out how Sandra Cisneros' work "Only Daughter" initiates for the empowerment of women these days, for it raises the issues of "subject matter as well as a desire for justice and a belief in the power of education to change our society for the better" (Tyson 116).

Self-authoring characteristics of the Montessori School graduates

The modern world requires a new mindset for people to enable them to become self-evaluating human beings. Kegan (1994) termed this complex system of mind the self-authorship. This is the ability to generate belief systems and intrapersonal states internally. The self-authorship analyses are culturally diverse. This paper presents two theories, namely the concept of self-authorship by Baxter Magolda (1998, 2001) and Obuchowski’s (2000, 2006) theory of self-authoring personality. The latter remains a framework of the description of central psychosocial attributes for the self-authoring personality of Montessori School graduates. The self-authoring studies of diagnostic character aimed at qualification of the authoring personality standard as well as subjective denotations of authoring attributes of the Montessori School graduates. The study covered 69 former students (56.5% women, 43.5% men) of the state Primary Montessori School in Lublin. The self-authoring personality standard was qualified using The Self-Authoring Personality Questionnaire elaborated by Obuchowski and colleagues (Blachnio &amp; Obuchowski, 2011). The personal denotations conferred on authoring attributes were examined by means of the questionnaire My Experiences based on the adaptation of Self-Confrontation Method by Hermans (1991). The level of self-authoring personality in female and male groups was high and characterised by similar values. In the personal statements the persons being examined described themselves as those who perceive themselves as a source of behaviour and the own aims were object of their projects designed for accomplishment in relation with the other people. As follows from the data, the participants of the study acquired skills indispensable for making individual decisions about themselves and the outer world.

Guillevic as Ecopoet: Apples, Roundness, and Affinities with Thoreau

This article will explore ecopoetics by comparing notes on tonic wildness: Eugène Guillevic’s poetry collection Sphère (1963), particularly the poem “Rond”, and Henry David Thoreau’s late essay “Wild Apples” (1859-1862). It will show how both writers foreground ethics and ecology via the materiality of words, the pull of nature, and the nuances of narrative voice. I will emphasize ways in which renowned French poet Guillevic exemplifies ecopoetics, despite critics not applying this label to him. I will develop parallels between Guillevic and Thoreau, consider Guillevic’s love for the non-human, and discuss the environmental and ecological stakes of his sensuous communion with the outer world. I will analyze these writers’ lively, invigorating poetic stances, highlighting the creative responses that Guillevic invites to the natural world and intersubjectivity, habitat and humanity, the senses and ecological paths that provide a future orientation. Kin perhaps to essayist Michael Pollan, Guillevic inscribes us in the cosmos and immerses us in cyclical growth, including by celebrating apples’ implicit call to inscription in the biosphere. His meditative, dialogic voice and affinities with Thoreau help ecopoetics as a category embrace immediacy and self-awareness as well as historical and literary trends since antiquity.