Perspective Of Analyst Research Articles

Plying the Steel: a Reconsideration of Surgical Metaphors in Psychoanalysis

Among the metaphors that Freud used to describe psychoanalysis, the surgical is possibly the most deplored. It is considered an anachronistic remnant of a dubious medical ideology that psychoanalysis has largely renounced. However, while analysts today avoid surgical analogies, their patients continue to produce surgical fantasies about analytic treatment. This fact alone requires a serious consideration of the meanings that surgical metaphors have for them. A second reason for reconsidering the role of the surgical metaphor, from the analyst's perspective, lies in its creative revival by W. R. Bion. Disregarding the shift away from surgical analogizing, Bion employed the metaphor to vividly portray various aspects of the analytic situation and the patient's experience of them. A brief historical overview of the surgical metaphor in psychoanalysis is provided, followed by an account of the reasons for its demise and by a review of the criticisms that continue to be leveled at it. Bion's use of surgical metaphors toward the end of his life is then explored. Finally, illustrations are given of the various ways in which patients use spontaneous surgical metaphors to depict transference and the analytic process. Though the analyst should not deliberately adopt surgical metaphors, it is important to remain open to these transference portrayals.

Estimating Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction

The simulation offers a way to improve student understanding of the analytic process used by intelligence analysts as well as analysts in other fields such as business and public policy. The simulation places participants in the role of intelligence analysts in the months leading up to the Iraq War. Participants prepare an outline of a national intelligence estimate (NIE) that assesses the status of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. The simulation has several stages that mimic the actual process that the U.S. intelligence community (IC) uses to produce NIEs. The simulation gives participants a better understanding of the ambiguity that IC analysts face in their jobs, the difficult assessments they must make based on limited information, the complexities of collaboration between different agencies in the IC to produce unified judgments, and the different perspectives of analysts and policy makers. The simulation takes about 2½ hours to conduct and requires very little preparation by instructors and participants. It is a valuable addition to courses in intelligence, national security, foreign policy, and international relations.

Intellectual capital disclosure from sell‐side analyst perspective

Purpose – Research on the use/disclosure of intellectual capital (IC) information by sell‐side analysts, using content analysis of their reports, is growing. This paper aims to establish the importance of this perspective in understanding the role of IC in communicating firm value, to introduce possible theoretical frameworks to interpret the findings of such studies, and to propose methodological developments.Design/methodology/approach – The paper argues for the need to look at IC from the perspective of sell‐side analysts, and then advocates the use of several theoretical frameworks to enrich current understanding of the role of IC as it is used/disclosed by sell‐side analysts. Current methodologies used in this type of research are critiqued with a view to proposing multiple research methods.Findings – Looking at IC from the sell‐side analyst perspective helps us to understand how the capital market appreciates this information. However, IC information that analysts disclose cannot be taken at its fac...

The Policy Analyst and Historical Perspectives: Notes of a Practitioner

AbstractIn these remarks I offer some tentative observations based largely on my experience as a policy analyst on China security-related issues for nearly twenty years, at RAND and now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. My focus during this time has been mainly on national security and military/defense issues, but also has included attempts to interpret the impact of both domestic and external factors on Chinese foreign/defense policies and military-security behavior. This has included analysis of the impact of domestic change on the People's Republic of China's (PRC) foreign policy and of Chinese grand strategy from a historical perspective. My uses of theory and of history, both premodern and modern, have been largely as needed to support my analysis of Chinese perceptions and motivations in the security arena. What I am most familiar with is the way in which policy analysts and policy practitioners look at China, including their use (or non-use) of studies from history and political science.

Industry Analyst Forum: Trends in Communications [Guest Editorial

This is the first installment of a feature topic in which the aim is to survey the broad trends that shape the future of the communications landscape, from the perspective of analysts who cover various aspects of the industry. The first four articles are presented here.

A Switch in Time: The Role of Switched Digital Video in Easing the Looming Bandwidth Crisis in Cable

Switched digital video technology, once considered little more than a wild-eyed science experiment by North American cable operators, has become mainstream. Indeed, we enter the summer of 2008 projecting that cable multiple- system operators - faced with ever-tightening bandwidth constraints as they seek to add more HDTV programming, niche programming, and other digital offerings - will cover more than half of the United States and Canada with switched digital installations by the end of the year and 75 percent or more of their cable footprint by the close of 2009. This article provides an industry analyst's perspective on the surge of interest in SDV and the implications of that surge for the future of the cable industry.

WHEN WAL-MART WIMPED OUT

This article offers one China analyst's perspective on a variety of questions related to the unionization of all sixty-six Wal-Mart outlets in China. Why did China force Wal-Mart to unionize? If, as Marx, paraphrasing Hegel, wrote, “all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice,” is Mao making his comeback? Or if, as Marx immediately continued in his own right, “He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce,” is Hu Jintao playing Louis Bonaparte to Mao's Napoleon? Is the Chinese state acting out of a new level of confidence that it can now challenge the world's most prepossessing corporate giants in order to make good on its communist commitments? Is it running scared in the face of a working class that has at last managed to score a victory? Or is it actually strengthening its power through time-honored tactics of mass organizational control that have not really changed despite the new market context? Are China's workers being protected, empowered, or co-opted and subjected to new forms of state control? And why did one of the world's most militantly antiunion corporations go along? Did they have a choice? Did they fear China's state-run union federation? And finally, what does all this portend for the future of labor relations in China?

Authenticities and lineages: revisiting concepts of continuity and change in language

Working assumptions about what constitutes authenticity in language are crucially informed by prevailing notions of continuity and change. This preoccupation is central to questions of identity for language speakers. It is also central to the discipline of linguistics. Our experience of working alongside community members on language projects has raised our awareness of the degree of disjunction between ideas of authenticity commonly assumed within linguistics and the ideas we encounter within speech communities. In this article, we investigate types of continuity embraced by different stakeholders in language and language development. We trace the continuity narratives in two different language situations, identifying types of lineage, participant positions, and their relevance to notions of authenticity. We then examine the criteria for authenticity and lineage within linguistics, noting the disjunctions internal to the field, depending on the analyst's theoretical perspective, as well the disjunctions between lineages of authenticity as narrated within the discipline and those narrated in the wider community. Our aim is to develop a working model of language that recognizes and accommodates multiple narratives of authenticity, thereby better accommodating the full range of language and language research situations. This may in turn contribute to more productive collaborative relationships between communities and consultant linguists.

On terms

The topic of intention has recently received attention from behavior analysts (Hineline, 2003; Neuman, 2004). From a behavior-analytic perspective, it is important to identify the circumstances in which people utter such terms, and to identify the potential circumstances that maintain such utterances. It follows that from a behavior-analytic perspective, the focus is primarily on those who observe behavior and attribute intentions to that behavior. However, there has not been a distinction between intention and intentionality. The current analysis stresses the distinction between the two terms, both from a traditional point of view (psychologist and layperson) and from a behavior-analytic point of view. From a behavior analyst's perspective, the distinction is important because observers may be responding to distinct functional relations when they attribute intention or intentionality to behavior.

Horn, colonel Bernd (dir.), From the Outside Looking In. Media and Defence Analyst Perspectives on Canadian Military Leadership, Kingston, on, Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2005, 266 p.

Horn, colonel Bernd (dir.), From the Outside Looking In. Media and Defence Analyst Perspectives on Canadian Military Leadership, Kingston, on, Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2005, 266 p.. Un article de la revue Études internationales (Volume 38, numéro 2, juin 2007, p. 167-297) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

Mediating women's suffrage literature

Synopsis Although cultural productions of the women's suffrage campaign have received increasing attention, the literary, historical and political issues raised by this body of material remain contentious. This article examines why suffrage literature has often been regarded as ‘insignificant’, and proposes new ways in which the body of writing can be understood from a literary perspective. Secondly, it addresses the problematic relationship between work produced by historians of suffrage and the perspective of cultural analysts, suggesting again that this dynamic raises questions about the politics of literary form. Thirdly, it suggests ways in which the organisation of material through new media archiving and research would enable new and more fruitful ways of reading across and interpreting the range of women's writing.

Trends in the U.S. communications equipment market: a Wall Street perspective

After years of decline, we exit 2005 predicting that U.S. telco capital expenditures (capex) spending could approach double-digit year-over-year growth in 2005 with spending into 2006 focused on broadband access, wireless, and (later) carrier-grade Ethernet initiatives. This article provides a Wall Street analyst's perspective on select trends in the communications equipment market, with a view toward what the future might hold for the telecommunications industry.

The value of language: concept, perspectives, and policies

PurposeThree distinct trends are evolving that characterize the challenges facing corporate planners in managing language as a corporate asset. These are the evolution of the knowledge economy, the globalization of business and economy, and the increasing diversity of the workforce. These trends call for attention to the role language plays in the creation of intellectual and organizational capital. Linguists have been hampered by their inability to model how linguistic conditions affect economic processes. They have long attempted to assess the economic value of language as a commodity, but with little success. The purpose of this article is to describe language as an asset, and argue that recent advances in decision sciences have sufficiently removed the deficit in theoretical and empirical research that challenged the linguists.Design/methodology/approachDrawing an analogy between language and currency, this article identifies the functions that language must perform in terms of exchange, accounting and storage of information, knowledge and know‐how.FindingsFactors that contribute to the value of a language are discussed through comparative analysis of these functions from the perspectives of linguists, economists and decision analysts. Based on the Social Judgment Theory, the article develops a judgment‐analytic framework for the assessment of the value of a language.Practical implicationsConcluding that the corporate and community planning perspectives are divergent, the paper identifies the direction for future research to inform formulation of language policies. The value of a language may be affected by the degree to which the language is used in the demographic community defining an organization's strategic environment, the investment in the language relative to other available languages, demand for the language as a commodity within the organization's strategic community, and so on.Originality/valueWith such conception of language, corporations can begin to think in terms of a portfolio of language assets much in the same way as it thinks of portfolio of financial currency assets.

An Analyst's Perspective on Financial Reporting

Analyzing financial statements is difficult because (1) the information is spread across three separate statements and a myriad of footnotes, (2) numerous assumptions underpin the numbers, and (3) the information reflects only a snapshot in time. The problem is further exacerbated by the complexity, ambiguity, and obfuscation of financial accounting rules. Nevertheless, tools exist to help astute managers and analysts work through these issues and, as a result, improve their investment odds. Numerous examples abound where analysts and managers could have identified problem stocks in advance of market reaction by digging deeper into the data with an eye on earnings quality, operating efficiency, cash flow quality, and balance sheet quality.

Creating an Intersubjective Reality: Commentary on Paper by Arnold Rothstein

The author discusses Arnold Rothstein's paper “Compromise Formation Theory: An Intersubjective Dimension” and challenges his definition of intersubjectivity. She offers a perspective in which the import of intersubjectivity theory is less to dissolve the notion of objectivity than to grasp processes of mutual engagement, regulation, and recognition. While it is true that the recognition that the analyst is also a subject and therefore does not have exclusive knowledge is an important shift in the psychoanalytic paradigm, the author suggests that the intersubjective is far more encompassing than this. Intersubjective theory emphasizes the active creation of consensus or conflict about reality rather than merely the recognition that the analyst's perspective on reality is subjective. This cocreation produces a different emotional experience of connection, not merely a change in the quality of insight. Finally, Rothstein's case illustrates how he responds to the need for recognition and regulation. He shows us how focusing on the procedural allowed him to make an intersubjective shift, not simply an intrapsychic interpretation of compromise formation.

A psychoanalytical phenomenology of perversion

After stating that the current tasks of psychoanalytic research should fundamentally include the exploration of the analyst's mental processes in sessions with the patient, the author describes the analytical relation as one having an intersubjective nature. Seen from the outside, the analytical relation evidences two poles: a symmetric structural pole where both analyst and patient share a single world and a single approach to reality, and a functional asymmetric pole that defines the assignment of the respective roles. In the analysis of a perverse patient, the symmetry-asymmetry polarities acquire some very particular characteristics. Seen from the perspective of the analyst's subjectivity, perversion appears in the analyst's mind as a surreptitious and unexpected transgression of the basic agreement that facilitates and structures intersubjective encounters. It may go as far as altering the Aristotelian rules of logic. When coming into contact with the psychic reality of a perverse patient, what happens in the analyst's mind is that a world takes shape. This world is misleadingly coloured by an erotisation that sooner or later will acquire some characteristics of violence. The perverse nucleus, as a false reality, remains dangling in mid-air as an experience that is inaccessible to the analyst's empathy. The only way the analyst can reach it is from the 'periphery' of the patient's psychic reality, by trying in an indirect way to lead him back to his intersubjective roots. At this point, the author's intention is to explain this intersubjective phenomenon in terms of metapsychological and empirical research-based theories. Finally, some ideas on the psychogenesis of perversion are set forth.

Sports drug testing--an analyst's perspective.

Sport plays a major role in the lives of many people, both for active participation and as entertainment. Sport is now a huge nationally and internationally based industry. The desire to win has led some athletes to resort to the use of performance enhancing drugs. With huge financial rewards now available in some sports the pressure to excel has grown. Some have argued that drug use should be given free rein, however most people are of the view that it is athletic prowess that should be applauded not the efficacy of various performance enhancing drugs. Apart from the obvious aspects of equality and fair play, the use of drugs is associated with significant health risks. In the 1960's the use of stimulants in sports such as cycling led to the death of at least one cyclist. Since 1968 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has required all Olympic Games' host cities to provide laboratory facilities for the analysis and detection of performance enhancing drugs. There are now 29 IOC accredited laboratories throughout the world that routinely test samples from athletes for the presence of such drugs. The purpose of this tutorial review is to give an overview of drug testing procedures, including those that were used at the last summer Olympic Games in Sydney 2000, and the incorporation of the latest developments in analytical chemistry technology in the drug testing process. More recently, developments in biotechnology mean that the use of whole new classes of drugs are banned in sport, often requiring new methodologies and techniques for their analysis. The contest between those who wish to cheat and those who wish to maintain fair play in sport is an ongoing one.

A Defense Analyst's Perspective

A Defense Analyst's Perspective

The Levered P/E Ratio

A vast literature examines the role of debt in corporate valuation, but most of these works proceed from the vantage point of corporate finance (i.e., ascertaining the effects of adding debt to a previously unlevered company). The investment analyst, however, confronts an already-levered company with already-levered return parameters. The analyst's challenge is to estimate the stock's theoretical value by inferring the company's underlying structure of returns. This shift in vantage point leads to results about the effect of leverage that are surprisingly different from the results of studies from the corporate finance angle. Whereas corporate finance studies find only a moderate effect of leverage, when viewed from the analyst's perspective, a company's value has such a high degree of sensitivity to the leverage ratio that it can significantly alter the theoretical P/E valuation. Moreover, from the analyst's vantage point, leverage always moves the P/E toward a lower value than that obtained from the standard formula.

The problem of self-disclosure in psychoanalysis.

The problem of self-disclosure is explored in relation to currently shifting paradigms of the nature of the analytic relation and analytic interaction. Relational and intersubjective perspectives emphasize the role of self-disclosure as not merely allowable, but as an essential facilitating aspect of the analytic dialogue, in keeping with the role of the analyst as a contributing partner in the process. At the opposite extreme, advocates of classical anonymity stress the importance of neutrality and abstinence. The paper seeks to chart a course between unconstrained self-disclosure and absolute anonymity, both of which foster misalliances. Self-disclosure is seen as at times contributory to the analytic process, and at times deleterious. The decision whether to self-disclose, what to disclose, and when and how, should be guided by the analyst's perspective on neutrality, conceived as a mental stance in which the analyst assesses and decides what, at any given point, seems to contribute to the analytic process and the patient's therapeutic benefit. The major risk in self-disclosure is the tendency to draw the analytic interaction into the real relation between analyst and patient, thus diminishing or distorting the therapeutic alliance, mitigating transference expression, and compromising therapeutic effectiveness.