Man's Psyche Research Articles

Gay Men and Suicidality: The Development and Nature of the Critical Superego

National research studies report elevated suicide rates amongst gay men, particularly those under the age of 26. Much of the current health and psychiatric literature on suicide tends to focus on the external world impacting on the suicidal individual. Although valuable, it is not enough to understand the specific circumstances that could contribute to gay men's suicidality. This paper focuses on the relationship between the external and internal dynamics at play in the suicidality of gay men, with particular emphasis on the development, influences, and nature of a cruel and punishing superego. The author provides some contemporary psychoanalytic theories on same‐sex desire as a useful framework to understand minority sexuality. Some influential classic and contemporary psychoanalytic theories regarding suicidality and the development and character of a cruel and punishing superego are presented. The concept of internalized homophobia and the impact of heteronormative masculinity on the gay man's psyche are explored as drivers for suicidality. A composite case study from clinical experience with suicidal gay men in an NHS setting is presented to illuminate the discussion. This paper could add new perspectives and important dialogue for psychoanalytic psychotherapists working with this patient population.

Is the media a means of knowing the world or manipulating consciousness?

The article highlights some aspects of the influence of the media on the human subconscious. It has been found that today the world community is moving from direct knowledge of the world around it to knowledge of the world — mediated by the media — the virtual world, which is increasingly pretended to be real.
 It is noted that today the main means of profit and struggle for power is mass disinformation, including through the media. Inequality in access to information and misinformation are the basis of market and power-democratic speculation.
 The dangers associated with the activities of the media are considered. In particular, raising the information threshold of perception in an aggressive information environment can be used for explicit and implicit methods of manipulation; means of communication contribute to the transformation of people into information addicts; latent neurolinguistic programming is widely used, etc.
 In the context of the influence of the media on the consciousness and psyche of man, the peculiarities of his inner world and the dynamics of self-consciousness are analyzed.
 The negative consequences of the mass media influence on users and possible ways of its neutralization are analyzed. It was emphasized that the example of foreign countries with negative manifestations and influences of domestic media should be combated by improving relevant laws, creating public oversight councils in the media, strengthening the requirements of public organizations and movements to the legislative, executive and judicial systems.

Challenging the Archetypes: Re-visitation of Fairy Tales

This study aims to highlight how the revisited American fairytale movies shun the archetypal symbols, characters and situations of the previous fairy tales. The researcher analyzes the new set of norms that are proposed by the postmodernists, which are positioned to shun the metanarratives and work against totality by waging war against it (Lyotard 71-82). The perspective in doing so is to find out the changes in the original stories which have challenged the collective unconsciousness. Collective Unconscious, according to Jung, are the unconscious feelings present among human beings as species. They are universally present in every man's psyche, and the unconscious of man has some primal images, which are depicted through symbols. These symbols are not limited to any particular culture or history (Four Archetypes 4). Jung calls the contents of the collective unconscious the "archetypes" (4). Postmodernists have challenged the archetypal patterns stated by the philosophers of archetypes, and they have attempted to break these archetypal patterns, or according to the postmodernists, the "metanarratives".

Negative news on the central TV channels of Russia and Ukraine: general and specific

The relevance of the article is caused by a number of socially significant factors, the most important of which is the possibility and inevitability of manipulative impact on the consumer of information through the formation of the media agenda on television with the active use of negative information in news releases. The scientific objective of the study was to attempt to resolve the theoretical and theoretical and applied questions about the role of the negative news in a person's life and society, on the need for revisions to the negative news to hold the attention of the television audience, the specifics of the use of negative information in the news releases of the Russian and Ukrainian TV channels. The article defines the negative news, systematizes the factors of formation of negative news, identifies and structures the main components of their submission, identifi the specifi of the negative news on Russian and Ukrainian television in the news releases of TV channels “Channel One”, “NTV”, “1+1”, “Ukraine” in the period from 2014 to 2018. The main conclusion of the article is the need to reduce the negative information in the news releases of Russian and Ukrainian TV channels in order to reduce the level of manipulative impact on the audience and the overall negative impact on the psyche of man and society.

Uncertainty of Theme in the Postmodernist Fiction:

The current paper is titled Uncertainty of theme in the postmodernist fiction: The case of Pynchon's Entropy. It aims at clarifying how features of postmodernist text have an impact on theme production. Language is alienated as it does not refer to the conscious world. However, it refers to unconscious world which is characterized by cryptic and it does not make a sense of the world. The scope of the study throws light on the features of postmodernism to show how psychological factors are employed in the text and the functions of its stylistic features. It is hypothesized that damage in man's psyche has influenced postmodernist short story. The paper consists of four sections; the first section discusses the term Postmodernism as a concept. It explores how postmodernism views history and culture. The second section discusses the psychic elements employed in the short story to project man’s psyche under the pressure of conflicting great powers. The third sheds light on the stylistic features, writers have used at variance with the ones used in realist and modernist texts to gain particular needs. The conclusion recapitulates the finding of three sections. Finally, the paper provides recommendations for further researches.

Assessment of psychosocial status and spiritual beliefs of a sample of infertile men in Baghdad City/Iraq

Background: Infertility is considered one of the most important marital problems which may lead to separation between spouses, especially in male societies either by the request of the wife or negatively effect on the man's psyche, and in this case, the man initiates to terminate the married life, away from the painful situation he suffers. Objective: This cross-sectional descriptive study aims to identify the infertile men's personal-demographic characteristics, in addition to determine the psychosocial status and spiritual beliefs. Materials and Methods: The study consists of 150 patients selected randomly from the fertility center and infertility treatment/Kamal Al-Samurai hospital in Baghdad city, the data were collected by direct interview with those patients by using a questionnaire. Results: Most of the infertile men were at age group (20–30) years, duration of marriage (1–5 years), had primary infertility. As overall assessment, the study stated that the majority of the sample was in fair psychological condition, good social condition, and spiritual beliefs in good condition. In addition, the results show that no significant difference between some personal-demographical characteristics (age husband, duration of marriage, type of infertility, husband occupation, residential area, degree of relationship, smoking habit, take of medicines, chronic diseases, and erectile dysfunction) with psychological and social status. Conclusions: The problem of infertility is one of the most difficult problems facing newly married couples that cause negative psychological and social effects.

Masters in Our Own House, or the Distresses of Narcissism

The author addresses the question of the misrepresentation of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts in the media and suggests that Freud's theory of man's psyche has, at its center, the inevitable and subversive contradiction that all knowledge undermines the narcissistic certainty of the knower; specifically, the unconscious mind constantly works to unseat that which is available to consciousness. This truism, which is the theoretical and clinically demonstrable position of psychoanalysis, produces resistance and aversion to the discipline, its practice, and its practitioners. The author argues, with brief references to three works of art, that paradoxically, by virtue of this misrepresentation of psychoanalysis—of its ideas and praxis, its very worth, and its contribution to society and to culture—the discipline of psychoanalysis is convincingly upheld.

From Fears of Entropy to Comfort in Chaos: Arcadia, The Waste Land, Numb3rs, and Man's Relationship With Science

Through the use of some purposeful anachronisms, Tom Stoppard uses his 1993 play Arcadia to explore the effects on man's psyche of the transition from Newton's Laws to the laws of thermodynamics and from thermodynamics to chaos theory. However, remarkably similar reactions to these changes are also reflected in works from the actual time periods following these shifts in scientific understanding. Modernist literature is believed by many to reflect a sense of depression about the implications of the second law of thermodynamics, which is exemplified in T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land. Likewise, the comfort provided by the revisions to thermodynamics made by chaos theory are reflected frequently in contemporary popular culture, such as in the current television series Numb3rs. Through the invocation of science, all three works suggest that man is uncomfortable with too much predictability and that comfort can instead be found in chaos and unpredictability.

Robert Johnson: Mythmaking and Contemporary American Culture

Robert Johnson: Mythmaking and Contemporary American Culture. By Patricia R. Schroeder. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Pp. x, 192. Acknowledgments, illustrations, appendix, notes, worked cited, index. $25.00.) Devil's Son-in-Law: Story of & His Songs, Revised and Expanded Edition. By Paul Garon. (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2003. Pp. xii, 138. Foreword to 1971 edition, foreword to 2003 edition, illustrations, notes, bibliography, discography, index, companion CD. $21.00, cloth; $15.00, paperback.) Here we have two books taking on unenviable challenges-discussing lives and legacies of two influential Arkansas-connected bluesmen about whom very little is known. Only one photograph is known to exist of Wheatstraw; only in recent years did two known photographs of Johnson surface. In terms of public recognition then and now, careers of Robert Johnson and William Peetie Wheatstraw Bunch could scarcely be more different. Johnson, dead since 1938 and not especially popular during his time, is today subject of documentaries, referenced in movies and TV, and lauded as muse to rock 'n' roll royalty like Eric Clapton and Rolling Stones. He earned a posthumous Grammy and appeared on a U.S. postage stamp in 1990s. Wheatstraw, by contrast, was among most prolific and popular of 1930s blues pianists (he also played guitar). In fact, Wheatstraw's popularity was such that Johnson adopted Wheatstraw's catchphrase vocal tic, ooh, well, well. But today, is nearly forgotten. For this reason alone, Garon's would-be biography, an update of his 1971 tome, is to be commended. accompanying CD is a fantastic bonus to better understand Wheatstraw's influence. author pulls many of scraps that are known about together and offers new ideas about man's psyche by delving into his song lyrics. In doing so, however, he seems to stray by confusing artist and his art. Garon writes, we consider [the lyrics] fantasy, very probably lived this fantasy as well as sang about it. Huh? Further: The separation of fantasy from reality is not always necessary for our purposes. We can see this is so if we investigate Peetie's attitude towards women, for example, using lyrics as our guide. We can say that however actually treated women, his songs tell us how he felt about them. But isn't it reverse when telling the story of a person, that way he actually treated women tells us how he felt about them? Sometimes, when a song tackles a topical issue or mentions a place name, Garon uncovers a nugget, but too often author relies on device of analyzing songs in search of himself. With information so scarce, Garon's dilemma is understandable, but speculative nature of practice sheds precious little light in end. Surrealist art-much of it, thankfully, based around lone photograph-is found throughout book, as are surrealist references in text. …

Life, Death and the Power of Powerlessness

In this article I endeavour to explore and clarify how the simple starting point of the biological given, the instinct for self-preservation, in part explains man's response to life, death and powerlessness, and how sensitization to primal psychic agony has shaped the development of man's psyche and civilization. General practice exposes the clinician to major events of life from birth to death. Training now addresses the social and psychological aspects of the patient's `management'. The broad mixture of disciplines and experiences struggled with in primary care has shaped and informed this article. In addition, the hypotheses and arguments are derived from my researches into Holocaust trauma in which annihilation threat, powerlessness, loss and the self-preservative instinct are central.

The Numinosum and the brain: The weaving thread of consciousness

The world bangs on a thin thread and that is the psyche of man —C. G.Jung, A Matter of Heart (the film)

Inventing and Controlling the Vernacular

African-American studies shares as an emerging discipline certain analogies with the founding of American Studies: both seem to be founded on ideas of the roots of American culture. In one of what I take to be its key 'documents,' Leo Marx identified the ideologically with the peripheral and provincial culture of the South-West. Here the voice of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn resounded in a prehistoric landscape.l .The romantic American hero's life on the margins in a running skirmish with domestic realism readily linked up with race (and gender). About the same time Marx's essay was published Leslie Fiedler was shortly to point out that the moment in American fiction is the moment of the confrontation with the Negro. America's archetypal romance, he told his readers in the 1950s, was a narrative about a white man on the run encountering and adopting the ways of a black man. Here was transgression and subversion, although as an internalized moment in the white man's psyche rather than as the experience of the real historical conditions of Negro life. Marx's vernacular tradition also took its principal illustrations from narratives representing the encounter between black and white characters. In the new critical manner it was perceived as an encounter between two verbal styles. Marx's didn't respect the genteel snobbery and idealism of the dominant American nineteenth century aesthetic and political discourses. His use of Whitman suggests that the

O zvočni in glasbeni identiteti (tokrat malo drugače)

O zvočni in glasbeni identiteti (tokrat malo drugače)

Flannery O'Connor's Others: Freud, Lacan, and the Unconscious

Flannery O'Connor's Others: Freud, Lacan, and the Unconscious

Photography and human behaviour in the nineteenth century

Abstract We know that it is possible to read a person's inner state by his facial expression, posture and other clues captured with the camera lens, as demonstrated by Robert Akeret in his book, Photoanalysis.1 Indeed, within a relatively brief time after the invention in 1839 of photography, which recorded the external world so faithfully, men of science were beginning to use the photograph as an instrument to mirror man's psyche. In this paper I will explore the relevance of photography in the investigations into man's private world of emotions and states of mind by several major scientists of the late 19th century.

Fernando Arrabal's "Ars Amandi": The Theme of Love in Selected Plays

The evolution in Arrabal's treatment of the theme of love reflects both the development and enrichment of his dramatic techniques and the resolution of his own deep-seated psychological conflicts. Arrabal's theater utilizes his concept of dramatic ceremony to project his intense desire for personal, political and artistic liberation. Psychological and social forces combine to frustrate the fulfillment of love in his early theater (Fando and Lis, 1956) but ultimately love functions to obviate both internal and external constraints. Sexual union, which receives its most rapturous affirmation in Arrabal's plays written during the late 1960's (The Law of Barabbas, Ars Amandi, and Erotic Bestiality), reflects the reconciliation of dialectical forces present in man's psyche. Women come to serve as intermediaries between man and the world. And in the broadest sense, the dramatic structure of Arrabal's mature plays can be depicted as the movement from psychic fragmentation to psychic unity, effected by the force of love. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol2/iss1/6 FERNANDO ARRABAL'S ARS AMANDI: THE THEME OF LOVE IN SELECTED PLAYS

Time Past and Time Present in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale and Gower's Confessio Amantis

The fourteenth century possessed a strong sense of past, a feeling for history and its bearing on (401). What is unique to Chaucer and Gower is that although both expressed sentiment that had grown old, and while they both tended to cast passing of time in moral terms, they also relied ultimately on personal sensibility to define relationship between present and (403). Particularly conclusion to Clerk's Tale and end of CA provide moments where Chaucer and Gower turn away from moralistic, clerical time and toward time as experience rooted in psyche, what might be termed 'humanistic time' (403). For Chaucer, defining virtue of Golden Age was constancy, precisely virtue that Griselda embodies. It is contemporary lack of constancy that Clerk decries, and so his final lament compares women of his time to debased coinage. Dean points out that it was ironically gold that caused downfall of Saturnian Golden Age. Griselda thus for Clerk an ideal, to be invoked in poetry, whose virtue rebukes present age of 'brassy' arrogance (406). Gower's CA introduces world grown theme in its Prologue. Nebuchadnezzar's statue embodies in shape of man as microcosm the decline of virtue, specifically love or charity, in macrocosm (407). While tone here is disengaged and moralistic (407), Gower also suggests, both in Prologue and in Book 5's discussion of avarice, that perfection of Golden Age is located in man's psyche, in his innate sense of moderation or mesure. The way back to harmony of past is through memory and poetry, a process symbolized by poet Arion and put into practice through stories of CA. Gower makes Amans an emblem of division in love; like senescent world, Amans is old and feeble. Amans's final encounter with Venus, a moment that is both amusing and poignant (411), allows reader to experience time and its passing in a very personal fashion. In end, for Chaucer and Gower it is not only that quest for a clarification of leads to a recherche du temps perdu, but also that the search for lost time leads to important insights about self (413). [CvD]

Mythology of evil in Judaism

The specific problem of evil?human evil, "those evils which everyone causes to himself by his own actions," to use Maimonides' description of psychological evil?has long been of concern to both theologian and psychologist. Long before Freud, the rabbis understood that man's psychic drives were largely responsible for the evil he commits. Of course, the rabbis did not achieve Freud's systematic and scientific level of research and observation; neither did they possess his knowledge of neurology and medicine. Yet they did share with him a mythology of evil that, as I shall demonstrate, is not only comparable in providing a functional myth for understanding evil or sin, but also serves as a theoretical basis for the rabbinic resolution of the problem of sin. Although many of Freud's clinical techniques have now been surpassed by contemporary psychiatry, his philosophy is still very much a part of our intellectual life. The works of Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown serve as adequate examples of the metaphysical Freud. It is within the context of this Freud who taught us an appreciation for primitive and instinctual forces in our life that we can come to appreciate the rabbinic formulation of the Yezer as the personification within man's soul identified with Satan and responsible for the commission of evil deeds. In talmudic theology, sin originates in man's soul. There is a factor or element of his personality responsible for generating an inclination to do evil. The rabbis referred to this aspect of man's psyche as Yezer ha-ra or sometimes in the abbreviated form of "Yezer"; usually translated as "evil inclination." However, rabbinic statements indicate that often the adjective "evil" was merely attached as part of a technical phrase.1 Thus Yezer ha-ra can be construed, without too much argument, as analogous to Freud's concept of the id as a source of instinctual energy. Like the id, which releases instinctual energy or libido, the Yezer ha-ra releases a powerful stream of energy.2 This interesting but facile analogy between the rabbinic concepts and psychoanalytic thinking is merely a superficial similitude. The true correlation lies in the mythic power of the Yezer and the mythological foundations of Freud's psychoanalysis. Through Freud's writings on religion, one becomes aware of his deep appreciation for the "numinosity" of man's unconscious. As Christine Downing spoke of it: "Yet he, himself, in order to suggest the numinous power of

A psycho-historical source: the Memoirs of Abbot Guibert of Nogent

Medievalists turn to Guibert of Nogent's Memoirs (1116) for the account of the Laon uprising they contain. And yet this account is poor history. It is didactic and self-righteous in tone; one senses that the writer consistently sacrificed historical truth to the moral point he was trying to make. Scratch this twelfth- century ‘historian’ and you will find underneath a guilt-ridden cleric, haunted by vivid sexual reminiscences of his mother and by the terrible chastening reality of the Virgin Mary. A sensitive reading of the confessional sections of the Memoirs may yield up crucial unconscious impulses in a medieval man's psyche: his ‘masculine’ ambitions for glory, his need to prove his manhood, and yet also his ‘feminine’ desire for selfless submission to God, and his need to achieve a kind of passive holiness and innocence. These opposing impulses may account for the ‘demon’ that tortured Guibert of Nogent. After isolating certain psychological themes in the Memoirs it is possible to relate these themes to various nuances in the psychological ‘milieu’ of twelfth-century France. It is also possible to relate some of these themes to a ‘milieu’ not altogether different from that of twelfth-century France — twentieth-century southern Italy. For in southern Italy, we find that the psychological relationship between masculinity and femininity and (perhaps as a result of this relationship) the prominence of the Virgin Mary in the lives of the people corresponds closely to the situation in twelfth- century France. But this cross-cultural analysis is meant only to illuminate some of the possibilities of psychohistory. At the very least, a psychohistorical consideration of a text such as Guibert of Nogent's Memoirs should reveal some useful correlations between the single psychological current and the larger tides of cultural history.

Pedagogy and Psychology

As a theoretical and applied science, pedagogy works in close cooperation with psychology — the science which investigates the facts, patterns, and mechanisms operative in the psyche of man, who is for pedagogy the object of education and upbringing. The elucidation of the nature of the relationship between pedagogy and psychology is a distinct theoretical problem which requires special scientific elaboration.