Self-other Relations Research Articles

Antecedents and Consequences of Self-Verification: Implications for Individual and Group Development

This article presents an integrative, multilevel model of individual and group development. It extends a model of small group development that holds that self-verification—through self-disclosure and sharing feed-back—produces interpersonal congruence (group members seeing each other as they see themselves), which especially helps groups that are heterogeneous, working on tasks that require judgment, or both. The model presented here proposes that components of self-awareness—self-evaluation, confidence in self-other relationships, and self-development orientation—affect motivation for self-verification, and that leader and peer behavior, group facilitation, and one-on-one coaching and mentoring stimulate self-disclosure and feedback. Self-verification is proposed to encourage individuals and groups to set learning goals and value differences.

Sisyphus without knees: exploring self-other relationships through illness and disability.

Two literary works are studied for the remarkable way they reveal important dimensions of the relationships between Self and Other. One is the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and the other the novel by Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (recognized as one of the finest antiwar statements). Bauby suffered a massive brain-stem stroke that left him able to move only one eyelid. Helped by a speech therapist to use this meager movement, he managed both to communicate and to write the memoire, published just two days before he died. Trumbo developed a character, Joe Bonham, who, massively injured in World War I, is left with almost no sensory contact with the surrounding world—no limbs, lips, ears, nose, or eyes. He discovers that he can bump his head, but then struggles to get others to recognize his Morse code. A nurse does, in a scene that is among the most compelling in modern literature. How each man, whose embodiment has been severely compromised—one "real," the other "fictional"—manages to contact other people is explored. The phenomenon of embodiment is seen as far more complex than often appreciated. The ways in which each establishes significant relationships with others helps readers understand important dimensions of embodiment and being with others.

Parallel Dimensions in Child, Adolescent, and Adult Analytic Work

SUMMARY This paper begins with the proposal that there are certain essential processes of therapy, including play as the renegotiation of self-other relationships that are fully present in work with children. This leads to a discussion of historical material about the use of play in analytic work with children, associated with the emergence of ideas about the analytic work with children as a “less pure” form of analysis. The paper then presents a theoretical discussion of play as a continuous and basic function in psychoanalysis, where play is seen as a way of engagement, which includes both the negotiation of paradox and the capacity for the use of metaphor in treatment. This is associated with a brief discussion of play as non-linear versus non-play as linear, reflected in more general theories about essentialist versus more relational, constructivist approaches to treatment. Vignettes from analytic work conducted with two young persons in residential care then illustrate how play can function as an essential process of therapy.

Achieving our world: toward a global and plural democracy

Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Introduction Part 3 Globalization and Democracy Chapter 4 Globalization: Curse or Promise? Chapter 5 Global Governance and Cultural Diversity: Toward a Cosmopolitan Democracy Chapter 6 Asian Values and Global Human Rights: Tensions and Convergences Chapter 7 Beyond Fugitive Democracy: Some Modern and Postmodern Reflections Chapter 8 Achieving Our World Democratically: A Response to Richard Rorty Part 9 Variations on Self-Other Relations Chapter 10 Transversal Encounters: Calvin Schrag and Postmodernity Chapter 11 Border Crossings: Bernhard Waldenfels on Dialogue Chapter 12 Distancing the Other: Jacques Derrida on Friendship Chapter 13 Oneself as Another: Paul Ricoeur's Little Ethics Chapter 14 Resisting Totalizing Uniformity: Martin Heidegger on Machenshaft Chapter 15 Concluding Remarks

The Pulse of Praise: Form as a Second Self in the Poetry of George Herbert

This book focuses on the meaning and function of George Herbert's poetic form from a psychohistorical perspective, demonstrating what close attention to prosody can contribute to critical discussions about the devices of self-representation, the dynamics of the self-other relation, and the depths of self-transformation in The Temple.

On generosity

The article addresses the problem of how to theorize generosity. It argues that generosity is a matter of social actors orienting to standards and suggests, drawing on an analysis by Derrida, that while he too sees the necessity of standards, for him this leads to certain dilemmas as to how actors can actually accomplish generosity. How can actors display the fulsomeness generosity requires while still respecting standards or limits? An attempt is made to resolve this problem by proposing, in line with certain work by Blum and McHugh, and by Taylor, a distinction between merely calculating generosity and reflecting on it. Finally, the communal value of the version of generosity that the article develops is alluded to with the help of a Levinas-inspired version of self-other relations.

Psychoanalysis and Life

The relevance of analytic work for people’s actual lives is a vital issue. The formation of analytic goals requires a negotiation process between analyst and analysand, a negotiation influenced by the inherent conflictuality of goals for each partner, and colored by the dialectics of goals and goallessness. As a potential contribution to such negotiation, the author emphasizes the fuller understanding and evolution of self-other relations, both as inner object relations and in their actualized external versions, with the help of the analyst’s complementary identifications, their self-disclosures when indicated, and a mutual intersubjective exploration when possible. The risks of an insular analytic process, uninvested in “external” reality and dealing exclusively with the analytic dyad, are discussed.

Simone de Beauvoir by Terry Keefe (review)

MLR, 96. , 200I MLR, 96. , 200I MLR, 96. , 200I fascination with the myth of Diana and Acteon to show how the central theme of unveiling constructsa 'theoriedu regard'(p. 179). UNIVERSITY OF WALES SWANSEA ANDREW ROTHWELL Simone de Beauvoir. By TERRY KEEFE. (Macmillan Modern Novelists) London: Macmillan. 1998. 191 pp. I 1.99. Celebration of the fiftiethanniversaryof the publication of LeDeuxieme Sexein 1949 has placed Beauvoirthephilosopherto the forerecently,but, as TerryKeefe's study of her important body of fiction reminds us, Beauvoir the novelist has long had a substantialreputation. The series to which this volume contributes lays emphasis upon the innovative contributionof the particularauthorto the artof fiction.Keefe tends to interpret this as an invitation to ask how well she writes novels, how successfullyshe achieves her vision, or indeed whetherher novels workas novels at all, ratherthan takingthe literaryvalue of her worksfor grantedand evaluatingher constant experimentations against other modernist transformationsof the genre. Blanchot's negative view of Le Sangdesautres as illustrationof a thesis rather than literaturehas weighed heavy, though recentlythe richnessof L'Invitee, a masterpiece of baroque complexity, or the sheer scope of the philosophical and social creation in Les Mandarins, has received critical attention, and within the broad area of women's studiesthereis a wealth of good writingon her novels. Keefe assessesBeauvoir'sachievements againsther own discussionsof her work, placing a particular emphasis upon the truthfulness of the writing, and the conviction conveyed by the plots and characterization.On the one hand, this has the disadvantage,forthose who knowBeauvoir'sworkwell, of spendinga good deal of time on matters of theme and plot, which are familiar. On the other hand, it places the craftof the writerand the complexities of composition very much to the fore, which has the merit of making the whole process of writing come alive. His final conclusions, that Beauvoiris neitherparticularlyinnovative nor a great stylist, are not very surprising, given the rather negative judgements he has already expressed on L'Invitee (not sophisticated as art compared to La JVausee, despite its emotional intensity), or LesMandarins (not a great novel compared with the best nineteenth-centuryfiction), or LaFemme rompue (an unfortunateclose to her career as a novelist).Only LesBellesImages is unequivocallypraised,for the prescience and acuity of its depiction of the very modern dilemma: how to live authentically in consumer society. But to a certain extent, Keefe's conclusions are undermined by the detail and complexity of his own readings, giving the readerplenty of scope to form a more favourableimpression. UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS MARGARET ATACK SimonedeBeauvoir.Genderand Testimony. By URSULATIDD. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. I999. xii + 250 pp. [37.50. This book representsan importantand originalcontributionto the fieldof Beauvoir studies.It analysesBeauvoir'searlytheoreticaltexts and her later autobiographical and biographicalwork to elucidate concepts of selfhood and the role of the Other. Ursula Tidd convincingly revealslinksbetween Beauvoir'sphilosophy of the 1940s and the 'auto/biographical' writingof herlateryears,arguingthat concepts of selfother relations developed in Pyrrhus et Cineas,Pourunemorale del'ambiguite, and Le Deuxieme Sexeare the foundation stones of Beauvoir's autobiographical project. fascination with the myth of Diana and Acteon to show how the central theme of unveiling constructsa 'theoriedu regard'(p. 179). UNIVERSITY OF WALES SWANSEA ANDREW ROTHWELL Simone de Beauvoir. By TERRY KEEFE. (Macmillan Modern Novelists) London: Macmillan. 1998. 191 pp. I 1.99. Celebration of the fiftiethanniversaryof the publication of LeDeuxieme Sexein 1949 has placed Beauvoirthephilosopherto the forerecently,but, as TerryKeefe's study of her important body of fiction reminds us, Beauvoir the novelist has long had a substantialreputation. The series to which this volume contributes lays emphasis upon the innovative contributionof the particularauthorto the artof fiction.Keefe tends to interpret this as an invitation to ask how well she writes novels, how successfullyshe achieves her vision, or indeed whetherher novels workas novels at all, ratherthan takingthe literaryvalue of her worksfor grantedand evaluatingher constant experimentations against other modernist transformationsof the genre. Blanchot's negative view of Le Sangdesautres as illustrationof a thesis rather than literaturehas weighed heavy, though recentlythe richnessof L'Invitee, a masterpiece of baroque complexity, or the sheer scope of the philosophical and social creation in Les Mandarins, has received critical attention, and within the broad area of women's studiesthereis a wealth of good writingon her novels...

Simone de Beauvoir: Gender and Testimony by Ursula Tidd (review)

MLR, 96. , 200I MLR, 96. , 200I MLR, 96. , 200I fascination with the myth of Diana and Acteon to show how the central theme of unveiling constructsa 'theoriedu regard'(p. 179). UNIVERSITY OF WALES SWANSEA ANDREW ROTHWELL Simone de Beauvoir. By TERRY KEEFE. (Macmillan Modern Novelists) London: Macmillan. 1998. 191 pp. I 1.99. Celebration of the fiftiethanniversaryof the publication of LeDeuxieme Sexein 1949 has placed Beauvoirthephilosopherto the forerecently,but, as TerryKeefe's study of her important body of fiction reminds us, Beauvoir the novelist has long had a substantialreputation. The series to which this volume contributes lays emphasis upon the innovative contributionof the particularauthorto the artof fiction.Keefe tends to interpret this as an invitation to ask how well she writes novels, how successfullyshe achieves her vision, or indeed whetherher novels workas novels at all, ratherthan takingthe literaryvalue of her worksfor grantedand evaluatingher constant experimentations against other modernist transformationsof the genre. Blanchot's negative view of Le Sangdesautres as illustrationof a thesis rather than literaturehas weighed heavy, though recentlythe richnessof L'Invitee, a masterpiece of baroque complexity, or the sheer scope of the philosophical and social creation in Les Mandarins, has received critical attention, and within the broad area of women's studiesthereis a wealth of good writingon her novels. Keefe assessesBeauvoir'sachievements againsther own discussionsof her work, placing a particular emphasis upon the truthfulness of the writing, and the conviction conveyed by the plots and characterization.On the one hand, this has the disadvantage,forthose who knowBeauvoir'sworkwell, of spendinga good deal of time on matters of theme and plot, which are familiar. On the other hand, it places the craftof the writerand the complexities of composition very much to the fore, which has the merit of making the whole process of writing come alive. His final conclusions, that Beauvoiris neitherparticularlyinnovative nor a great stylist, are not very surprising, given the rather negative judgements he has already expressed on L'Invitee (not sophisticated as art compared to La JVausee, despite its emotional intensity), or LesMandarins (not a great novel compared with the best nineteenth-centuryfiction), or LaFemme rompue (an unfortunateclose to her career as a novelist).Only LesBellesImages is unequivocallypraised,for the prescience and acuity of its depiction of the very modern dilemma: how to live authentically in consumer society. But to a certain extent, Keefe's conclusions are undermined by the detail and complexity of his own readings, giving the readerplenty of scope to form a more favourableimpression. UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS MARGARET ATACK SimonedeBeauvoir.Genderand Testimony. By URSULATIDD. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. I999. xii + 250 pp. [37.50. This book representsan importantand originalcontributionto the fieldof Beauvoir studies.It analysesBeauvoir'searlytheoreticaltexts and her later autobiographical and biographicalwork to elucidate concepts of selfhood and the role of the Other. Ursula Tidd convincingly revealslinksbetween Beauvoir'sphilosophy of the 1940s and the 'auto/biographical' writingof herlateryears,arguingthat concepts of selfother relations developed in Pyrrhus et Cineas,Pourunemorale del'ambiguite, and Le Deuxieme Sexeare the foundation stones of Beauvoir's autobiographical project. fascination with the myth of Diana and Acteon to show how the central theme of unveiling constructsa 'theoriedu regard'(p. 179). UNIVERSITY OF WALES SWANSEA ANDREW ROTHWELL Simone de Beauvoir. By TERRY KEEFE. (Macmillan Modern Novelists) London: Macmillan. 1998. 191 pp. I 1.99. Celebration of the fiftiethanniversaryof the publication of LeDeuxieme Sexein 1949 has placed Beauvoirthephilosopherto the forerecently,but, as TerryKeefe's study of her important body of fiction reminds us, Beauvoir the novelist has long had a substantialreputation. The series to which this volume contributes lays emphasis upon the innovative contributionof the particularauthorto the artof fiction.Keefe tends to interpret this as an invitation to ask how well she writes novels, how successfullyshe achieves her vision, or indeed whetherher novels workas novels at all, ratherthan takingthe literaryvalue of her worksfor grantedand evaluatingher constant experimentations against other modernist transformationsof the genre. Blanchot's negative view of Le Sangdesautres as illustrationof a thesis rather than literaturehas weighed heavy, though recentlythe richnessof L'Invitee, a masterpiece of baroque complexity, or the sheer scope of the philosophical and social creation in Les Mandarins, has received critical attention, and within the broad area of women's studiesthereis a wealth of good writingon her novels...

E-Mail and the Problems of Communication

E-Mail and the Problems of Communication

"Merveilleuse" et "Sotte" Honte: Meting out the Paradoxes of Shame in Montaigne

MONTAIGNE'S ESSAIS, which are determined by a visual imperative of se peindre, demand that words make visible the invisible. Rather than taking for granted the fundamental difference between word and image, between writing and painting, they address the process through which writing makes available an image of the self through words. In constructing such a visibility through words, Montaigne calls on a mode of self-exhibition governed by shame, a specific topos inherited from Plutarch, that, I will suggest, is transformed by Montaigne's palette into a complex affect appearing through a spectrum of nuanced and conflicting depictions. The paradoxical and conflictual nature of shame emerges in places in the Essais where its inevitability in self-other relationships is rigorously questioned, as in friendship, as well as in others where meting out of shame is shown to be potentially beneficial, as in pedagogical and erotic discourses. In what follows I will trace the dependence of the imperative of se peindre on shame in those essays that are engaged in articulating the gaze of the other as the necessary mediation for self-vision, while attempting to isolate Montaigne's gesture as a move to both rewrite and historicize shame in the context of self-representation. The paradoxical dimension of shame emerges abundantly throughout the Essais as Montaigne tests the limits of the division between private and public, between self and other. At critical moments of his work, Montaigne explores the double nature of shame: its dependence on the other, yet its preoccupation with the self. Insofar as shame emerges through the consciousness of the other in the Essais, this consciousness constitutes the limits of a private discourse. And then, to the extent that shame induces such a consciousness of the self by the self, it bears on the ways in which self-representation relies profoundly on the relation with the other. The double directionality of shame, marking the social bond both towards the self and other, accounts for an overlooked relational dimension in readings of Montaigne that are concerned with the conditions of possibility of self-representation. Que si j'eusse estA© entre ces nations qu'on diet vivre encore sous la douce libertA© des premieres loix de nature, je t'asseure que je m'y fusse tres-volontiers peint tout entier, et tout nud. Ainsi,

Anthropology at Home in Australia

This introductory essay takes ‘anthropology at home’ to refer to the conduct of fieldwork and other kinds of anthropological research in or about communities which Australian anthropologists regard as culturally familiar. In that sense, anthropology at home raises two interrelated questions: 1) ‘What is an appropriate anthropological object?’ and 2) ‘What are the appropriate methods for studying that object?’ I argue that anthropology remains overdetermined by its colonial heritage and that it is still overly concerned with the study of ‘the other’ through long‐term fieldwork. My feeling is that we should displace the idea of ‘the other’ in favour of an anthropological object construed in terms of self‐other relationships. This not only implies that anthropology at home should cease to appear as an oxymoron, but also suggests that a more comprehensive employment of various study methods should displace long‐term fieldwork as metonymic of the discipline.

Interpretation becoming other: A response to Leslie Bloom

This response to Leslie Bloom's "Interpreting interpretation: gender, sexuality and the practice of not reading straight" explores Bloom's interpretations of her interpretations of a research participant's life-history narrative. Taking as a given that sexuality places research in a crisis of knowledge and limits, I ask how Bloom's meta-interpretive narrative informs inquiry that seeks not only to break with heteronormative structures of knowing but also to exceed the given. As Bloom's article suggests, to understand the researcher as in a constant state of transformation is to understand interpretation as always in process, always other to itself, inviting new responses. This process of becoming other highlights the perpetual reworkings of the implications of researchers' implications and relations as interpreters of others'- and our own- lives and experiences. Becoming other by interpreting interpretation demands that we let go of certainty by acknowledging the unknowability of the other in self-other relations, the other in our relations to self, and the other in interpretation itself.

The Self-Other Relation in Beauvoir's Ethics and Autobiography

Article selected for reprinting; originally published in 1999 in Hypatia (US philosophy journal)

Interpersonal Roles in Transference: Transient Mood Effects Under the Condition of Significant-Other Resemblance

Research has demonstrated that transference occurs in social perception—defined in terms of the activation and application of a significant-other representation to a new person—using memory confidence and evaluation as indices (e.g., Andersen & Baum, 1994; Andersen, Reznik, & Manzella, 1996). The present research examined interpersonal roles in transference, and the notion that transient mood in transference may be predicted by one's interpersonal role with the significant other and its congruence or incongruence with the new person's role. In a combined idiographic-nomothetic design, participants learned about a new person characterized by features descriptive of their own positively toned significant other or that of a yoked participant's. Importantly, this new person was cast in an interpersonal role congruent or incongruent with the significant other's. Given the positive significant-other relationship, we predicted that role congruence would be associated with positive affect and role incongruence with negative affect, and hence that this pattern should emerge in transference. Results confirmed this prediction. Participants' transient mood was relatively more positive (nondepressive) when the target had resembled their own significant other and occupied a congruent versus incongruent role, and was clearly negative (depressive) based on role incongruence. Memory confidence and evaluation effects verified that transference was triggered in the significant-other resemblance condition, and thus that interpersonal roles predicted self-reported mood in transference. Implications for self-other relations and relational schemas are discussed.

The Self-Other Relation in Beauvoiris Ethics and Autobiography

This article examines how some of Simone de Beauvoir's ethical notions about the Self-Other relation explored in her theoretical philosophy of the 1940s were developed in her subsequent autobiography. It argues that Beauvoir represents reciprocal alter-ity in these autobiographical texts through a testimonial engagement with autobiography conceptualized as an act of bearing witness for the Other, through the privileging of various interlocutors and privileged others with whom "the real" is experienced and through a negotiation with the reader. The article also explores the wider question of how Beauvoir's engagement with autobiography might constitute a mode of ethical engagement with the Other.

The Self-Other Relation in Beauvoir's Ethics and Autobiography

This article examines how some of Simone de Beauvoir's ethical notions about the Self-Other relation explored in her theoretical philosophy of the 1940s were developed in her subsequent autobiography. It argues that Beauvoir represents reciprocal alterity in these autobiographical texts through a testimonial engagement with autobiography conceptualized as an act of bearing witness for the Other, through the privileging of various interlocutors and privileged others with whom “the real” is experienced and through a negotiation with the reader. The article also explores the wider question of how Beauvoir's engagement with autobiography might constitute a mode of ethical engagement with the Other.

Studying the Use of Figurative Language in Psychotherapy: The Search for Researchable Questions

Much of the theoretical and conceptual writing on the use of figurative language in psychotherapy has stressed the important role that this language plays in facilitating change. A review of the empirical literature indicates that, although frequent calls have been made to investigate the change-producing effects of metaphor, we have yet to elucidate these effects through empirical research, to suggest that this domain of inquiry be left to theorists and clinicians and that empirical researchers concentrate their efforts on investigating questions that are amenable to empirical research. Some possible avenues include the study of clients' key as markers of change (Siegelman, 1990) and the conceptualizing of those domains of figurative language that are predominant in psychotherapy, specifically, metaphors of. self, self-other relationships, emotion, and cognitive-affective-behavioral states.

Self-Other Relationships and Identity in Late Adolescence.

Self-Other Relationships and Identity in Late Adolescence.

On the thin line between connection and separation: The individuation process, from cognitive and object-relations perspectives, in kibbutz adolescents

The study explores the individuation process among kibbutz children and adolescents. Individuation is defined as developmental process of separation of the self from one's family. The process encompasses intrapsychic and interpersonal changes leading to an autonomous self within relational contexts. The major objective of the study is to examine the relationship between the socialcognitive perspective and the object relation school of psychoanalytic theory of the individuation process, in a communal life. Mazor's individuation interview of 1985, Levine et al.'sSeparation-Individuation Test of Adolescence (SITA) of 1986, Urist's The Mutuality of Autonomy Scale of 1977, and Coonerty's The Separation-Individuation Theme Scale of 1986 were administered to four age groups (N=60): late childhood (9–10 years), early adolescence (13–14 years), midadolescence (16–17), and late adolescence (20–22 years). From the social-cognitive perspective, four individuation levels were defined as age increased. Results confirmed that older subjects construe self and self-other relationships on a higher level of the individuation sequence than younger ones. From the psychoanalytic perspective, results partly confirmed the hypothesis that adolescents exhibit the second individuation process. Accordingly on the SITA a significant increase of engulfment-anxiety was higher in early adolescence and subsequent age groups than in late childhood. Findings on the two Rorschach's scales point to a common pattern: In late childhood there is a lower level of differentiation between self and object representation and the themes are more primitive than in older age groups. At early adolescence there is a significant constriction of psychic expression through defensive as well as shallow responses. In middle adolescence, psychic expression becomes richer revealing differentiation of the self and ambivalence between merging and separatedness in object relations. These features also characterize the late adolescence group. Findings indicate that the social-cognitive aspect of the individuation process proceeds faster than the intrapsychic and unconscious aspects.