Separate Self Research Articles

‘Boys, too, can be objects of desire’: Psychic and Erotic Domination in Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (2020)

The present paper aims to analyze the psychic nature of the female protagonist in Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (2020), as well as her relationships with other characters. For this purpose, I will use psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin’s theory of intersubjectivity. Benjamin’s intersubjectivity “reorients the conception of the psychic world form a subject’s relations to its object toward a subject meeting another subject”. For my analysis, I will focus on concepts such as recognition, a process of identification with the other, and destruction, a process which allows the individual to go beyond identification with the other and, consequently, to perceive them as a separate self. In Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts, Irina is a photographer who specializes in takes explicit pictures of “interesting”-looking men. The offer of an exhibition at a gallery in London triggers a tailspin of self-destructive behavior partly centered around Irina’s relationship with her best friend, Flo. The analysis of Irina’s psyche and her bonds with Flo and other characters will lead us to conclude that the aforementioned theories provide us with an enriching ground for uncovering the intricacies and what lies at the core of Irina’s psychic nature.

A Comparison of the Psychometric Properties of the EQ-5D-Y-3L and EQ-5D-Y-5L Using Paediatric Multi-Instrument Comparison (P-MIC) Study Data.

The EQ-5D-Y is a generic health-related quality of life (HRQoL) measure suitable for children and adolescents. There are two versions of the instrument, which differ in response levels: the three- (Y-3L) and five-level (Y-5L) versions. The Y-5L has been developed to improve the psychometric performance of the Y-3L. This study aims to assess the psychometric properties of Y-5L and to compare the performance of Y-5L with Y-3L in separate self- and proxy-reported samples. Both versions of the instrument were administered to children/adolescents (self-report) or caregivers (proxy-report) of Australian children aged 5-18 years. The data were gathered as part of the Australian Paediatric Multi-Instrument Comparison (P-MIC) study. The Y-5L and Y-3L were evaluated in terms of ceiling effects, criterion validity, inconsistency, informativity, and test-retest reliability in both proxy and self-complete populations. Overall, 5945 respondents completed both the Y-3L and Y-5L, with 2083 proxy and 3862 self-completed responses. Ceiling effects were lower in the Y-5L than the Y-3L. Items from the samedomains show the strongest correlation for both samples. Regarding informativity, the Y-5L demonstrated more discriminatory power, indicated by having a higher Shannon diversity index in all domains of the Y-5L compared with the Y-3L. Test-retest showed fair agreement between responses at baseline and follow-up. The Y-5L has demonstrated moderate validity and fair reliability for use in measuring HRQoL in children and adolescents, both when self-reported by children or proxy reported. Overall, Y-5L is a dependable and valid extension from the Y-3L.

To sit quietly by oneself: on neoliberal capitalism’s ‘unprecedented inner loneliness’

Building upon Max Weber’s insightful critique of the capitalist spirit as causing ‘unprecedented inner loneliness’, this article traces the trajectory of a fraught subjectivity over the course of a socioeconomic order from the Protestant Reformation to the present. Beginning with the premise that this socioeconomic order has a long history of both inviting and foreclosing upon the capacity to have an inner life, the general argument is pursued that grappling with one’s separateness, as well as the separateness of the object, gives rise to an inevitable sense of loneliness. This psychoanalytically informed sense of loneliness is juxtaposed with the gnawing loneliness that seems to haunt neoliberal subjectivity, revealing how the former might provide an imperfect but still viable antidote to our increasing inability to sit quietly by ourselves. Particular focus is given to re-evaluating Winnicott’s notion of the capacity to be alone in light of cultivating a separate self. The article concludes with some tentative thoughts on what suffering a separate self might entail, including suffering one’s inevitable loneliness.

초등교사의 다문화 인식 및 수용 태도의 실체적 의미에 관한 질적연구

This study explored the substantive meaning of elementary school teachers’ multicultural awareness and acceptance attitudes. To this end, this study began two researchers’ self-report statements. Then, research questions were formulated and multicultural awareness was divided into uncanny, prejudice, discrimination, and hatred. In addition, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with eight elementary school teachers to collect and analyze relevant data. As a result of the study, it was found that elementary school teachers teach multicultural students and that their self-perception changes as teachers. In this process, elementary school teachers build relationships with multicultural students by going through the pre-meeting stage, the meeting stage, and the post-meeting stage. From this, the elementary teachers reflected on their existing selves. They understand that their self changed from an initial integrated perception to a separate perception, and they experienced the strengthening of their Persona as a teacher. The findings of the study reveal the empirical implications of what elementary teachers experience in multicultural awareness and acceptance and how they are guided in this process. Based on the results of the study, the researcher discussed the need for educational practice and training for pre-service teachers and teachers who have entered the teaching profession to experience multicultural awareness and separation of self, and discussed the direction of teacher education to separate the personal and professional self for the professionalism of the teaching profession and the need to solidify the area of teacher-centered pedagogy.

What makes a ‘good doctor’? A critical discourse analysis of perspectives from medical students with lived experience as patients

What constitutes a ‘good doctor’ varies widely across groups and contexts. While patients prioritise communication and empathy, physicians emphasise medical expertise, and medical students describe a combination of the two...

Origins of Dualism and Nondualism in the History of Religion and Spiritual Practice

In a previous article we proposed that spiritual traditions and practices emerged to counterbalance humans inherent “dualism”, or perceived separation from the world around us, by cultivating experiences of “subject-object nonduality” more commonly referred to as “unification with the divine” or “enlightenment”. This implies that religions (social and political institutions ostensibly based in spiritual practices) similarly aim towards overcoming the separation of self and other. However, many religions include dualistic elements. In particular, many religions incorporate “ethical dualism” in which certain individuals and groups are seen as essentially “good” or “bad”, a feature not seen in nondual traditions. Here, we explore this seeming paradox, highlighting an intriguing correspondence between the degree to which religions include dualistic or nondualistic elements and, respectively, the prevalence of conflict or cooperation as the organizing principle in their associated social context. We find major “dualistic” religions to be generally traceable to pastoral societies largely organized around intergroup conflict, whereas major “nondual religions” are generally traceable to societies in which large-scale cooperation and rule-based behavior was necessary for collective survival. Finally, we apply this pattern to the modern world, speculating that large-scale cooperation and rule-based behavior in modern society may be currently encouraging the renewal of nondual practices in modern social and political institutions that is indicated by the growing popularity of “spiritual but not religious” groups, and that this renewal of nondual practices may in turn set the frame for and reinforce behavior that will be necessary to address the historic challenges of our day like climate change and democratic backsliding.

Beyond the veil of duality-topographic reorganization model of meditation.

Meditation can exert a profound impact on our mental life, with proficient practitioners often reporting an experience free of boundaries between a separate self and the environment, suggesting an explicit experience of “nondual awareness.” What are the neural correlates of such experiences and how do they relate to the idea of nondual awareness itself? In order to unravel the effects that meditation has on the brain’s spatial topography, we review functional magnetic resonance imaging brain findings from studies specific to an array of meditation types and meditator experience levels. We also review findings from studies that directly probe the interaction between meditation and the experience of the self. The main results are (i) decreased posterior default mode network (DMN) activity, (ii) increased central executive network (CEN) activity, (iii) decreased connectivity within posterior DMN as well as between posterior and anterior DMN, (iv) increased connectivity within the anterior DMN and CEN, and (v) significantly impacted connectivity between the DMN and CEN (likely a nonlinear phenomenon). Together, these suggest a profound organizational shift of the brain’s spatial topography in advanced meditators—we therefore propose a topographic reorganization model of meditation (TRoM). One core component of the TRoM is that the topographic reorganization of DMN and CEN is related to a decrease in the mental-self-processing along with a synchronization with the more nondual layers of self-processing, notably interoceptive and exteroceptive-self-processing. This reorganization of the functionality of both brain and self-processing can result in the explicit experience of nondual awareness. In conclusion, this review provides insight into the profound neural effects of advanced meditation and proposes a result-driven unifying model (TRoM) aimed at identifying the inextricably tied objective (neural) and subjective (experiential) effects of meditation.

Levinas on the Relationship between Pleasure and the Good

The article discusses the relationship between pleasure and the Good in Levinas’s ethics. Firstly, the paper points out that, for Levinas, pleasure and the Good are both essentially related to sensibility, except that pleasure is concerned with the self-affection of sensibility, and the Good is concerned with the hetero-affection of sensibility. The self-affection of pleasure and enjoyment enables the subject to locate and contract itself, and thus to establish an inner and separated self. Meanwhile, the Good is originated from the hetero-affection of the call of the transcendent Other, and is embodied in an involuntary suffering for the other’s suffering, weakness, and needs. Secondly, the paper argues that the relationship between pleasure and the Good is highly tensional. On the one hand, the Good does interrupt the egoism of life and its pleasure. On the other hand, pleasure actually constitutes a necessary condition for the Good, rather than something that must be rejected. The intersection of pleasure and the Good constitutes an insurmountable and irreducible tension within subjectivity. Finally, the paper places Levinas’s ethics in a dialogue with hedonism, virtue ethics, asceticism, and deontology, and regards Levinas’s ethics as a new paradigm for understanding the relationship between pleasure and the Good in the history of Western ethics.

Meditation, critical psychology, and emancipation

In this article, it is argued that the original Buddhist notion of meditation can be regarded as an emancipatory practice, as opposed to a legitimation of oppressive social relations. The article first discusses the Buddhist notion of meditation as a practice of the deconstruction of the illusion of a substantial (separate, solid, autonomous) self. Then, it explains theories of the social construction of the self and argues that the notion of the autonomous, separated self is an ideology closely tied to social relations of power. Finally, it concludes that meditation, as a practice of the deconstruction of the self, is an emancipatory practice.

Knowing Our True Self and Transforming Suffering toward Peace and Love: Embodying the Wisdom of the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra

The biggest crisis that we are in nowadays is existential, which is the state of not knowing our true natures or our true selves; hence, we suffer from deep anxiety and we fail to find safety and a way to ground ourselves. In this article, we share our practical experiences of encountering and practicing the teachings of two important Buddhist scriptures: the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra. We show how both sutras, and especially their teachings on emptiness, allow us to remove our attachment to a sense of a separate self, which deepens our understanding about life, and transforms suffering toward peace and love. We further demonstrate the importance of meditation, contemplative chanting and reading, and experimentation with Buddhist teachings as pathways towards understanding our true natures. In sum, both sutras help us to go beyond the materialistic, capitalistic, narrow vision of who we are and to access the higher dimension of our existence, which allows us to discover our cosmic selves in the ultimate reality. It is through experiencing one’s true self that one gains a greater capacity to seek social transformation in times of crisis.

Turkish Islam and Kurdish difference

In this article I discuss the ways in which the Turkish state uses Islam as a weapon to delegitimize and render unnecessary Kurdish distinctiveness and associated rights claims. Drawing on the particular discourse employed by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a series of political rallies in Diyarbakır, the symbolic capital of Turkish Kurdistan, I highlight key patterns in the instrumentalization of religion to maintain Turkish dominance. The Kurdish question as it is experienced by Kurds of Turkey, contrary to expectations, is not at all a matter of “discrimination” and “otherization.” Rather, the Kurdish problem arises from a lack of recognition of the Kurds as a separate self.

Deepening Perspectives on Spirit

Deepening Perspectives on Spirit Lonny S. Jarrett1 (bio) A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. – Albert Einstein2 The character shen 神 for “spirit” can be used in two main ways, indicating personal or impersonal dimensions of the self. Shen can refer to the mind and its contents as they constitute the personal sphere of the individual to define the psychological self. In this regard, it denotes to the capacity for cognition and the quality of expression of the life force as it animates an individual. We may refer to this dimension as shen with a lower-case “s,” denoting its relatively personal, microcosmic nature.3 The ego, as resistance to wholesome integrative change, is a habit en-training awareness on this personal dimension of the self, to the exclusion [End Page 169] of those dimensions of shen that are pre-personal, transpersonal, and impersonal. Beyond that, shen can also refer to the “macrocosmic” spirit or the unified consciousness that initiates, sustains, and drives the evolution of the universe. It is the one infinite, unbroken field of consciousness that we may call Shen with an upper-case “S.” In essence, there is only one light, one fire, one consciousness, and it is only ego that creates the illusion that there are two or more. A secret of the spiritual path is that the motive that inspires the seeker is consciousness, lost within a world of form, seeking for itself. Practically speaking, spiritual awakening occurs when shen, the mind or consciousness of the individual, awakens to and recognizes itself as in no way separate from Shen. This is one way of discussing nondual awakening in psychophysiological terms. Similarly, we can refer to the self with a lower-case “s” to denote the ego’s constraint of perspective to the personal sphere and speak of the Self with an upper-case “S” to include also the universal dimensions of humanity. In this text when referring to shen and to the self, I use the word in lower-case, but always keep in mind the context, in which the word is being used as a clue to my meaning. Also, holding the greater context, make sure to remain aware that Shen and shen, Self and self, are ultimately one. The effect of the individual self-sense perceiving the macrocosmic shen is akin to staring into the sun. We slowly go blind to the illusion of a separate self as it is revealed in an instant that the universal dimensions of the Self are very much more compelling and real than the purely personal self-sense born in time and conditioned by history. With ongoing exposure exercised through sincere practice, the presence of the conditioned self blanches slowly like a photograph left in the sun, eventually with little of the original image left to distinguish it from the light falling on it. Of course, this is a traditional mythic formulation predicated on the notion of “ego death.” In reality, the ego goes nowhere. However, it does seem to be true that with sincere practice, relationship to ego lessens as identification with deeper and higher dimensions of the Self increases. Over time, with sincere striving toward integrity, the personal and impersonal become one. Consciousness as Shen does not cognize our personal psychological dilemmas. They literally do not show up on its radar screen. The motive [End Page 170] force inherent in consciousness is mission-centric and relentlessly positive, always single-pointedly focused on responding to events in a way that...

I am Not Myself: Augustine, Locke, and Levinas on the Self

The duality or separation of self and me is central to the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas, but it is difficult to understand, not least because of the powerful hold that John Locke’s account of personal identity still has on our thinking of the self. By drawing on Augustine and especially Jean-Luc Marion’s reading of Augustine in In the Self’s Place, it is possible to gain insight into Augustine’s not yet Lockean account of the self so as to arrive at Levinas’s no longer Lockean account.

Awe and the interconnected self

ABSTRACT Awe is a self-expansive emotion, where the boundaries of a separate self are transcended to process a larger, complex reality. The current review integrates the existing scholarship on awe including the benefits, individual differences, and neuroanatomical correlates of the emotion. We also identify the attentional antecedents to awe experiences, the states and traits that may support or create barriers to experiences of the emotion, and theoretically guided methods to allow the emotion to be accessible in day-to-day life. We argue that awe may promote prosocial instincts through the recognition of one’s place in a vast interconnected world and be particularly beneficial in this age of rapid technological progress and social unrest.

Lively Lands: The Spatial Reproduction Squeeze and the Failure of the Urban Imaginary

AbstractThis article argues that the theoretical invisibility of non‐privatized land tenures constitutes a failure of the urban imaginary, which restricts the ability to forge less commodified urban futures. The article explicates two attributes of non‐privatized land—fungibilityandcombinatoriality—that produce an urban land nexus capable of fostering pro‐poor agglomeration economies and generating socialities that exceed the model of the separative self that is hegemonic in more propertied settings. Fungibility, it shows, externalizes supportive economies of production and reproduction into surrounding neighborhoods by shifting the boundaries and terms of usufruct without cadastral oversight or regulation. Combinatoriality—a hybrid formulation of combined territories and combined territorialities—describes overlapping forms of access to land or demarcations of legitimate land use, either competitive or reciprocal. Together, these two attributes of non‐privatized land systems produce a propinquity requirement for economic production, or a social density and liveliness more limited in privatized land markets. Through a diagnostic analogy with the simple reproduction squeeze characteristic of subsistence agrarian settings, it charts how anurbanspatial reproduction squeeze—felt globally in dense, rising‐rent environments across the global North and South—generates subsistence needs that mixed‐tenure environments are uniquely capable of fulfilling and that can provide inspiration for radical housing struggles elsewhere.

The Sleep Paralysis Nightmare, Wrathful Deities, and the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

The sleep paralysis nightmare has been reported from antiquity to modernity across manifold cultures. Many people who experience nocturnal assaults by dark entities, demons, hags, or incubi during sleep paralysis ascribe them to evil spirits with varying degrees of malevolence. The majority report the episodes as terrifying, mysterious, and uncanny. Known in the neurocognitive literature as “isolated sleep paralysis” or “sleep paralysis with hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations,” the phenomenon is fascinating to researchers across disciplines because it occurs when we are both asleep and awake, presenting fundamental questions on the subject of conscious experiences in sleep.This article considers the nightmare of sleep paralysis to be an archetypal psychic process akin to Jung’s night sea journey and having correspondence to the wrathful deities presented in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. With a Jungian perspective directed at artwork created by a person who has experienced sleep paralysis, archetypal imagery emerges and reveals elements missing from conscious view. Utilizing the interpretive frameworks of Jungian-oriented depth psychology and Tibetan Buddhist psychology, this universally experienced nightmare of terror can also be undergone as a dream of transformation with potential for psychological and spiritual growth.Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung turned to the stories and images of religion and mythology to explore psychic life, in general, and the religious function of the psyche, in particular. For Jung, both myths and what Jung termed “big dreams” are expressions of psychic content emerging from the collective unconscious, which includes the entire spiritual inheritance of humankind’s evolution. Because dreams contain images that are not created with conscious intent, they provide self-portraits of the psychic life process and can be utilized for their objective insights into the psyche’s teleological directedness. Jung’s psychological theories drew on a vast number of sources, including shamanism, art, religion, alchemy, parapsychology, and Eastern philosophy. Notably, Tibetan Buddhist cosmology strongly influenced his thought (Jung, 1935/1989a).Whereas Jungian psychology is rooted, albeit loosely, in the philosophies of empiricism that presuppose a subject–object duality, Tibetan Buddhist philosophy emphasizes the empty and illusory nature of the separate self, whether in waking life or nightly dreams. Nevertheless, although all phenomena are empty of inherent existence, they are, at the same time, pure manifestations of Buddha mind. In this philosophical system, the world of dream occupies an interesting paradox. On the one hand, dreams are considered to be unreal and deceptive, yet they are also a magical art to be mastered by the seeker, and their meanings are deemed of highest importance (Wallace, 2012; Young, 1999).Drawing on the dreams and subsequent paintings of one person, this article investigates the sleep paralysis nightmare—a phenomenon that has been recognized universally across time in folklore and myths, as well as by contemporary science—through the lens of both Tibetan Buddhism and Jungian-oriented depth psychology. With its emphasis on image and symbol, Jungian-oriented depth psychology is especially well suited to dialogue with art in the exploration of psyche. Both expressive product (image) and experience (meaning) are essential in this process. Jung (1946/1972) stated, “Image and meaning are identical; and as the first takes shape, so the latter becomes clear” (p. 204, par. 402).

Zen Wisdom for Christians by Christopher Collingwood

Reviewed by: Zen Wisdom for Christians by Christopher Collingwood Daniel Millet Gil, Editor ZEN WISDOM FOR CHRISTIANS. By Christopher Collingwood. Foreword by Father Patrick Kundo Eastman Roshi. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019. 264 pp. In Zen Wisdom for Christians, a non-academic book, Collingwood suggests that with Zen, Christian faith "comes alive in hitherto unexpected ways" (p. 32). His premise is that Zen can lead Christians toward the rediscovery of their deep spirituality. This notion is complemented by the ideas that both traditions present real convergences, can learn from one another, and meet in the ineffable ground of existence. Organizationally, the book is divided into three parts, each containing two chapters, juxtaposing comparable patterns of spiritual progress along the Christian and Zen paths. Collingwood starts with a historical introductory chapter where we are reminded of the early relationship between Christianity and Zen in Japan, which began with mutual incomprehension—even antagonism—between Buddhists and the earliest Christian missionaries. This is illustrated by the persecution of Spanish and Portuguese priests at the end of the 16th century, as depicted in the film Silence, directed by Martin Scorsese. The story ends with several Jesuits committing [End Page 475] apostasy to save converts. From here, the author jumps ahead 400 years to the arrival of Fr. Hugo M. Enomiya-Lassalle (1898–1990) in Japan. This German Jesuit was a missionary, fully committed to his Christian faith, who became a Zen master. According to Enomiya-Lassalle, Zen let him understand Christianity more deeply and become a better Christian. In Part 1, "Raising the Bodhi Mind," Collingwood is concerned with what he believes to be a shared beginning in the spiritual quest: a universal search for the realization of our true nature (p. 39). In Chapter 1, "A Sense of Exile," he describes the practice of seated meditation (zazen, in Japanese) and explains what, in his view, Zen is all about: "to enable us to see into our true nature and to awaken to who we truly are" (p. 39). At the onset of the quest of Zen lies the intuitive realization that "we are not truly at home with ourselves," that we feel estranged from our real nature, along with a desire to find out who we truly are. In "Zen terms," Collingwood writes, this is known as "Raising the Bodhi Mind," which is about "responding to the intuitive aspiration to wake up to who we truly are" (p. 40), and leads to our desire to emerge from exile and return home. In this, Collingwood finds a common starting point with Christianity, which also starts with a sense of exile and the desire to return home. Collingwood exemplifies this feeling of estrangement and homelessness with Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son, the biblical story of the Fall, and the story of Siddhārtha Gautama's search for awakening. In the Christian tradition, the sense of exile and the desire for homecoming are shaped by a sense of duality, fashioned by the desire to be a separate self, which produces estrangement and disharmony. As a result, the person longs for a way back home, which is found by reuniting with the Father. In the story of Siddhārtha's search for awakening, the expression "living in exile" may seem inappropriate. He had everything at his father's palace, but a feeling of discontent prompted him to seek liberation. In both cases, there is dissatisfaction, a yearning to return home, and a sense of exile that arises from the "I" which perceives everything as separate, and references all within its narrow self-interest. It is this wrong perception that Christianity and Zen, in their distinctive ways, deal with (p. 67). Chapter 2, "Finding the Way Home," explores how the practice of Zen wakes us up to the need to return home and offers what the author describes as "a pathless path to that home" (p. 69). To do this, Collingwood uses the story of the Bodhidharma (c.440–c.530 C.E.), the First Patriarch of Chinese Chan. Through the practice of zazen, we discover that we identify ourselves with our thoughts and that the self, which is created by thinking, "is something of...

Orbiting Planet Gemma: The Trajectory of a Two‐Year Infant Observation

This paper describes the author's reflections on an infant observation which took place at baby Gemma's home for an hour a week over two years. It describes the phenomenological experience of the weekly observation and the observer's progressive attempt to ‘feel into’ Gemma's developing mind. The author tracks Gemma's journey from her birth to the age of 2 years and witnesses the gradual emergence of a unique separate self. The paper attempts to untangle which feelings belong to the writer, which to Gemma and which to her mother, and it acknowledges ‘black holes’ of unknowable aspects. The astronomical headings reflect the family's interest in space exploration and also the writer's appreciation of the numinous quality of a close encounter with an infant.

The couple, the self, and the problem of the other

Using a Winnicottian frame, the author explores the difficulties that are inherent within couple relationships of truly allowing the other to be a separate self, that is, truly “other”, but in relation. Winnicott proposed that the most dangerous exposed moment was the establishment of the self—”I am” and “you are”. Referring to poetry and song, the author examines the regressive pull to unity and sameness which can be a place of rest and restoration, or an enchained place of stifling identity, insulated from the nourishing replenishment of difference.

Adaptive Aspirations: A Comparison of Alternative Models

The Cyert and March (1963:123) aspirations model has spawned research into organizational aspirations and their influence on firm behavior. In the absence of actual aspirations measures, researchers have developed alternate models based on proxies that mimic the Cyert and March conceptualization. However, the proxies make different theoretical assumptions. Even the few studies using actual aspirations measures fail to model the original formulation they are based on. We compare three prominent models of aspirations adaptions against the original, hitherto empirically untested, Cyert and March formulation. The results show marginal support for a model with separate self- and social-aspirations measures over the original conceptualization. We discuss how future research should re-examine aspirations models using actual aspirations data before theorizing on the influence of aspirations on firm behavior.