Theory Of The Mind Research Articles

Introduction Carl E. Schorske as Historian, Writer, and Political and Psychoanalytic Thinker

Introduction Carl E. Schorske as Historian, Writer, and Political and Psychoanalytic Thinker Louis Rose As Sigmund Freud concisely articulated in The Interpretation of Dreams, psychoanalysis differentiates itself from other psychologies in the vast field of research into the human mind by its central focus on the over-determination of meaning. The person honored in this issue of American Imago has reconceived, expanded, and deepened that essential insight, making us more acutely aware of over-determination as both an active principle in the structuring of the past and an experiential framework for re-engaging critically with the present. Here we offer our tribute to the work of Carl E. Schorske and its continuing importance to the history and theory of psychoanalysis. The participants in this issue have been influenced and inspired directly by his teaching and writing: some of us as his former students at Berkeley or Princeton, all of us as his beneficiaries in the fields of European, Viennese, and Freudian studies. From the end of the Second World War until the present, the work of Carl E. Schorske—a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a recipient of the American Historical Association’s lifetime Distinguished Service and Scholarly Distinction Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow—has remained integral to the study of psychoanalysis and its worlds. His essay on “Politics and Patricide in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams”—published originally in the American Historical Review (1973) and included in his Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (1980)—remains the seminal historical analysis of Freud’s dream book as both a transformative theory of the mind and a radical turning point in culture. In that essay, by contextualizing Freud’s relations to his father, to Judaism, to Italy, to science, and to Austrian politics, Schorske suggests not only how to re-comprehend Freud’s decisive process of self-analysis and his landmark psychological [End Page 583] discoveries, but also how to reconceive the mutual influence—conscious and unconscious—between history, politics, and psychology. Throughout his career, Schorske’s analysis of how historical context and historical crisis shape, re-work, and realign mental products and processes has offered a conceptual tool for both social scientific and psychological researchers and provided a bridge between theorists and practitioners across the humanities, arts, and human sciences. Any appreciation of Schorske’s contributions to psychoanalytic thought must begin with the richness and painstaking discernment of his writing, qualities that immediately impress both the historian and the psychologist and that cannot be separated from his interpretive approach. Charting the interaction between historical context and inner life—as he does in his studies of Freud and the Viennese modernists—Schorske marks distinctly and deeply the points at which historical context influences not only the location of ideas and images within the mind, but also their pathways of expression and patterns of organization within the self. In his writing, the contextual model of interpretation becomes crucial to a dynamic understanding of the psyche. The émigré psychoanalyst Hans W. Loewald, born in the Alsatian city of Colmar, writes with a purpose similar to that of Schorske. In his well-known essay “On the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis,” published originally in 1960 and republished in the same year that Fin-de-siècle Vienna appeared, Loewald comments upon what he considers to be overly static and excessively narrow conceptualizations of the psyche: To use Freud’s archeological simile, it is as though the functional relationship between the deeper strata of an excavation and their external environment were denied because these deeper strata are not in a functional relationship with the present-day environment; as though it were maintained that the architectural structures of deeper, earlier strata are due to purely “internal” processes, in contrast to the functional interrelatedness between present architectural structures (higher, later strata) and the external environment that we see and live in. The id—in the archeological analogy being [End Page 584] comparable to a deeper, earlier stratum—integrates with its correlative “early” external environment as much as the ego integrates with the ego’s more “recent” external reality (1980, p. 232). Loewald writes as an analytic theorist and practitioner, Schorske as an intellectual and cultural...

The Mind as Skills and Dispositions: On Normativity and Mediation

On the occasion of the critique of Alfredo Gaete and Carlos Cornejo, this article explains and extends the hybrid theory of the mind that I recently presented in this journal. Taking inspiration from Rom Harré's program for a hybrid psychology, the theory is supposed to be integrative and aims to broaden Harré's hybrid psychology by including not just the brain, but also the body, social practices, and technological artifacts as mediators of the mind. The mind is understood not as a substance of any kind, but as a set of skills and dispositions to act, think, and feel. This implies a normative view of the mind, according to which psychological phenomena do not simply happen, but are done, and can consequently be done more or less well. I provide arguments in favor of grounding psychology in normativity rather than conscious experience, and I explain why the emphasis on mediators does not represent a threat to the ontological primacy of the person in psychology.

Towards a computational theory of experience

A standing challenge for the science of mind is to account for the datum that every mind faces in the most immediate--that is, unmediated--fashion: its phenomenal experience. The complementary tasks of explaining what it means for a system to give rise to experience and what constitutes the content of experience (qualia) in computational terms are particularly challenging, given the multiple realizability of computation. In this paper, we identify a set of conditions that a computational theory must satisfy for it to constitute not just a sufficient but a necessary, and therefore naturalistic and intrinsic, explanation of qualia. We show that a common assumption behind many neurocomputational theories of the mind, according to which mind states can be formalized solely in terms of instantaneous vectors of activities of representational units such as neurons, does not meet the requisite conditions, in part because it relies on inactive units to shape presently experienced qualia and implies a homogeneous representation space, which is devoid of intrinsic structure. We then sketch a naturalistic computational theory of qualia, which posits that experience is realized by dynamical activity-space trajectories (rather than points) and that its richness is measured by the representational capacity of the trajectory space in which it unfolds.

Psychology is About Persons: On Brinkmann’s Expansion of Harré’s Hybrid Psychology

Brinkmann has recently put forward an integrative theory of the mind by expanding Harré's hybrid psychology. The theory is integrative because it establishes that in order for one to gain a full understanding of the mind-which is represented as a set of dispositions-one has to take into account theories about the brain, the body, social practices, and technological artifacts. All of these are said to be 'mediators' upon which the mind depends. An important claim underlying the theory is that in psychology the basic ontological unit is the person. We agree with Brinkmann both on this and on the dispositional nature of the mind. Still, he does not make a strong case for the latter. Furthermore, we believe the concept of mediation is by no means helpful to produce an integrative view in psychology, not only because the theoretical job of such a concept is unclear but also because qua unifying concept it may end up undermining the ontological primacy of the person (in psychology). In this paper we refer to these issues and suggest some ideas that may help improve Brinkmann's (and Harré's) proposal.

Theoretical Establishment of The Mind Humanities: Necessity and Methodological Approach

The Mind is a still vastly vague and unknown notion. But the more we view this phenomenon with multi-faceted viewpoints and depth, the more we discourse of the Mind with profundity and develop the concept of the Mind with more objectivity which will become that much more perfect. This article proposes to capture the Theory of the Mind, to some extent, in various academic fields and in parallel studies to organize the whole perspectives of the Mind in form of a digital knowledge Mind Map and present a thinkable model of the topology of the Mind.

The Other Half of the Embodied Mind

Embodied theories of mind tend to be theories of the cognitive half of the mind and to ignore its emotional half while a complete theory of the mind should account for both halves. Robots are a new way of expressing theories of the mind which are less ambiguous and more capable to generate specific and non-controversial predictions than verbally expressed theories. We outline a simple robotic model of emotional states as states of a sub-part of the neural network controlling the robot's behavior which has specific properties and which allows the robot to make faster and more correct motivational decisions, and we describe possible extensions of the model to account for social emotional states and for the expression of emotions that, unlike those of current “emotional” robots, are really “felt” by the robot in that they play a well-identified functional role in the robot's behavior.

Sloan Mahone and Megan Vaughan (eds), Psychiatry and Empire, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. ix + 243, £45.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-1-4039-4711-6.

This is not the first edited volume to gather historical essays on psychiatry and colonialism. It does, however, contain some very good new research. It also provides some helpful confirmation of observations in previous work. These include, for example, the opinion that colonial psychiatric institutions were more often reluctant and desultory responses to social problems than they were instruments of grand schemes for social control. And, while colonial psychiatrists may have given expert imprimatur to racist theories of ‘the native mind’, they reflected racist ideologies more than they were instrumental in creating them; this theme is not new to this volume, though there are some really remarkable examples in a number of the chapters of how colonial culture compromised the vision of psychiatric theory. A number of the authors also echo previous work in disavowing the utility of applying Foucault by noting, for example, the lack of ‘great confinements’ in colonies, an observation co-editor Megan Vaughan made in her pioneering original work on the subject. There is some significant new ground broken in this volume. Shula Marks contributes a chapter on psychiatric nursing, a topic relatively neglected by historians of psychiatry, and not only in colonies. Marks’s chapter, titled ‘The microphysics of power’, actually illustrates how many of Foucault’s insights about the dynamics of knowledge and power may be relevant to colonial contexts, however much those contexts may differ from those in European metropoles—about which Foucault’s empirical foundation was always shaky, anyway. Richard Keller explores therapeutics in the Maghreb as a laboratory for French psychiatry, exploring the blurry line between therapy and control—themes developed further in his recent monograph. Shruti Kapila provides a nuanced exploration of the reception of Freud in India, showing how psychoanalytic ideas were selectively appropriated, not only as theories of the mind, but as reflections of varied orientations toward both religion and the Indian nation. And Hans Pols’s chapter on psychiatric constructions of the ‘native mind’ in the Dutch East Indies goes further than many previous treatments in exploring how colonised people responded to these ideologies. For readers looking for an overview of the field, Psychiatry and Empire supplants previous edited collections. Taken together, the varied essays provide a good gauge of the state of the field.

Structure Amongst the Modules: Lévi-Strauss and Cognitive Theorizing About Religion*

Abstract Cognitivism in the anthropology of religion and religious studies is an approach to religion that appeals to evolved or selected architectures of cognition from which theories of—and explanations for—religion, can be generated. Cognitive approaches to religion are hardly new, though today, cognitive theory draws upon an evidence base heavily influenced by the insights of evolutionary psychology. The writings of scholars such as Dan Sperber, Pascal Boyer and Ilkka Pyysiainen are defining this new field of research into religion. In this essay I want to consider the place of Claude Levi-Strauss in relation to this “cognitive turn” in the study of religion (Jensen 2009: 145). Levi-Strauss’ work has been described as an approach that “we could call cognitivist today” (Henaff 1998: 119) but I will argue that his cognitively oriented writings on religion lead—though not unequivocally—to an alternative theory of the mind to that posed by evolutionary psychology.

Re-cognizing the Mind in the Anthropology of Religion

AbstractCognitive approaches to religion in religious studies and anthropology are proving increasingly fashionable of late. The focus of this essay is on “cognitivism” in the anthropology of religion, and in particular the writings of E. B. Tylor, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Harvey Whitehouse. I define cognitivism in the anthropology of religion as an approach to religion that appeals to the mind and to processes of cognition as universals from which theories of — and explanations for — religion, can be generated. The essay engages in a detailed analysis of three cognitive theories of religion. Each theory takes the mind to be an enduring and stable foundation upon which an explanation for religion can be erected. Yet the mind — the foundation — is disclosed through each theory as unstable; it actually changes under different kinds of enquiry into religion. I then sketch two possible alternative theories of the mind before concluding by arguing that the cognizing mind might productively be treated not as a given and natural fact but rather as the product of discourse.

Towards an Expansive Hybrid Psychology: Integrating Theories of the Mediated Mind

This article develops an integrative theory of the mind by examining how the mind, understood as a set of skills and dispositions, depends upon four sources of mediators. Harré's hybrid psychology is taken as a meta-theoretical starting point, but is expanded significantly by including the four sources of mediators that are the brain, the body, social practices and technological artefacts. It is argued that the mind is normative in the sense that mental processes do not simply happen, but can be done more or less well, and thus are subject to normative appraisal. The expanded hybrid psychology is meant to assist in integrating theoretical perspectives and research interests that are often thought of as incompatible, among them neuroscience, phenomenology of the body, social practice theory and technology studies. A main point of the article is that these perspectives each are necessary for an integrative approach to the human mind.

Review: Beyond Rationalist Theories of the Mind

Review: Beyond Rationalist Theories of the Mind

‘DEATH'S DREAM KINGDOM’: THE REPRESENTATION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS IN APOCALYPSE NOW

The film Apocalypse Now, first released in 1979, is now recognized as Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece. Inspired by Joseph Conrad's 19th century novella Heart of Darkness, the film tells the story of a journey upriver into a threatening interior where the protagonists face the challenge of attack from an unseen and savage enemy, disease, madness and death. The film can be ‘read’ from a number of different perspectives: as representing the USA's conflict with Vietnam, as a journey into man's soul or, from a psychoanalytic perspective, as representing the unconscious. Derived from this perspective, the author questions why Apocalypse Now continues to have such resonance. Working with Matte Blanco's theory of the mind which he saw as manifesting a form of logic, and which he called bi-logic, the author interrogates three significant scenes from the film and argues that they can be understood to represent increasingly deeper levels of the unconscious. It is this evocation which makes the film unforgettable.

La question de Lintériorité mentale à L'âge classique

L’article examine la notion d’intériorité mentale à l’âge classique, et plus particulièrement la conception cartésienne de l’esprit comme «théâtre intérieur». La thèse qui se dégage est celle d’une étroite corrélation, dans la philosophie de Descartes, entre une théorie représentationnelle de l’esprit, associée à un intemalisme, d’une part, et une perspective « neuropsychologique », d’autre part. Le mentalisme cartésien, fondé sur la disjonction des catégories de représentation et de ressemblance, n’est donc pas dissociable du projet, déjà à l’oeuvre dans laDioptrique, d’une localisation intracérébrale du mental.

Intersections of mathematical, cognitive, and aesthetic theories of mind.

New mathematical and cognitive theories of the mind are connected to psychological theories of aesthetics. I briefly summarize recent revolutionary advancements toward understanding the mind, due to new methods of neuroimaging studies of the brain and new mathematical theories modeling the brain–min

P02-258 - Theory of mind and borderline personality disorder : a pilot study

ObjectivesTo examine the theory of the mind (TOM) in BPD patients.MethodsFifteen BPD patients (age>18) meeting criteria for BPD were compared to 16 healthy matched controls on two measures of TOM: mental state decoding (MSD) and mental state reasoning (MSR). MSD is the ability to perceive social cues (faces expression, voices) while MSR is the ability to infer on mental states with experiment, learning, context. MSR was measured by the faux pas recognition task assessing the ability to identify a faux pas in a social situation (range 0-60) and a comic strips task measuring the ability to infer intention (range 0-28). MSD was assessed by a video task reporting the ability to infer false belief and intention of deceit on visual motor action. Depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory) and axis II comorbidity traits (Personality Disorder Questionnaire-4+) were also assessed.ResultsMean (SD) age was 26.0 (4.1) and two participants were of male gender (6.5%). BPD patients scored significantly lower than controls on the both MSR measures: faux pas task mean (SD) scores of 46.6(14.1) vs 58.0(2.8) (p=0.002) and comic strips mean (SD) scores of 26.1(1.5) vs 27.4(1.3) (p=0.001). No significant differences were found on the video task. Multivariate analyses showed that faux pas score was predicted by BPD diagnosis independently from level of depressive symptoms, history of hypomanic episode, schizotypic and antisocial personality disorder traits (F=4.32, df=6, p< 0.01).ConclusionsBPD is associated with a TOM deficit on mental state reasoning tasks even after controlling for confounding variables.

Eye tracking and eyewitness memory

For more than a century psychologists have utilized eye tracking as a window into how we think and how we feel, and to test theories of the mind and its mental processes. A range of forensic topics has been investigated with eye tracking, such as the effect of weapon exposure (e.g., Hope & Wright, 2008), visual attention in anti-social personality disorder (e.g., Ceballos & Bauer, 2004), and the role of expertise in deception detection (Bond, 2008). Recently, researchers have begun to use eye tracking to study eyewitness decision processes in criminal lineup identification (e.g., Mansour, Lindsay, Brewer, & Munhall, 2009). This paper reviews the application of eye tracking technology in criminal identification lineup research and discusses issues that arise in translating eye movements to reveal eyewitness decision processes.

Introduction to Buddhist meditation

1. Buddhism and its background. 2. Buddhist meditation: mindfulness, wisdom and concentration 3. Tracing back the radiance: Buddhist theories of the mind 4. The objects for meditation 5. Chanting as meditation 6. Meditation traditions of Southern Buddhism 7. India 8. Tibet 9. China 10. Korea and Vietnam 11. Japan 12. Modern Developments

Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis (review)

Reviewed by: Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis Elizabeth Bromley George Makari . Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008. viii + 613 pp. Ill. $32.50 (978-0-06-134661-3). It seems true, as the book jacket claims, that Revolution in Mind is the first book "ever to fully account for the making of psychoanalysis." George Makari's impressive new book vibrantly renders the intellectual environment of late-nineteenth-century Europe, exhaustively traces psychoanalysis's development through World War II, and generously enlivens an enormous cast of thinkers who fundamentally shaped the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Makari's history includes the warts of Freud's science: the politicking, jockeying, and hand waving that plagued the effort are recounted in rich detail. Yet, through comprehensive historical detective work, Makari demonstrates why psychoanalysis was an astounding advance and an unparalleled watershed in the science of the mind and brain. This is neither a biography of Freud nor a good introduction to psychoanalytic thought, since Makari only indirectly explains Freud's ideas by detailing their development. Instead, Revolution in Mind is a history of a scientific discovery. The development of psychoanalysis as a science is finally and fully recounted: a brilliant synthesis of previously incommensurate ideas; the development of initial hypotheses and their dialectical refinement; theoretical advances in fits and starts; and an increasingly persuasive accumulation of evidence. The social portion of science is also detailed: the attacks from the mainstream aging lions; the backdoor politics enacted to maintain cohesiveness among colleagues; the uneven link between theory and practice; and the rising tide that lifted all boats. Makari demonstrates that, by prioritizing hypothesis testing and standards for data collection, Freud created an avalanche of investigation in psychological science. He deftly describes how Carl Jung, Eugen Bleuler, and other colleagues in Zurich devised experimental techniques with which to test tenets of Freud's model of the mind. Experimentation in the clinic also led to theoretical developments. Freud initially used dreams as the primary source of data about the unconscious, but dream interpretation proved a haphazard data collection tool. It took decades for psychoanalysts to recognize that the relationship between analyst and analysand could be a reliable representation of unconscious processes. Makari says, "Freud had pushed aside the complex hermeneutics of dream interpretation and replaced it with the analysis of transference. From the evidentiary point of view, this move was a winner, and Freud knew it" (p. 332). [End Page 214] Revolution in Mind is also a useful corrective, because it confronts certain totalizing myths about Freud. Freud was not an intellectual autocrat. Freud did struggle to maintain some theoretical unity among colleagues of immense diversity, and at times he squelched debate. His ideas were not inherently misogynistic. Instead, they were interpreted by some as blatantly revolutionary and libertine and by others as progressive and friendly to women. Overall, the critiques of psychoanalysis do not appear to have changed much in a century. Auguste Comte's curse haunted early analysts: psychological knowledge "could never be objective," Comte claimed, because a mind looking at itself would surely produce "as many theories as there are observers" (p. 11). Lacking rigorous laboratory techniques for gathering data, psychoanalysts argued over fundamental truths. One analyst's conclusions could easily be impugned as only "marked by the author's neurosis" (p. 170). Freud recognized that theoretical innovation emerged from introspection (e.g., following his father's death, during his own self-analysis) as often as it did from experimentation. And, as early psychoanalysts gleefully appropriated Freud's ideas to issue scathing cultural critiques, psychoanalysis as a social theory conflicted with psychoanalysis as a clinically relevant theory of the mind. For these reasons and others, psychoanalysts had difficulty maintaining a position in academic medical circles. Makari accomplishes a remarkable feat: he thoroughly explores the nuances of progress and retrenchment in this intellectual and scientific movement. His history does not shy away from the complexity of its subject. Revolution in Mind fills a significant gap, and it is a must read for scholars interested in the history of ideas about the mind or brain. [End Page 215] Elizabeth Bromley University of California, Los Angeles Copyright © 2009...

“Thus Gan He Make a Mirour of His Mynde”: Fragmented Memories and Anxious Desire in Troilus and Criseyde

This article argues that the Troilus’s relationship with Criseyde is fraught with anxious desire. By referencing medieval theories of the mind and Kleinian psychoanalytic theory, it shows that the manner in which Troilus memorializes his desire for Criseyde in the books I to III of the poem has a direct impact on the way he experiences her loss in book V. Throughout the poem, anxiety is the definitive characteristic of Troilus’s desire. It emerges when he first encounters an uncontrollable desire and when the consummation of his desire is delayed. It is this anxious engendering of desire, and not loss per se, that causes the feelings of persecution and victimization in Troilus when he loses Criseyde at the end of the poem.

René J. Muller, Doing Psychiatry Wrong: A Critical and Prescriptive Look at a Faltering Profession

Doing Psychiatry Wrong: A Critical and Prescriptive Look at a Faltering Profession by Rene J. Muller powerfully challenges the current paradigm of mental illness. Muller’s arguments are the culmination of 10 years of clinical observation and frustration in three urban psychiatric hospitals. Muller successfully compels professionals of all levels of expertise to examine psychiatric diagnosis and treatment from what has become an unconventional angle. Muller reemphasizes the significance of the human being and free will into a practice that has become so heavily reliant on brain dysfunction. Initially, Muller describes the evolution of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. To support his arguments, Muller integrates various case examples. In addition, misconceptions about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, paranoia, and depression are explained. Muller proposes a novel and refined method of conceptualizing mental disorders that emphasizes a dimensional approach. A major strength of Muller’s Doing Psychiatry Wrong: A Critical and Prescriptive Look at a Faltering Profession is the relevance of his perspective to a wide-range of individuals. In his writing, Muller is not afraid to go against the grain of current societal beliefs. The radical approach that Muller adopts gives his stories universal appeal. Although the arguments are most specifically directed towards psychiatrists and psychologists, all mental health and medical professionals may be influenced by Muller’s arguments. Furthermore, Muller’s perspective has the ability to challenge how mental health patients and lay members of society view personal struggles with mental illness. Muller effectively confronts the role of marketing and sales in the current conceptualization and treatment of mental illness. Consequently, Muller’s extreme arguments also have relevance to business and legal professionals. Muller’s perspective is supported by theory and knowledge gathered from various realms of scholarly work. He criticizes the current approach to mental diagnosis and treatment on the grounds that biology is overemphasized and psychology is underemphasized. In contrast, Muller successfully integrates theories of the mind, philosophical ideas, and biological science into a comprehensive theory. Muller manages to raise questions about the biological evidence being used to support current theories. Furthermore, Muller emphasizes that true understanding of mental disorders cannot be accomplished without accepting a multidisciplinary approach. In Doing Psychiatry Wrong, Muller effectively reintroduces the importance of understanding the distinctiveness of each patient. Muller argues that in psychiatric practice, human beings have been reduced to neurons and brain structures. Although Muller believes that symptoms are relevant to diagnosis, he argues that the meaning underlying symptoms is of greater importance. Muller suggests that symptoms should be understood before a diagnosis is given. In addition, he argues that patient motivation and free will should be assessed. Muller successfully emphasizes the importance that patients’ unique life stories have to a profession dedicated to helping individuals. In the final chapter of the book, Muller provides an alternative approach to diagnosis that can be implemented by psychologists or psychiatrists. Muller emphasizes a dimensional approach in his model. The guidelines provided are simple, straightforward, and encompass transtheoretical approaches. Despite the practicality of these A. L. Marquart (&) Psychology Department, Case Western Reserve University, Mather Memorial Building #103, 11220 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106-7123, USA e-mail: Abby.marquart@gmail.com; abby.marquart@case.edu