Understanding Of Illusion Research Articles

Commentary: Physical time within human time.

A debate - involving philosophers, theoretical physicists, psychologists, and neuroscientists - focuses on whether the experience of the passage of time is a veridical or an illusory representation of the physical reality of the Universe. It is suggested here that a better understanding of illusions and hallucinations allows for a deeper examination of the role of time experience.

On Psychoses, Conspiracies, Creative Flow and the Absent-Mindedness of Genius: An Evolutionary Function-Dysfunction Taxonomy of the Multiple Subjective Realities of the Human Mind

The significance of illusion as a positive force in everyday life has been underestimated in both societal discourse and in empirical science. The objective of this study is to provide a synthesis of many academic disciplines’ understanding of illusion and reality by proposing a taxonomy of functional and dysfunctional subjective realities as based on the assumption that the human mind is adaptive in an evolutionary sense and likely to be a quantum entanglement system. Assumptions and discussions needed to construct the taxonomy are generally based on empirical research drawing from evolutionary theory, neurology, biology, anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, physics and other disciplines. The purpose of the proposed taxonomy is heuristic, serving as a base for further studies drawing particular attention to the fact that, by evolutionary processes, Homo sapiens have been made dependent on multiple subjective realities where illusion and reality are not necessarily opposites. The article is concluded by discussing possible reasons for why illusions as a positive force in human behaviour has been neglected in comparison to the dysfunctions of the human mind of which research abound.

Ongoing change in psychoanalytic theory implications for analysis of religious experience

Hans Loewald (1980) once made the distinction between ghosts and ancestors, the former always wanting to return to the land of the living, the latter being able to rest in peace and live forth through their progeny in the present generation. Extending this metaphor, Stephen Mitchell (1991) has noted that the intellectual integrity and vitality of psychoanalysis depends on our shifting our view of Freud from an unburied ghost who haunts us to an honored ancestor. I argue that perhaps nowhere is Freud's enduring presence greater than in psychoanalytic perspectives on religion, and it is often as an unburied ghost. Ongoing change in psychoanalytic theory, however, affords respectful amendment to his work in a way that allows Freud to be a dearly honored ancestor from whom we are all psychoanalytic descendents. Three developments in psychoanalytic theory have special implication for the analysis of religious experience. These areas of change pertain to contemporary understanding of illusion, narrative, and so...