Mental time travel is the ability to mentally project oneself backward in time to relive past experiences and forward in time to pre-live possible future experiences. Previous work has focused on MTT in its voluntary form. Here, we introduce the notion of involuntary MTT. We examined involuntary versus voluntary and past versus future MTT in a diary study. We found that involuntary future event representations—defined as representations of possible personal future events that come to mind with no preceding search attempts—were (...) as common as involuntary autobiographical memories and similar to them regarding cuing and subjective qualities. Future MTT involved more positive and idyllic representations than past MTT. MTT into the distant future/past involved more representations of cultural life script events than MTT into the immediate past/future. The findings are discussed in relation to cultural learning and MTT considered as a higher mental process. (shrink)

"An astutely argued and elegantly written (and translated) book on the philosophical genealogy and logical implications of the work of Jacques Lacan."Choice.

____Remembering Anna O.__ offers a devastating examination of the very foundations of psychoanalytic theory and practice, which was born with the publication of Breuer and Freud's ____Studies on Hysteria__ in 1895. Breuer described the case of Anna O., a young woman afflicted with a severe hysteria whom he had cured of her symptoms by having her recount under hypnosis the traumatic events that precipitated her illness. Drawing on the most recent Freud scholarship and on long-secret documents, Borch-Jacobsen demonstrates, however, (...) that Anna O. was never cured by Breuer's "talking cure" and that both Breuer and Freud knowingly falsified the historical record. Borch-Jacobsen points out the numerous inconsistencies in Breuer's account that suggests that Anna O.'s symptoms were simulated to meet Breuer's theoretical expectations and that her famed "reminiscences" were in fact fictitious memories induced by Breuer in the course of a hypnotic treatment. (shrink)

Donald Davidson's explanation of first-person authority turns on an ingenious account of speakers' knowledge of meaning. It nonetheless suffers from a structural defect and yields, at best, expressive know-how for speakers. I argue that an expressivist strand already latent in Davidson's paratactic treatment of the semantics of belief attribution can be exploited to repair the defect, and so to yield a plausible account of first-person authority.

How did psychoanalysis attain its prominent cultural position? How did it eclipse rival psychologies and psychotherapies, such that it became natural to bracket Freud with Copernicus and Darwin? Why did Freud 'triumph' to such a degree that we hardly remember his rivals? This book reconstructs the early controversies around psychoanalysis and shows that rather than demonstrating its superiority, Freud and his followers rescripted history. This legend-making was not an incidental addition to psychoanalytic theory but formed its core. Letting the primary (...) material speak for itself, this history demonstrates the extraordinary apparatus by which this would-be science of psychoanalysis installed itself in contemporary societies. Beyond psychoanalysis, it opens up the history of the constitution of the modern psychological sciences and psychotherapies, how they furnished the ideas which we have of ourselves and how these became solidified into indisputable 'facts'. (shrink)

We generalize the concept of Nash equilibrium in mixed strategies for strategic form games to allow for ambiguity in the players' expectations. In contrast to other contributions, we model ambiguity by means of so-called lower probability measures or belief functions, which makes it possible to distinguish between a player's assessment of ambiguity and his attitude towards ambiguity. We also generalize the concept of trembling hand perfect equilibrium. Finally, we demonstrate that for certain attitudes towards ambiguity it is possible to explain (...) cooperation in the one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma in a way that is in accordance with some recent experimental findings. (shrink)

In this article we introduce an argument developed in Borch-Jacobsen and Shamdasani (2006). We attempt to draw some consequences from several decades of work in Freud history. We argue that such work has had the cumulative effect of showing up the legendary nature of Freud's epistemology, and has demonstrated the direct linkages between his interpretive procedures and rewriting of history. The Freud legend was by no means a supplementary accessory which accompanied substantive advances, akin to the legend of Newton's (...) apple: rather, it was constitutive of the very identity of psychoanalysis, and enabled its differentiation from rival psychologies and psychotherapies, and promoted the claim that it formed the only viable science of mind and the most advanced form of psychotherapy. Historical research enables one to grasp the legendary nature of Freud's achievement. (shrink)

Is mental illness an object of knowledge? The history of psychiatry teaches us to doubt it, by emphasizing the infinitely variable and fluctuating character of psychiatric entities. Mental illness is not simply ‘out there’, waiting to be described and theorized by psychiatrists; it interacts with psychiatric theories, clinical entities waxing and waning in accordance with diagnostic fashions, institutional practices and methods of treatment. This should be a warning to psychiatrists and therapists: their intervention is part of the ‘etiological equation’ of (...) the syndromes that they claim to observe from the outside. But this should also be a warning to historians of psychiatry, who can no longer be content with writing the history of ready-made syndromes and psychiatric theories. They must, if they want to remain faithful to their improbable ‘object’, study the complex interactions from which those syndromes and those theories emerge, somewhere between the doctors, the patients and the society that surrounds them. In short, they must study the making of psychiatric history, and understand that they participate in it. (shrink)

What is a human being according to Augustine of Hippo? The question has occupied a group of researchers from Brazil and Europe and has been explored at two workshops during which the contributors to this volume have discussed anthropological themes in Augustine's vast corpus. In this volume, the reader will find articles on a wide spectrum of Augustine's anthropological ideas. Some contributions focus on specific texts, while others focus on specific theological or philosophical aspects of Augustine's anthropology. The authors of (...) the articles in this volume are convinced that Augustine's anthropology is of major importance for how human beings have been understood in Western civilization for better or for worse. The topic is therefore highly relevant to the present times in which humanity is under pressure from various sides. (shrink)

Several lines of evidence show that systematic exposure to negative social acts at the workplace i.e., workplace bullying, results in symptoms of depression and anxiety among those targeted. However, little is known about the association between bullying, inflammatory genes and sleep problems. In the present study, we examined the indirect association between exposure to negative social acts and sleep through distress, as moderated by the miR-146a genotype. The study was based on a nationally representative survey of 1179 Norwegian employees drawn (...) from the Norwegian Central Employee Register by Statistics Norway. Exposure to workplace bullying was measured with the 9-item version of Negative Acts Questionnaire – Revised (NAQ-R) inventory. Seventeen items from Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL-25) was used to measure distress. Insomnia was assessed with three items reflecting problems with sleep onset, maintenance of sleep and early morning awakening. Genotyping with regard to miR-146a rs2910164, previously linked to inflammatory processes, was carried out using Taqman assay. The data revealed that individuals systematically exposed to negative social acts at the workplace reported higher levels of sleep problems than non-exposed individuals. Moreover, the relationship between distress induced by exposure to negative social acts and insomnia was significantly stronger for individuals with the miR-146a GG genotype. Thus, the miR-146a genotype moderated the association between distress and insomnia among individuals exposed to negative social acts. The present report support the hypothesis that inflammation could play a role in stress-induced insomnia among individuals exposed to workplace bullying. (shrink)

Why do 'maladies of the soul' such as hysteria, anxiety disorders, or depression wax and wane over time? Through a study of the history of psychiatry, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen provocatively argues that most mental illnesses are not, in fact, diseases but the product of varying expectations shared and negotiated by therapists and patients. With a series of fascinating historical vignettes, stretching from Freud's creation of false memories of sexual abuse in his early hysterical patients to today's promotion and marketing of (...) depression by drug companies, Making Minds and Madness offers a powerful critique of all the theories, such as psychoanalysis and biomedical psychiatry, that claim to discover facts about the human psyche while, in reality, producing them. Borch-Jacobsen proposes such objectivizing approaches should be abandoned in favor of a constructionist and relativist psychology that recognizes the artifactual and interactive character of psychic productions instead of attempting to deny or control it. (shrink)

BackgroundNon-technical skills are cognitive and interpersonal skills underpinning technical proficiency. Ethical values and respect for human dignity make operating room nurses responsible for nursing decisions that are clinically and technically sound and morally appropriate.AimTo learn what ethical issues operating room nurses perceive as important regarding non-technical skills.Research designQualitative individual in-depth interviews were conducted. The interviews were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s six phases for thematic analysis.Participants and research contextEleven experienced perioperative/operating room nurses working in an operating unit at a Norwegian (...) university hospital.Ethical considerationsApproval was given by The Norwegian Social Science Data Service in care of the hospital’s Data Protection Officer.FindingsThree main themes were found: respect and care for the patient, making the patient feel safe, and respect within the perioperative team. These features or themes, which incorporate collaboration and communication, are closely connected to patient safety.DiscussionDefending the patient’s dignity is part of caring for and respecting the patient. The manner in which the operating room team collaborates is important for the patient to feel safe and secure. Poor teamwork may have dire consequences. Reciprocal respect within the team includes respect for each other’s tasks and responsibilities and to talk to one another in a friendly manner.ConclusionBeing respectful and contributing to a caring atmosphere are central ethical skills in the operating room. To patients, harmonious teamwork translates into a feeling of safety and being cared for. The nurses see respect and patient safety, and respect and reciprocal politeness among the members of the perioperative team as central ethical non-technical skills. Lack of respect influences the team negatively and is detrimental for patient safety. Good communication is an important safety measure during surgery and creates a feeling of good ‘flow’ within the operating room team. (shrink)

The core structures of d 111 ¢ screw dislocations in bcc metals are studied using density functional theory in the local-density approximation. For Mo and Fe, direct calculations of the core structures show the cores to be symmetric with respect to 180° rotations around an axis perpendicular to the dislocation line. The magnetic moment in the Fe core is shown to be reduced relative to the bulk value. Calculations of n surfaces and the elastic constants B , C ' and (...) c 44 are reported for Fe and all group VB and VIB metals. Using a criterion suggested by Vitek and Duesbery the calculations point to symmetric core structures for all the studied metals. (shrink)

In participatory activities in the workplace, employees are invited to raise problems and suggest improvements to the management. Although it is widely acknowledged that employees rarely control decisions in these settings, little is known about the interactional resources that employees and managers draw upon when negotiating consensus about which initiatives to pursue in the future. We analyse interactions from participatory meetings in an industrial setting in relation to the topic of work shoes, showing how the participants orient to both their (...) relative deontic rights and epistemic rights. The analysis suggests that besides their low deontic status, employees’ fragile epistemic status constitutes an important but overlooked challenge to achieving improved working conditions through the participatory activities. (shrink)

Depuis leur origine, la théorie et la pratique psychanalytique suscitent des questions et des oppositions. Dans ce débat très animé, un philosophe, dont les travaux sur l'histoire de la psychanalyse sont reconnus, et un psychanalyste ouvert sur l'épistémologie abordent, sans concessions et de façon approfondie, les principaux points de la polémique. Au lecteur de former sa propre opinion.

$\eta $ -representations are a way of coding sets in computable linear orders that were first introduced by Fellner in his thesis. Limitwise monotonic functions have been used to characterize the sets with $\eta $ -representations, and give characterizations for several variations of $\eta $ -representations. The one exception is the class of sets with strong $\eta $ -representations, the only class where the order type of the representation is unique.We introduce the notion of a connected approximation of a set, (...) a variation on $\Sigma ^0_2$ approximations. We use connected approximations to give a characterization of the many-one degrees of sets with strong $\eta $ -representations as well new characterizations of the variations of $\eta $ -representations with known characterizations. (shrink)

This article analyses the influence of Hinduism on Ecosophy T. Arne Naess in several of his environmental writings quotes verse 6.29 of the Bhagavadgitā, a Hindu sacred text. The verse is understood to illustrate the close relationship between the ideas of oneness of all living beings, non‐injury and self‐realization. The article compares the interpretations of the verse of some of the most important Hindu commentators on the Bhagavadgitā with the environmentalist interpretation. There is no agreement in the history of the (...) Hindu tradition on the meaning of the verse. The interpretation of Ecosophy T contrasts sharply with the interpretations of the Hindu monastic traditions but has similarities with the twentieth‐century social activist interpretations of Mohandas K. Gandhi and S. Radhakrishnan. In Ecosophy T aspects of this social activist version of Hinduism have been creatively reinterpreted in the context of contemporary environmentalism. (shrink)

It is a common mistake, especially, perhaps, among students of the religions and philosophies of India, to assume that the word prakṛti, best known as the ultimate material principle in the Sāṃkhya and Yoga systems of religious thought, the material cause of the world in Hindu theologies and, as such, an epithet of the goddesses in Hinduism, always refers to an ultimate principle. Even in Sāṃkhya and Yoga texts the word prakṛti is used in various ways. Prakṛti does not always (...) refer to the ultimate principle. Translators often leave the word prakṛti untranslated and mislead the reader to assume that the ultimate principle is referred to, when it is not. This article discusses the use of prakṛti in the Sāṃkhya-Yoga texts the Yogasūtra and the Vyāsabhāṣya and criticises some translation practices. (shrink)

The most important analytical tool in non-cooperative game theory is the concept of a Nash equilibrium, which is a collection of possibly mixed strategies, one for each player, with the property that each player's strategy is a best reply to the strategies of the other players. If we do not go into normative game theory, which concerns itself with the recommendation of strategies, and focus instead entirely on the positive theory of prediction, two alternative interpretations of the Nash equilibrium concept (...) are predominantly available.In the more traditional one, a Nash equilibrium is a prediction of actual play. A game may not have a Nash equilibrium in pure strategies, and a mixed strategy equilibrium may be difficult to incorporate into this interpretation if it involves the idea of actual randomization over equally good pure strategies. In another interpretation originating from Harsanyi, see also Rubinstein, and Aumann and Brandenburger, a Nash equilibrium is a ‘consistent’ collection of probabilistic expectations, conjectures, on the players. It is consistent in the sense that for each player each pure strategy, which has positive probability according to the conjecture about that player, is indeed a best reply to the conjectures about others. (shrink)

This collection of essays by 13 well-known social scientists and commentators examines the modern state from different inter-disciplinary and thematic perspectives.

We define an evolutionary process of “economic Darwinism” for playing the field, symmetric games. The process captures two forces. One is “economic selection”: if current behavior leads to payoff differences, behavior yielding lowest payoff has strictly positive probability of being replaced by an arbitrary behavior. The other is “mutation”: any behavior has at any point in time a strictly positive, very small probability of shifting to an arbitrary behavior. We show that behavior observed frequently is in accordance with “evolutionary equilibrium”, (...) a static equilibrium concept suggested in the literature. Using this result, we demonstrate that generally under positive (negative) externalities, economic Darwinism implies even more under- (over-)activity than does Nash equilibrium. (shrink)

This article critically addresses recent anthropological and feminist efforts to theorize and analyse Muslim women's participation in and support for the Islamic revival in its various manifestations. Drawing on ethnographic material from research on young Muslims engaged in Islamic youth and student-organizations in Norway, I investigate some of the challenges that researching religious subjectivities and practices pose to feminist theory. In particular, I deal with how to understand women's religious piety in relation to questions of self, agency and resistance. Engaging (...) with Saba Mahmood's work on The Politics of Piety, this article suggests ways of understanding the young women's religious engagement that move beyond the confines of a binary model of subordination and resistance, coercion and choice. Grounding the discussion in ethnographic analysis of how young Muslim women in Norway speak about the ‘self’, I argue that critically revisiting feminist notions of agency, autonomy and desire, is necessary in order to understand the kinds of self-realization that these women aspire to. However, the article argues against positing Muslim conceptions and techniques of the self as ‘the other’ of liberal-secular traditions. Rather, I show how configurations of personhood, ethics and self-realization drawn from Islamic and liberal-secular discursive formations inhabit not only the same cultural and historical space, but also shape individual subjectivities and modes of agency. (shrink)

Buddhism teaches that the diversity of living beings in the world is caused and upheld by intentional acts performed in this and previous lives by karmic trajectories, beings whose continuity through rebirths is not dependent on a transcendent substratum such as a self (ātman), and that the order of beings in the world exactly correlates with the consequences of acts (karrnan) operative for their present life. The central Buddhist doctrine of dependent co‐arising (pratītya‐samutpāda) shows how these karmic trajectories are sustained (...) by twelve conditions, the primary of which is ignorance. The goal of Buddhists is ultimately to transcend rebirth and attain nirvāṇa. This is possible because the world is both a rebirth realm and a realm in which awakening from ignorance can be attained. The natural world of living beings is a moral order and this moral order functions in a physical setting. The physical setting of the rebirth system is the cosmos as the abode of beings, and the beings participating in the rebirth system constitute the world of living beings. These together constitute the world of rebirth (saṃsāra). By nature in this article is understood that part of the cosmos that constitutes the physical setting of humans and the world of non‐human beings also living there – that is, animals and plants. This is, one should note, only a very small part of the Buddhist cosmos, which consists of a huge number of world systems, and which is immense in time and space and eternally manifests and dissolves. (shrink)

In Sāṃkhya similes are an important means to communicate basic philosophical teachings. In the texts similes are frequently used, especially in the Sāṃkhya passages in the Mahābhārata, in the Sāṃkhyakārikā and in the Sāṃkhyasūtra. This paper compares the similes in these three texts and analyses changes in the philosophy as revealed in the similes. A comparison of the similes of Sāṃkhya texts produced over more than one thousand years reveals changes in the emphasis in this philosophical system. The purpose of (...) the similes in the Sāṃkhya passages of the Mahābhārata is to produce an intuitive understanding of the separateness of puruṣa and prakṛti. The similes are designed to lead the listener to understand this basic dualism. In the Sāṃkhyakārikā the most difficult issues are the relationship between prakṛti and puruṣa and the idea of prakṛti working for the salvation of puruṣa. One whole chapter of the Sāṃkhyasūtra is devoted to similes. (shrink)