ArgumentAnimals played an important role in the formation of psychoanalysis as a theoretical and therapeutic enterprise. They are at the core of texts such as Freud's famous case histories of Little Hans, the Rat Man, or the Wolf Man. The infantile anxiety triggered by animals provided the essential link between the psychology of individual neuroses and the ambivalent status of the “totem” animal in so-called primitive societies in Freud's attempt to construct an anthropological basis for the Oedipus complex in Totem (...) and Taboo. In the following, we attempt to track the status of animals as objects of indirect observation as they appear in Freud's classical texts, and in later revisionist accounts such as Otto Rank's Trauma of Birth and Imre Hermann's work on the clinging instinct. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Freudian conception of patients' animal phobias is substantially revised within Hermann's original psychoanalytic theory of instincts which draws heavily upon ethological observations of primates. Although such a reformulation remains grounded in the idea of “archaic” animal models for human development, it allows to a certain extent to empiricize the speculative elements of Freud's later instinct theory and to come to a more embodied account of psychoanalytic practice. (shrink)

Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg hat Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921-2007) herausragende israelische Gelehrte in englisch- und deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen in Europa und Nordamerika bekannt gemacht. Die zu diesem Zweck von ihm begründete Reihe Studia Judaica bietet heute ein Forum für wissenschaftliche Studien und Editionen aus allen Epochen der jüdischen Religionsgeschichte.

In this paper I shall attempt to show that the difference which Boethius has in mind when distinguishing between conditional and simple necessity in the fifth book of Philosophiae Consolatio is not, as already Thomas Aquinas presumed, the difference between a necessitas consequentiae and the corresponding necessitas consequentis, but rather the difference between the necessity of a given state of affairs which is necessary in the sense that at the moment of its existence its present existence is unchangeable, and the (...) necessity of a given state of affairs which is necessary in the sense that even prior to the moment of its existence its future existence is unavoidable. (shrink)

Glossolalia (“speaking in tongues”) is a rhythmic utterance of word‐like strings of sounds, regularly occurring in religious mass gatherings or various forms of private religious practices (e.g., prayer and meditation). Although specific verbal learning capacities may characterize glossolalists, empirical evidence is lacking. We administered three statistical learning tasks (artificial grammar, phoneme sequence, and visual‐response sequence) to 30 glossolalists and 30 matched control volunteers. In artificial grammar, participants decide whether pseudowords and sentences follow previously acquired implicit rules or not. In sequence (...) learning, they gradually draw out rules from repeating regularities in sequences of speech sounds or motor responses. Results revealed enhanced artificial grammar and phoneme sequence learning performances in glossolalists compared to control volunteers. There were significant positive correlations between daily glossolalia activity and artificial grammar learning. These results indicate that glossolalists exhibit enhanced abilities to extract the statistical regularities of verbal information, which may be related to their unusual language abilities. (shrink)

Hierocles of Alexandria was a Neoplatonic philosopher of the fifth century AD. Hermann S. Schibli surveys his life, writings, and pagan and Christian surroundings, and succinctly examines the major points of his philosophy, both contemplative and practical. He includes the first modern English translations, with helpful notes, of Hierocles' Commentary on the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans and of the remnants of his treatise On Providence.