In vitro experimental approaches are of central importance to contemporary molecular and cellular biology and toxicology. However, the scientific value or impact of in vitro results depends on their relevance in vivo. In vitro effect studies address inobservable in vivo phenomena through experiments on analogous in vitro phenomena. We present a theoretical basis developed to evaluate the in vivo relevance of in vitro effect studies. As a case study, the procedure for measuring specific gene transcription in isolated cell nuclei (nuclear (...) run-off method) is analyzed It is concluded that current evidence fails to justify in vivo interpretations of nuclear run-off experiments within the framework of theoretical models of transcription, implying that quantitative in vivo interpretations are unwarranted. Qualitative interpretations of nuclear run-off experiments may be justified by inferring the best explanation, especially when significant in vitro effects follow in vivo perturbations.Elements of a general theory are proposed. It is concluded that quantitative in vivo interpretations are warranted primarily in biochemical quantitation of biomolecules, while studies on biological function should be interpreted qualitatively in terms of causal explanations. Inferences to the best explanations are strengthened through additional evidence and the creation of experimental differences (effects). (shrink)

In what arrived belatedly as an announced, but delayed, preface to Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom, Jacques Lacan interrogates the relations Sade could be said to have had with, on the one hand, Sigmund Freud, and, on the other, Immanuel Kant.1 Despite the presuppositions at the time of its writing, the text was first published as “Kant avec Sade” in the journal Critique in 1963 and only later reappeared as the preface it had been conceived as: announcing the (...) dogma of de Sade as an introduction to one of his key works. What had happened in the meantime, Lacan cryptically suggests, is that his – Lacan’s – collection of lectures and essays, Écrits, had arrived with a certain acclaim on the French cultural scene, and what had at first appeared to the publisher as inconsequential ravings had morphed into a profound and potentially significant enframing of de Sade’s “philosophy.” -/- What is it we find here? It is stupid, says Lacan, to pronounce – as too many “literary types” do – that de Sade’s perversions prefigured Freud’s interrogation of sexual mores. True, they both have the appearance of schooling, and so serve to prepare, Lacan informs us, the way for a new science. To understand the difference between them we need to arrive at some conception of Freud’s ethics of pleasure. -/- With what is known as the pleasure principle – announced in 1911 – Freud ordained a mechanism whereby pleasure is maintained at the lowest possible level.2 Lacan elsewhere referred to this principle as a homeostatic device, since it seeks to secure the functioning of the organism with as little excitement as possible. -/- Freud’s principle is different from traditional ethics in that it doesn’t disallow some sexual practices that had hitherto been condemned as wrong. However, such a realization doesn’t relieve us from approaching the principle as ethical. To Lacan, Freud’s homeostatic device is what “preordains the creature to its good.” In other words, it is by indulging in just enough pleasure to avoid unpleasure, either by becoming abstinent or consumptive, that we maintain our experience of goodwill. -/- What is remarkable, Lacan notes in his foreword to de Sade, is that Freud did not find it necessary to explicitly refer to this principle as an ethical prerogative. The only reason we can find for this, Lacan claims, is the 19th century obsession with the theme of “happiness in evil.” -/- The “happiness in evil” – or, as we should say, happiness in the will – has its precursor in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, which was published eight years prior to de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom.3 To Lacan, de Sade subverts the Enlightenment directive inaugurated by Kant, and it is as such that it is possible to say that de Sade offers the truth of Kant’s Critique. -/- This “happiness in evil” becomes de Sade’s Being-Supreme-in-Wickedness. Recall that this is quite a different notion of perversion – of which the Marquis figures as the first and predominant example in Lacan – from that which reigned in the “literary” epoch, i.e., prior to Freud, as well as from Freud’s own inflection of the term. Perversion is no longer reducible to a catalogue of abominations – whipping, homosexuality, you name it – such as was the case prior to Freud, nor to a more select line of such – Freud famously excluded homosexual love from the list, while retaining sadomasochism. Lacan would draw the conclusion of Freud’s tentative first step by positing that perversion is a position, and specifically a location in relation to the phallus. -/- The novelty and force of this perspective should become clear to those who study the present volume. It is not a clinical attempt, nor the final word on a philosophy of mind without psychoanalysis. Rather, it should be regarded as situated in between these two domains, and with eyes to both. (shrink)

Is the creative act like a volcano: an outburst that lights up the universe? This volume connects reason with desire and the arts in ways that enable us to imagine how creativity can bring us closer to the truth. The artistic quest for freedom stands in stark contrast to philosophy's call to subordinate art to reason and tradition. The struggle between them has culminated in artistic attempts to subsume philosophical matters within the domain of art. One central question in this (...) study is what the consequences will be of a final dissolution of the boundary between the two domains: will all that remains of the artwork be an abstract howl of the rock – our rock, the planet – itself? (shrink)

Abduction, deduction and induction are different forms of inference in science. However, only a few attempts have been made to introduce the idea of abductive reasoning as an extended way of thinking about clinical practice in nursing research. The aim of this paper was to encourage critical reflections about abductive reasoning based on three empirical examples from nursing research and includes three research questions on what abductive reasoning is, how the process has taken place, and how knowledge about abductive reasoning (...) based on the examples can inform nursing research and clinical practice. The study has a descriptive and explorative approach using a convenience sample of three empirical studies from nursing research. The three studies illustrate different ways to enter the abductive reasoning process in steps. They represent new caring models, which offer visual and cognitive maps for expanding nursing research, education and thus informing care. Therefore, we suggest that abductive reasoning may be beneficial for different ways of knowing and demonstrates scientific innovation to shed new light on health phenomena, which can help researchers and practitioners to gain a broader and deeper understanding of nursing care inquiry. However, more studies are needed to broaden this scope. (shrink)

This essay investigates whether the term national signification may serve better than the more common national identity to describe how sports people variously enrol and reference the nation to position themselves and their practice. Taking the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu as a ground for analysis, this essay investigates four cases involving elite athletes from Norway to situate them within the field of sports culture and the larger fields of power and class relations. For Bourdieu actors’ ‘practical sense’ mediated between (...) their subjective striving for autonomy and the objective weight of structured class relations. This essay shows how these athletes’ struggle for relative autonomy is differently expressed by the way they enlist the nation to position themselves within the field of power. An athlete’s positions within the larger, structured fields circumscribe their articulatory space, and realising this state of affairs can aid our understanding of how these elite practitioners differently enlist the national sign in their specific quest for cultural autonomy. The analysis shows athletes that are better placed in economic terms can afford to take greater risks when it comes to the national signifier. Conversely, a relative smaller access to economic gain appears to correlate with an increase in the importance granted to the national signifier. Thus, the nation becomes a sign that can be actively enlisted in an ongoing struggle for relative autonomy from the field of class relations, rather than an attribute that is passively endorsed by them. What this suggests is that a term such as national identity is less descriptive for the actual work of these elite players; instead, we propose that an active national signification more aptly describe how these cultural actors enlist a highly coveted sign to achieve their specific aim. (shrink)

This essay discusses how spectacular sports are framed in an national, epic world of fathers, firsts and bests, and put to use in regulating desire by narrating the fundamental fantasies that hold the subject together. Spectacular sports provide allegories of the excessive body, and these embodied narratives are meticulously produced through an individualizing training machine designed to deliver moments of excess. Sports produce phantasms of peak moments and phallic dominance, and symbolize a conquest of youth, women and the working population. (...) We ask if the subject may experience a kind of subjective destitution by the loss of a fundamental fantasy from watching sports and what the effects of such an experience may be. Can televised football induce in the viewer a sense that these images are mistaken as objects of desire, and give rise to the truth effects of "full speech"? (shrink)

The present study is an interrogation of theories of culture and nation in the context of spectacular sports. It proposes a view of nationalism as discourses that articulate and produce nations through narrative acts. A wide array of concepts and tools are drawn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and contrasted with methods and notions from discursive and semiotic analysis to interrogate a national-sports nexus in which sports are vehicles to embody nations, their matrices of thought and perception, and their (...) dominant order of masculinity and heteronormativity in the national subject, so that this order appears natural and commonsensical. Particular attention is given to the case of South Africa’s participation in the 1998 World Cup, and the way the epic genre was employed to frame the event and produce a particular kind of national body. -/- Spectacular sports events provide nations with opportunities to disseminate narratives that regulate desire and conjure a particular kind of national fantasy – what Bourdieu referred to as illusio – in subjects. This work makes a distinction between an epic body of nationalism, a body enmeshed in "the natural and authentic," and an excessive body. However, mediations of sports are never merely reflections of social events but themselves participate in producing these events as meaningful and anchor them as national. Furthermore, an actively interpreting subject is required for the production of meaning, and in this regard the thesis offers a critique of Bourdieu’s limited view on what it entails for a recipient of nationalist discourse to be active. The questions addressed by this study is twofold: how and what kind of national order of the body and desire is manufactured through spectacular sports events, and how are mediations of such events made meaningful in subjects? -/- The open-ended character of signification means that beneath the level of nationalist anchorage of spectacular sports events other articulations are possible. Drawing on Bourdieu’s view of sports as forms of silent dressage, the thesis suggests that there is a potential excess of meaning that enables such events to become potential sites of subjective truth: as viewers realise the fantasmatic character of such mediations they may come to question the notion that spectacular sports are something more than just a game. (shrink)

This study investigates the prevalence of ‘Seeking God's Help’, its relation to time since diagnosis, and its association with Life Satisfaction for all cancer types. This study also investigates Disease-Specific Quality of Life for patients with breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers. Data were obtained from the third wave of the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study of Norway, with 2,086 cancer patients identified by the Cancer Registry of Norway and 6,258 cancer-free controls. Our results indicate a higher prevalence of ‘Seeking God's Help’ after (...) a shorter time since diagnosis among men. No association was observed in multivariate analyses between ‘Seeking God's Help’ and ‘Life Satisfaction’ or ‘Disease-Specific QoL’ in long-term cancer survivors. Longitudinal investigations are needed to elucidate the relationship between the ‘Seeking God's Help’ variable and Life Satisfaction and Disease-Specific QoL among cancer patients in a Norwegian context. (shrink)

This study investigates the prevalence of ‘Seeking God’s Help’, its relation to time since diagnosis, and its association with Life Satisfaction for all cancer types. This study also investigates Disease-Specific Quality of Life for patients with breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers. Data were obtained from the third wave of the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study of Norway , with 2,086 cancer patients identified by the Cancer Registry of Norway and 6,258 cancer-free controls. Our results indicate a higher prevalence of ‘Seeking God’s Help’ (...) after a shorter time since diagnosis among men. No association was observed in multivariate analyses between ‘Seeking God’s Help’ and ‘Life Satisfaction’ or ‘Disease-Specific QoL’ in long-term cancer survivors. Longitudinal investigations are needed to elucidate the relationship between the ‘Seeking God’s Help’ variable and Life Satisfaction and Disease-Specific QoL among cancer patients in a Norwegian context. (shrink)

The present text shows that the prevailing view of Martin Heidegger's approach to society and technology is not only based on prejudice, but more importantly works to obscure a more relevant perception of reality. Heidegger's “phenomenological hermeneutic” sought to uncover technology's hidden truth, beyond the appearance of technology as framing our existence (Gestell). Even if we acknowledge that technology has now reached a planetary and all-encompassing dissemination – becoming, in effect, the leading figure of our time – we still need (...) to remain vigilant to the metaphysical notions embedded in such a characteristic. We should seek other ways of living with and within technology. A radical critique should seek topologies and “orders” that are universal and preliminary, so that by potentially exceeding every demarcation we can be liberated to a way of listening – a “hearing” (Hören) – to a “constellation” of a different “essence of technology”. (shrink)

Philosophy of Sport: Core Readings is a competent attempt at providing college instructors and students with a comprehensive set of key texts in a wide variety of topics in sports philosophy. This second edition is both a testament to the success of the first edition and an elaboration and refinement of the former. Before we investigate further the differences between the two editions and assess whether this is a convincing revision, let us consider more generally the state of the field (...) that Jason Holt, the editor, is seeking to address. (shrink)

Aim:The purpose of this study was to explore how adolescent patients displaying developmental trauma experience and describe meaning in life. Schnell’s model of meaning in life is applied to explore meaningfulness, crises of meaning and sources of meaning. Method: The study has a qualitative design based on individual interviews with eight adolescents aged 14–18 years in treatment in an outpatient clinic for mental health care for children and adolescents. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using systematic text condensation. Results: The (...) adolescents related meaning in life to the experience of coherence, intrinsic values, progress and belonging, or the absence of these. Examples of sources of meaning among the informants were positive relations with meaningful others, structure and routines, moments of well-being, achieving goals related to education, work and family, and seeking something else outside oneself such as playing computer games, being engaged in politics, being with animals, having a belief in a god or being outdoors in natural surroundings. Conclusion: Although the topic of meaning in life was unknown to this group, they used sources of meaning intuitively. This group seems to have similar preferences to the general population. More knowledge is needed on how the topic of meaning in life can be useful in therapy for adolescents with development trauma. (shrink)

This article explores how media content may facilitate processes of recognition through playfulness and comedy. Mediated recognition is typically understood as a matter of respectful and positive representation of subaltern groups and in terms of struggles for visibility and dignity. Yet at the same time, the media address audiences in much less deferential ways that are nonetheless consequential to processes of recognition: by means of playfulness, subversion, and irreverence. This article introduces the concept of ‘playful recognition’ to account for the (...) contradictory ways in which humor can incite recognition. The article empirically illustrates this concept drawing upon a case study of Svart Humor – a comedy show aired in Norway. On the one hand, this article explores an important yet neglected dimension of mediated recognition, on the other, it introduces a recognition perspective to the study of televised comedy. (shrink)

Meaning in life has become an important topic in empirical research in the psychology of religion. Although it has been studied and found applicable in many different contexts, research on meaning in life and sources of meaning in African countries is scarce. This study qualitatively investigates understandings and experiences of meaning in life and sources of meaning among urban and village dwellers with different educational backgrounds in Zambia. Seven focus group interviews (total N = 52) were conducted and analysed, drawing (...) on Schnell’s model of meaning in life and sources of meaning. The results indicate that the concept of meaning in life is relevant to both urban and village dwellers in Zambia. Meaning experiences and sources of meaning are associated with certain life domains: relationships; religion; education and work; leisure activities; and health and survival. Each life domain includes several fundamental sources of meaning, which can be related to Schnell’s four dimensions of sources of meaning: self-transcendence, self-actualisation, order and well-being and relatedness. The results are discussed in light of extant studies on meaning and cultural characteristics in Africa. (shrink)

Long-term potentiation is one of the most extensively studied forms of neuroplasticity and is considered the strongest candidate mechanism for memory and learning. The use of event-related potentials and sensory stimulation paradigms has allowed for the translation from animal studies to non-invasive studies of LTP-like synaptic plasticity in humans. Accumulating evidence suggests that synaptic plasticity as measured by stimulus-specific response modulation is reduced in neuropsychiatric disorders such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorders and schizophrenia, suggesting that impaired synaptic plasticity plays (...) a part in the underlying pathophysiology of these disorders. This is in line with the neuroplasticity hypothesis of depression, which postulate that deficits in neuroplasticity might be a common pathway underlying depressive disorders. The current study aims to replicate and confirm earlier reports that visual stimulus-specific response modulation is a viable probe into LTP-like synaptic plasticity in a large sample of healthy adults. Further, this study explores whether impairments in LTP-like synaptic plasticity is associated with self-reported subclinical depressive symptoms and stress in a healthy population. Consistent with prior research, the current study replicated and confirmed reports demonstrating significant modulation of visual evoked potentials following visual high-frequency stimulation. Current results further indicate that reduced LTP-like synaptic plasticity is associated with higher levels of self-reported symptoms of depression and perceived stress. This indicate that LTP-like plasticity is sensitive to sub-clinical levels of psychological distress, and might represent a vulnerability marker for the development of depressive symptoms. (shrink)

Research has shown that addressing and integrating the existential dimension in treatment settings reduce symptoms like anxiety, depression and substance abuse. Healthcare chaplains are key personnel in this practice. A nationwide, cross-sectional survey influenced by a mixed-methods approach was used to examine the attitudes, practices, understanding and perceptions of mental health professionals, including healthcare chaplains, regarding the value of addressing the existential dimension in treatment programmes. The existential group practice was led by the healthcare chaplains as an integrated part of (...) specialist mental health services. A positive and open attitude towards addressing the existential dimension was identified among the informants. Despite this, a small gap between attitude and practice was reported. Existential, religious and spiritual concerns are reported as part of the existential dimension and as relevant topics to be discussed in specialist mental health services. The findings indicate that the existential group practice could have a positive influence on the co-leaders’ competence to address existential, religious and spiritual concerns; however, this should be further investigated. (shrink)

Patients in specialist mental healthcare services who are at risk of suicide may experience their struggles as existential in nature. Yet, research on meaning in life has been relatively scarce in suicidology. This qualitative study aimed to explore how patients at risk of suicide perceived their encounters with specialist healthcare professionals after a suicide attempt (SA), with special reference to meaning in life experiences. The study was conducted in specialised mental healthcare services in Norway. Data were collected via individual interviews (...) with eight patients aged 20–75 years. Using a four-step procedure, the interviews were analysed by systematic text condensation. The participants understood their feelings of shame, self-contempt and challenging life experiences as contributing factors to their SA. They perceived that existential themes in relation to financial difficulties, shame and trauma were resolved, while issues associated with the SA, such as death, loss and beliefs, were given less attention. The participants were either ambivalent about continuing to live or wished to rebuild a meaningful life. Overall, their experiences of meaningfulness were hampered. Assisting patients with meaning in life experiences may help them alter their life interpretations and increase their ability to rebuild their lives as meaningful. The present study should be seen as a contribution to meaning-informed approaches in specialist mental healthcare services. More research is needed to equip healthcare personnel in their overall aims of preventing suicide and supporting patients at risk in their efforts to live a meaningful life. (shrink)