Where did that come from? Countertransference and the Oedipal triangle in family therapy

Family systems therapists are uncomfortable using psychoanalytic terms. This reluctance restricts discussion of therapeutic process. How does one describe, for example, the therapist’s subjective experiences of the patient or family? Psychoanalysts call this countertransference yet there is no equivalent word commonly used in systemic practice. Therapists who avoid the word may also avoid the experience and thereby risk losing sight of fundamental clinical events

Theory of Prosaics in Literature and History: Leo Tolstoy and Lion Feuchtwanger

In this paper, I intend to explore the theory of prosaics, which offers a quite different approach to life and historical events in particular. This theory was introduced;by the American scholar Gary Saul Morson. Morson coined the term prosaics in order to describe a concept that permeates the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), a Russian literary critic and philosopher. The most important concepts developed by Bakhtin are prosaics (Morson\u27s and Emerson\u27s term), unfinalizability, and dialogue. Bakhtin created also various theories: a comprehensive theory of literature that privileges prose and the novel, theories of languages, and of literary genres. Bakhtin was first rediscovered in the Soviet Union and the West in the 1960s and 1970s. Morson\u27s and Emerson\u27s work on Bakhtin\u27s philosophy definitly contributed to the understanding of this original thinker

Environmental Quality, Developmental Plasticity and the Thrifty Phenotype: A Review of Evolutionary Models

The concept of the thrifty phenotype, first proposed by Hales and Barker, is now widely used in medical research, often in contrast to the thrifty genotype model, to interpret associations between early-life experience and adult health status. Several evolutionary models of the thrifty phenotype, which refers to developmental plasticity, have been presented. These include (A) the weather forecast model of Bateson, (B) the maternal fitness model of Wells, (C) the intergenerational phenotypic inertia model of Kuzawa, and (D) the predictive adaptive response model of Gluckman and Hanson. These models are compared and contrasted, in order to assess their relative utility for understanding human ontogenetic development. The most broadly applicable model is model A, which proposes that developing organisms respond to cues of environmental quality, and that mismatches between this forecast and subsequent reality generate significant adverse effects in adult phenotype. The remaining models all address in greater detail what kind of information is provided by such a forecast. Whereas both models B and C emphasise the adaptive benefits of exploiting information about the past, encapsulated in maternal phenotype, model D assumes that the fetus uses cues about the present external environment to predict its probable adult environment. I argue that for humans, with a disproportionately long period between the closing of sensitive windows of plasticity and the attainment of reproductive maturity, backward-looking models B and C represent a better approach, and indicate that the developing offspring aligns itself with stable cues of maternal phenotype so as to match its energy demand with maternal capacity to supply. In contrast, the predictive adaptive response model D over-estimates the capacity of the offspring to predict the future, and also fails to address the long-term parent-offspring dynamics of human development. Differences between models have implications for the design of public health interventions

Narrative environments: how do they matter?

The significance and possible senses of the phrase 'narrative environment' are explored. It is argued that 'narrative environment' is not only polysemous but also paradoxical; not only representational but also performative; and not just performatively repetitive but also reflexive and constitutive. As such, it is useful for understanding the world of the early 21st century. Thus, while the phrase narrative environment can be used to denote highly capitalised, highly regulated corporate forms, i.e. "brandscapes", it can also be understood as a metaphor for the emerging reflexive knowledge-work-places in the ouroboric, paradoxical economies of the 21st century. Narrative environments are the media and the materialities through which we come to comprehend that world and to act in those economies. Narrative environments are therefore, sophistically, performative-representative both of the corporate dominance of life worlds and of the undoing of that dominance, through the iterative responses to the paradoxical injunction: "learn to live"

Clearing Up Rollo May’s Views of Transpersonal Psychology and Acknowledging May as an Early Supporter of Ecopsychology

This paper explores Rollo May’s 1992 reassessment of transpersonal psychology, in which he reverses his 1986 and 1989 arguments against transpersonal psychology. Equally relevant, this paper shows that May was actually interested in supporting what is now called ecopsychology. Schroll (following Alan Drengson and Arne Naess) now refers to ecopsychology as transpersonal ecosophy. This paper offers a thorough examination of several key concerns that May had regarding his reservations toward accepting transpersonal psychology’s legitimacy, and includes May’s vigorous discussion with Ken Wilber. Wilber’s discussion with Kirk Schneider’s 1987 and 1989 critique of transpersonal psychology is also examined. Likewise Albert Ellis’ 1986 and 1989 rejection and misunderstanding of transpersonal psychology is discussed

A dialogical approach to interdisciplinarity in practice based fine art research

This paper examines An invitation to dialogue Kirkgate Market 2008, as an example of interdisciplinary fine art practice as research and contrasts it against Greckhamer and colleagues’ deconstruction of interdisciplinarity, arguing the former better represents dialogical praxis as a model of interdisciplinarity

Biosemiosis and Causation: Defending Biosemiotics Through Rosen's Theoretical Biology, or, Integrating Biosemiotics and Anticipatory Systems Theory

The fracture in the emerging discipline of biosemiotics when the code biologist Marcello Barbieri claimed that Peircian biosemiotics is not genuine science raises anew the question: What is science? When it comes to radically new approaches in science, there is no simple answer to this question, because if successful, these new approaches change what is understood to be science. This is what Galileo, Darwin and Einstein did to science, and with quantum theory, opposing interpretations are not merely about what theory is right, but what is real science. Peirce's work, as he acknowledged, is really a continuation of efforts of Schelling to challenge the heritage of Newtonian science for the very good reason that the deep assumptions of Newtonian science had made sentient life, human consciousness and free will unintelligible, the condition for there being science. Pointing out the need for such a revolution in science has not succeeded as a defence of Peircian biosemiotics, however. In this paper, I will defend the scientific credentials of Peircian biosemiotics by relating it to the theoretical biology of the bio-mathematician, Robert Rosen. Rosen's relational biology, focusing on anticipatory systems and giving a place to final causes, should also be seen as a rigorous development of the Schellingian project to conceive nature in such a way that the emergence of sentient life, mind and science are intelligible. Rosen has made a very strong case for the characterization of his ideas as a real advance not only in science, but in how science should be understood, and I will argue that it is possible to provide a strong defence of Peircian biosemiotics as science through Rosen's defence of relational biology. In the process, I will show how biosemiotics can and should become a crucial component of anticipatory systems theory