Performance Anxiety: Medusa, Sex and the First Amendment

In this Article, I attempt to solve a First Amendment puzzle by turning to a surprising source. Here is the puzzle: why would the Supreme Court offer robust First Amendment protection to non-obscene pornographic film, while relegating live erotic dance, far less sexually explicit, to the very perimeter of First Amendment protection? I suggest that one way to understand this puzzle can be found in the ancient myth of Medusa, the monster Freud interpreted as standing for the castrated female genitals. A direct confrontation with Medusa\u27s stare was deadly. But Perseus slew Medusa by outsmarting her: he looked at her only in the reflection of his shield, thereby transforming her into the passive object of his gaze. I interpret Perseus\u27s shield as a precursor of pornographic film. In my view, live erotic performance, in which the dancer interacts with the audience and claims her own role as a First Amendment speaker, conjures up some of the threat of the unmediated stare of Medusa. In contrast, pornographic film, like Perseus\u27s shield, tames the monstrous threat of the woman\u27s direct stare. Ultimately, I read the Court\u27s puzzling distinction between live and filmed performance as bound up in anxieties about castration, the female gaze, and the possibility of female agency and speech that the gaze symbolizes

Building a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive drivers of performance under pressure: an international multi-panel Delphi study.

The ability to perform optimally under pressure is critical across many occupations, including the military, first responders and competitive sport. Despite recognition that such performance depends on a range of cognitive factors, how common these factors are across performance domains remains unclear. The current study sought to integrate existing knowledge in the performance field in the form of a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie performance under pressure. International experts were recruited from four performance domains: (i) defense; (ii) competitive sport; (iii) civilian high-stakes; and (iv) performance neuroscience. Experts rated constructs from the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework (and several expert-suggested constructs) across successive rounds, until all constructs reached consensus for inclusion or were eliminated. Finally, included constructs were ranked for their relative importance. Sixty-eight experts completed the first Delphi round, with 94% of experts retained by the end of the Delphi process. The following 10 constructs reached consensus across all four panels (in order of overall ranking): (1) attention; (2) cognitive control-performance monitoring; (3) arousal and regulatory systems-arousal; (4) cognitive control-goal selection, updating, representation and maintenance; (5) cognitive control-response selection and inhibition/suppression; (6) working memory-flexible updating; (7) working memory-active maintenance; (8) perception and understanding of self-self-knowledge; (9) working memory-interference control; and (10) expert-suggested-shifting. Our results identify a set of transdisciplinary neuroscience-informed constructs, validated through expert consensus. This expert consensus is critical to standardizing cognitive assessment and informing mechanism-targeted interventions in the broader field of human performance optimization

Leader Perspectives on Managing Suicide-related Events in Garrison

Leaders who have personally experienced the aftermath of a suicide-related event can provide important lessons and recommendations for military leadership and policymakers. This paper executes a thematic analysis of interviews with leaders, chaplains, and behavioral health providers who responded to garrison suicide-related events and explores leader decision making related to memorials, investigations, and readiness