Psychoanalysis as the Patient: High in Feeling, Low in Energy

This paper examines the increasingly important role that affect is assuming in psychoanalytic research and practice. This rise in the centrality of affect has been at the expense of an independent role for motivation and a dismissal of any energy concept. Difficulties with this affect-first approach are identified and an alternative offered that accords motivation an independent role and accommodates a useful energy concept. Research on esophageal atresia, addiction, and infant suckling are cited in support of this position.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66624/2/10.1177_00030651970450031101.pd

Coming to terms with heritability

The complex mechanisms of heredity are little appreciated by non-specialists, in some measure, because of misunderstandings that are perpetuated when words used for technical terms have other, more widely understood, folk meanings. When a word has both technical and folk meanings, it is the responsibility of the specialist to avoid promoting confusion by either using extremely cautious and precise language when using the term or, in cases when confusion is inevitable, abandoning the term in favor of one without a widely understood folk meaning. The study of heredity is beset by such confusion, and the term heritability appears to be at the heart of some of the confusion. In this article, I discuss both the technical and folk meanings of heritability and examine the bridge between them. By continuing to use the term heritability, we risk promulgating serious misunderstanding about the workings of heredity, therefore I suggest selectability as an alternative term to avoid such pitfalls.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42804/1/10709_2005_Article_BF02259512.pd