_Initiating Psychoanalysis_ presents an international collection of papers brought together by the Working Party on Initiating Psychoanalysis of the European Psychoanalytic Federation and addresses the specific clinical and technical issues involved in launching the processes that are at the core of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic treatment. Expert contributors provide introductions and commentaries on a selection of psychoanalytic papers, including one by Freud himself, which refer to beginning psychoanalytic treatment in a wide range of settings. Divided into four main sections, areas of (...) discussion include: historical and conceptual developments in the field practical, technical and ethical considerations unconscious transference and counter-transference dynamics of initial interviews internal factors that can help or hinder psychoanalysts in their work to initiate psychoanalysis. This book will be helpful to all psychoanalytical practitioners in thinking about their work in first interviews with prospective patients, as well as psychoanalysts and psychotherapists at all levels of experience, who will be able to use this book to enrich their own practice. (shrink)

After a long period of neglect, the phenomenology of action has recently regained its place in the agenda of philosophers and scientists alike. The recent explosion of interest in the topic highlights its complexity. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework allowing for a more precise characterization of the many facets of the phenomenology of agency, of how they are related and of their possible sources. The key assumption guiding this attempt is that the processes through (...) which the phenomenology of action is generated and the processes involved in the specification and control of action are strongly interconnected. I argue in favor of a three-tiered dynamic model of intention, link it to an expanded version of the internal model theory of action control and specification, and use this theoretical framework to guide an analysis of the contents, possible sources and temporal course of complementary aspects of the phenomenology of action. (shrink)

Ten years ago, one of us proposed a dynamic hierarchical model of intentions that brought together philosophical work on intentions and empirical work on motor representations and motor control (Pacherie, 2008). The model distinguished among Distal intentions, Proximal intentions, and Motor intentions operating at different levels of action control (hence the name DPM model). This model specified the representational and functional profiles of each type of intention, as well their local and global dynamics, and the ways in which they interact. (...) A core insight of the model was that action control is the result of integrated, coordinated activity across these levels of intention. Since the proposal of the model, empirical and theoretical works in philosophy and cognitive science have emerged that would seem to support and expand on this central insight. In particular, an updated understanding of the nature of sensorimotor processing and motor representations, as well as of how the different levels of intention and control interface and interact, allows for the further specification and precisification of the original DPM model. (shrink)

Widmer sheds light on a neglected aspect of the Western philosophical tradition. Following an era of Hegelianism, the members of the neo-Kantian "Marburg School," such as Friedrich Albert Lange, Hermann Cohen, Rudolf Stammler, Paul Natorp, and Ernst Cassirer defended socialism or left-wing ideals on Kantian principles. In doing so, Widmer breaks with two mistaken assumptions. First, Widmer demonstrates that the left-Hegelian and Marxist traditions were not the only significant philosophical sources of socialist critique in nineteenth-century Germany, as the left-Kantians identified (...) problems of normativity that the left-Hegelians could not adequately address. Second, Widmer challenges the prevailing assumption that the political philosophies developed in the Marburg School can be comprehensively characterized as a unified school of "ethical socialism." By showing that they varied fundamentally regarding their political views and their philosophical foundations of socialism, Widmer fills a gap in the studies of neo-Kantianism that is long overdue. (shrink)

This chapter aims at investigating the phenomenology of joint action and at gaining a better understanding of (1) how the sense of agency one experiences when engaged in a joint action differs from the sense of agency one has for individual actions and (2) how the sense of agency one experiences when engaged in a joint action differs according to the type of joint action and to the role one plays in it.

The concept of intention can do useful work in psychological theory. Many authors have insisted on a qualitative difference between prospective and intentions regarding their type of content, with prospective intentions generally being more abstract than immediate intentions. However, we suggest that the main basis of this distinction is temporal: prospective intentions necessarily occur before immediate intention and before action itself, and often long before them. In contrast, immediate intentions occur in the specific context of the action itself. Yet both (...) types of intention share a common purpose,namely that of generating the specific information required to transform an abstract representation of a goal-state into a concrete episode of instrumental action directed towards that goal. To this extent, the content of a prospective and of an immediate intention can actually be quite similar. The main distinction between prospective and immediate intentions becomes one of when, i.e., how early on, the episodic details of an action are planned. We propose that the conscious experience associated with intentional action comes from this process of fleshing out intentions with episodic details. (shrink)

We first describe how the concept of “fringe consciousness” can characterise gradations of consciousness between the extremes of implicit and explicit learning. We then show that the NEO-PI-R personality measure of openness to feelings, chosen to reflect the ability to introspect on fringe feelings, influences both learning and awareness in the serial reaction time task under conditions that have previously been associated with implicit learning . This provides empirical evidence for the proposed phenomenology and functional role of fringe consciousness in (...) so-called implicit learning paradigms . Introducing an individual difference variable also helped to identify possible limitations of the exclusion task as a measure of conscious sequence knowledge. Further exploration of individual differences in fringe awareness may help to avoid polarity in the implicit learning debate, and to resolve apparent inconsistencies between previous SRT studies. (shrink)

This paper challenges the hitherto common distinction between Hermann Cohen’s early phase of Völkerpsychologie and his later phase as a critical idealist. Recently, it has been claimed that Cohen’s turn was not a rapid conversion but a development that was already inherent to his early view. This paper argues that even in Cohen’s mature critical idealism, a thin basis of Völkerpsychologie continues to exist. Cohen’s critical programme is presented as having a twofold aim: On the one hand, it strives to (...) give an account of pure, formal, and logical laws that regulate critical thinking; on the other hand, it offers a reading of Kant’s dualism between matter and form that allows critical thinking to be seen as inevitably embedded in causal laws of psychology, history, and physiology. Concerning the latter, the paper argues that Cohen remained in the tradition of Völkerpsychologie in his mature ethical thought. (shrink)

Two main approaches can be discerned in the literature on agentive self-awareness: a top-down approach, according to which agentive self-awareness is fundamentally holistic in nature and involves the operations of a central-systems narrator, and a bottom-up approach that sees agentive self-awareness as produced by lowlevel processes grounded in the very machinery responsible for motor production and control. Neither approach is entirely satisfactory if taken in isolation; however, the question of whether their combination would yield a full account of agentive self-awareness (...) remains very much open. In this paper, I contrast two disorders affecting the control of voluntary action: the anarchic hand syndrome and utilization behavior. Although in both conditions patients fail to inhibit actions that are elicited by objects in the environment but inappropriate with respect to the wider context, these actions are experienced in radically different ways by the two groups of patients. I discuss how top-down and bottom-up processes involved in the generation of agentive self-awareness would have to be related in order to account for these differences. (shrink)

On realist terms, politics is about power, security, and order, and the question of whether politics can practice compassion is irrelevant. The author argues that a politics of compassion is possible and necessary in order to address human security needs. She extend debates on care ethics to develop a politics of compassion, using the example of asylum seekers to demonstrate that politics can practice compassion with attentiveness to the needs of vulnerable people who are suffering, an active listening to the (...) voices of the vulnerable, and open, compassionate, and appropriate responses to particular needs. (shrink)

Stories told about violence, trauma, and loss inform knowledge of post-conflict societies. Stories have a context which is part of the story-teller’s life narrative. Reasons for silences are varied. This article affirms the importance of telling and listening to stories and notes the significance of silences within transitional justice’s narratives. It does this in three ways. First, it outlines a critical narrative theory of transitional justice which confirms the importance of narrative agency in telling or withholding stories. Relatedly, it affirms (...) the importance of story-telling as a way to explain differentiated gender requirements within transitional justice processes. Second, it examines gendered differences in the ways that women are silenced by shame, choose silence to retain self-respect, use silence as a strategy of survival, or an agential act. Third, it argues that compassionate listening requires gender-sensitive responses that recognize the narrator’s sense of self and needs. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Gow raised a new and interesting problem for externalist representationalism, the conclusion of which is that its proponents are unable to provide an acceptable account of the phenomenal character of colour hallucination. In contrast to Gow, we do not believe that the problem is particularly severe – indeed, that there is any problem at all. Thus our aim is to defend externalist representationalism against the problem raised by Gow. To this end, we will first reconstruct her (...) reasoning, and then show that it poses no real challenge to externalist representationalism. (shrink)

Der Philosoph Hryhorij Skovoroda zahlt zu den bedeutenden Gestalten der ukrainischen und russischen Geistesgeschichte. Sein Denken ist jedoch bisher sehr widerspruchlich interpretiert und im Grunde genommen nicht verstanden worden. Bei der Suche nach einem neuen Zugang gelingt es in dieser Studie erstmals, alle Aspekte seines Denkens schlussig in das antike Konzept der einen Weisheit zu allen Zeiten einzuordnen, welches von den Kirchenvatern im Zuge einer Vereinnahmung hellenischer, judischer und lateinischer Denk- traditionen fur das Christentum bereits praktiziert und in der Renaissance (...) programmatisch als philosophia perennis etabliert worden ist. In den fur Skovoroda wesentlichen Bereichen der Erkenntnistheorie, der Gotteslehre, der Poetik und der Ethik kann die Autorin eine koharente Lekture seiner Schriften verfolgen und im Vergleich mit zahlreichen Quellen belegen. Aus der dargelegten Verortung Skovorodas in der kultur- und religionsgeschichtlichen Tradition Europas ergeben sich daruber hinaus neue geistesgeschichtliche Aspekte fur die Zeit der Aufklarung in den Regionen des Russischen Reiches. (shrink)

Winckelmann’s work inhabits an ambivalent place in the history of historiography. His Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764) is often referred to as the foundational document of art history, but almost never without the obligatory mention of its rather unhistorical dimension. The aim of the following discussion is to evaluate Winckelmann’s position in the history of eighteenth-century European historiography, especially with regard to the early phase of his career as a historian, i.e. the decisive period between his studies in Halle (...) and his stay in Nöthnitz (1738–1754). During these years, Winckelmann carefully excerpted historiographical literature and dealt intensively with the model of universal history, whose structural patterns deeply influenced his reflection on art historiography. (shrink)

La pauvreté de l’homme pauvre, telle qu’Eckhart la caractérise notamment dans le Sermon 52, n’est pas une pauvreté d’objet. La volonté n’est pas pauvre lorsqu’elle renonce au bien : il lui faut encore s’anéantir elle-même. Le destin de la volonté est de s’effacer en tant que voulante : pour cela, elle doit, à la suite du Christ et en tant que créature, mourir. De même, l’intellect n’est pauvre que lorsqu’il délaisse son activité naturelle et propre d’intelliger par images : celles-ci, (...) abstraites à partir des étants, demeurent des médiations par lesquelles il se rapporte au créé. L’intellect ne peut être délivré des images que lorsqu’il cesse d’être leur lieu pour devenir leur origine : élevé au-dessus de sa nature propre, il produit les raisons des créatures en même temps que le Verbe – il engendre le Verbe dans l’âme. L’homme pauvre ne reste homme que par son suppôt créé : s’il demeure par lui dans la finitude spatio-temporelle, il laisse agir et penser en lui la déité. La pauvreté est, en définitive, maintien et dépassement de la relation et du face-à-face extérieur. (shrink)

Le couple est parfois bousculé lors de l’arrivée d’un enfant qui oblige à un réaménagement de l’héritage psychique et des alliances fondatrices de la conjugalité. Des résistances s’installent, surtout lorsque les liens se sont organisés pour immobiliser le réveil de souffrances générationnelles. Le cas singulier d’une difficile conception d’un enfant, présenté pour sa valeur paradigme, nous aide à comprendre le laborieux passage entre conjugal et parental. Nous verrons notamment comment un climat d’incestualité dans la famille ancienne va conduire à un (...) rejet de la maternité. La thérapie de couple dès le désir d’enfant, puis la thérapie familiale au temps de la grossesse aident à comprendre les craintes ou les effrois ressentis à l’idée de devenir parent. L’analyse des mouvements transférentiels et contretransférentiels soutient ce travail et permet de penser les organisations défensives mobilisées face aux traumatismes mis sous silence par les familles d’origine. (shrink)

The topical focus of the following inquiry is the critical engagement of French scholars and writers ca. 1800 – for example, Madame de Staël or Charles de Villers – with German philosophical aesthetics. With regard to this case study, the changing relationship of literary criticism and aesthetics within different national contexts can be brought into view. In France, the concept »esthétique«, which was imported as a translation of the German neologism »Ästhetik« current since the publication of Baumgarten’s work, met with (...) firm resistance from the middle of the 18th century on. The task of the following contribution is to analyze the reasons for this rejection in French intellectual circles at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. In the background of these often quite intensely conducted discussions lies the question whether philosophy can legitimately claim to produce a specific discourse regarding literature. (shrink)

By the start of the Victorian period the school of British economists acknowledging Adam Smith as its master was in the ascendancy. 'Political Economy', a catch-all title which ignored the diversity of viewpoints to be found amongst the discipline's leading proponents, became associated in the popular mind with moral and political forces held to be uniquely conducive to the progress of an increasingly industrialised and competitive society. 'Political Economy' served in turn as the focus for critics of equally diverse moral (...) and political persuasions, who sought to challenge the materialism of contemporary society and offer their own assessments of the profound social changes of the time. In the introductory essay to the collection of readings from such 'critics of capitalism', the editors review the principles of the early economists, the way in which these principles were appropriated and applied by their Victorian successors and the contrasting modes which critics of popular economic ideas assumed. Subsequent extracts from the writings of the Owenite Socialist John Bray, Carlyle, Marx and Engels, J. S. Mill, Ruskin, Arnold, T. H. Green, William Morris and G. B. Shaw, demonstrate both the breadth of the possible grounds for ideological opposition to the prevailing philosophy and the shifting nature of the debate as 'Political Economy' itself was revealed as incapable of explaining or responding to the changing conditions of the 1870s. Headnotes to the extracts describe the genesis of individual debate and discuss distinctive stylistic features. Annotation in the form of footnotes and endnotes has been designed to gloss obscure allusions and arguments. In making more accessible the socio-economic writings of those authors now better known for their imaginative work, this volume will enable readers to reach a more profound appreciation of the central role such work played in developing the moral vision embodied in their more lastingly popular books and essays. (shrink)

This paper adopts an economic interpretation of the legal process, explaining legal change as the outcome of the complex interplay of entrepreneurial forces operating inside, as well as outside the legal system. The question of concern is whether the concept of entrepreneur as elaborated by Kirzner in a theory of the market process can be extended to understand the legal process as well. The focus on the alertness of legal decision-makers, their capacity to learn from experience and the multitude of (...) legal and nonlegal sources they are referring to, seems to provide a possible methodology for an economic approach to law that avoids the exaggerated belief in the objectivity, determinacy and cogency of legal reasoning typical for mainstream law-and-economics, and at the same time the opposite exaggeration of law’s radical subjectivity and indeterminacy characterizing most of contemporary critical legal literature.Cet article adopte une interprétation économique du processus juridique en expliquant l’évolution du droit comme le résultat de l’interaction complexe de forces entrepreneuriales opérant à l’ intérieur et à l’extérieur du système juridique. Il s’agit de montrer que le concept d’entrepreneur élaboré par Kirzner pour expliquer le fonctionnement du processus de marché peut offrir une méthodologie également pour comprendre les processus de production du droit. En mettant l’accent sur la vigilance des décideurs, leur capacité d’apprendre par l’expérience, ainsi que la multitude des sources juridiques et extrajuridiques auxquelles ils se réfèrent, une approche économique du droit qui renvoie à cette théorie de l’entrepreneur, peut éviter d’un côté l’hypothèse irréaliste d’omniscience de l’autorité juridique qui sous-tend l’analyse économique traditionnelle du droit et de l’autre côté, l’hypothèse opposée non moins exagérée de la subjectivité et de l’indétermination radicales de l’évolution juridique qui caractérise une partie dominante de la littérature juridique critique contemporaine. (shrink)

The goal of this study is to provide an account of the relation between feminist theory and the writings of decolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter. I offer a twofold approach to this account. On the one hand, I outline a series of texts that have addressed Wynter's critique of feminist theory. These authors note how Wynter problematizes a universal conception of woman that marginalizes women of color. On the other hand, I have provided an account of various authors who have turned (...) to Wynter for the purpose of developing a feminist project. I make evident why it is the case that these two approaches are not contradictory or paradoxical in Wynter's work, but rather provide the foundation for a theory of liberation that is relevant to a variety of socio, geopolitical, and temporal locations. (shrink)

This doctoral thesis is an examination of the possibility of ascribing objectivity to aesthetic judgements. The aesthetic is viewed in terms of its being a certain kind of relation between the mind and the world; a clear understanding of aesthetic judgements will therefore be capable of telling us something important about both subjects and objects, and the ties between them. In view of this, one of the over-riding aims of this thesis is the promotion of an ‘aesthetic psychology’, a philosophical (...) approach, that is to say, which emphasises the importance of the psychological processes involved in the making of aesthetic judgements. One of the aims of this thesis is to develop a revisionary account of the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity in the domain of value. This revision will undertake to dismantle some of the assumptions implicit in a metaphysical framework which traditionally ascribes objectivity only to judgements about facts, and not to judgements about values and other concerns such as norms and emotions. Further, the thesis examines the intricate ways in which aesthetic properties, the focus of aesthetic judgements, depend on the (emotional and other) responses of the subjects of experience. The particular role played by first-hand experience in the making of aesthetic judgements is among the things critically investigated in the interests of reaching a clearer understanding of the manner in which aesthetic judgements may be objective in the sense of being justifiable. Eventually, a defence is outlined of the view that aesthetic judgements can be supported by good reasons, but not in the same way as ordinary cognitive judgements. Finally, I outline the main tenets of a proposed ‘reasonable objectivism’ for aesthetic judgements, an objectivism grounded on justifying reasons. (shrink)

The last decade has seen a significant increase in empirical research into the nature of art and aesthetic experience in the Anglo- American scientific community. Much of the impetus for this came from the publication of three special issues of the present journal on the theme of 'Art and the Brain' . A decade or so later, it seems timely to consider the extent to which these new approaches have filtered through into wider philosophical understanding. Many philosophers express scepticism towards (...) empirical aesthetics. This paper seeks to re-examine the grounds for any such scepticism and proposes a new reading of the explanatory power of scientific approaches. It begins by separating the data provided by such theories into three categories. Having identified a particular conceptual problem, it argues that many empirical accounts fail to distinguish sufficiently between the aesthetic and the artistic, and that this is a source of considerable philosophical concern. It then suggests that empirical aesthetics should be divided into two branches, namely empirical aesthetics and empirical art theory. Although such a division may seem to restrict the explanatory reach of scientific accounts somewhat in philosophy, it highlights the numerous ways in which empirical investigations can nonetheless strengthen and benefit philosophical analyses. (shrink)