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The Journal of Critical Realism has issued a call for papers for a special issue on "critical realism and the self." The concept of the self is seen as crucial for social change and emancipatory theorizing. The special issue aims to explore various aspects of the self, including subjectivity, reflexivity, authenticity, personhood, and identity. Submissions can be theoretical or applied, and can engage with critical realism or critique it. The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2024, and the final papers are required by November 19, 2024. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper I discuss John Riker's article, "A Critique of Stolorow's Erasure of Self Psychology and his Appropriation of Heigegger's Theory of Authenticity, plus the Possibility of an Intersubjective Self Psychology" a paper in which Riker sets out to evaluate Stolorow's intersubjectivity theory and its contribution to psychoanalysis. I attempt to add something to Riker's consideration of intersubjectivity especially as it relates to our shared mortality, a topic addressed by Stolorow in a lifetime of books and papers. I also comment on some of the similarities and differences between the ideas of Kohut and Stolorow, suggesting that to some extent these differences lie more in the distinctive languages coined by the two authors than in the ideas themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss Magid, Fosshage and Shane's impressive overview of the contributions to Relational Self Psychology in the psychoanalytic literature, contributions they see as having emerged for the most part after Kohut's death and therefore as having been carried out almost entirely by Kohut's followers. But while the authors see Kohut's work as having hewed closely to a one-person psychology, I use my discussion to highlight what I see as the two-person themes in Kohut's own writings, suggesting that he may have been more relational in his thinking than initially meets the eye. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ai Weiwei is an installation artist who enjoyed great acclaim in the West after having absented himself from China, his homeland. These latter qualities mark both the excellence and the limitations of Ai Weiwei as an artist whose genial personality plays a role in his popularity as significant as the artworks themselves. To be sure, Ai Weiwei possesses the habits and noetic resources of an artist deserving of his celebrity. [Extracted from the article]

Harry and Oscar both laugh and stand surveying their domain, Harry: This is sure some estate. Oscar began, We've got everything we need inside our wall, everything ... Harry: Yeah, we've got a race track and five Rolls, five Lamborghinis, five Jaguars, five Aston-Martins, and five ... all those other kinds, you know, the fastest and best ones. Harry glances over at Ian and says in a soft, pleasant tone: Hey, Ian, we can build you inside our wall, if you want. It is not clear who the third is.) Oscar: Yeah, the richest in the world, At this point, Ian, who had been working separately on his track came and stepped over the estate wall. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the impact of technology on the human mind and self. It explores various technological advancements such as artificial intelligence, medical technologies, remote psychotherapy, and the internet, and their effects on psychology and psychoanalysis. The papers in this collection raise questions about how these advancements shape our work and our lives, and whether they enhance or undermine human experience. The article also examines the changing conception of self in the digital age and the potential dangers and benefits of technology. [Extracted from the article]

In his discussion of Gentile's and Togashi's Plenary papers, the author explains how they are initially destabilizing, but ultimately reorienting and profoundly hopeful for us in these threatening, uncertain times. He reviews the arguments that the papers present, explores how they are challenging to him as a representative of a 1960's liberal, Self Psychological perspective and illustrates how they can be applied to clinical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates a problem concerning the equilibrium of a solid body containing a thin rigid inclusion and a crack. It is assumed that the body is hyperelastic, therefore, it is described within the framework of finite strain theory. One of the peculiarities of this problem is a global injectivity constraint, which prevents the body, the crack faces and the inclusion from both mutual and self penetration. First, the paper deals with the differential formulation of the problem. Next, we consider energy minimization, showing that the latter provides the weak formulation of the former. Finally, the existence of the weak solution is demonstrated through the use of the variational technique. This article is part of the theme issue 'Non-smooth variational problems with applications in mechanics'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lewis argued that although paradoxes such as the famous Grandfather Paradox can be solved, only a limited set of time travel fiction is consistent. In this paper, I discuss how to extend a Lewisian approach to a class of time travel fiction not considered by Lewis: transmigration or mental time travel fiction. To this end, Lewis's definition of personal time needs refining, and this is the primary focus of my paper. I discuss some alternative refinements of Lewis's definition: a Solely Mental definition and a Causal definition. I end by also applying these definitions to cases of reverse aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lane line images have the essential attribute of large-scale variation and complex scene information, and the similarity between adjacent lane lines is high, which can easily cause classification errors. And remote lane lines are difficult to recognize due to visual angle changes in width. To address this issue, this paper proposes an effective lane detection framework, which is a hybrid feature fusion network that enhances multiple spatial features and distinguishes key features throughout the entire lane line segment. It enhances and fuses lane line features at multiscale to enhance the feature representation of lane line images, especially at the far end. Firstly, in order to enhance the correlation of multiscale lane features, a multi-head self attention is used to construct a multi-space attention enhancement module for feature enhancement in multispace. Secondly, a spatial separable convolutional branch is designed for the jumping layer structure connecting multiscale lane line features. While retaining feature information of different scales, important lane areas in multiscale feature information are emphasized through the allocation of spatial attention weights. Finally, considering that lane lines are elongated areas in the image, and the background information in the image is much more abundant than lane line information, the flexibility of traditional pooling operations in capturing widely existing anisotropic contexts in actual environments is limited. Therefore, before embedding feature output branches, strip pooling is introduced to refine the representation of lane line information and optimize model performance. The experimental results show that the accuracy on the TuSimple dataset reaches 96.84%, and the F1 score on the CULane dataset reaches 75.9%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the dual keywords--wenfang 文房 and "four friends" (siyou 四友)--this essay examines the inextricable interrelationship among material things, a place, and the self that was initiated during the Song dynasty (960-1279). Song literati displayed unprecedented interest in scholarly things, particularly four specific things in the studio--the writing brush, inkstone, paper, and ink. Through literary representations, this article investigates the changing nature of the literati's relation to these "four things" in the studio. Rather than framing their bond as the ruler and ministers or the owner and his possessions, from the early Northern Song to the Southern Song, writers transformed their relationship to these four things gradually to that between friends and peers, or from pure ownership to an imaginary friendship, and in turn, these four things supported the construction of both the personal studio and the collective identity of the new elites in the Song. This transformation from "four things" or "four treasures" to "four friends" represented a distinctive model of the observation and conception of material things that Song scholars developed, which provided intriguing insights into the relationship between humans and things in premodern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the experiences of the main character in Michalis Malandrakis' short novel, Patriot (2018). The protagonist, an Albanian migrant in Greece, is compelled to change his name and (re) invent his identity to achieve his goals in the new country. Agim becomes Yiannis (John) and ultimately dies as Yiannis. The novel engages in an open dialogue with theoretical questions about the self and the Other, subjectivity and objectivity, as well as the feeling of "belongingness." This paper addresses several questions: What role does the self-narrator play in constructing an identity? To what extent is the protagonist welcomed into this new world after his name change? What must he sacrifice to become accepted? And to what extent can a person (re)invent their identity? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to introduce, unpack, explore, make sense and share Hiraya Foresight via the Engaged Foresight approach as a futures concept, framework and methodology to reconceptualize foresight and reframe anticipatory processes to enable the self and communities to reimagine visions of the future. This indigenous foresight process offers to strip the husk and break the shell of conscious, colonial anticipation and reveal and liberate unconscious imagination that enables ethical aspirations to emerge. Design/methodology/approach: This paper introduces and examines the context, purpose and process of the four waves of the Hiraya Foresight Framework via the Engaged Foresight approach. These were constructed through the use of the Engaged Foresight approach, through workshops, a literature review and an action–learning approach. The first wave, lawak, looks into the breadth of foresight. The second wave, lalim, looks into the depth of foresight. Tayog, the third wave, looks into the peak of foresight. Finally, the fourth wave of foresight kababaang-loob contemplates the nature, values and wisdom of foresight. Findings: This paper shares the processes, experiences and impacts through five case studies where the Hiraya Foresight Framework via the Engaged Foresight approach was applied. This paper shares the impacts of Hiraya Foresight in democratizing and indigenizing futures literacy. Originality/value: This paper describes and offers Hiraya Foresight via the Engaged Foresight approach as an indigenous approach to decolonize futures studies and foresight practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the constructions of historical personal identity of Finnish-speaking students are analysed. The students participated in a larger study of historical narratives and identities, carried out in 2020 in two schools in Finland and in one European School outside Finland. In the mixed-method study, sixty-one students were interviewed and given writing and drawing assignments on historical identity. In this paper, the students' visual representations of their personal historical identity and its relationship with wider official history are analysed. The aim is to increase understanding of how 14–16-year-old students visualise and articulate their historical personal identity constructions and the historical elements they use in negotiating this identity. The findings suggest that the students integrate personal and historical social narratives in diverse ways but that the majority of them find it challenging to connect their personal family history with the wider official history. Only twelve students made the connection. In addition to presenting the results for the whole group of students, the visual representations of two selected students are discussed in more detail so as to highlight the difference in the approaches to historical personal identity construction among the students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial discusses the integration of education and technology in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It presents a collection of research papers that explore various aspects of this intersection, including personalized learning approaches, the impact of technology integration on learning, the skills needed for success in the digital age, and challenges associated with technology integration in education. The papers highlight the importance of adapting educational approaches to meet the diverse needs of students in a technology-enabled learning environment. The editorial emphasizes the need for collaboration among educators, researchers, technologists, and policymakers to continue advancing in this field. [Extracted from the article]

In his paper 'Communicating and not communicating leading to a study of certain opposites' (1963), Donald Winnicott suggests that there is a silent, non‐communicating area of experience at the core of the self. Poetic expression takes a prominent role in the text. In this article, I concentrate on the aesthetic dimension of Winnicott's text and use it to explore the role of aesthetic experience in the development of self‐experience. I suggest that the paper's aesthetic dimension—form, quality and structure—expresses essential characteristics of the core of the self and the mature self's communication with it. I furthermore suggest that Winnicott, by use of poetic expression, offers the idea that the core, defined here as pre‐reflective experience, can be approached through aesthetic means. Building on George Hagman and Giuseppe Civitarese, I argue that aesthetic experience creates a bridge between pre‐reflective and reflective aspects of self‐experience and thus contributes to the integration of self. I suggest that forming a connection with the core can be seen as an aesthetic act where the intention is not to transform pre‐reflective experience into reflective. Since aesthetic experience includes reflection, the effort to represent the core of the self remains paradoxical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Zeitgeist of our time calls on social workers and the social work profession to reconsider the ways in which we practice, teach, and learn. The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 reawakening of the racial and social justice movements profoundly influence how social workers approach the directive from our accrediting body (CSWE) calling on us to intentionally integrate an anti-racist framework in our implicit and explicit curriculum. This paper re-introduces "use of self" as an anti-oppressive pedagogical tool that can build and hold brave spaces of transformation. Orienting ourselves to the use of self as a kind of pedagogy is one way to reengage with our social justice mission. Although we believe that pedagogy and practice are intricately connected, for the purposes of this paper, we focus on pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present how my positionality as a researcher aligned with the works of Latour in terms of methodological inspirations and allowed me to develop a critical vantage point and simultaneously adopt a heterogeneously rather than hierarchically informed approach to ordering the world, which I argue serves as a basis for a more inclusive study of management systems. Design/methodology/approach: I reflect on my own positionality as a researcher and share how my interpretation of Latour's ontology through some of his ideas and concepts, particularly symmetry, power, translation and agency, allowed me to incorporate and organize heterogeneous actors depicted in different empirical materials into space-time contexts and subsequently theorize organizing and management practices as agential, multiple and becoming. Findings: A base in Latour's ontology has equipped me with openness towards empirical settings, which I argue retains a democratic approach to theorization, i.e. theorization, which remains mindful of inadvertent assumptions about power, hierarchy or the taken for granted. This approach has also given me a form of personal resilience as a researcher. Originality/value: The originality of this paper lies in presenting and developing the concept of method as democratizing. I argue that Latour's approach to the empirical allows for at least two forms of active democratizing, one relating to the researcher as self and the other in how it incorporates the empirical actors into research, making possible the inclusivity of heterogeneity in analyses of organizations and organizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is interested in the hidden selves that hover silently in the spaces that all human relationships create. It asks how these hidden self-states can find the light of day and suggests that one way is through fictional creative writing. The author shares a piece of fictional writing in which an elusive character—Isobel—appears. This ethereal and fictional manifestation occurs in the context of excruciatingly painful relational experiences in which the narrator describes repetitive and painful struggles for transformation. Speculative attempts to understand the meaning of the fictional material reveal an emerging forward edge and a fledgling sense of agency. But more. It elaborates how the creative writing process offers a different kind of lens through which to locate, elaborate, see, experience and be empathic with our own and, by extension, with our patients' hidden self-states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to show how concepts and analytical methods of systemic functional linguistics can work congruently with other human practices to improve outcomes for those undergoing the suffering around loss of meaning and the absence of purposeful, self-directed experience. Based on a two-decade collaboration between linguists and psychotherapists in Sydney, Australia, and using the tools of text linguistics as developed by Michael A. K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan in systemic functional theory, the paper presents an indicative selection of intense exchanges between traumatized persons and therapists (centrally the experience of 'Ruth'). The level by level linguistic descriptions of these exchanges offer opportunities for understanding how progress in the clinical interaction might be achieved. The descriptions can also be evaluated against the theoretical claims of psychotherapy in psychiatry – in particular, the emphasis of the Conversational Model of Psychotherapy developed in England and Australia by Robert Hobson and Russell Meares, whose characterization of disorders involves an emphasis on 'co-ordination' and 'cohesion' within frontal lobe activity of traumatized patients. In this way the paper also explores conceptual parallels and intellectual antecedents shared between the Conversational Model and Systemic Functional Linguistics, contributing to the broader intellectual history of the human sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To conduct a systematic review to establish what is known about the relationship between depression and self-evaluation in adolescents with a chronic illness. Methods: A systematic search was conducted using MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, and hand-searching. We sought to identify primary research that examined both the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between depression and self-evaluation in adolescents with chronic illness. The search resulted in 8941 retrieved articles that were screened against an inclusion criteria. A total of 4 papers were included in the review. The MMAT used to assess study methodological quality. Results: A narrative synthesis was conducted, and a summary figure was included. These 4 studies included 236 adolescents aged 9–18 years with depression and either Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), chronic pain, headaches, or Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). The limited existing evidence indicated that that depression was associated with negative self-evaluation in adolescents in some but not all chronic illnesses investigated to date. We also found some evidence that psychological intervention can help to improve self-evaluation, specifically in adolescents with T1D. Conclusions: More robust studies of the association between self-evaluation and depression in adolescents with a chronic illness is needed, with attention to the nuances of differences between chronic illnesses. The existing evidence indicates that there may be a stronger association in some chronic illnesses. Pilot data suggest that specific psychological therapies may improve self-evaluation, although much more extensive evaluation is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary, I engage with selected ideas from Mendes' paper, examining childhood trauma and the (dis) configuration of the Self. First, I focus on what the possibilities of a more triadically-inflected analysis of the relationship between the patient, her mother, and father may offer us in understanding the recalcitrant effects of trauma inside a culturally gendered triad. Second, I reflect on the foregrounded traumatogenic events surrounding the patient's maternal loss, and highlight the role of her father as a potential driver of iatrogenic traumatic outcomes that are further consolidated within the Self. Third, I reflect obliquely on issues of training, focusing on the centrality of language in conveying clinical material, as a critical basis for generating compelling and credible sources of evidence in psychoanalytic writing. Finally, I conclude with reflections on the possibilities and limitations of theoretical diversity and pluralism, that have characterized much of the contemporary Relational Paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deterministic nature of EQM (the Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics) seems to be inconsistent with the use of probability in EQM, giving rise to what is known as the "incoherence problem". In this paper, I explore approaches to solve the incoherence problem of EQM via pre-measurement uncertainty. Previous discussions on the validity of pre-measurement uncertainty have leaned heavily on intricate aspects of the theory of semantics and reference, the embrace of either four-dimensionalism or three-dimensionalism of personhood, or the ontology of EQM. In this paper, I argue that, regardless of the adoption of three-dimensionalism or four-dimensionalism of personhood, the overlapping view or the divergence view of the ontology of EQM, the pre-measurement uncertainty approach to the incoherence problem of EQM can only achive success while contradicting fundamental principles of physicalism. I also use the divergence view of EQM as an example to illustrate my analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The graphic novel Aranyaka: Book of the Forest (2019) by mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik and illustrator and author Amruta Patil is related to the 3000-year-old Vedic literature and the central significance of forests in Vedic mythology. The central theme revolves around natural elements and the world around us. It shows human transactions in the forests and how life evolves amidst nature. This study discusses how blurry the lines between self and others are and whether we truly "see" others and, in turn, ourselves. Domestication and civilization distance us from nature. This paper intends to discuss the tactics, manipulation, and consumption of space in everyday life that the protagonist Katyayani, her husband Yajnavalkya, and others employ within the setting of the dense, dark forest. The forest here acts as a psychological forest, where Katyayani's inner self is transformed and which, for Yajnavalkya, serves as a place where he appears in the quest for knowledge. This paper further aims to show how, in Aranyaka: Book of the Forest, spatial changes take place in the forest using the concepts of human geographer Yu Fu Tuan, philosopher and psychoanalyst Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, French psychoanalyst and philosopher. The paper also looks at what role the forest plays in the self-awakening of the female protagonist, Katyayani. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sense of agency and sense of ownership are considered crucial in autonomous systems. However, drawbacks still exist regarding how to represent their causal origin and internal structure, either in formalized psychological models or in artificial systems. This paper considers that these drawbacks are based on the ontological and epistemological duality in mainstream psychology and AI. By shedding light on the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and dialectical logic, and by building on and extending related work, this paper attempts to investigate how the noted duality affects investigating the self and "I". And by differentiating between the space of meanings and the sense-making space, the paper introduces CHAT's position of the causal emergence of agency and ownership by stressing the twofold transition theory being central to CHAT. Furthermore, a qualitative formalized model is introduced to represent the emergence of agency and ownership through the emergence of the contradictions-based meaning with potential employment in AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper creatively extends Fairbairn's theory to investigate the impact of the UK's hostile environment policy on marginalised communities at the intersection of culture, politics and society. The hostile environment is conceptualised as a disruptive 'bad object' in the cultural dimension in alignment with Fairbairn's theory. Its influence is explored in terms of its unconscious reproduction within the psyche. By juxtaposing context, theory and personal introspection, this paper offers a Fairbairnian exploration of how sociality and sociopolitical contexts interplay with the intricate processes of the human psyche. It provides reflective commentary on how external racial dynamics are internalised within the endopsychic structure, shaping one's interactions with others, and, more significantly, how one relates to aspects of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developing a theory of consciousness, one of the main problems has to do with determining what distinguishes conscious states from non-conscious ones—the delimitation problem. This paper explores the possibility of solving this problem in terms of self-awareness. That self-awareness is essential to understanding the nature of our conscious experience is perhaps the most widely discussed hypothesis in the study of consciousness throughout the history of philosophy. Its plausibility hinges on how the notion of self-awareness is unpacked. The idea that consciousness involves self-awareness has been understood in two different ways: either as awareness of oneself—the subject of experience—or as awareness of the conscious episode itself. In this paper I argue (i) that every experience concerns the subject in a very specific way, involving what I will call 'perspectival de se representation', and (ii) that there is no need to appeal to the experience itself in order to characterize the awareness within that experience. The view I articulate explains the subjective nature of experience without over-intellectualizing it, accommodates the phenomenology of experience, and dispels any doubt about the need to find the self in introspection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts are routinely used for writing in Serbian. In existing ideological discourses, using Cyrillic is associated by some with Serbian ethnic authenticity and loyalty to nationhood, but by others with conservatism, Russian-leaning politics and dangerous ethnonationalism. For some, using Latin is associated with cosmopolitanism and a western-leaning internationalisation, but for others with an assault on Serbian heritage, values and tradition. In this context, with which script do Serbians today most closely affiliate and does established ideological discourse actually inform script choices? By seeing this affiliation as linguistic citizenship, the paper analyses survey data and metalinguistic explanations about which script Serbians choose to represent their own names as the most personal of identities. The data show that while some simply write their name in either script depending on habit, younger Serbians, and Serbians outside metropolitan areas, seemingly bias Cyrillic for ethnonationalist reasons as discourse predicts. However, especially revealing is that linguistic citizenship among older Serbians is sooner mediated by lingering notions of Yugoslavia and Serbo-Croatian as country and language that no longer exist but once indexed ideals of equality and harmony in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media facilitates a digital presentation of self and a curated identity that may differ from real-life portrayals. Being exposed to others 'highlight reel' may influence the way we perceive ourselves. Using collage with an unstructured interview, children's perceptions of how they portray their identity in digital spaces were explored. This paper focuses on an in-depth exploration of three of these collages and demonstrates that identity portrayal may be more complex than an online/offline binary. Findings demonstrate that children need support from practitioners to develop emotional skills to deal with the complexity of their social media use beyond traditional e-safety lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the narratives of the Taiwanese woman novelist Shao-Lin Chu's trilogy to see how the problem of female sexuality and resistance to parental wedlock tragedy becomes a traumatic experience. The traumatic symptoms in the narratives are taken as Peircean signs for tracing the negative influences of traumatic experiences on the formation of personal identity and the associated depressive disorder. The scenes portrayed in Chu's traumatic narratives of female and male sexuality are implications and representations of how sexuality is conceptualized and confined by the traumatic events while backgrounded with regulations and restrictions of a traditional society. The stories of Chu's female narrators reveal the persistent and resisting feminine power. This paper adopts the concept of feminist narrative to analyze the traumatic and sexual events in Chu's trilogy. The decoding and re-encoding of resistance and sexuality in the traumatic narratives prove that the narratological textual analysis and semiotic reading strategy together offer a solid approach to the discovery of the persistent traumatic impacts of the secret veiled in the narratives and reveal the probable strength of compassion that has its roots derived from deplorable trauma but later transforms itself to stimulate a positive reconstruction of the traumatic survivors' identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we respond to this special issue's critical focus on mental health in education by considering the medicalised and homogenising approaches to the mental health of young people and the severely negative consequences for young people. Our argument is underpinned by the need to destabilise the hegemony of the current dominant discourses and practices of mental health used in education. The problem with these discourses and practices, informed by particular forms of psychiatry and psychology, is precisely their dominance and their popularised proxy take-up of these. We firstly outline this problem, explore the emergence and saturation of a 'damaged self' in education and consider the impact on young people. We offer counter-narratives that involve a reframing of the self in relation to ethics, politics, capability and the arts and can assist in countering the psy-dominance in education. The paper concludes with some reflections on how teachers might work against the damaging effects of the psy-disciplines and instead support young people in finding their counter-narrative selves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When looking for an account that explains how pain changes consciousness, one finds that most studies in the phenomenology of pain focus either on the outcome of the change, or on how it affects the self, as a conscious object, and the self's experiences in the world of objects. This paper focuses on the mechanism of consciousness, exploring the nature of the change that pain creates in consciousness and how exactly that change occurs. The paper provides a systematic, phenomenological inquiry in three phases: one identifies three essential attributes of consciousness, another identifies three essential attributes of pain, and a third analyses the outcome of the integration between both sets of attributes. The paper demonstrates how the change wrought by pain on the self, as a conscious object, allows the self to breach its boundaries as an object, and experience being a non-object, even if only in part and temporarily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with Kohut's classic 1959 paper on the subject, empathy has been conceptualized as a process of finding something in one's self (introspection) that has resonance with one's experience of the other. This paper, inspired by advances in queer studies, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the Black American theater, identifies the limitations of this understanding. By putting Kohut's ideas about empathy in dialogue with French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, Black American playwrights Jeremy O. Harris, Michael R. Jackson, and James Ijames, and the author's own clinical experience, a queered empathy is theorized that relies less on self-reference and more on passibility. The theoretical and clinical implications of this shift are explored, and the possibilities for a queered Psychology of the Self that contain a heightened possibility for responsiveness to marginalized experience are suggested. The hope of this paper is that the reader, from a multidisciplinary perspective, will be inspired to imagine a psychoanalysis and Self Psychology for all that has the potential to flourish for generations to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores Michael Ondaatje's novel "Anil's Ghost" through the lens of trauma theory, postcolonialism, and the concept of heterotopic spaces. As space studies examine migration, displacement, and exile, which are inherently linked to traumatic experiences, the investigation illuminates the intricate connection between heterotopic spaces and encounters with trauma, providing a valuable understanding of their interdependence. Michael Ondaatje, the acclaimed author of "Anil's Ghost", has drawn upon his own traumatic experiences of displacement and emigration in the novel. Therefore, the purpose of the research paper is to analyze how changes in space shape traumatic experiences. Spaces are integral to one's sense of place and identity, and traumatic events might disrupt this connection, leading to a profound loss of identity or a struggle to reconcile personal identity with changed or disrupted spaces. Studying the connections between trauma and space reveals a better understanding of how environments and spatial contexts impact the occurrence, perception, and recovery from traumatic events. The research contextualizes Foucault's concept of heterotopia within postcolonial distinctions in time and space, emphasizing its relevance in understanding the novel's narrative. It highlights the complexity of trauma and the challenge of reconciling historical narratives within these spaces. Employing a multidimensional methodology integrating cultural studies, trauma theory, and literary analysis, results uncover the complexities of trauma within postcolonial spaces, notably Sri Lanka, showcasing the profound impact of historical conflicts and Western interventions. Ultimately, the research concludes by recognizing the intertwined nature of trauma, history, and identity within physical and metaphorical spaces. It acknowledges the evolution of characters’ identities like Anil Tissera, who navigate their personal traumas and their nation's scars, seeking a path forward while acknowledging the weight of history. In summary, the manuscript contributes to a deeper understanding of how "Anil's Ghost" navigates the complexities of trauma, identity, and history, shedding light on the relationships between individuals, society, and historical narratives in postcolonial contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I provide a synopsis of the core concepts of Intersubjective Self Psychology or ISP, and seek to demonstrate how ISP, with its focus on the leading edge, represents a new paradigm for clinical practice. I want to highlight the difference the ISP perspective makes on how we think about the therapeutic process and therefore, how we work. My introduction to the theory will provide the reader with the theoretical foundation for how to listen to the clinical presentations that my colleagues, Aviva Rohde and Harry Paul, will present in the two subsequent papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group hate, a phenomenon increasingly prevalent in recent world history, manifests in ethnic hatred, mass killings, terrorism, and war. In this context, psychoanalysis offers a unique perspective, modestly contributing to the understanding of group hate through the analysis of human aggression and defenses against such aggression. Human beings, while requiring a group life to maintain basic security, often fear being immersed and judged by other individuals in the group. This paper delves into three mechanisms, interpellation, group polarization, and projective identification, that individuals employ to defend against such fears. Interpellation, for instance, sheds light on how cultural forces, referred to as ideology, influence personal identity. The latter two mechanisms, group polarization, and projective identification, foster in‐group solidarity and hatred of the out‐group, thereby perpetuating widening splits and cycles of hatred and vengeance between groups. The paper concludes by advocating for the humanization of the hated others, setting aside fantasies of vengeance, and finding areas of compromise as the way forward. A secondary goal of the paper is to address the split within psychoanalysis between intrapsychic and interpersonal concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a strong secular consensus that death terminates subjective consciousness. In this paper I show that this consensus can be meaningfully doubted for entirely secular reasons. After formulating the strongest possible argument which supports this consensus, I argue that it inconsistently excludes Constitutive Russellian Panpsychism (CRP) from consideration. CRP, I maintain, is fully consistent with the possibility of post-thanatological consciousness. To flesh out this account, I develop an account of the Panpsychist Self (PS) that can be axiomatically derived from CRP. I then show that the PS has the right metaphysical structure to ensure that the persistence of consciousness beyond brain death aligns with the persistence of our individual selves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the emergence of "Soviet active measures" in US political discourse during the "Second Cold War" of the early 1980s. It follows the efforts of the Active Measures Working Group, a little-known interagency organization led by Reagan administration appointees that constructed an image of Soviet active measures as a threat to national security. I detail, especially, how the Working Group framed the US anti-war movement as both a target of and vehicle for active measures. In so doing, I show how the active measure was constructed in US political discourse through a dramaturgy of secrecy and revelation that placed it within a broader "covert imaginary." This paper concludes with a theorization of these efforts in relation to Foucault's concept of "alethurgy," considering how the construction of the active measure produced a "politics of truth" in which the anti-war protestor appeared as a dangerous, disinformed subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]