This paper develops an alternative for (what feminists call) ‘the sex/gender distinction’. I do so in order to avoid certain problematic implications that the distinction underpins. First, the sex/gender distinction paradigmatically holds that some social conditions determine one’s gender (whether one is a woman or a man), and that some biological conditions determine one’s sex (whether one is female or male). Further, sex and gender come apart. Since gender is socially constructed, this implies that women exist mind-dependently, or due to (...) productive human social activities; thus, it should be possible to do away with them just by altering the social conditions on which gender depends. In addition, some feminists take gender to depend on oppressive social conditions. Changing our social environments, then, would not only unwittingly eradicate women; doing away with women should be feminism’s political goal. I argue that both implications are unacceptable. In response, I argue for a view that has ontological commitments which are more congenial to ordinary thinking, and that doesn’t have the goal of eradicating women. (shrink)

Repression has become an empirical fact that is at once obvious and problematic. Fragmented clinical and laboratory traditions and disputed terminology have resulted in a Babel of misunderstandings in which false distinctions are imposed (e.g., between repression and suppression) and necessary distinctions not drawn (e.g., between the mechanism and the use to which it is put, defense being just one). “Repression” was introduced by Herbart to designate the (nondefensive) inhibition of ideas by other ideas in their struggle for consciousness. Freud (...) adapted repression to the defensive inhibition of “unbearable” mental contents. Substantial experimental literatures on attentional biases, thought avoidance, interference, and intentional forgetting exist, the oldest prototype being the work of Ebbinghaus, who showed that intentional avoidance of memories results in their progressive forgetting over time. It has now become clear, as clinicians had claimed, that the inaccessible materials are often available and emerge indirectly (e.g., procedurally, implicitly). It is also now established that the Ebbinghaus retention function can be partly reversed, with resulting increases of conscious memory over time (hypermnesia). Freud's clinical experience revealed early on that exclusion from consciousness was effected not just by simple repression (inhibition) but also by a variety of distorting techniques, some deployed to degrade latent contents (denial), all eventually subsumed under the rubric of defense mechanisms (“repression in the widest sense”). Freudian and Bartlettian distortions are essentially the same, even in name, except for motive (cognitive vs. emotional), and experimentally induced false memories and other “memory illusions” are laboratory analogs of self-induced distortions. Key Words: avoidance; Bartlett; defense; denial; distortion; Ebbinghaus; false-memories; Freud; inhibition; repression; suppression. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that dissociative identity disorder (DID) is best interpreted as a causal model of a (possible) post-traumatic psychological process, as a mechanical model of an abnormal psychological condition. From this perspective we examine and criticize the evidential status of DID, and we demonstrate that there is really no good reason to believe that anyone has ever suffered from DID so understood. This is so because the proponents of DID violate basic methodological principles of good causal modeling. (...) When every ounce of your concentration is fixed upon blasting a winged pig out of the sky, you do not question its species' ontological status. James Morrow, City of Truth (1990). (shrink)

This article analyzes the demarcations made within psychology as a feature of the “memory wars”—the current controversy around “recovered” or “false” memory. As it is played out inside professional psychology, the dispute features clinical practitioners acting largely as proponents of recovered memory and experimentalists as proponents of false memory. Tracing a genealogy of this dispute back to a pair of original sites, we show how the traditions’engagement in three modes of scientific demonstration varies systematically in terms of the modes of (...) social relation inherent in their epistemic practices and the kinds of “reliable witness” these practices produce. We conclude that whereas the experimentalist tradition is able to transporttheir produced witnesses from oneto anothersite of demonstration with relative ease, the clinical tradition has much greater difficulty in doing so and thus has to engage in a variety of compensatory demonstrative strategies. (shrink)

The disputed issues that comprise the recovered memories controversy are so important that they deserve the most careful and intellectually honest scholarship that the academic and professional community can muster. Drawing partly on illustrative material from the recentHealth Care Analysis paper by Goodyear-Smithet al. and associated commentaries, it is argued that the controversy is not being well served. The rules of scholarship are too often broken, with the result that the products are often superficial, containing what should have been readily (...) avoided factual errors, and are sometimes even misleading. (shrink)

I here focus on two debates about the conditions for self-governance. In one, the metaphysical debate, theorists are concerned with the potential threat that causal determinism poses to self-governance. In another, the relational debate, theorists are concerned with the potential threat that certain social conditions—especially those that are oppressive to certain social groups—pose to self-governance. MacKenzie and Stoljar have suggested (2000) that the concerns of these two debates do not intersect. In this chapter, I draw out the connections between the (...) two debates, arguing that certain views in the relational debate are in tension with certain commitments in the metaphysical debate. I look at a relational condition for autonomous agency from Paul Benson (1994), extrapolate from the cases discussed by Langton (1993) in the literature on speech acts some relational conditions for autonomous action, and examine the formulation of relational conditions for autonomous choice (Stoljar 2000). I argue that each of these views sits in tension with positions in the metaphysical debate (hard determinism, libertarianism, and (more broadly) incompatibilism, respectively). Thus the concerns of the two debates do intersect. Moreover, if these tensions cannot be resolved, then the relational debate brings to bear important considerations in assessing the plausibility of the views in the metaphysical debate. (shrink)

This essay considers two concepts of repetition in thinking about canon, the history of ideas, and the work of an opponent, both real and fantastical. I take up these motifs in a variety of figures and cases, but principally in Søren Kierkegaard’s reading of the biblical Abraham in Fear and Trembling, a text rich in interpretive challenges. How might readers in the humanities contend with interpretive rivals while investing in the power of diverse readings? The argument turns on the relationship (...) between the struggle for self‐consciousness, understood through Hegel and Freud as an appointment with otherness, and the work of interpretation, understood as the endeavor to understand others, including other texts, other minds, and one’s own mind. What is the aim of interpretation? How does interpretation fail? To which history of ideas is a reader responsible? (shrink)

Abstract The recent proliferation of economically informed writings favoring market socialism exhibits dissonances in this evolving theoretical orientation. The ethical presuppositions of classical socialism have often been inherited by those who now embrace markets under socialism. But precisely because it accepts markets, market socialism may prove incompatible with these sentiments.

Напередодні появи психоаналізу в західній науці та культурі відбувалися різноманітні процеси, що їх можна розглядати як «протопсихоаналітичні». Автор намагається показати, що деякі з цих процесів дістали відображення у працях випускників та викладачів Київської духовної академії. Приклади осмислення поняття несвідомого можна зустріти у таких випускників і викладачів КДА, як Орест Новицький, Петро Ліницький, Григорій Малеванський, Маркеллін Олесницький, Федір Орнатський, Олексій Кирилович. Показано, що до подібних міркувань їх підштовхували ідеї західноєвропейських філософів, зокрема Фрідріха Шеллінґа, Артура Шопенгауера, Едуарда фон Гартмана, Іммануїла Фіхте, Поля (...) Жане та ін. Зазначено, що випускник і викладач КДА Матвій Троїцький максимально наблизився до визначення такого важливого для психоаналізу феномену, як перенос. Найбільшу увагу присвячено працям випускника КДА Михайла Вержболовича. Вони містять розгляд низки концептів, уявлень, міркувань, настанов, практик, що відіграли важливу роль у формуванні різних версій психоаналізу. Михайло Вержболович виходить на відповідну проблематику, аналізуючи погляди не лише згаданих вище філософів, а й провідних європейських психологів ХІХ – початку ХХ ст. – Йогана Гербарта, Германа Ульріци, Вільгельма Вундта, Теодора Флурнуа та ін. У серії праць Вержболовича, присвячених вивченню різноманітних окультних феноменів, відображено чимало ідей та процесів, що відіграли велику роль у формуванні аналітичної психології Карла Юнґа. Зазначене дає змогу уникнути звуженого уявлення щодо розвитку науки у КДА. Хоч вона й була передусім релігійним закладом, у її стінах навчалися та працювали фахівці з широким кругозором. Вони здійснювали актуальні розвідки, добре знаючись на філософських засадах та новітніх тенденціях у різних наукових дисциплінах, зокрема у психології. (shrink)