As with certain other self-reflexive emotions, such as guilt and shame, our understanding of self-hatred may be aided by views of the mind which posit an internalized other whose perspective on oneself embodies and focuses a set of concerns and values, and whose perspective one is in some sense vulnerable to. To feel guilt for some transgression is not solely to feel the anger that one would feel toward another’s trespasses, now directed back onto oneself as an object of that (...) anger; it is at the same time to react to that anger – perhaps, for example, to accept it as deserved, or to welcome the lashing of one’s bad conscience. To feel shame before oneself is not just to see oneself in some compromising way, it is to feel compromised by one’s own gaze. Likewise, the person who hates herself does not feel the hatred that she might have for another, simply taking herself as object of that attitude. She is not merely the seat of an internalized hostile voice and perspective that she may, for example, react to with indifference. She does not only tell herself that she is “worthless” but, will typically feel herself so in response. And her suffering may not just result from pain she is inclined to inflict, but suffering that, in some sense, she is inclined to suffer. But how is this so? How, in self-hatred, does one become not only subject to, but vulnerable and even receptive to one’s own hostility? (shrink)

A dominant view of guilt and shame is that they have opposing action tendencies: guilt- prone people are more likely to avoid or overcome dysfunctional patterns of behaviour, making amends for past misdoings, whereas shame-prone people are more likely to persist in dysfunctional patterns of behaviour, avoiding responsibility for past misdoings and/or lashing out in defensive aggression. Some have suggested that addiction treatment should make use of these insights, tailoring therapy according to people’s degree of guilt-proneness versus shame-proneness. In this (...) paper, we challenge this dominant view, reviewing empirical findings from others as well as our own to question (1) whether shame and guilt can be so easily disentangled in the experience of people with addiction, and (2) whether shame and guilt have the opposing action tendencies standardly attributed to them. We recommend a shift in theoretical perspective that explains our main finding that both emotions can be either destructive or constructive for recovery, depending on how these emotions are managed. We argue such management depends in turn on a person’s quality of self-blame (retributive or ‘scaffolding’), impacting upon their attitude towards their own agency as someone with fixed and unchanging dispositions (shame and guilt destructive for recovery) or as someone capable of changing themselves (shame and guilt productive for recovery). With an eye to therapeutic intervention, we then explore how this shift in attitude towards the self can be accomplished. Specifically, we discuss empathy-driven affective and narratively-driven cognitive components of a process that allow individuals to move away from the register of retributive self-blame into a register of scaffolding ‘reproach’, thereby enabling them to manage their experiences of both shame and guilt in a more generative way. (shrink)

It is facile and factually incorrect to represent suicide terrorists as simply seeking mass destruction, as demented or believing that they will be rewarded by "seventy-two virgins in paradise". In my book The Myth of the Closed Mind: Understanding How and Why People are Rational I felt it was important to deal with the issue of terrorism by consulting explanatory theories of human behaviour and the substantial research on the strategic pattern of terrorist incidents over the decades, led principally by (...) Professor Robert Pape of Chicago University. -/- To defeat your enemy, you must first understand him. Strangely, we must first grant that, though morally depraved, terrorists are rational: they concoct and execute detailed plans with definite strategic goals in mind. Only once we have granted the terrorist a rational mind can we, in the end, create peace. My argument is that while religion may have a small role in terrorism, it is principally politics, or the logic of territorial control, that is the key to understanding the threat we face. -/- This extract from my book is principally about Al Qaeda, but a similar analysis applies to ISIS, the current greatest threat to our peace in the west. -/- The strategic goal of Al Qaeda was simply to repulse what they saw as foreign intervention. ISIS has the same goal, but in order to continue its growth as a state in the sense of a monopoly of coercion over a given geographical area. -/- ISIS, a rogue state that arose in ungoverned space created unintentionally by foreign intervention in Iraq, is now lashing out at foreign governments that have severely shrunk the territory ISIS occupies. Before October 2015, ISIS confined its terrorism to the goal of extending its territory in Iraq and Syria, and there were no significant ISIS-led or inspired suicide terrorist attacks outside Iraq and Syria. But now, as their territory collapses, they are attacking the countries that have strangled their control of territory in Iraq and Syria: the coalition of western governments – Britain, Belgium, Canada, France, Morocco, Turkey, Russia, the U.S.A. and others – exactly the countries that have recently seen an explosion of suicide terrorism. (shrink)

What can insights from psychological science contribute to interdisciplinary research, conducted by individuals or by interdisciplinary teams? Three articles shed light on this by focusing on the micro- (personal), meso- (inter-personal), and macro- (team) level. This Introduction (and Table of Contents) to the 'Special Section on Interdisciplinary Collaborations' offers a brief description of the conference session that was the point of departure for two of the three articles. Frank Kessel and Machiel Keestra organized a panel session for the March 2015 (...) meeting of the International Convention of Psychological Science (ICPS) in Amsterdam, which was the titled “Theoretical and Methodological Contributions of Inter/Trans-Disciplinarity (ID/TD) to Successful Integrative Psychological Science.” Machiel Keestra's article analyses how metacognition and philosophical reflection complement each other by making scholarly experts aware of their cognitive processes and representations. As such, these processes contribute to individual and team interdisciplinary research. Hans Dieleman's article proposes a transdisciplinary hermeneutics that acknowledges the embodied nature of cognition and contributes to richer and more creative interdisciplinary knowledge production. The article by Lash-Marshall, Nomura, Eck & Hirsch was added later and continues by focusing on the macro-level of institutional and team arrangements and the role of facilitative leadership in supporting interdisciplinary team research. The original conference panel session's introduction by Frank Kessel and the contribution on the Toolbox Project's dialogue method by Michael O'Rourke are briefly described as well. Together, this Special Section on Interdisciplinary Collaboration offers a wide variety of insights in and practical instructions for successfully conducting interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

There are two kinds of resentment relevant to the politics of multiculturalism today. 1 The first, which is basically Nietzsche’s conception of ressentiment, occurs under conditions in which people are subject to systematic and structural deprivation of things they want (and need), combined with a sense of powerlessness about being able to do anything about it. It manifests itself in terms of a focused anger or hatred towards that group of people who seem to have everything they want, and yet (...) also symbolize their powerlessness to get it. For Nietzsche, of course, it was out of this set of emotions and psychological state of mind that the ‘slave revolt’ that gave birth to modern morality emerged, supplanting the aristocratic values oriented around good and bad with the reactive and slavish values of those oriented around good and evil (Nietzsche 1989: 36- 39). The desire to lash out or take revenge against those who you perceive as keeping you down, keeping you from enjoying all the benefits and advantages others enjoy and that you want or feel you deserve, for Nietzsche, is a basic emotional orientation that can – in combination with other complex forces - reshape an entire culture. A second form of resentment is of a more moralized kind; a reactive sentiment bound up with holding another morally accountable for their actions. I resent your curtailment of my liberty, for example, just because I believe we share certain moral commitments – for example, a.. (shrink)

…Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work and eat as much as a man-when I could get to it- and bear de lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen ‘em mos’ all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I (...) a woman? Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can’t have as much rights as man, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman…. (shrink)