"Psychology, Emotion, and the Human Sciences," University of Windsor, April 20-21, 2012.

In Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions [Cambridge, 1999], Jon Elster argues that "with an important subset of the emotions [for example, regret, relief, envy, malice, pity, indignation, ...] we can learn more from moralists, novelists, and playwrights than from the cumulative findings of scientific psychology." Elster then explores the work of both ancient and early modern moral philosophers in order to substantiate his argument.

This symposium will explore Elster's assertions: what can contemporary 'scientific psychology,' barely 150 years old, teach us about the emotions that early modern literary and philosophical inquiry cannot? Does psychology [of various sorts] deserve its status as the discipline of feeling? What can contemporary philosophical work teach us about feeling and emotion? Are there viable ways of bringing historical and contemporary emotional inquiry into contact? What insight can various forms of inquiry bring to the increasingly prominent issue of affective education [the education of emotions, dispositions, and values]? What is the status of emotional inquiry across disciplines?

Possible topics might include, but are not limited to, the following:
- rhetoric and the emotions
- emotion and informal logic
- argument and emotion
- affective education
- emotion in the classroom
- the history of psychology
- neuroscience and emotion
- the passions in history:
- psychoanalysis and emotion
- the sociology of emotion

The organisers are hopeful that participants are aware of, and incorporate, the history of emotion in their respective disciplines or areas of inquiry. Selected papers will be considered for a collection of essays, and all applicants will be informed by 15 November 2011 about their participation in the symposium.

Contact Stephen Pender, spender@uwindsor.ca

Bennett, Drake. "Thinking Literally." BOSTON GLOBE September 27, 2009.

WHEN WE SAY someone is a warm person, we do not mean that they are running a fever. When we describe an issue as weighty, we have not actually used a scale to determine this. And when we say a piece of news is hard to swallow, no one assumes we have tried unsuccessfully to eat it. These phrases are metaphorical--they use concrete objects and qualities to describe abstractions like kindness or importance or difficulty--and we use them and their like so often that we hardly notice them. For most people, metaphor, like simile or synecdoche, is a term inflicted upon them in high school English class: “all the world’s a stage,” “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” Gatsby’s fellow dreamers are “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Metaphors are literary creations--good ones help us see the world anew, in fresh and interesting ways, the rest are simply cliches: a test is a piece of cake, a completed task is a load off one’s back, a momentary difficulty is a speed bump. But whether they’re being deployed by poets, politicians, football coaches, or realtors, metaphors are primarily thought of as tools for talking and writing--out of inspiration or out of laziness, we distill emotions and thoughts into the language of the tangible world. We use metaphors to make sense to one another. Now, however, a new group of people has started to take an intense interest in metaphors: psychologists. Drawing on philosophy and linguistics, cognitive scientists have begun to see the basic metaphors that we use all the time not just as turns of phrase, but as keys to the structure of thought. By taking these everyday metaphors as literally as possible, psychologists are upending traditional ideas of how we learn, reason, and make sense of the world around us. The result has been a torrent of research testing the links between metaphors and their physical roots, with many of the papers reading as if they were commissioned by Amelia Bedelia, the implacably literal-minded children’s book hero. Researchers have sought to determine whether the temperature of an object in someone’s hands determines how “warm” or “cold” he considers a person he meets, whether the heft of a held object affects how “weighty” people consider topics they are presented with, or whether people think of the powerful as physically more elevated than the less powerful. What they have found is that, in fact, we do. Metaphors aren’t just how we talk and write, they’re how we think. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/27/thinking_literally/?page=full.

Annual Meetings, American Psychological Association, Toronto, August 6-9, 2009.

Society for the History of Psychology (APA Division 26):

• Download the programme here: http://www.hood.edu/shp/Div26Program2009.pdf.

Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (APA Division 24):

• Download the programme here: http://www.westga.edu/~stpp/pdf/Div24Program2009.pdf.

Miller, Russell. "R. D. Laing: the Abominable Family Man." TIMES April 12, 2009.

Eighteen months before she died of leukaemia at the age of 21, Susan Laing, RD Laing’s second oldest daughter, was interviewed by The Sunday Times Magazine for a 1974 feature about the children of celebrities. Her contribution was unutterably sad. She claimed that her father, then the best-known psychiatrist in Britain bar Jung and Freud, could not get accustomed to his children being grown up. “We’ve got too many problems for him,” she said. “He can solve everybody else’s, but not ours.” It was a rare insight into the chaotic private life of a man lauded as one of the most controversial and remarkable figures in the history of psychiatry. RD Laing frequently asserted that mental illness was rooted in the family, yet he treated his own family abominably. He abandoned his first five children and left them in penury. He went on to father five more children with three different women, had innumerable affairs, was subject to violent drunken rages and became obsessed with his own fame. Yet he treated patients with extraordinary compassion and empathy, qualities he denied his own family. . . . Read the rest here: http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article6058901.ece.

Cfp: "The Encultured Brain: Neuroanthropological Explorations," University of Notre Dame, South Bend, October 8, 2009.

The First Neuroanthropology Conference. One main part of the schedule will facilitate a kind of collective brain-storming, make connections (both mental and practical) meeting, rather than the standard anthropology panel set-up, where just a few people present 15 minute versions of their research. We will have two keynote presentations, as well as a lot of ’speed presentations’ in which participants will be able to briefly (about five minutes) talk to the whole assembled conference about what they are working on or would like to work on. We will have pre-printed message pads to allow the whole conference to share thoughts, as well as ample chances during breaks to grab the person you just heard share a great idea. There will also be an ongoing poster session for presenters so that we really get an opportunity to network in this emerging area of research. So much of what we hope to do is to create conversations over the fences that separate our respective disciplinary backyards, so we’re going to do our best to get people in touch. There will also be a roundtable on research methods for breaking new ground in neuroanthropology. In addition, we’ll have keynote lectures by Prof. Patricia Greenfield of UCLA and Prof. Harvey Whitehouse of Oxford University . Further information may be found here: http://neuroanthropology.net/2009/04/21/big-news-first-neuroanthropology-conference/.

"Neuropsychoanalysis: Who Needs It?," 10th International Neuropsychoanalysis Conference, Paris, June 26-29, 2009.

Neuropsychoanalysis has been the major international development within psychoanalysis in recent decades. However, opinions differ as to whether it will have a positive or negative impact on the future of the discipline. At this congress, the leading exponents of the new approach will present their findings and discuss their points of view with some of France’s outstanding psychoanalytic and neuroscientific authorities. The Unconscious, child development, and the clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis in particular will be discussed. The congress will be an historical event, the impact of which will be felt for many years to come. Speakers at the Congress include: György Gergely, Claude Gottesmann, André Green, Catherine Morin, Lionel Naccache, Georg Northoff, Philippe Rochat, René Roussillon, Howard Shevrin, Mark Solms, Daniel Stern, Daniel Widlöcher and Yoram Yovell. Visit the conference webpage here: http://www.neuro-psa.org.uk/npsa/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=61.

Lehrer, Jonah. "How the City Hurts Your Brain." BOSTON GLOBE January 2, 2009.

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so. "The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations." . . . Read the rest here: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/.

McHugh, Paul R. "Hysteria in Four Acts." COMMENTARY (December 2008).

In 1973, the journalist Flora Rhea Schreiber collaborated with Cornelia Wilbur, a Manhattan psychiatrist, in writing Sybil, the story of a young woman who, while under Wilbur’s care, developed sixteen “personalities.” In each distinct “alter”— alternative personality—she behaved in a different way, at one time or another “depicting” aggressive males, defenseless children, and intellectual women. In their book, which was an enormous bestseller in both hardcover and paperback and inspired a hugely popular four-hour movie for television, the collaborating authors proposed that the “disintegration” of Sybil’s mind into several personalities was the result of her having repressed the memory of sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of her mother in childhood. Although the abuse itself was never confirmed, the book and the television movie ignited a craze. Schreiber heard from numerous women who credited her with opening their eyes to their own multiple personalities. Other biographies soon appeared. (Only one, The Minds of Billy Milligan [1981], remains in print.) Like Sybil, they all linked multiple-personality disorder (MPD) to childhood abuse—a practice that, at the time, was being reported with distressing frequency by pediatricians. What went unmentioned in Sybil was a serious difference of opinion between Wilbur and Herbert Spiegel, a fellow psychiatrist whom she had consulted. In a May 1995 interview, Spiegel told of having come to know Sybil well, examining her many times and arriving at the conclusion that she was not a multiple personality at all. Instead, Spiegel characterized Sybil as “a wonderful hysterical patient with role confusion, which is typical of high hysterics. It was hysteria.” But Schreiber, he related, rejected his interpretation summarily and insisted that they stick to the original diagnosis—because “if we don’t call [her] a multiple personality, we don’t have a book!” Looking back in 1995, Spiegel was impressed with how the publication of Sybil had started “a whole new cult, a whole new wave of hysteria . . . a hysterical response to hysteria.” In his view, therapists specializing in MPD were “taking highly malleable, suggestible persons and molding them into acting out a thesis that they [were] putting upon them.” But what did Spiegel mean by hysteria? And what clinical and historical background was he drawing on to confirm his diagnosis? Get the answer here: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/hysteria-in-four-acts-13663.

Pub: WILLIAM JAMES STUDIES 3.1 (2008).

American Philosophical Association Conference Papers:

• Human Blindness (2007 Presidential Address) by John Lachs
• Blindness, Vision and the Good Life for All: Comment on John Lachs' "Human Blindness" by David E. Leary
• The 'Riven' Self as Remedy to "a Certain Blindness" by Frederick J. Ruf

Submitted Essays:

• Flowers in the Desert: F. C. S. Schiller's [Unpublished] Pragmatism Lecture by Mark J. Porrovecchio
• The Concept of Truth that Matters by Laura E. Weed
• Investigations into the William James Collection at Harvard: an Interview with Eugene Taylor by Thibaud Trochu
• "The Many and the One" and the Problem of Two Minds Perceiving the Same Thing by Mark Moller

Review Essay:

• Pragmatism in the 21st Century by Wesley Cooper

Book Reviews:

• The Drama of Possibility: Experience as Philosophy of Culture. By John J. McDermott by Erin McKenna
• The Dynamic Individualism of William James. By James Pawelski by Doug Anderson
• Brazil through the Eyes of William James: Diaries, Letters, and Drawings, 1865-1866. Edited by Maria Helena P.T. Machado by Douglas McDermid
• The Soul of Classical American Philosophy: The Ethical and Spiritual Insights of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce. By Richard P. Mullin by Mathew A. Foust

Visit the journal homepage here: http://williamjamesstudies.press.uiuc.edu/.

Cfp: "What Could Unfold Phenomenology in the Field of Psychotherapy?", 7th International Forum of Daseinsanalyse, Brussels, October 9-10, 2009.

En mai 2006, le conseil d’administration de la Fédération Internationale de Daseinsanalyse présidée par le Dr. Gion Fidel Condrau a entériné officiellement la demande du Centre et de l’Ecole Belge de Daseinsanalyse d’organiser leur septième forum. Il aura lieu les vendredi 9 et samedi 10 octobre 2009 à Bruxelles. Etant donné la complexité des traductions dans les trois langues officielles de la Belgique, nous avons décidé en accord avec la fédération internationale d’organiser ce congrès en langue anglaise tout en proposant une traduction simultanée en français, anglais et allemand pour les conférences du premier jour choisies par notre comité scientifique. Tous les conférenciers devront nous remettre le texte de leur conférence en anglais tout en pouvant s’exprimer, s’ils le désirent, en français, en anglais ou allemand. Nous leurs demandons néanmoins de privilégier la langue anglaise qui sera celle de tous les échanges ultérieurs. Sous la présidence d’honneur du Pr. Dr. Paul JONCKHEERE, ce congrès se posera une question fondatrice : « Que peut déployer la phénoménologie dans le champ de la psychothérapie?». Trois axes sont proposés : 1. L’art 2. Le monde de l’enfant et de l’adolescent 3. Conscience et Existence For more information, visit: http://www.daseinsanalyse.be/congres.htm.

PUB: Callaghan, Jane, and Rose Capdevila, eds. ASYLUM AND MIGRATION. ANNUAL REVIEW OF CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGY 6 (2008).

This issue of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology is devoted to critical work around globalisation and two of its emergent progeny: migration and asylum. The papers in this issue engage with the questions that arise around how we might theorise, understand and engage with the varying instantiations and positionings of these phenomena critically. The point of departure for us as editors is that traditionally dominant psychological approaches offer little to an understanding of the transgressive movements that are associated with transnational communication, migratory lifestyles and hybrid identities. Rather, we would argue, the modernist project of psychology, characterised as it is by categorisation (the processes of differentiation and distinction along with the symbolic construction of boundaries) serves to reinforce hegemonic ideologies of nation state, the tenaciousness of ethnic identity, and reified constructions of culture. These mainstream approaches can be seen to obscure the very ways in which national identities are challenged by the shifts that emerge as a consequence of a range of boundary transgressions. By drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological resources, these articles address these transgressions and problematise the incommensurabilities that are (re)produced when Psychology brings its knowledges to bear on issues of globalisation, migration and asylum. . . . Access the whole issue here: http://www.discourseunit.com/arcp/6.htm.

Angier, Natalie. "Mirrors Don't Lie. Mislead? Oh Yes." NEW YORK TIMES July 22, 2008.

For the bubbleheaded young Narcissus of myth, the mirror spun a fatal fantasy, and the beautiful boy chose to die by the side of a reflecting pond rather than leave his “beloved” behind. For the aging narcissist of Shakespeare’s 62nd sonnet, the mirror delivered a much-needed whack to his vanity, the sight of a face “beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity” underscoring the limits of self-love. Whether made of highly polished metal or of glass with a coating of metal on the back, mirrors have fascinated people for millennia: ancient Egyptians were often depicted holding hand mirrors. With their capacity to reflect back nearly all incident light upon them and so recapitulate the scene they face, mirrors are like pieces of dreams, their images hyper-real and profoundly fake. Mirrors reveal truths you may not want to see. Give them a little smoke and a house to call their own, and mirrors will tell you nothing but lies. To scientists, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of mirrors make them powerful tools for exploring questions about perception and cognition in humans and other neuronally gifted species, and how the brain interprets and acts upon the great tides of sensory information from the external world. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/science/22angi.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin.