Author: Diane Jeske File Type: pdf Thomas Jefferson and Edward Coles were men of similar backgrounds, yet they diverged on the central moral wrong of this countrys history the former remained a self-justified slave-holder, while the latter emancipated his slaves.What led these men of the same era to choose such different paths? They represent one of numerous examples in this work wherein examining the ways in which people who perform wrong and even evil actions attempt to justify those actions both to others and to themselves illuminates the mistakes that we ourselves make in moral reasoning. How do we justify moral wrongdoing to ourselves? Do we even notice when we are doing so? The Evil Within demonstrates that the study of moral philosophy can help us to identify and correct for such mistakes. In applying the tools of moral philosophy to case studies of Nazi death camp commandants, American slave-holders, and a psychopathic serial killer, Diane Jeske shows how we can become wiser moral deliberators. A series of case studies serve as extended real-life thought experiments of moral deliberation gone awry, and show us how four impediments to effective moral deliberation -- cultural norms and pressures, the complexity of the consequences of our actions, emotions, and self-deception -- can be identified and overcome by the study and application of moral philosophy. Jeske unsparingly examines the uncomfortable parellels between the moral deliberations of those who are transparently evil (e.g. psychopaths, Nazis), and our own moral justifications. The Evil Within ultimately argues for incorporating moral philosophy into moral education, so that its tools can become common currency in moral deliberation, discussion, and debate.**

Author: WMO File Type: pdf

Author: Judith Stamps File Type: pdf Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan have received much recognition as communications theorists, but Judith Stamps argues that the scope and value of their work extends far beyond this. She demonstrates that Innis and McLuhan used their studies of media to develop a critique of Western thought and culture and that their insights, derived from the North American experience, added a new, media-based perspective to such a theory. Using a combination of historical and textual analysis, Stamps shows that Innis and McLuhan were dialecticians who developed an alternative route to a critique of reason through a media-based study of the limits of the positivist traditions that still inform much of Western thought. She demonstrates that Innis and McLuhan created variations of the negative dialectics proposed by members of the Frankfurt school, specifically Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. In doing so Innis and McLuhan invented a uniquely Canadian version of critical theory, a fusion of critical political economy and critical rationality associated with the early Frankfurt school. Unthinking Modernity raises issues about how modernity can best be understood and offers unique perspectives on how economics, politics, and media intertwine to create personal and social consciousness.

Author: Edgar A. Levenson File Type: pdf Edgar A. Levenson is a key figure in the development of interpersonal psychoanalysis whose ideas remain influential.Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and the Enigma of Consciousness builds on his previously published work in his key areas of expertise such as interpersonal psychoanalysis, transference and countertransference, and the philosophy of psychoanalysis, and sets his ideas into contemporary context. Combining a selection of Levensons own writings with extensive discussion and analysis of his work by Stern and Slomowitz, it provides an invaluable guide to how his most recent, mature ideas may be understood and applied by contemporary psychoanalysts in their own practice.? This book explores how the rational algorithm of psychoanalytic engagement and the mysterious flows of consciousness interact this has traditionally been thought of as dialectical, an unresolvable duality in psychoanalytic practice. Analysts move back and forth between the two perspectives, rather like a gestalt leap, finding themselves listening either to the interpersonal or to the intrapsychic in what feels like a self-state leap. But the interpersonal is not in dialectical opposition to the intrapsychic rather a manifestation of it, a subset. The chapters pick up from the themes explored in The Purloined Self, shifting the emphasis from the interpersonal field to the exploration of the enigma of the flow of consciousness that underlies the therapeutic process. This is not the Freudian Unconscious nor the consciousness of awareness, but the mysterious Jamesian matrix of being. Any effort at influence provokes resistance and refusal by the patient. Permitted a working space, the patient ultimately cures herself. How that happens is a mystery wrapped up in the greater mystery of unconscious process, which in turn is wrapped into the greatest philosophical and neurological enigma of allthe nature of consciousness.? ul l*l ul Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and the Enigma of Consciousness will be highly engaging and readable Levensons witty essayist style and original perspective will make it greatly appealing and accessible to undergraduate and postgraduate students of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, as well as practitioners in these fields. **Review *Much like the subject matter of this wonderful book, Edgar Levenson is an enigma. Even though he has published for over fifty years, his work is continuously contemporary. Even though he is the most well-known and subtle theorist of interpersonal psychoanalysis, he is a decisive critic of theory and theorizing. Levenson has made a truly original contribution to our understanding of psychoanalytic process, but at the same time, he has repeatedly warned against codifying this understanding into a specific technique of method or treatment. He has always been our foremost student and authority on process, and much like analytic process itself, Levenson eludes capture. He describes the ineffable nature of our work in a way that continues to change, to evolve, never settling onto a single set of concepts that might be elevated to a new orthodoxy. He challenges us to think anew, to experience with a fresh awareness never reduced to our conceptualizations. * In this new book, we see Levensons work at a new level of maturity, leap-frogging over the pervasive conundrums of our field today. Psychoanalysis across the world is finally coming to terms with concerns raised by Levenson since the beginning of his work. Current international interest in intersubjectivity, mutual influence, field phenomena, the limits of understanding and the importance of negative capacity have been continued interests for Levenson, raised in response to the fixity of a psychoanalytic theorizing that has not taken into account the effects of theory in process itself. This is Levensons purview. But in his recent work, Levenson moves further, situating internal private experience in relation to the intersubjective, proposing a nuanced reflection on the role of perception in psychoanalytic process, offering as always a perspective that subtends dichotomies, but that here also finds new integrations without ever simply settling for making sense. One finds a unique pleasure in the encounter with Levenson. More than any other psychoanalyst, we read what Levenson writes, and we have an incarnation of his presence. Reading becomes an experience with him, a process in itself. We find ourselves shifted, in spite of ourselves, out of our familiar stance of knowing into an experience of being, into an encounter with the ineffable, always tilted from familiar moorings in a way that leads us to consider, and more importantly, to experience our work afresh. This is the Levenson idiom, one that offers a rare opportunity to play with him as he pursues psychoanalytic process and the enigmatic nature of experience. Jack Foehl, Ph.D., ABPP, Training & Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Supervisor and Faculty, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and Harvard Medical School, Associate Professor (Adjunct) NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. About the Author Edgar A. Levenson*, M.D,is Fellow Emeritus, Training, Supervisory Analyst and Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute. He is Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychology at the NYU Graduate Studies Division, Honorary Fellow at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, Honorary Member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Life Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, and Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Winner of the 2006 Mary S. Sigourney Award, he is author of over110 publications, including Fallacy of Understanding (1972), The Ambiguity of Change (1983) and The Purloined Self* (2016). hr Alan Slomowitz, Ph.D., is a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology. He is a Supervisor of Psychotherapy at the White Institute, on the Editorial Board of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and the Internet Editor of the Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Action blog. Dr. Slomowitz edited the new release of The Purloined Self (2016) with Dr. Levenson. Dr. Slomowitz is in private practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in New York City.