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Ivan Karamazov's famous dictum 'If there is no God, anything is permitted' in fact appears as a central meta-theme in many of Dostoevsky's works. Western philosophers and writers repeatedly reinterpreted this idea. The most recent versions belong to the contemporary psychoanalytic and Freudian–Marxist philosophy. E.g. Jacques Lacan famously said that "if there is a God, then anything is permitted", and Slavoy Zizek attributed this to Dostoevsky himself. The paper demonstrates which versions of this saying are present in Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov, what meaning this meta-theme has within the integral structure of these literary works, and which of them express the author's own position. The paper also provides insight into those bright reinterpretations of Dostoevsky's central meta-theme that were given by certain representatives of contemporary European psychoanalytic philosophy. These readings are regarded as the significant attempts to explain the present from the standpoint of European psychoanalytic philosophy, made on the basis of elements of Dostoevsky's artistic thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical appraisals of dance/movement therapy (DMT) generally present a view that the profession's development occurred roughly simultaneously in quite different directions on the East coast and the West coast of the United States. The author, whose formative training was with Marian Chace in Washington, DC, and elsewhere, examines this origin myth from a new perspective. Having been invited in 2016 to join with a number of California-based dance/movement therapists on a panel on Jungian theoretical approaches to DMT (widely considered a quintessentially West coast paradigm), the author recalled an event that foreshadowed this panel presentation at the annual conference of the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA). Her resulting narrative looks back at a West coast visit that she made as ADTA president in 1972, and her encounter then with sister dance/movement therapists there. She charts several levels of interaction between the two 'coastal' approaches, along with significant and illuminating correspondences organizationally and theoretically, which she indicates continue to the present day. Sharing her reflections on the profession at these two distinctive points-in 1972 and in 2016-is meant both to preserve this history and to highlight commonalities across DMT, ideally enabling integration of pivotal aspects of the profession's core knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although apparently irrational, people with seemingly high moral standards routinely make immoral decisions or engage in morally questionable behavior. It appears as if under certain circumstances, people become in some enigmatic way blind to the immoral aspects of what they are doing or consequences of their immoral actions. This article focuses and reports on a psychoanalytic inquiry into the role of emotions and the unconscious management of unwanted emotions in promoting moral blindness. Emotions are essential to the conscience, self-sanctioning, and advancement of moral behavior. Notwithstanding moral ideations, a sufficiently strong counterwill may create incongruence between moral intentions and actual desires or behavior. The unwelcome experience of acute moral emotions such as guilt and anxiety is likely to activate a range of psychological defense mechanisms and unconscious processes to manage these emotions. It is argued that the management of these emotions through undue avoidance, inappropriate regulation, or lack of regulation, can bypass self-sanctioning. As result, the condition of moral blindness can develop or be sustained. The psychoanalytic explanations offered contribute to the understanding as to how emotions in combination with the unconscious mind can cause moral blindness in any person, notwithstanding high moral standards and good intentions. Improved understanding of moral blindness represents an important scientific step in improved understanding of our moral and immoral selves, with all its complexities, conflicts, and contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientific analyses of inequality inform interventions ranging from the material and political to the personal and psychological. At the extremes of this continuum, Marxian militants view the exploration of the inner lives of oppressed people as irrelevant to liberation, while psychoanalysts bemoan the naïveté of "depsychologized" conceptions of the social subject. While both approaches have been applied to disability inequality, an historical materialist view has dominated the discipline of disability studies, where attention has only recently turned to psychological aspects of oppression. This article provides a brief introduction to some key aspects of the social and economic marginalization experienced globally by the disability minority. Thereafter, the complex debates around materialist and psychological accounts of, and interventions upon, racism and disablism are explored and compared, with particular reference to the place of grief and loss in disability discourse. The clinical fragment which forms the title of this paper introduces an engagement with Cheng's model of racial melancholia, its conceptual origins and explanatory power. The balance of the paper considers how Cheng's work may help illuminate how it is that disability inequality, like that of race, may remain an obstinate reality notwithstanding material interventions aimed at overturning it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As I conceive it, existential psychotherapy has deep spiritual roots. Following in the tradition of existential-spiritual philosophy, I describe the nature of these roots, the implications of them for existential-integrative therapy, and a case vignette to illustrate their application. I conclude with a reflection on the importance of contextualizing and integrating existential themes into general therapeutic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The brunt of scholarship on Marie de France's Lanval portrays Lanval's fantastical 'Otherworld' as 'utopic' in the term's oldest sense: it is a world that has 'no place.' Such scholarship severs the linkage of Otherworld and reality indicated by the lai; the relationship between earth and Avalon, in which one achieves the other, is dis-placed for a simple and disjointed 'multivalence of reality' (Hodgson 23). This article discusses Lanval's Otherworld/Avalon using Anne Wilson's psychoanalytic approach to a fantastical text 'as if the text were a human subject.' Through this approach, this article hopes to reclaim the latent, universal significance of the notion of 'Otherworld.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychodynamic practitioners have been slow to evaluate their outcomes empirically and to disseminate these findings publicly. This historic stance is changing, with psychoanalytic leaders now calling for more empirical research and with important, recent contributions. This response lauds the JAMA paper as a developmental achievement among dynamic theorists, and as an example of the kind of interdisciplinary scholarship which is needed. The author offers a critique and raises questions about what constitutes the treatment in these quite disparate treatments, spanning 25 years. It compares their findings to those of a current, clinic-based longitudinal study ( N = 1,050), and asks if this latter study's findings might challenge or at least complicate some of the strong assertions Leichsenring and Rabung make. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses the contribution that psychoanalytic psychology has made to research on religious conversion and asks what implications it might have for pastoral practice. Some of conversion's most dramatic manifestations occur amid familial instability, or negative parental influences, that stand to be misinterpreted by religious leaders if their full psycho-spiritual context is not understood. The Freudian tradition has provided some context as to why people with rocky upbringings might undergo dramatic change. The data supports the conclusion that these radical conversions are much less a sign of direct supernatural influence than they are of a need for the converts to receive pastoral care in working through a 'crisis stage' of faith development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our approach to emotion in school mathematics draws on social semiotics, pedagogic discourse theory and psychoanalysis. Emotions are considered as socially organised and shaped by power relations; we portray emotion as a charge (of energy) attached to ideas or signifiers. We analyse transcripts from a small group solving problems in mathematics class, and from an individual student. The structural phase of analysis identifies positions available to subjects in the specific setting, using Bernstein's sociological approach to pedagogic discourse. The textual phase examines the use of language and other signs in interaction and describes the positionings taken up by particular pupils. We then focus on indicators of emotion, and find indications of excitement and anxiety, linked to participants' positionings. Finally we consider implications of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the influence of the intersubjective or relational perspective, guidelines for establishing the therapeutic frame in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are undergoing modification. Therapeutic interventions such as disclosing subjective reactions have a sound theoretical basis, but they must be executed judiciously within a context of general neutrality, anonymity, and abstinence. Novice practitioners ought not attempt the more difficult relational interventions until they have acquired experience and security in the basic tenets of psychoanalytic practice, including how to maintain the traditional therapeutic frame. Inexperience in knowing when and under what circumstances to attempt self-disclosure of therapist affect, and insecurity in examining one's countertransference, have the potential to exacerbate enactments and entanglements for beginning therapists, as is illustrated in a case example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many social workers experience a powerful bond with their profession and with the contributions of psychoanalysis. This paper explores these bonds and demonstrates the substantial overlap, and occasional divergence, which exists between these two important fields. It is especially gratifying to see the renewed emphasis on the treatment relationship in contemporary psychoanalytic writings because the relationship has always been central to social work practice. Finally, all psychoanalytic social workers are encouraged to invest themselves in transferring the legacy of their work to beginning social workers, social work students, and the generations of social workers that will follow them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]