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Freud (and later commentators) have failed to explain how the origins of psychoanalytical theory began with a positivist investment without recognizing a dual epistemological commitment: simply, Freud engaged positivism because he believed it generally equated with empiricism, which he valued, and he rejected "philosophy," and, more specifically, Kantianism, because of the associated transcendental qualities of its epistemology. But this simple dismissal belies a deep investment in Kant's formulation of human reason, in which rationality escapes natural cause and thereby bestows humans with cognitive and moral autonomy. Freud also segregated human rationality: he divided the mind between (1) an unconscious grounded in the biological and thus subject to its own laws, and (2) a faculty of autonomous reason, lodged in consciousness and free of natural forces to become the repository of interpretation and free will. Psychoanalysis thus rests upon a basic Kantian construction, whereby reason, through the aid of analytic techniques, provides a detached scrutiny of the natural world, i.e. the unconscious mental domain. Further, sovereign reason becomes the instrument of self-knowing in the pursuit of human perfection. Herein lies the philosophical foundation of psychoanalytic theory, a beguiling paradox in which natural cause and autonomous reason - determinism and freedom - are conjoined despite their apparent logical exclusion.

According to the Penrose's law, outlined on the basis of a comparative study of European statistics, there is an inverse relationship between the number of psychiatric beds and prison population. Based on international data, interrelationship among prison, asylum, psychiatric disease and criminal action are investigated in the present study, paying particular attention to the event of deinstitutionalization. Prevalence of mental and addictive diseases as well as psychological disturbances in prison is characterized by epidemiological data. As proposed by Penrose, an inverse relationship between the number of psychiatric beds and prison population can be observed in Hungary, too. To get a deeper insight into the mainstream of the events, economic, sociological, philosophical, as well as therapeutic aspects initializing deinstitutionalization are highlighted in the course of analysis. On the basis of data, it can be assumed that members the same population are confined to both systems. The author arrives at the conclusion that deinstitutionalization has in fact led to trans-institutionalization, because of, on one hand, the limited capacity of community treatment facilities; on the other hand, the community treatment itself cannot provide adequate treatment options to those suffering from severe, chronic mental diseases or comorbid states. In addition, the rate of financial support and the methods for prevention and treatment are insufficient to protect patients from the effects of revolving door.

The split between the theoretical branch and the practice--oriented art of memory psychology has existed for centuries. Whereas the theory of memory involved creation of elaborate models to elucidate the structure and processes of memory, in contrast the art of memory embraced techniques to enhance memory performance. One might expect a close relationship between practice and theory. This is, however, not the case. Theorists and memory artists criticized, fought, or ignored each other, as is demonstrated by examples from the 16th to the 19th century.

Background: Public-health psychiatry is concerned, on the one hand, to ensure access to mental health services for all persons in need and, on the other hand, to advance knowledge of the social and environmental risk factors of mental disorders, and to establish a basis for preventive action. It is unclear how far current European Community (EC) policies will serve to achieve these objectives. This study aimed to review the mental health reform policies adopted in European countries since 1970, and to identify the main factors impeding progress in practice and research., Method: The relevant publications and statistical documentation for EC countries over the period in question were analysed., Results: Despite a broad consensus on principles and aims, the implementation of mental health reforms in EC countries has been slow. Progress is subject to constraints imposed by service infrastructures, reductions in state responsibility, changing public attitudes, and growth of relative poverty. Much inferential evidence has accumulated on the importance of social risk factors such as unemployment and socio-economic deprivation, but most studies have had to rely on analysis of ecological correlations, based on administrative data, and there is an urgent need for more direct research making use of case- control and cohort study designs., Conclusions: EC harmonization will lead to improved mental health care only if the basic principles of public-health psychiatry are adopted and put into practice.

In "re-membering" the atrocities inflicted on her body and those of her comrades in the Nazi concentration camps, the French memoirist Charlotte Delbo avoids the linear time scheme and the metaphors for self that have traditionally defined autobiography as a genre. Instead, her depiction of time is circular, and the depiction of self and other is that of dismembered bodies and fragmented psyches. As conditions for the French political prisoners improved late in the war, numbed emotions thawed and Delbo's group began to recapture their pre-Auschwitz identity by reviving their pre-Auschwitz language. In recording testimonies garnered more than twenty years after the war, Delbo demonstrates that although the women were forever frozen in the time-space continuum of Auschwitz, they were also bonded into something larger than the sum of their once "dismembered selves."

This article examines the frayed relationship between psychology and Holocaust history and its consequences for scholarship, arguing the need for a reconciliation between the fields. The causes for the split are traced in part to a reductionist approach to methodological, conceptual, and moral issues common in psychology, an approach particularly misleading in work on the Holocaust. On the other hand, historians continue to make the subjective motivations of both perpetrators and victims a central concern-an implicitly psychological question. Consequently, implicit (mis)conceptions of psychology affect-distort-long-standing historical debates. Zuckier argues that a misconception of psychological intentionality (unwittingly shared by both opposing sides) has set a wrong historical agenda and led to "fluke-and-freak" accounts of the Holocaust in which the protagonists are alternately said to act out their essential dispositions or to be the victims of their own psychological compulsions and accidental history. The article explores the effects of such conceptions in the study not only of perpetrators and victims, but also rescuers, witnesses, survivors, and their children. It concludes with an appeal for a more differentiated interactional approach.