The Dreams of Santiago Ramón y Cajal

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ehrlich
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Neurobiological Research ◽  
Intellectual Discipline ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Ramón Y Cajal

This book contains the first English translation of the lost dream diary of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934), the Nobel Prize-winning “father of modern neuroscience.” In the late nineteenth century, while scientific psychologists searched the inner world of human beings for suitable objects of study, Cajal discovered that the nervous system, including the brain, is composed of distinctly independent cells, later termed neurons. “The mysterious butterflies of the soul,” he romantically called them, “whose beating of wings may one day reveal to us the secrets of the mind.” Cajal was contemporary with Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), whose “secrets of the mind” radically influenced a century of thought. Although the two men never met, their lives and works were intimately related, and each is identified with the foundation of a modern intellectual discipline—neurobiology and psychoanalysis—still in conversation and conflict today. In personal letters, Cajal insulted Freud and dismissed his theories as lies. In order to disprove his rival, Cajal returned to an old research project and started recording his own dreams. For the last five years of his life, he abandoned his own neurobiological research and concentrated on psychological manuscripts, including a new “dream book.” Although his intention was to publish, the project was never released. The unfinished work was thought to be lost, until recently, when a Spanish book appeared claiming to feature the dreams of Cajal, along with the untold story of their complex journey into print.

scholarly journals Identity considerations for a psychology based on a complex epistemology

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Jaramillo Estrada
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Active Part ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Way

Born in the late nineteenth century, within the positivist paradigm, psychology has made important developments that have allowed its recognition in academia and labor. However, contextual issues have transformed the way we conceptualize reality, the world and man, perhaps in response to the poor capacity of the inherited paradigm to ensure quality of life and welfare of human beings. This has led to the birth and recognition of new paradigms, including complex epistemology, in various fields of the sphere of knowledge, which include the subjectivity, uncertainty, relativity of knowledge, conflict, the inclusion of "the observed" as an active part of the interventions and the relativity of a single knowable reality to move to co-constructed realities. It is proposed an approach to the identity consequences for a psychology based on complex epistemology, and the possible differences and relations with psychology, traditionally considered.

Remembering the Evolutionary Freud

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Young
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Psychotic Disorders ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Point Of No Return ◽  
Evolutionary Narratives ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

ArgumentThroughout his career as a writer, Sigmund Freud maintained an interest in the evolutionary origins of the human mind and its neurotic and psychotic disorders. In common with many writers then and now, he believed that the evolutionary past is conserved in the mind and the brain. Today the “evolutionary Freud” is nearly forgotten. Even among Freudians, he is regarded to be a red herring, relevant only to the extent that he diverts attention from the enduring achievements of the authentic Freud. There are three ways to explain these attitudes. First, the evolutionary Freud's key work is the “Overview of the Transference Neurosis” (1915). But it was published at an inopportune moment, forty years after the author's death, during the so-called “Freud wars.” Second, Freud eventually lost interest in the “Overview” and the prospect of a comprehensive evolutionary theory of psychopathology. The publication of The Ego and the Id (1923), introducing Freud's structural theory of the psyche, marked the point of no return. Finally, Freud's evolutionary theory is simply not credible. It is based on just-so stories and a thoroughly discredited evolutionary mechanism, Lamarckian use-inheritance. Explanations one and two are probably correct but also uninteresting. Explanation number three assumes that there is a fundamental difference between Freud's evolutionary narratives (not credible) and the evolutionary accounts of psychopathology that currently circulate in psychiatry and mainstream journals (credible). The assumption is mistaken but worth investigating.

Sigmund Freud and the Politics of Marginality

1974 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Rothman ◽  
Phillip Isenberg
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Scientific Success ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Liberal Position

Relying heavily upon Freud's greatest work, The Interpretation of Dreams, Professors Carl Schorske and William McGrath have attempted to increase our understanding of the origins of psychoanalysis. Both authors feel that the key to Freud's discoveries lies in his reaction to the sociopolitical realities of late nineteenth-century Vienna, and while the articles differ somewhat in emphasis their arguments are sufficiently similar so that they can be treated together. To Schorske and McGrath psychoanalysis had its origins in Freud's decision to give up his initial desire to mount a direct political (even revolutionary) attack on the inequities of the existing society for a “counter-political” psychology which enabled him to adjust to the existing political situation and even achieve a measure of scientific success. As a youth Freud had radical political aspirations and was even active in radical political organizations. However, the hopelessness of the liberal position in Vienna and the rise of anti-Semitic popular movements led Freud to believe that direct political action would not be successful. By reducing political conflict to father-son conflict Freud, like other liberals, would ignore the reality of the political and learn to live (albeit imperfectly) in a world which he could not influence. A career in science could bring recognition and at least partial acceptance, and thus a minimum of satisfaction at least.

Comparing the Lives of Cajal and Freud

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ehrlich
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Emotional Attachment ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Direct Encounter ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Anatomical Research ◽  
Ramón Y Cajal

Despite their many social and cultural differences, Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Sigmund Freud had more in common than one might naturally assume. Both attended and excelled in anatomy and medical courses in University. Freud even studied histology and contributed important discoveries to that field. However, Cajal entered the army between his schooling and his discovery of histology. Cajal’s brush with tuberculosis led to his first direct encounter with psychology. Experimenting with himself as a subject, he learned the transformative power of what is called “autosuggestion.” Although known for his purely anatomical research of the nervous system, Cajal initially was drawn to study the brain by an emotional attachment to his experience with psychology and the mind’s potential for personal improvement, in addition to his intellectual and artistic connection with the material itself.

Mind, Intelligence and Spirit

1998 ◽  
pp. 164-169
Author(s):  
Pascual F. Martínez-Freire
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Chinese Room ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Personal Project ◽  
Important Quality ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The mind is a collection of various classes of processes that can be studied empirically. To limit the field of mental processes we must follow the criteria of folk psychology. There are three kinds of mind: human, animal and mechanical. But the human mind is the paradigm or model of mind. The existence of mechanical minds is a serious challenge to the materialism or the mind-brain identity theory. Based on this existence we can put forward the antimaterialist argument of machines. Intelligence is a class of mental processes such that the mind is the genus and the intelligence is a species of this genus. The capacity to solve problems is a clear and definite criterion of intelligence. Again, like in the mind, the human intelligence is the paradigm of the intelligence. There are also three kinds of intelligence: human, animal and mechanical. Searle’s Chinese room argument is misleading because Searle believes that it is possible to maintain a sharp distinction between syntax and semantics. The reasonable dualism in the brain-mind problem defends the existence of brain-mental processes, physical-mental processes, and nonphysical-mental (spiritual) processes. Constitution of the personal project of life, self-consciousness and free volitions are examples of spiritual processes. Usually the intelligence has been considered the most important quality of human beings, but freedom, or the world of free volitions, is a more specific quality of human beings.

Vienna

2019 ◽  
pp. 76-116
Author(s):  
Andrew Thacker
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The City

This chapter explores the cultural history of Vienna as a story of modernity, space, and power, from the late nineteenth century construction of the Ringstrasse to the postwar building of Red Vienna. It traces the city’s particular version of the geographical emotions of modernism, concentrating upon how the city’s architectural spaces helped shape an ‘inward turn’ in the mood or stimmung (Heidegger) of the modernism produced here, often producing notions of spatial phobias. It also analyses the importance of coffee houses as cultural spaces, and the ‘outsider’ figure of Jewish writers and thinkers in the city. After discussion of key Viennese figures such as Sigmund Freud and Robert Musil, it then traces how Anglophone visitors such as John Lehmann, Naomi Mitchison (in her Vienna Diary), Jean Rhys, and Stephen Spender (in his neglected long poem Vienna) represented the mood of the city in the interwar years. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Carol Reed’s 1949 film The Third Man.

Catholic Hylomorphism, Disembodied Consciousness, and Temporary Bodies

2017 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 171-183
Author(s):  
Michael Potts ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Intermediate State ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Alternative Position ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
The Catholic Church

This paper considers the possibility of a disembodied conscious soul, arguing that a great deal of current research converges in a direction that denies the possibility of a bodiless consciousness for human beings. Contemporary attacks on Cartesianism also serve as attacks on the view of some hylomorphist Catholics, such as Thomas Aquinas, that there can be a disembodied consciousness between death and resurrection, a view that violates the Catechism of the Catholic Church. However, there may be a way out for the Catholic hylomorphist which was suggested by Dante—the possibility of a temporary body. The first section of the paper will summarize the contemporary attack against both the Cartesian soul and physicalist systems that reduce the mind to the brain. The alternative position proposed is that the human being is a psychosomatic unity at the level of the organism as a whole, and that both mind-body and brain-body dualism should be avoided. Such a position, I will argue, supports the notion that a disembodied soul, including a disembodied consciousness, is not possible for human beings. Finally, I will discuss Dante’s views on temporary bodies and explore three ways of understanding a temporary body, any of which can preserve a conscious intermediate state between death and resurrection.

‘A plastic power ministering to organisation’: interpretations of the mind–body relation in late nineteenth-century British psychiatry

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
General Medicine ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind

SynopsisLate nineteenth-century medico-psychological approaches to the mind–body problem are discussed in relation to psychiatry's theoretical constitution as a distinct ‘mind–body’ science and practice, and to John Hughlings Jackson's ‘doctrine of concomitance’. Psychiatric ‘explanations’ of the mind–body relation are interpreted as expressions of psychiatry's independent professional interests vis-à-vis neurology and general medicine.

scholarly journals Divine Impassibility: A Comparison of Weinandy's and Culpepper's Perspectives on Whether God Suffers

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Attributes ◽  
Vast Array ◽  
Hypostatic Union ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Suffering God

From being generally regarded as a philosophical and theological impossibility, since the late nineteenth century the idea that God suffers has become popular and attractive among a vast array of Christian theologians. Due to this shift, many theologians no longer see the need to argue for it and divine passibility has even been called the ‘new orthodoxy.’ The matter has not yet been laid to rest and is made more complex because the terms ‘suffering’ and ‘impassibility’ are used with a variety of connotations. At the heart of the debate is the desire to assert God’s personalised love for all human beings. If suffering is intrinsic to love, as some ‘passibilists’ state, only a suffering God can also be a God who loves humankind absolutely and unconditionally. Also at stake is the salvation of human beings. For some, a suffering God necessarily implies His lack of transcendence and thus His impotence. From their perspective, Jesus suffers only in His humanity. The divine attributes of omnipotence and immutability are wholly unaffected by the crucifixion. For others, the intimacy of the hypostatic union makes it possible to attribute suffering to the Son in His divinity. Furthermore, by deciding to grant free will to humankind, God makes Himself vulnerable; the eternal knowledge of the divine permission for evil establishes an ‘eternal wound’ in God. This essay will examine the contrasting positions of Thomas Weinandy and Gary Culpepper to assess how it can be said that God must or must not suffer.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document