Human Reconfigurations: Conversations on Being Therap(ist)eutic in Time of Covid

In this paper the authors’ aim is to reflect on the impact the Sars-CoV-2 Pandemic has had and is still having on our external and internal reality, in terms of individual and collective implications. In an open dialog with colleagues and patients, through a psychoanalytic viewpoint capable of respecting the suffering and the solutions identified by the Ego-subject within the “therapeutic dance”, it was possible during this period to observe movements and processes underlying these changes. Throughout the paper, the authors highlight both difficulties and resources that the patients put in play within the relational space and the need to “reconfigure” them; our focus is on the creativity and the repercussions this event, significant for the majority of the Society, has had on the practices and beliefs of each of us. The peculiar experience of loneliness and isolation, faced during this pandemic emergency, has profoundly transformed and shaped our living space, demanding a collective reorganization of the social space and thus forcing us to rethink our humanity. In the relational exchange, the possibility of finding one’s own space to exist and to inhabit one’s present, can be unfolded. A shared resilience is necessary to face current challenges.

COMPETITIVE ANXIETY IN SPORTS. THE VIEW OF AN ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGIST

The success of sports activity in a competitive situation is largely determined by psychological readiness, how the athlete’s mental apparatus is configured, how much the athlete is able to cope with the challenges of a competitive situation, the mental mechanisms that the athlete uses to cope with anxiety. In the article, the situations of competitive difficulties are considered from the point of view of the theory of object relations, microdynamic shifts in the intrapsychic reality of an athlete. In a situation of increased anxiety and the difficulties of its processing, primitive mental defenses can be involved: splitting, idealization, projection, denial of external and internal reality, projective identification. Their most typical consequences are feelings of self-doubt, a decrease in the accuracy of understanding and anticipation of the opponent’s actions, a feeling of muscle stiffness, underestimation/ overestimation of the opponent, a decrease in the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of sports action. The article presents two cases of athletes of different sports qualifications, on the basis of which the manifestations and consequences of these primitive forms of protection are discussed. It also describes the specifics of the position of a psychologist in sports, the importance of understanding the mental reality of an athlete, the needs behind anxiety, as well as the need for help in integrating the “I”, despite the prevailing target orientation for a quick result.

Bierce, Bioy Casares, and Borges: The Mirrors and Labyrinths of Intertextuality

This article analyzes the intersection of works by Ambrose Bierce, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Jorge Luis Borges as mirror images of themes and descriptions in describing a miraculous occurrence, albeit only in the labyrinthine mind of the protagonist, often categorized within the genre of the fantastic. The article’s intertextual approach focuses on sensorial perceptions that only grant validity to an internal reality (what the mind interprets) rather than to an external reality (what the eyes see). All three works in this study are concerned with a criminal condemned to death who seeks to prolong his life. The protagonists have similar responses, although their motivations are different.

O DINAMISMO DA EDUCAÇÃO A DISTÂNCIA E HÍBRIDA DA AMÉRICA LATINA E BRASIL

RESUMONum momento da educação digital, que tende a se consolidar por meio do desenvolvimento de diferentes tecnologias e inovações, as instituições de Ensino Superior enfrentam desafios alusivos às propostas didático-pedagógicas tecnológicas, às estratégias que envolvem o processo de ensino-aprendizagem e aos investimentos referentes às diferentes modalidades presencial e a distância. Apresenta-se nesta reflexão elementos relevantes relacionados à educação híbrida e a distância, dados da América e do Brasil. As transformações no Ensino Superior estão relacionadas também às condições da realidade externa, interna em relação aos investimentos e às perspectivas educacionais, que são impulsionadas pelas demandas sociais, do mundo do trabalho, da globalização e do novo papel do conhecimento. O hibridismo tem se consolidado em experiências diferenciadas e entende-se que este não pode ser considerado como um modelo estático, mas que tende a transformar o contexto no qual está inserido cada vez mais, com os resultados de reflexões acadêmicas a respeito de propostas implantadas, como a sala de aula invertida, uso de diversos aplicativos, entre outros, no Ensino Superior em diferentes países.Palavras-chave: Educação a Distância. Educação Híbrida. Ensino Superior.ABSTRACTAt a time of digital education, which tends to consolidate itself through the development of different technologies and innovations, Higher Education Institutions face challenges related to technological didactic-pedagogical proposals, the strategies that involve the teaching-learning process and the related investments the different modalities, in person and at a distance. In this reflection, relevant elements related to hybrid and distance education are presented, data from America and Brazil. The transformations in Higher Education are also related to the conditions of the external, internal reality in relation to investments and educational perspectives, which are driven by social demands, work, globalization and the new role of knowledge. Hybridism has been consolidated in different experiences and it is understood that this cannot be considered as a static model, but that it tends to transform the context in which it is increasingly inserted, with the results of academic reflections on proposals implemented as the Flipped Classroom, use of various applications, among others, in Higher Education in different countries.Keywords: Distance Education. Hybrid Education. University education.

Psychology of the exoteric: on the specifics of spiritual work at the initial stage of mastering esoteric knowledge and experience

The key ideas of esotericism regarding the spiritual transformation of a person in this article are considered in the context of psychological inner work on oneself at the initial (exoteric) stage of mastering esoteric knowledge and experience. It is noted that the external world penetrates into the inner world of a person, "imprinted", becoming an internal reality. This reality has various characteristics, acquires the psychological status of positive and negative emotions. In this regard, esoteric work as a whole is a "guide" for orientation in the space of the inner world and recommendations for changing internal states.

Embedded dialogue and dreams: the worlds and accessibility relations of Inception

In this article, Text World Theory (Gavins, 2007; Werth, 1999) and Ryan’s model of fictional worlds (1991a, 1991b) are both applied to Nolan’s blockbuster film, Inception (2010) to explore the multi-layered architecture of the narrative. The opening two scenes of Nolan’s screenplay are analysed using Text World Theory, with particular attention to the embedded nature of character dialogue, or, more generally, ‘represented discourse’ (Herman, 1993), otherwise known as Direct Speech (Leech and Short, 2007). Based on this analysis, I suggest a modification to the way in which Text World Theory deals with represented discourse, which improves the framework’s applicability to all text types. Moving from the micro-analysis of the screenplay text, to a macro-analysis of the film narrative as a whole, I outline the various different worlds that make up the reality, dream and ‘limbo’ layers in the film, explaining how most of the action takes place at a remove from the world at the centre of the textual system. I use Deictic Shift Theory’s terms PUSH and POP (Galbraith, 1995) to describe the movements between the ontological layers of the narrative and suggest that these terms are better suited to describe hierarchies of ontology rather than horizontal deictic shifts. Ryan’s taxonomy of accessibility relations is used to describe the ways in which the film differs from reality, as well as the ways in which the dreams differ from the internal reality of the film. The complex ontological structure and asymmetric accessibility relations between the worlds are ascribed as the reason for many viewers’ difficulty in processing the film’s narrative. With its attention to discourse-world factors, Text World Theory is then used to account for the myriad of reactions to Inception – as expressed on online discussion forums – which range from engagement and enjoyment to frustration and resistance.

Changing While Remaining the Same

Aging is a clearly evolutionary process that first discreetly and then more starkly modifies social references, cognitive potentialities, and above all bodily integrity and appearance. External reality cannot avoid encountering the internal reality of each one of us. Women and men, with their variable and singular narcissistic and identificatory weaknesses and resources, are invited or even compelled to deal, in a way that is both new and constantly being modified, with loss and incompleteness, with the inevitable nature of our finite destiny, the disenchantment of things left unfinished. This research, based on a qualitative analysis of 110 Rorschach protocols gathered from a random group of men and women – ordinary people between 50 and 90 years of age – allows us to appreciate the quality and perhaps the particularity of the expressions of these mental problem configurations in which the question of nonintegrity proves to be crucial. The results demonstrate how the Rorschach Test can be useful in understanding the diversity of self-representation, by avoiding turning a demographic group into a clinical entity. They show that, contrary to what the first research works in psychoanalysis and projective psychology suggested, aging in itself does not lead to a decrease of the mental processes.