le beau pendu

"On the 21st of September, 1851, 36 leaders of the Hungarian Freedom War were sentenced to death by an Austrian Military Court. Among them were Lajos Kossuth, Regent of Hungary, Bertalan Szemere, the last Prime Minister, several ministers, generals and politicians. On the following day 36 gallows were erected in the courtyard and a tablet with the name of a condemned man was hung from each gibbet. The 36 condemned men were not present. They had fled from Austrian vengeance and were sentenced and executed “in contumaciam”, in effigy, in their absence. One of these “hanged” men was Count Gyula (Julius) Andrassy. He was born in 1823 and died in 1890 -having outlived his own execution by some 40 years"

(from the 1929 NYT Obituary)

The cause of the Magyar patriots was a hopeless one. Kossuth fled to London, and subsequently to this country. Andrassy retired to Constantinople, where he posed as an ambassador of independent Hungary until the Austrian government demanded his surrender. Andrassy found refuge in London. He was in possession of immense revenues. His personality was most fascinating. Accomplished, eloquent, a man of striking courage, the young Magyar noble became the lion of fashionable London. At the outbreak of the Crimean War, Andrassy went to Paris. He became one of the friends of the court party and the personal friend of Louis Napoleon.

Count Gyula Andrassy, gentleman, revolutionary, genius and hero - here's to his memory.

Andrassy Avenue statue pic from Disappearing Budapest:

Armenian Relativity Theory vs Time Cube

Trying to devise an experiment to test between the most plausible and well-formulated solutions to the current problems in the integration of relativity and quantum mechanics. Here are the alternative theories. Suggestions welcome:

Timecube theory predicts that

Cubic Nature is Omnific,
Infinite, Ineffable and
on Harmonic duty today. Singularity has no God
within "The Universe of
Opposite Corner Life" -
opposite hemispheres
and opposite sexes - by
which all Earth life exist.
For as long as you dumbass,
educated stupid and evil
bastards IGNORE Cubic
Creation, your sons and
daughters deserve to die
and be maimed in foreign
lands - while killing innocent
women and children. Keep
ignoring me you evil asses
and observe the slaughter of
your children protecting the
oil barons ripping off their
families back home.

Whereas Armenian Relativity theory postulates:

1. All physical laws have the same mathematical(tensor) form in all inertial systems.

2. There exists a boundary velocity, denoted as , between micro and macro worlds, which is the same in all inertial systems.

3. The simplest transformation equations of the moving particle between two inertial systems and we have only when relative velocity, measured in two inertial systems, satisfy the relation .

These first two postulates are almost the same as the Special Relativity Theory postulates, but the third postulate is quite new and necessary for receiving the simplest transformation equations without ambiguity problems in orientation of the inertial systems axes.

All authors that I know, derive the Lorentz transformation equations using two Cartesian coordinates or as a general way using four Cartesian coordinates . Nobody (that I know of) uses vector notations to derive general transformation equations for relativity. Many authors artificially construct general Lorentz transformation equations in vector form using special Lorentz transformation equations and therefore those generalized results cannot be correct. The laws of logic tell us, that we need to go from the general case to the special case. That's why we derive our New transformation equations using the most general considerations and adapting vector notation. The great merit of the vectors in the theoretical and applied problems is that equations describing physical phenomena can be formulated without reference to any particular coordinate system, without worry that coordinate systems axes are parallel to each other or not. However, in actually carrying out the calculations we need to find a suitable coordinate system (our third postulate) where equations can have the simplest form. Therefore to receive the correct transformation we need to use only vector notations and focus on it entirely. Using this new promising approach and one additional postulate we derive truly correct transformation equations in the most general and simplest form.

The other question can arise - why are we calling our newly received transformation equations the Armenian Transformation Equations? The answer is very simple. This research was done for more than 20 years in Armenia by an Armenian and the manuscripts were written in Armenian. This research is purely from the mind of an Armenian and from the Holy land of Armenia, therefore we can rightfully call these newly derived transformation equations the Armenian Transformation Equations and the theory the Armenian Relativity Theory or ART.

I call on all of the world's most brilliant physicists to emerge from their mother's basement and stop chewing on their first and only girlfriend's rotting dismembered ears for long enough to devise a means to determine which of these two coherent, consistent and eminently plausible theories is correct.

Calling for

While I have some sympathy for the 'linguistic turn', I must admit that some of its effects are both deleterious and absurd. Witness, for example, this piece of news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7366301.stm

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is to launch a new campaign to eliminate deaths from malaria, to mark the first World Malaria Day.

The disease causes over a million deaths a year, with 90% of all cases occurring in Africa.

Mr Ban wants all of Africa to have access to basic measures to control the disease by the end of 2010.

"We need desperately to step up our efforts to roll back malaria", he says in a statement.

More than half a billion people are infected with malaria each year, and the disease kills a child every 30 seconds.

Despite this, it is preventable and treatable.

Bed nets

In a video message for a UN World Malaria Day event, the Secretary-General announces an initiative offering household sprays and bed nets treated with insecticide "to all people at risk, especially women and children in Africa" by the end of 2010.

He is calling for:

• Bed nets for an extra 500 million people
• More malaria clinics and preventative treatment centres
• More training for community health workers
• Encouragement of research into the disease

Mr Ban describes this as a "bold but achievable vision", saying that several African countries "have made dramatic strides in malaria control".

But he adds: "the most affected nations remain off track to reach the goal of halting and reversing the incidence of the disease."

Previous efforts to control malaria have proved less than successful.

In 1998 the Roll Back Malaria initiative aimed to halve malaria deaths by 2010 - but halfway through the programme deaths had actually risen.

Reversing the trend of increase in malaria and other diseases is one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals, aimed at halving poverty and improving the quality of life by 2015


As though malaria was simply an element in the text whose end can be 'called for'. As the article itself mentions, previous calls for the halving of malaria deaths coincided with their increase. Inasmuch as malaria admits of a talking cure, it is within the realm of properly political discourse which, as the Chairman teaches us, issues directly from the barrel of a gun.

More cross-posting

Links to free online Journals with capsule descriptions:

http://jwsr.ucr.edu/volumes/vol13/index2.html

Journal of World Systems research: A refereed journal of World-Systems Analysis published under the auspices of the Institute for Research on World Systems (UC Riverside)

http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal

"Cosmos and History is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal of natural and social philosophy. It serves those who see philosophy's vocation in questioning and challenging prevailing assumptions about ourselves and our place in the world, developing new ways of thinking about physical existence, life, humanity and society, so helping to create the future insofar as thought affects the issue. Philosophy so conceived is not exclusively identified with the work of professional philosophers, and the journal welcomes contributions from philosophically oriented thinkers from all disciplines."

NOTE: C+H is inspired by the work of contemporary philosopher Alain Badiou

http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs-journals

A huge database of open-access journals by the makers of Open Journal Systems software.

http://www.mental-nls.com/

Mental/Mental Online/Lacanian Praxis

A titularly mercurial journal of contemporary Lacanian thought.

http://stat-www.berkeley.edu/users/m...ejournals.html

List of mathematics e-journals, some of which are free.

http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/

Radical Philosophy - Socialist and Feminist philosophy.

http://www.newleftreview.org/

the famous NLR. Current issues are free, back issues subscription only.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/JCA/default.htm

Journal of Caribbean Archaeology

The Journal of Caribbean Archaeology is intended to provide a refereed publication outlet for archaeological research in the Caribbean and surrounding area. The development of our understanding of both the historic and prehistoric past in the Caribbean has been hampered by the lack of a journal devoted expressly to archaeology in the region, and archaeologists have resorted to publishing in a variety of venues. Many of these are not widely or readily available or are typically associated with another discipline. There is no journal devoted specifically to Caribbean archaeology, and it is this void that the Journal of Caribbean Archaeology seeks to fill.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/journal/

Stanford Journal of Archaeology

title is self-explanatory. Current issue free, back issues cost.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Humanities-p1+History

thefreelibrary's list of history journals. They have other stuff too.

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc0337/phil...lectronic.html

Project MUSE's list of philosophy journals. Many are free.

note: Some are these are of remarkably poor quality - undergrad journals and such. Caveat emptor.

http://www.hist-analytic.org/

not actually a journal, but really cool. A collection of useful resources in the history of analytic philosophy. Good primary source material.

Dialogue on the CPI(M)

This is a Q+A between me and another poster on a forum about the Indian Maoists. I think it is some of my better geopolitically oriented writing, so I'm reposting it here for (snicker) posterity. It has been minimally edited for narrative flow and to preserve anonymity.

Originally Posted by X

in the past you've come across portraying this possibility in South Asia as a good thing (i.e. Communists gaining strength, possibly power, and the U.S. retreating rather than building up good relations).

I think it is undeniable that, at least in the case of Nepal, the people's war is laudable. The king and royal family expropriated the countries wealth to a huge extent (all of the country's airlines closed when he traveled, for example). The idea of a contemporary nation still holding to the doctrine of the King's two Bodies strains the imagination, but as a point of fact this was the case until (almost literally) last Thursday.

Quote:

Is is, and why? It sounds like something that would derail the upward trajectory of the place. (Unless that is the good thing? )

India's development is indeed rapid, but hardly even. This is the main concern of CPI(M) and one I find hard to dismiss. The multinational corporations that CPI(M) initially reacted against have a firm track record of buying up tribally owned land, shunting the inhabitants off to concentration camps (let's not mince words here) and permanently destroying their livelihoods. Salwa Judum and other government-sponsored death squads retaliate brutally against any natives who wish to preserve their lands and ways of life. High caste landowners (as I'm sure you're aware, the abolition of the caste system is more nominal than real in the hinterlands) are free to hire private security forces to kill, torture and rape those who oppose their interests (and their families). It is, of course, possible that conditions under the CPI(M) would be even worse, but given their level of popular support (they have persisted for over 30 years now - most of the time depending on local populations for everything) and given the parallel developments in Nepal (where the CPN(M) won an overwhelming electoral majority after having governed large parts of the country in parallel with the Nepalese government - going to show that it is not simply a case of choosing the devil you don't know over the one you do), I believe that the CPI(M) has the interests of India's dispossessed more clearly in mind than the government, and that they are competent to act on this concern from a position of power.

EDIT: I think this is worth a lengthy quote, to demonstrate both how royally screwed up resource allocation is in rural India and the extent to which the rural areas are being bled dry to serve the booming megalopolises. It's like Chinatown with a billion victims.

http://www.navdanya.org/earthdcracy/...itz-letter.htm

The 24x7 scheme being funded by the World Bank for two South Delhi zones is also a privatization scheme since the contract is to be awarded to global corporations like Vivendi, Suez, Saur.

The Statement by Michael Carter, Country Director of the World Bank in India, made at the peak of the debate on World bank driven privatisation in Delhi has stated that the World Bank funds, will be used to “award management contracts to professional operators” in two zones of Delhi. The implication is that the water workers and the engineers of the Delhi Jal Board are not “professional”. There is also the implication that the other zones in Delhi can be denied reliable water supply, as all financial and management focus is limited to two zones. This is a recipe of water apartheid, not improving urban water supply. The free water provided to the poor is being stopped by stopping water provisioning through public taps and tankers to slums. While referring to the poor in the 24x7 schemes, the Bank is hiding the fact that even the poor will have to pay for water. If supplying water to two zones with 14 lakh population will cost $ 250 million, then on the World Bank model, Delhi’s 13 million will need $ 2.5 billion. This is a recipe for financial non-sustainability and permanent indebtedness. When the World Bank’s past lending has left our rivers and ground water aquifers dry, the tacky consumerist slogan of 24x7 can only bring water twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, to privileged enclaves by diverting it from other users – the rural and urban poor. 24x7 projects are in effect 24x7 drying up of our rivers, 24x7 denial of water to the economically underprivileged, politically marginalized communities; 24x7 guaranteed super profits for MNC’s.

Originally Posted by X

What I was really interested in is if you think Communism is the way to go for India. Would it raise the standard of living the way it did in China?

Put simply, I don't know. We'll know a lot more when we see how the CPN(M) does in power. If you're interested, i posted a long interview with Prachanda in the SP (under a thread about nepalese maoists). What I do believe is that it is imperative, almost categorically so, to put an end to the unmitigated rapine that India's rural poor are suffering under the IMF/multinational/GOI (government of India) death pact. When subsistence farmers are being deprived of their groundwater for the sake of Coca Cola and Pepsico bottling plants, one simply has no time to carefully consider a series of alternatives. I support the CPI(M) in their people's war, while reserving the right to withdraw my support in the future.

Quote:

There are a lot of differences between India and China. The average IQ among the poor is much lower in India.

This may be true, but we should be careful. China's rural population is basically inaccessible to psychometricians. The (quite high) national IQ is based, AFAICT, entirely on surveys of urban-dwellers.

Quote:

My concern is that Communism might render it somewhere halfway between China and Zimbabwe, and possibly a failed state. Yes, capitalism and free markets are going to make the rich richer, however a portion of that trickles down. This is something we can be fairly certain of.

My concern is that the combined and uneven development of India's urban and rural areas (especially if the 24/7 scheme is implemented) will lead to an exacerbation of the already critical overburdening of India's urban centers and, ultimately, economic disaster. Furthermore, I would be willing to bet that this would happen well before any possible benefits of IMF led development could reach India's rural communities. More likely, everyone will move to the cities and the subcontinent will burn from the inside out.

Crews at it again

Here's a marvelous piece of abject dishonesty from everyone's favorite Freud-denier Fred Crews:

"One rational way of judging whether Freudian propositions have found empirical support might be to bypass the print wars between Freudians and anti-Freudians and simply look at the research being done in academic psychology departments. A recent citation study (by Robbins et al.) found that, for several decades now, the major journals of the field have completely ignored all psychoanalytic claims. Nor, I believe, can you find a single course, in the psychology department of any reputable American university, that treats Freudianism as anything other than a historical curiosity."

First, let's note that he adds the bizarre and parochial qualifier 'American'. This should not be read as an assertion that serious psychology is only done in America (at least, I hope not) but rather as an attempt to add a grain of plausibility to an otherwise preposterous statement. After all, British universities like London, Sheffield, Essex and so forth all have specifically Psychoanalytic clinical certification programs and, in the case of U. London an endowed Sigmund Freud professorship.

Second, let's assume that by 'American' he means 'in the United States of America'. Canadian and Argentine Universities, for two, are frequently psychoanalytically oriented. Mariano Ben Plotkin has written a book about the reception of Psychoanalysis in Argentina which concludes that not only clinical psychiatric practice but all aspects of Argentine life have been given a deep-seated psychoanalytic bent.

Third, even giving him this, we find that he is utterly incorrect. Not only do several US schools actively promote Psychoanalysis, but about a quarter of the teaching faculty in Psychology at UC Berkeley (where Crews is a prof. Emeritus) identify as Psychoanalysts.

As for the citation study, since Crews neglects to identify it with anything other than the lead author's name, I can't find it, but I would like to know exactly which 'psychoanalytic claims' he is talking about, and the extent to which they actually are 'ignored'. In any case, this is question-begging. Empirically-minded psychodynamically-oriented scholars are quick to acknowledge that their claims are not widely credited by the heavily CBT dominated Psychological establishment, but they argue (in some cases convincingly) that the latter has actually validated their claims through studies that don't make any refernce to psychoanalysis whatsoever (like the construct validity of Rorschach tests compared to the MMPI)

Crews makes another obnoxious and patently false assertion with regards to the neuro-Psychoanalyst Mark Solms:

"What Mr. Guterl neglected to mention was that Solms is a psychoanalyst, an editor of Freud's writings, an official of the Anna Freud Centre, and an ardent public advocate whose views about psychoanalysis-&-dreaming are by no means shared by his scientific colleagues, who find them amusing at best. On a deeper level, Mr. Guterl failed to understand the point I have made above: that resemblances between a given phenomenon--e.g., dreaming--and a given theory in no way constitute a triumph for the theory. (Guterl and I had a civil correspondence about this.)"

Since Crews carefully and typically provides no documentation for the claim that Solms' colleagues find his Psychoanalytic bent 'amusing at best', I am not sure precisely what he is referring to. However, I do know that Solms is a founder of NeuroPsychoanalysis, a journal whose editorial board includes Eric Kandel, Antonio Damasio and various other luminaries. One is left to wonder whether such figures would waste their time and energy to support a project they regard with bemused detachment.

Smoking Coffee

Interesting and pleasant. I recommend it.

The Cobbler's Daughter

Is a truly remarkable song. The version I know is by Kate Rusby. In addition to being a truly fine piece of music, The Cobbler's Daughter presents a character that is, in my mind, the epitome of feminine sexuality. The song starts with the character identifying herself 'I am a cobbler's daughter/ and thought of rude and mean/ but a finer and a bonnier lass you have never seen/ I plagued me father's head/ for me life I wouldn't wed/ me mother's in the prison 'cause of me'. She then proceeds to relate the event that founds her identification. She invites her handsome young neighbor, who would always follow her, up to her room (presumably to get some action). He kisses her, she screams, and her parents come to the room and beat him to death. The young man's situation, as far as i can tell, is precisely what it is to be confronted, as a man, by feminine desire. He simply has no way to know, when he follows her upstairs, whether he will end up getting lucky or getting beat to death. The impossibility of the sexual relationship has never been boiled down to a purer essence. When you follow the cobbler's daughter, you can do nothing but hope for a kiss. If you come out alive, you're a lucky man.

More on Fashionable Nonsense

Its interesting to note that 'debunker' type writers tend to grossly abuse the term 'meaningless'. How does one proceed when one's interlocutor is working with a meaningless definition of 'meaningless'?

For example, according to Sokal, the following definition is 'meaningless'

'a limit is defined as that which is greater than one point and less than another but in no case equal to the point of departure, to sketch it for you quickly.'

This is clearly meaningful, in fact I can hazard to say I know damn well what he means by this.

'Let us call a limit any point such x that if Y (the 'point of departure') is a specified unique set X is not an element of Y and X is not the empty set.' He may wish to say something else (if he is trying to talk about limit points in topology, he must clarify a good deal more. This could be the case, if what he means by 'point of departure' and 'point of arrival' is the boundary of the relevant open set. He would then have imprecisely restated the correct definition, which is here. Greater than one point and less than another but in no case equal to the point of departure or the point of arrival is an awkward way of saying that it is 'in the middle' - a limit point is a point x in a Subset S of topological space X such that - to simplify- if you draw a small circle around x that doesn't contain anything outside of S it will always contain a point of S other than itself ), and his formulation may not be precise, but I maintain that i have come up with an unambiguous and meaningful re-statement of Lacan's text.

Not too tough, is it? I came up with the re-statement in about five seconds, and found all the relevant information about topology on wikipedia within the space of a few minutes. Given the (alluded to) time constraints of this kind of seminar and the fact that Lacan was, if nothing else, a pretty bright MD who forgot more formal training in math than I've ever had , I think its probably better to go with one of the two more charitable readings. The seminar may not be one of the brightest moments in the history of the pedagogy of Mathematics (Lacan was not much of a teacher), but the particular passage is either well-formed but unrelated to topology or poorly formed and correct. In any case, this example of Lacanian prose is clearly not schizophasiac (for example, his terms retain their meaning over time), which is what we usually mean by 'gibberish'. So we now wonder what exactly does Sokal mean when he calls something 'meaningless' or 'gibberish'. We can start by examining a case where he clearly believes that posited terms are meaningful. When Sokal wishes to define his own terms, he guarantees their meaning first by asserting that they are meaningful (and they indeed are), then by pointing out that they rely on a long chain of relations to already clearly and specifically defined terms.

Of course, one COULD be led to wonder how this meaning is ultimately guaranteed (indeed, at first blush this seems to lead to vicious regress), but, like good Saussureans, we know that a universe of discourse is a given. Sokal's S's (sound-images) corresponds to his s's (concepts) relationally - so 'compactness 'is 'meaningful' because it fails to be any other (synchronically or diachronically) substitutable S/s relation. So we may not know what Sokal means by meaning, but we at the very least know how he manages to mean it. As an added bonus, we have also explained (should Alan Sokal read this blog, which is unlikely) what another 'meaningless' Lacanian formula (S/s) means. Remember kids, Lacan helps you read Sokal on Lacan.

When it isn't enough to be controversial

Abortion as Art form at Yale Quote: Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement. Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process. [...] The "fabricators," or donors, of the sperm were not paid for their services, but Shvarts required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages. Shvarts declined to specify the number of sperm donors she used, as well as the number of times she inseminated herself. Art major Juan Castillo '08 said that although he was intrigued by the creativity and beauty of her senior project, not everyone was as thrilled as he was by the concept and the means by which she attained the result. "I really loved the idea of this project, but a lot other people didn't," Castillo said. [...] The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting. Since the function of (static-Visual) Art has now been divorced more or less completely from its product, and both from its craft, what is left for Art to do? Political art is a joke - antisystemic actors and the world-system elite share a complete disregard for it. Of course, artists can still *piss people off*, and that seems to be about all that (at least most of them) do. Ms. Schvarts probably thinks she is making some sort of political statement here, something about choice, or a Woman's Body, (pick a liberal feminist hobby horse and run). What she is actually doing is using the resources of a kind of superexploitation that is only beginning to be adumbrated (the US relative to its economic hosts) in order to re-present her own blood (in a double sense - actual blood and her aborted progeny) in its commodity form. I wonder if, as a man, I am entitled to, uh, risk daring hypothesis*: despite its feminist pretensions, Schvarts' work is actually the latest word in misogyny. What we are treated to is a glimpse at the brutal inner kernel of the liberal feminist ego ideal - a bloody, masochistic 'death Mother' whose function is to convert anonymous sperm into defective, non-functional children. This is why, pace the claims of what passes for a left in this country liberal feminism cannot be safely quarantined from the rest of Enlightenment poisons. Just as populist democracy takes the malformed images of the peasantry developed by the old feudal elites and says "wow, I want to BE that", so does liberal feminism identify wholly with fundamentally misogynist libidinal structures. The thesis is that all women ARE mothers or whores, with the proviso that whores are awesome. *Zizek said this, in these words, in the Pervert's Guide to Cinema. I aped him because I think its funny.

Wow

Sometimes its hard to blog, knowing that no matter what you blog you will be thoroughly outblogged by another. Sometimes the Other is Turkish. This is the best blog I've seen in a while, and if you have any interest in post-Heideggerean C.Phil you'll think so too.

Presumed Idiotic

The SF gate ran a review of Fashionable Nonsense a while back that, on a second read, yields a true inanity in the midst of otherwise expected mediocre journalistic pap.

"Perhaps only a mathematical genius could propose these insights? Don't buy into the con, Sokal and Bricmont advise. When he tosses tori and square roots in with penises and neuroses, Lacan is betting that a math-induced brain freeze will suspend the critical faculties of his audience. Not so readily bamboozled, the authors of ``Fashionable Nonsense'' expose Lacan's mathematical antics as ``showing off a superficial erudition and manipulating meaningless sentences.''

That sounds pretty right on. After all, Lacan's audience was made up primarily of dim bulbs like this fella. Are we expected to believe that not only did Lacan completely make up all of his reference to higher Maths, but that he put such nonsense over on a gentleman who studied under Husserl and David Hilbert? Weird.

And More

http://www.wz.nrw.de/Neuro2005/Dokumentationen/TURNBULL%20FORMATIERT.pdf

Dreams
A final, rather striking, example of the re-discovered role of emotion is in the field
of sleep and dream research. When REM sleep and its near-perfect correlation with
dreaming were discovered in the 1950s, and the related brain-stem mechanism
discovered in the 1970s (Hobson and McCarley, 1977), Freud’s (1900) dream theory
appeared to lose all scientific credibility. However, more recent research has revealed
that dreaming and REM sleep are doubly dissociable states, controlled by distinct (but
interactive) brain mechanisms (Solms, 1997). Dreaming turns out to be generated by a
network of forebrain structures centered principally around ascending dopamine
systems (see Solms 1997, 2000 for review).

Importantly, dreaming stops completely when fibers in the ventromesial frontal lobes
are severed, after lesion to exactly the same brain region as that targetted in pre-frontal
leucotomy. This is, of course, the same system that mediates powerful positive
emotions (Panksepp, 1998), and is also centrally implicated in hallucinations and
delusions that share many formal features with dreams (Silbersweig et al, 1995). The
landscape of dreaming research, especially as regards emotion, has radically changed,
and it would appear, based on modern findings, that Freud’s classical has much to
recommend it.

This opens the fascinating possibility that emotion may play a generative role in all
classes of false belief states: from dreaming in the neurologically-healthy, to changes
seen after focal brain lesions, and also encompassing the pharmacologically-sensitive
disorders that are central to the several psychiatric states with delusional features. The
empirical foundation for such a grand claim remains limited, but it offers the prospect
of a tempting unification of findings across wide domains.

Ask and it Shall be Given

Critics of psychoanalysis often ask for one, just one prediction made by Freud that has received confirming empirical evidence.

B13 1992: There is a parallel of the CCRTs about the therapist with the CCRTs about other people.

A necessary and expected parallel is based on Freud's (1912) central clinical observation about the transference template: the patterns that become expressed to the therapist have parallels with the pattern that is expressed to other people. Now, for the very first time, this parallel has been empirically shown for 35 patients from the Penn Psychotherapy Project between the CCRT for relationships with others and the CCRT for relationships with the therapist (Fried, Crits-Christoph, & Luborsky (1992).

The broader issue of the consistency of themes across different types of people, such as father versus mother, has been examined by Frevert et al (1995). This broader topic is basic to the CCRT because of the partly research-supported clinical expectation that narratives about different types of people will show some common themes across the different types of people.

They can feel free to thank me (and google, which actually turns this piece up on the first page for a search of empirical + transference) later.

Nepalese Maoists

I've been keeping track of these guys for a while. Now I note that, unlike their main rivals in global antisystemic activity (international mujihideen), the RIM has actually managed to get themselves firmly entrenched in government, and do so without either A) compromising with the prerevolutionary government or B) seizing power by force of arms. Contemporary Maoism is a strange beast indeed. It is adopted by erudite French philosophers and practiced by guerrilla insurgents. The Maoists of Southeast Asia are what this blog is about. They have simply not been informed that Marxism is dead, that Mao was a psychopathic killer (and in any case incoherent and barely Marxist), and that the parameters of global geopolitics are now such that the only possible site of conflict is within the clash of civilizations between Islam and The West. Rather, through practical philosophizing in the best Maoist tradition, they have arrived at similar conclusions about 'post-ideological' geopolitics as one the first world's foremost minds. With regard to the power elite, they are what Rumsfeld would call one of the things 'you don't know you don't know.' They succeed using methods that have been conclusively demonstrated to produce failure. They are beneath notice, but are now causing serious tremors in a region that is crucial to the continued success of global Capitalism. They have the potential to shift the situation of Southeast Asia into a site with true revolutionary possibilities.