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In her final book, >Environmental Culture< as well as elsewhere, Val Plumwood advances the view that sustainability should properly be seen as emergent from an ecofeminist partnership ethic of nourishment and support between humans and nonhuman nature, and that such an ethic must replace the characteristic institutional structures and dominant conceptions of rationality found in capitalist modernity. In making this case, Plumwood impressively charts the impact and significance of the expansionist, exclusionary models of the disembodied but appropriative self found in Cartesian and Lockean thought along with the impact of private property doctrines derived from this source. However, whilst making reference to eco-socialist alternatives at the broader political level, Plumwood offers no systematic account of property that might dovetail with her wider philosophical concerns. In this paper I attempt to generate the start of such an account, drawing on Plumwood’s own canon and bringing it into relationship with (1) relections on ideas of belonging and culture drawn from a range of thinkers including Erazim Kohák, Erich Fromm, and William James, and (2) the contemporary debate over the relationship between green political thought and the liberal democratic tradition.
In this paper we express concerns that the marketisation of British higher education that has accompanied its expansion has resulted in some sections becoming pedagogically limited. We draw from Fromm's humanist philosophy based on >having< to argue that the current higher education (HE) market discourse promotes a mode of existence, where students seek to >have a degree< rather than >be learners<. This connects pedagogic theory to a critique of consumer culture. We argue that a ‘market-led’ university responds to consumer calls by focusing on the content students want at a market rate. It may decrease intellectual complexity if this is not in demand, and increase connections with the workplace if this is desired. Once, under the guidance of the academic, the undergraduate had the potential to be transformed into a scholar, someone who thinks critically, but in our consumer society such ‘transformation’ is denied and ‘confirmation’ of the student as consumer is favoured. We further argue that there is a danger that the new HE's link to business through the expansion of vocational courses in business, marketing and related offerings, inevitably embeds expanded HE in a culture of having. This erodes other possible roles for education because a consumer society is unlikely to support a widened HE sector that may work to undermine its core ideology.
Background: In elderly care registered nurses (RNs) and nurse assistants (NAs) face ethical challenges which may trouble their conscience. Objective: This study aimed to illuminate meanings of RNs’ and NAs’ lived experience of troubled conscience in their work in municipal residential elderly care. Design: Interviews with six RNs and six NAs were interpreted separately using a phenomenological hermeneutic method. Settings: Data was collected in 2005 among RNs and NAs working in special types of housings for the elderly in a municipality in Sweden. Participants: The RNs and NAs were selected for participation had previously participated in a questionnaire study and their ratings in the questionnaire study constituted the selection criteria for the interview study. Results: The RNs’ lived experience of troubled conscience was formulated in two themes. The first theme is ‘being trapped in powerlessness’ which includes three sub-themes: being restrained by others’ omission, being trapped in ethically demanding situations and failing to live up to others’ expectations. The second theme is ‘being inadequate’ which includes two sub-themes: lacking courage to maintain one's opinion and feeling incompetent. The NAs’ lived experience of troubled conscience was formulated in the two themes. The first is ‘being hindered by pre-determined conditions’ which includes two sub-themes: suffering from lack of focus in one's work and being restrained by the organisation. The second theme is ‘being inadequate’ which includes two sub-themes: lacking the courage to object and being negligent. Conclusions: The RNs’ lived experience of troubled conscience were feelings of being trapped in a state of powerlessness, caught in a struggle between responsibility and authority and a sense of inadequacy fuelled by feelings of incompetence, a lack of courage and a fear of revealing themselves and endangering residents’ well-being. The NAs’ lived experience of troubled conscience was feelings of being hindered by pre-determined conditions, facing a fragmented work situation hovering between norms and rules and convictions of their conscience. To not endangering the atmosphere in the work-team they are submissive to the norms of their co-workers. They felt inadequate as they should be model care providers. The findings were interpreted in the light of Fromm's authoritarian and humanistic conscience.
This short paper concentrates on three powerful ideas introduced by three important theorists, namely, Merton’s interpretation of anomie in America, Fromm’s critical aesthetics regarding man’s consciousness in relation to nature, and finally Du Bois’ concept of the >racial wage< (Lemert, 2004, pp. 218-240). Those theories are then applied to the Japanese phenomenon of the <compensated date< and the Thai >sex industry<.
Erich Fromm’s biophilia, a theory of personality development incorporating an interaction between existential needs and the socio-economic environment, was a significant element of Fromm’s proposed Analytic Social Psychology. Despite an enduring influence, Fromm’s theory of biophilia has been largely untested in the literature. Fromm argued that biophilia was the optimum way to conceptualise malignant aggression, and that the introduction and reward of cooperation was the best way to increase levels of biophilia, and thereby reduce levels of destructive behaviour in a population. It was the aim of this thesis to investigate whether the introduction and reward of cooperation would increase biophilia, and decrease aggression, in a population. In Studies One to Six, a trait biophilia scale was developed and psychometric validity and reliability established. In Studies Seven to Nine, scale predictive validity in comparison to existing trait measures was investigated in theoretically appropriate areas including online behaviour, positive psychology and pro-environmental behaviour. In Study Ten, a game theory paradigm for introducing and rewarding cooperation was developed, and the relationships among biophilia, cooperation and aggression were investigated. Contrary to Fromm’s theory, a positive association between aggression and cooperation, and negative associations between those and biophilia, were found. In addition, the effects of introducing and rewarding cooperation were investigated, and again contrary to Fromm’s theory, introducing and rewarding cooperation produced an increase in aggression and a reduction in biophilia. These findings may reflect an inherent tension within Fromm’s theory between the use of existential needs, that were argued to be the product of competitive natural selection, and the use of cooperative interventions derived from Marxist theory. It is proposed that the relationships among biophilia, cooperation and aggression may be mediated by frustration. Implications for interventions and future research are discussed.
This paper will try to analyze a curious intellectual phenomena: a group of Jewish-German authors that developed, during the Weimar Republic, a radical anti-capitalist and anti-protestant argument, directly inspired by Weber’s Protestant Ethic. They did not hesitate to denounce capitalism as a sort of diabolic religion (Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin), or as the product of the evil ethical tendencies of Calvinism (Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm).
Jews’ journey from time to time showed an ebb and flow situation. Sometimes they reached glory, while in the other times they experienced deterioration. However, the traces of suffering were seen more obvious befalling the nation that claimed themselves as the chosen people. Being enslaved in Egypt, stranded in Arab Coast for 40 years, evicted from the promise land (Palestine), inquisitioned by Christian Church in Middle Age and killed in Holocoust tragedy were the long period of dark destiny afflicting Jewish people. Expulsion, hatred and assassination became the common things for Jews. Meanwhile, this minority nation among billions people around the world could survive through every bitter period that approached their lives. Reclining to the belief in God, the messianic hope had given an optimistic feeling to them to face deal with whatever bitter the life was. This research used a figure approach to discuss a topic. The figure that I took to explain Jewish messianic concept was Erich Fromm, a social psychology expert that had a strong Jewish tradition background. This research was a literary research by using methodical elements: description, interpretation, holistika and reflection. Referring to Fromm’s analysis, the question about Jewish survival can be explained through the concept of hope in Jewish belief called >messianic<. The hope bandage by the faith spirit had a link with the concept of >homo esperans< or expectancy beings. Hope and expect are human basic conditions. The spirit of hope for messianic era had made Jewish people traversed various bitter conditions in their history. Messianic concept had some philosophical values: suffering for freedom, theological hope for repairing life and harmony.
The concept of countertransference has a long history in psychoanalysis. This paper sketches the phenomenon referred to by countertransference and the development of the concept, from being signs of disturbance in the analyst to an important road to knowledge about the patient's inner life. The complexity of the questions discussed today – how to understand the concepts of neutrality, abstinence, and empathy; the relative subjective mutuality and symmetry of the analytic situation; the analyst's enactments and self-disclosure of feelings – reflects the complexity of the contemporary view of the patient–analyst relationship. In conclusion, the author presents a model illustrating the disturbing and informative aspects of countertransference together with the conceptual relationship between countertransference on the one hand and empathy and projective identification on the other. Finally, by differentiating between intuitive and irrational levels of functioning, an integrated model for countertransference is presented, synthesising the essence of the concept as it is used today.
Using one detailed case presentation, this paper examines the clinical hardship of making accurate and helpful interpretations that do not become part of the patient's defensive system. The author argues that interpretive acting-out is inevitable in the psychoanalytic process. But, if properly monitored, understood, and contained, these interpretive enactments can sometimes actually be a profit to the overall treatment. Issues of projective identification, countertransference, and the importance of realizing our transference role in the patient's changing phantasies are discussed throughout the case material.