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Narratives of Non-normative Bodies and Minds
This volume calls for a Narratology of Diversity by investigating narratives of non-normative bodies and minds. It explores mental health representations in literature, including neurodiversity, the body-mind nexus, and embodied non-normativities, therein emphasizing the importance of understanding diverse psychological conditions as represented in narratives. The contributions include perspectives from a wide variety of scholars of European, North American, and comparative literature and culture.

While post-classical narratology has evolved through phases of diversification and consolidation, this volume represents innovation in understanding narrative development to embrace new areas of social awareness, including gendered narratologies (specifically feminist and queer narratologies) and post-colonial criticism, paving the way for a more inclusive narratology.
Psychoanalysis and the Neurotic in Contemporary Society
Volume Editors: and
Sigmund Freud’s work has influenced the modern world in many profound ways. The “father of psychoanalysis,” Freud wrote numerous works wherein his psychoanalytic perspectives were applied to history, society, religion, and other cultural phenomenon. By expanding his psychoanalytic theories into these realms, Freud insured his place within the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, history, theology, and religious studies, wherein his works are still studied. More specifically, his psychoanalytic theories were adopted, revised, and expanded upon by philosophers and sociologists, such as Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, and many others, who in some cases radicalized the latent political content within Freud’s thought, using it to critique modern industrialized capitalism and theorize about the possibility for alternative forms of societies more conducive towards mental health. Although Freud is often marginalized, or even denigrated, we think there are still elements within the corpus of Freud’s work that are valuable for both diagnosing social problems and addressing such problems psychoanalytically. The book demonstrates the lasting relevancy of Freud’s thought to a variety of disciplines, as they diagnose a myriad of social issues.

Abstract

The media occasionally report instances where people mistake ordinary objects for art. This often happens in art galleries or museums and might suggest that people attribute meaning differently depending on whether the context is artistic or rooted in everyday life. In this manuscript, we investigate how people attribute meaning to seemingly nonsensical sentences and images when they believe they are made by poets or artists. We used a collection of sentences that conclude with semantically congruent and noncongruent words, and a collection of images where the object is either congruent or noncongruent with the background. We randomly assigned participants to the baseline and experimental (art) conditions, telling participants in the art condition that the sentences/images were created by artists. Studies 1 and 2 found that the art context increases the perceived meaningfulness of noncongruent sentences (‘Most cats see well at court’), but not the congruent ones (‘Most cats see well at night’), while Study 3 found a similar effect regarding noncongruent images (a lion in an office) and congruent images (a lion in a field). Additionally, we discuss how individual differences in aberrant salience and religiosity moderate the main effects of the art context on meaning-making. These results advance our theoretical understanding of how art contexts affect the interpretation of meaning and the importance of semantic noncongruency.

Open Access
In: Art & Perception

Abstract

In two experiments, we explored whether cross-modal cues can be used to improve foraging for multiple targets in a novel human foraging paradigm. Foraging arrays consisted of a 6 × 6 grid containing outline circles with a small dot on the circumference. Each dot rotated from a random starting location in steps of 30°, either clockwise or counterclockwise, around the circumference. Targets were defined by a synchronized rate of rotation, which varied from trial-to-trial, and there were two distractor sets, one that rotated faster and one that rotated slower than the target rate. In Experiment 1, we compared baseline performance to a condition in which a nonspatial auditory cue was used to indicate the rate of target rotation. While overall foraging speed remained slow in both conditions, suggesting serial scanning of the display, the auditory cue reduced target detection times by a factor of two. In Experiment 2, we replicated the auditory cue advantage, and also showed that a vibrotactile pulse, delivered to the wrist, could be almost as effective. Interestingly, a visual-cue to rotation rate, in which the frame of the display changed polarity in step with target rotation, did not lead to the same foraging advantage. Our results clearly demonstrate that cross-modal cues to synchrony can be used to improve multitarget foraging, provided that synchrony itself is a defining feature of target identity.

In: Multisensory Research

Abstract

At the crossroads of femme theory and Autistic femininity lie the nuanced experiences of individuals whose identities challenge societal norms of both gender and neurodiversity. By delving into these intersections, this article seeks to illuminate the unique perspectives of Autistic individuals who, in some aspect, identify with femininity. Employing six core principles of femme theory—reclaiming femininity, valuing feminine knowledge and characteristics, intersectionality, agency and empowerment, visibility and inclusivity, and resistance to femmephobia and misogyny—, the authors analyze, through theory application, how these principles manifest in the lives of Autistic individuals. Using femme theory, this research identifies the nuanced ways Autistic individuals navigate societal expectations and stereotypes. The findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the diverse spectrum of femininity, emphasizing the importance of recognizing and respecting the agency and experiences of Autistic individuals.

In: Journal of Femininities

Abstract

Combining information from visual and auditory modalities to form a unified and coherent perception is known as audiovisual integration. Audiovisual integration is affected by many factors. However, it remains unclear whether the trial history can influence audiovisual integration. We used a target–target paradigm to investigate how the target modality and spatial location of the previous trial affect audiovisual integration under conditions of divided-modalities attention (Experiment 1) and modality-specific selective attention (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, we found that audiovisual integration was enhanced in the repeat locations compared with switch locations. Audiovisual integration was the largest following the auditory targets compared to following the visual and audiovisual targets. In Experiment 2, where participants were asked to focus only on visual, we found that the audiovisual integration effect was larger in the repeat location trials than switch location trials only when the audiovisual target was presented in the previous trial. The present results provide the first evidence that trial history can have an effect on audiovisual integration. The mechanisms of trial history modulating audiovisual integration are discussed. Future examining of audiovisual integration should carefully manipulate experimental conditions based on the effects of trial history.

In: Multisensory Research
Author:

Abstract

While Freud claims that, in Paul, Christianity “correctly traced” a faith experience back to its (repressed) historical origin, in point of fact Freud’s own analysis suggests that Christianity was established as a defense mechanism in much the same way that Judaism was. Through a close reading of several passages from Paul’s letters (passages that are meaningful as attempts to reinterpret Jewish scripture), Coda 2 explores how much of Pauline-Christian discourse was founded on a disavowal of the traumatic possibility that Jesus’ death was meaningless and so rendered absurd the claim that he was the promised messiah. Part of Paul’s disavowal of what would otherwise be incomprehensible is his rejection of Jewish life as defined under Mosaic law which, for Paul, is equivalent to non-messianic time. Paul’s entire mission might be said to promote an end-time vision—even to force the end—precisely as a desperate means of escape from the burden of existence itself. Existence must be disavowed because Paul understands it as a site of subjection, subjection to Mosaic law first and foremost but even more primally subjection both to death and to a divine authority that refuses to keep its word. The Pauline mission, in short, is a sustained effort to evade the trauma of being alive in the world defined by Jewish scripture.

In: The Freudian Exodus: Psychoanalysis and the Mosaic Legacy
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Abstract

Coda 3 offers a slightly different perspective on how Jewish tradition has been and continues to be passed across generational lines. Focusing on Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis’ seminal essay, “Fantasme originaire, fantasmes des origins, origine du fantasme,” I use their reformulation of the Freudian notion of the fantasy of origin (which Laplanche and Pontalis associate with the primal scene) to argue that Torah’s memic function in the construction of Jewish identity needs to be seen in the context of the Jewish family. More to the point, as the primary site of cultural replication, the Jewish family is the vehicle of the unconscious passing on of tradition, where tradition itself can be conceived not simply as a body of ideas and shared practices but also, and more crucially, as what we might call the Jewish uncanny: the trauma of chosenness as it is communicated in the whispers of a self-estranging originary loss transmitted from parents to their children. Coda 3 ends with a reflection on the link between fantasy, itself structured through the passing on of—even a seduction by—enigmatic messages and a cultural foundation myth or origin story.

In: The Freudian Exodus: Psychoanalysis and the Mosaic Legacy
Author:

Abstract

Chapter 1 begins by reconstructing Freud’s core argument in Moses and Monotheism in which Judaic monotheism is understood as a “father religion” by analogy to prehistoric totemic religions (as first examined in Totem and Taboo). For Freud, the repression that is at the heart of the father religion helps us understand what he believes is the loftier ethical and spiritual orientation of Judaism (he calls it “progress in spirituality”) in contrast to other religious traditions, especially Christianity. I will reconsider elements of that particular claim on the grounds that in making it Freud fails to follow his own psychoanalytic method of interpretation. Shifting then to Freud’s discussion of Pauline Christianity as both a development and a distortion of Judaism, I will also shift the terms of Freud’s argument. To the extent it can be understood as what Freud calls a “son religion,” Pauline Christianity, I venture, challenged its own Judaic origins not because, as Freud thought, it more openly admitted the founding trauma of the murder of the great-father, Moses but rather because it exposed the very ambivalence toward the father that Freud believed was at the heart of totemic religion. This ambivalence towards the father provides a new perspective on the origin of anti-Semitism, an issue Freud briefly and rather inconclusively touches on in Moses and Monotheism.

In: The Freudian Exodus: Psychoanalysis and the Mosaic Legacy
Author:
The Freudian Exodus redefines the traumatic experience that Freud argued was the origin of Judaic monotheism, the murder of Moses. Focusing instead on the Babylonian Exile, the study explores a series of topics understood as the aftershocks of that cultural trauma. Among these are the nature of anti-Semitism, Christianity’s vexed relationship to Judaism, the fantasmatic status of subjectivity, the cultural function of Torah, and Freud’s escape at the end of his life from Nazi-controlled Austria. The in-depth analysis of these topics aims for a new understanding of psychoanalysis, conceived more as a philosophy than as a mode of therapy.