by Roy Schafer (1997)
In this era of rapid change in psychoanalysis there is a need for a work that bridges tradition and innovation. This book is devoted to building that bridge. On the one side there are the fundamental contributions of Freud and the great modern developers of ego psychology, and on the other the panoramas being opened by object-relational theory and practice, feminist thought, and postmodern critical theory. In this book, both the old and the new are shown to have significant strengths and distinctive problematic aspects, and the same may be said of the many transitional positions now prevalent among workers in the field of mental health. Many central ideas have had to be rethought; these include the nature of interpretation as a process, the validation of interpretations, the significant role played by countertransference in the therapeutic process, and the problem of working either systematically or eclectically in a discipline which now contains a number of strong competing points of view.
Peter Alexander Meyers
In 'Abandoned to Ourselves', Peter Alexander Myers shows how the centrepiece of the Enlightenment - society as the symbol of collective human life and as the fundamental domain of human practice - was primarily composed and animated by its most ambivalent figure: Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Donald Nute
Relevant to philosophy, law, management, and artificial intelligence, these papers explore the applicability of nonmonotonic or defeasible logic to normative reasoning. The resulting systems purport to solve well-known deontic paradoxes and to provide a better treatment than classical deontic logic does of prima facie obligation, conditional obligation, and priorities of normative principles.
Stephen Bann
In Romanticism and the Rise of History, Bann argues that history came of age in Europe during the period following the French Revolution through the end of the nineteenth century, becoming an object of widespread desire. As one perhaps mildly astonished scholar noted later, it was a time when "the most simple-minded farmhand" was "able to distinguish an old belfry from a new one," and, Bann might add, perceive value in the old one. To draw the reader into his exploration of the nineteenth century's "discovery of history," Bann presents twenty-five images from the period - engravings, oil paintings, sculptures, watercolors - that appear to both represent and interact with the past. Does the suit of armor standing at Walter Scott's shoulder in Sir John Watson Gordon's portrait validate the image of the author as rightful custodian of the past and its relics, or is it Scott who through his imaginative interpretation of history imbues this shell of knighthood with lasting significance?
Theodore R. Weber
"Was John Wesley the "fanatical Tory" conservative of many political portraits, with his loyalty to the British monarchy, his support of taxation without representation, and his severe criticism of American independence? Or was he an emergent political liberal, condemning slavery, defending the rights and liberties of the British people, and urging government intervention in the economy to relieve hunger and poverty? This historical and theological study of Wesley's political thought concludes that he is understood best neither as Tory nor as liberal (both of which he was, in important respects), but as a staunch champion of limited constitutional government and of the subordination of power to law - in the context of the "Glorious Revolution" and the organic unity of the British community. Wesley's understanding of rights is a mixture of the historical and the natural, but is closer to the adaptive conservatism of Edmund Burke than to natural rights individualism in the following of John Locke.". "Weber argues further that Wesley's deliberate exclusion of the people from politics can be challenged from within his own theology by recovering and developing his concept of the political image and integrating it with his understanding of the order of salvation. This process of recovery and integration discloses the political vocation for all humankind, and opens the way to an authentically Wesleyan political language. It has significant implications also for rethinking Wesley's theology as such, and not only the Wesleyan language of politics."--BOOK JACKET.