This book presents a collection of essays honoring Professor Harry Heft, a leading figure in the field of ecological psychology, engaging critically with his work, thought and influence. Containing 12 chapters written by leading experts from philosophy and psychology, this text critically examines, questions, and expands on crucial ideas from Heft concerning the nature of cognition, its relationship to the body and the environment (including the social and cultural environment), and the main philosophical assumptions underlying the scientific study of psychological functions. It elaborates on the notion of affordance, and its connection to social, cultural and developmental psychology, as well as on the application of Roger Barker's eco-behavioral program for current psychology and cognitive science. The book includes an extensive interview with Heft, where he reflects about the history, challenges and future of ecological psychology. Finally, it presents a chapter written by Heft, that offers a systematic response to the critical feedback. Given the increasing popularity of ecological psychology and the highly influential work of Harry Heft in related areas such as developmental, social and cultural psychology, and philosophy, this book will appeal to all those interested in the cognitive sciences from a scientific and philosophical perspective. It is also a must read for students of psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science departments.

This collection traces the history of psycho-analytically informed thinking about dreams, using selected contributions from Freud to the present to highlight both the legacy of The Interpretation of dreams and the evolving use of the dream as a research tool- of the mind first, later of the psychoanalytic process and of pathology and loge predicaments, and finally as a tool to be integrated with other methods of investigation.

"Personal Peacefulness" examines the existing theories and knowledge about the peacefulness of individuals, including inner peace, interpersonal peacefulness, and peaceful attitudes towards groups and nations. It uses the term "personal peacefulness" to refer to the peaceful states, attitudes, and behaviors of individuals, and it discusses the phenomena and determinants of personal peacefulness in the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup domains. Also addressed is the relationship between personal peacefulness and well-being, describing various methods for enhancing the peacefulness of individuals. Within the framework of a scholarly and scientific approach to the study of personal peacefulness, various psychological perspectives are represented: personality, social, clinical, and positive psychology perspectives, peacefulness as nonviolence, attachment theory and the development of affect regulation, a human needs theory approach, Buddhist conceptions of compassion and mindfulness, a natural science perspective describing physiological foundations for personal peacefulness, phenomenological perspectives, and peacefulness as the promotion of conflict resolution. The book is an important resource for scholars, researchers, and educators in psychology, political science and in a variety of other areas who study and teach topics such as empathy, prosocial behavior, personality, psychological well-being, mental health, personal development, peace and conflict and conflict resolution.

Tyler Burge presents a substantial, original study of what it is for individuals to represent the physical world with the most primitive sort of objectivity. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, he gives an account of constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, and thus aims to locate origins of representational mind. Origins of Objectivity illuminates several long-standing, central issues in philosophy, and provides a wide-ranging account of relations between human and animal psychologies.

This is literary criticism at its most perceptive. Theory is subservient to a deeply engaged reading of works Professor Paris clearly loves. To read his analysis of Emma Bovary or Hedda Gabler is to gain an enriched insight into characters whom we thought we knew so well.
-- Phyllis Grosskurth, author of "Byron, The Flawed Angel"

One of literature's greatest gifts is its portrayal of realistically drawn characters--human beings in whom we can recognize motivations and emotions. In Imagined Human Beings, Bernard J. Paris explores the inner conflicts of some of literature's most famous characters, using Karen Horney's psychoanalytic theories to understand the behavior of these characters as we would the behavior of real people.

When realistically drawn characters are understood in psychological terms, they tend to escape their roles in the plot and thus subvert the view of them advanced by the author. A Horneyan approach both alerts us to conflicts between plot and characterization, rhetoric and mimesis, and helps us understand the forces in the author's personalty that generate them. The Horneyan model can make sense of thematic inconsistencies by seeing them as the product of the author's inner divisions. Paris uses this approach to explore a wide range of texts, including "Antigone," "The Clerk's Tale," "The Merchant of Venice, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Wuthering Heights, Madame Bovary, The Awakening, "and "The End of the Road."

This book provides extraordinary insight into the subtleties and diversities of contemporary clinical practice by exploring the problematic and ambiguous concept of the transference neurosis.

The Roman cult of Mithras was the most widely-dispersed and densely-distributed cult throughout the expanse of the Roman Empire from the end of the first until the fourth century AD, rivaling the early growth and development of Christianity during the same period. As its membership was largely drawn from the ranks of the military, its spread, but not its popularity is attributable largely to military deployments and re-deployments. Although mithraists left behind no written archival evidence, there is an abundance of iconographic finds. The only characteristic common to all Mithraic temples were the fundamental architecture of their design, and the cult image of Mithras slaying a bull. How were these two features so faithfully transmitted through the Empire by a non-centralized, non-hierarchical religious movement? The Minds of Mithraists: Historical and Cognitive Studies in the Roman Cult of Mithras addresses these questions as well as the relationship of Mithraism to Christianity, explanations of the significance of the tauroctony and of the rituals enacted in the mithraea, and explanations for the spread of Mithraism (and for its resistance in a few places). The unifying theme throughout is an investigation of the 'mind' of those engaged in the cult practices of this widespread ancient religion. These investigations represent traditional historical methods as well as more recent studies employing the insights of the cognitive sciences, demonstrating that cognitive historiography is a valuable methodological tool.

Signal detection theory, as developed in electrical engineering and based on statistical decision theory, was first applied to human sensory discrimination about 40 years ago. The theory's intent was to explain how humans discriminate and how we might use reliable measures to quantify this ability. An interesting finding of this work is that decisions are involved even in the simplest of discrimination tasks--say, determining whether or not a sound has been heard (a yes-no decision). Detection theory has been applied to a host of varied problems (for example, measuring the accuracy of diagnostic systems, survey research, reliability of lie detection tests) and extends far beyond the detection of signals. This book is a primer on signal detection theory, useful for both undergraduates and graduate students.

Studies on subjective well-being derive from two main perspectives: hedonism and eudaimonism. The former emphasizes human search for pleasure and satisfaction The latter stems from Aristotle s concept of eudaimonia as the fulfilment of one s true nature, that includes both self-actualization and commitment to socially shared goals. The framework adopted in this book belongs to the eudaimonic approach, and it is grounded in the scientific tradition of bio-cultural studies.

Most researchers agree that humans are living systems equipped with biological and cultural features. Theoretical approaches however differ in their emphasis on the role and relevance of biology and culture in influencing human behavior. In particular, the impact of culture and social norms on individual behavior and quality of life can hardly be overestimated. Day by day, people acquire cultural information from their social contexts by means of various forms of learning, and they subsequently replicate and transmit it. These cultural constraints can be used as objective indicators to evaluate quality of life and well-being, but they are not sufficient to grasp the real life conditions of an individual. This book introduces a third perspective in this debate: it emphasizes the role of individuals as active agents in shaping their cultural environment and in promoting both their own development and culture complexity.

Each person within her culture has a more or less wide extent of autonomy and freedom in facing challenges and in discovering opportunities in daily activities, in interpreting life events and in setting self-selected goals. Far from simply being recipients and vehicles of cultural information, human beings actively take part in the process of cultural transmission and change. A process of psychological selection takes place at the individual level, promoting the differential reproduction of cultural information units. A great number of cross-cultural studies have been conducted, in order to detect the basic criterion which guides this process. Results show the paramount role played by the quality of experience people associate with their daily activities and social contexts. In particular, individuals preferentially select and cultivate activities connected with optimal experience, or Flow, in which individuals describe themselves as active and deeply involved in the task at hand, excited and relaxed at the same time. In optimal experience people perceive high challenges in the activity, and adequate personal skills in facing them. They report engagement, activation, enjoyment, and autonomy.

However, provided that individuals play a central role in the process of cultural transmission and change, they should be supported in finding in meaningful and socially relevant challenges. From childhood, citizens should be exposed to opportunities for engagement, enjoyment and optimal experiences in socially useful activities. They should be taught to appreciate the development potential embedded in agency and co-operation towards community objectives. Intrinsic motivation and the autonomous search for meanings and goals should be sustained. The individual effort and ability to find a personalized way toward well-being and complexity have to be primarily supported. At the social level, the individual tendency to pursue self-selected goals and personal wellbeing could be channelled to foster at the same time co-operation and community empowerment.

In this historical period it is of paramount importance for positive psychology to contextualize the study of individual well-being within the broader perspective of social empowerment and cultures cooperation. Following the long tradition initiated by Aristotle with his studies on virtues and ethics, we strongly believe in the human potential to match the pursuit of optimal experiences and personal wellbeing with agency and the active contribution to the empowerment of societies."

The Neurobiology of C. elegans assembles together a series of chapters describing the progress researchers have made toward solving some of the major problems in neurobiology with the use of this powerful model organism. The first chapter is an introduction to the anatomy of the C. elegans nervous system. This chapter provides a useful introduction to this system and will help the reader who is less familiar with this system understand the chapters that follow. The next two chapters on learning, conditioning and memory and neuronal specification and differentiation, summarize the current state of the C. elegans field in these two major areas of neurobiology. The remaining chapters describe studies in C. elegans that have provided particularly exciting insights into neurobiology.

* How is it that someone who has a problem is able to resolve it through conversation with another?* By the author of several classics in psychoanalysis* Written for patients and analysts alike In this essential new volume, Neville Symington, a highly respected psychoanalyst and author, considers why someone who has a problem is able to resolve it through conversation. The disciplines of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy are based upon the assumption that it is possible to resolve one's troubles in this manner. Combining his own substantial experience in psychoanalysis with rigorous academic research, Symington reminds us that psychoanalysis constitutes "not just an intellectual effort but an emotional transformation" facilitated through healing conversation.As a psychoanalyst, he seeks to illuminate the complexity and the sometimes painful ambiguity of human experience. He aims to avoid oversimplification, quick judgment, or reliance on established meta-narratives. The book therefore maintains a dialectical approach to its subject, continuing to raise questions and motivate further investigation.Written in an engaging style drawing on cultural, literary, and clinical sources, Symington moves from the broad themes of emotion, communication, and representation to the depth of clinical case studies. Though written specifically with psychoanalysts in mind, A Healing Conversation is a work that will appeal to many, not only those with an interest in this field.

Some of the most intriguing issues in the study of cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development arise in the debate over nature versus nurture; a debate difficult to resolve because it is difficult to separate the respective contributions of genes and environment to development.

The most powerful approach to this separation is through longitudinal adoption studies. The Colorado Adoption Project (CAP) is the only longitudinal adoption study in existence examining development continuously from birth to adolescence, which makes it a unique, powerful, and tremendously valuable resource. CAP is an ongoing assessment of 245 adopted children and 245 biological control children assessed from birth to early adolescence.

This book is the fourth in a series describing CAP results. This latest volume, edited by four eminent researchers in developmental psychology, builds on the large body of research already generated by investigating the role of genes and environments on early adolescent development.

Consciousness is one of the major unsolved problems in science. How do the feelings and sensations making up conscious experience arise from the concerted actions of nerve cells and their associated synaptic and molecular processes? Can such feelings be explained by modern science, or is there an entirely different kind of explanation needed? And how can this seemingly intractable problem be approached experimentally? How do the operations of the conscious mind emerge out of the specific interactions involving billions of neurons? This multi-authored book seeks answers to these questions within a range of physically based frameworks, i.e, the underlying assumption is that consciousness can be understood using the intellectual potential of modern physics and other sciences. There are a number of theories of consciousness in existence, some of which are based on classical physics while some others require the use of quantum concepts. The latter ones have drawn a lot of criticism from the present-day scientific establishment while simultaneously claiming that classical approaches are doomed to failure. This book presents the reader with a spectrum of opinions from both sides of this on-going scientific debate, letting him/her decide which of these approaches are most likely to succeed.

Wertsch argues against reductionist accounts of human cognition and proposes a sociocultural perspective, which moves beyond the isolated individual. He suggests that "mediated action" and cultural tools shape cognitive processes and can explain how they are organized.

In "Higher Wisdom," 14 eminent thinkers offer their fascinating anecdotes, invaluable knowledge, and hard-won wisdom--the culmination of 50 years of research and reflection--on the subject of psychedelics, one of the most intriguing and challenging topics of our time. "A reminder of the remarkable promise and peril of what are broadly called psychedelics."--Ken Wilber, author of "A Brief History of Everything."

When it first appeared in 1976, Understanding Human behaviour for Effective Police Work quickly became the foremost guide for the officer on the force and the recruit in the classroom. Today, the new third edition is still the only comprehensive book on the subject. Thoroughly revised and updated, this edition covers important new developments in the field, including the emergence of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Teams, which help emergency service personnel survive the impact of critical incident stress. This edition also addresses the psychological aspects of proactive police work. In a world ridden by drugs and violence, it is no longer enough merely to respond to incidents. Police forces around the country are being called upon to perform community-based services to reclaim neighbourhoods dominated by crime.As in the previous editions, the heart of the book is a virtual catalogue,enlivened by vivid case histories,of the kinds of deviant behaviour today's police officer is likely to confront, along with valuable suggestions on identification and management.

Fantasies of Flight invigorates the field of personality psychology by challenging the contemporary academic view that individuals are best studied as carriers of traits. Daniel Ogilvie exchanges a heart-to-heart, case study approach to understanding human behavior for the current strategies of categorizing and comparing individuals according to their manifest traits. Ogilvie asks and endeavors to answer questions like "What were the psychological conditions that led Sir James Barrie to create a character named Peter Pan?" and "What were the dynamics behind the Marshall Herff Applewhite's conviction that a space ship, hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet, would rescue him and his Heaven's Gate followers after they enacted a mass suicide pact in 1997?" Answering these questions requires him to resurrect "old" ways to think about personality and "old" strategies for studying individuals one by one. Early in the book, Ogilvie reviews the history of why intensive case studies were discredited in psychology and describes how Sigmund Freud's psychobiographical account of Leonardo da Vinci's fascination with flight inadvertently abetted critics of psychoanalytic psychology. He then performs a partial psychobiography of James Barrie and the origins of Peter Pan, followed by an investigation of Carl Jung, who fashioned the collective unconscious to serve as humankind's link to eternity. Arguing that personality psychology needs to become less insular, Ogilvie integrates information from the disciplines of developmental psychology and neuroscience into a theory regarding the latent needs that both Barrie and Jung sought to satisfy. The theory, including its emphasis on the onset of self and consciousness, is then applied to an array of well-known and obscure individuals with ascensionistic inclinations. Well written and accessible, but complex and scholarly, this volume will restore interest in the investigation of people's inner lives.

The construct quality of life (QoL), since the 1980s, when it was introduced, is being used mainly in the context of health problems. Areas of one s life that contribute to QoL are good physical and mental health, efficient cognitive functioning, social support, being able to meet the requirements of professional life, positive emotions, etc (Power, 2003). Work on subjective well-being (SWB), on the other hand, was developed in the context of healthy everyday life; it also has a history of more than 30 years. During this 30-year period factors that have an impact on SWB, such as SES, gender, health, age, and religiosity have been identified (Diener, 2000). A third independent line of research pertains to what has been called Positive Psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), that is, an emphasis on human strengths, such as optimism, hope, wisdom, positive emotions, resilience, etc., which contribute to positive functioning in life.

Recently, SWB has been associated to human strengths and to the movement of positive psychology but this did not happen for QoL, possibly because of its emphasis on people with health problems. However, QoL can be conceived of as a generic term that pertains to all people, healthy or not. In this sense, it is closely related to SWB defined as happiness (Diener, 2000). Also, QoL encompasses positive emotions that go beyond happiness and has the advantage that it can be applied to many different domains of life such as interpersonal relations, health-related situations, and professional and educational strivings. Moreover, the mechanism(s) that underpin QoL and SWB can be studied in relation to people s goals and strengths of character, that is, from a positive psychological perspective. Such a perspective can reveal the specificities of quality in the various domains of life and, specifically, the positive emotions and strengths that contribute to a happier, healthier, and more successful life, even in face of adversity.

Therefore, despite the differences among the three theoretical traditions, namely QoL, SWB, and positive psychology, it is possible to find the common ground they share and each of them can benefit from notions developed in the others. The aim of the present book is to bring together these three traditions, show the interactions of variables emphasized by them, and give an integrative perspective from the positive psychology point of view. It also aims to extend the range of life situations in which one can look for quality and which go beyond the traditional emphasis of QoL on health problems. Thus, the content of the proposed book covers different age populations (from children to older adults), healthy and people facing health problems as well as people facing problems in their interpersonal lives or in their pursuits. It also discusses factors that contribute to marital satisfaction, well being in the school context, and things that people value and cherish. The chapters refer to notions such as happiness, interest, resilience, wisdom, hope, altruism, optimism, and spirituality/religiosity that represent unique human strengths. Finally, it emphasizes the role of goals and motivation that connect SWB with self-regulation and managing of one s life priorities.

To conclude, the chapters included in the proposed edited book aim at bringing to the fore new theoretical developments and research on QoL, SWB, and positive psychology that bridges previously distinct theoretical traditions. The proposed book covers a broad range of topics, addresses different theoretical interests and paves the way for a more integrative approach. Finally, it brings together an international set of authors, from USA, Europe, Australia, and Asia. "