Theory Is Personal

In “Theory Is Personal,” Allen Siegel MD, a Chicago psychoanalyst and Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center, shares the very personal story of how he came to his theory. Sometimes we find our theory. Other times, Siegel argues, it is our theory that finds us. In this article Siegel catalogues his early encounters with figures—contemporary and real—from Sigmund Freud to influential department chairs to an analyst who would become legendary for introducing a bold new theory into the psychoanalytic canon. Charting key experiences that shaped his adoption of this new approach—a depression in response to his first patient, a clinical treatment with Heinz Kohut, and exposure to others who dared to challenge Freud—Siegel describes the theory that brought both himself and his patients to life. After outlining the principles that guide the new theory and practice known as self psychology, Siegel tells of the empathic ambiance that can now emerge in the consulting room. Finally, he shows how this new theory of human motivation provides not merely a rationale for psychotherapy but an explanatory apparatus for understanding human action in the world beyond the consulting room. He turns to a brief study of aggression and war, as expressed in a 1932 correspondence between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, to illustrate how the understanding of aggression and war changes significantly when empathy is the field's data collecting instrument.

Reason within Passion

The relationship between core values and political opinions has been well documented but its implications for citizens’ awareness of the reasons that ground competing opinions are less well understood. This study examines the effect of value priorities on rating different rationales for a government decision to end a war. The relationship is tested among Israelis in the days following the aftermath of the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war in Lebanon. Consistent with previous research, values, such as universalism, predicted dovish or hawkish positions on the ceasefire. In addition, however, different value priorities correlated, as expected, with their respective rationales for an opinion on the ceasefire. Moreover, both supporters and opponents evaluated valid (versus invalid) reasons as more important, regardless of their personal position. Overall findings suggest that, even in conflict, reasoned considerations resonate with the opinions of ordinary citizens.

The Great Billion‐year War between Ribosome‐ and Capsid‐encoding Organisms (Cells and Viruses) as the Major Source of Evolutionary Novelties

Our conceptions on the origin, nature, and role of viruses have been shaken recently by several independent lines of research. There are many reasons to believe now that viruses are more ancient than modern cells and have always been more abundant and diverse than their cellular targets. Viruses can be defined as capsid‐encoding organisms that transform their “host” cell into a viral factory. If capsid‐encoding organisms (viruses) and ribosome‐encoding organisms (cells) are the major types of living entities on our planet, it seems logical to conclude that their conflict has been a major engine of biological evolution (in the framework of natural selection). In particular, many novelties first selected in the viral world might have been transferred to cells as a consequence of the continuous flow of viral genes into cellular genomes. We discuss recent observations and hypotheses suggesting that viruses have played a major role at different stages of biological evolution, such as the RNA to DNA transition, the origin of the eukaryotic nucleus, or, alternatively, the origin of unique features in multicellular macrobes.

Disputes over Yasukuni Shrine and Its War Dead in Contemporary Japan

Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto sanctuary located in Tokyo, has become the focus of a recent dispute in Japan, and a source of criticism against Japanese politicians by neighboring Asian countries. Especially since the former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō visited Yasukuni once every year during the period of his administration (2001–2006), arguments have been accumulated both in Japan and abroad. This essay tries to review some of the arguments over the war dead and war memory in modern Japanese history, referring also to more specific issues such as the Class A war criminals and Li Ying's documentary film Yasukuni (2007).

Beyond the Weberian Trails: An Essay on the Anthropology of Southeast Asian Buddhism

Theravada Buddhism is one of the most important fields of inquiry within a larger context of Southeast Asian studies. In this essay, I discuss an overview of anthropolo gical studies of Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia since the 1960s. I argue that key intellectual and social forces, which have characterized and sustained the anthropological studies of Buddhism in the region, are the combination of the following factors: (1) an insistent and subtle applications of Weberian thoughts to understand complexity and multivalency of Buddhist practices in the region's diverse contexts; (2) some critical problematic relationships between Buddhism and the post‐Indochinese War (post‐Cold War) nation states and other turbulent politics of the social life of the Buddhists; and (3) some surging global interests in Theravada Buddhism, especially its teachings and meditational practices. Such interests have transformed the Buddhist World of Southeast Asia into a transnational religious phenomenon and instantly placed Southeast Asian Buddhism at the center of the world's theological and intellectual Buddhist landscapes. Toward the end, I suggest some critical issues that could ignite new directions in the field of study and create some vibrant and exciting generations of ethnographies on Southeast Asian Buddhism.

Politics and Religion in Japan

The relation between church and state, or religion and politics, has always been an uncomfortably close one in Japan, but it is only in recent years that this relationship has been seen as problematical, both from a political and a religious perspective. This article surveys two major areas of contention in particular: the present Japanese government's apparent attempts to revive an Emperor‐centered State Shinto, and the lively recent debates over the role of Buddhism, especially of ‘fascist Zen’, in the Asia–Pacific War. I also consider the political implications of the new movement of so‐called ‘Critical Buddhism’, as well as of the ‘religious violence’ practiced by the Aum Shinriky? ‘doomsday cult’.

Power, Place, and Militarism: Toward a Comparative Geographic Analysis of Militarization

The topics of militarism and militarization have acquired a position of prominence in geography, and the social sciences, in general, in recent years. This article begins by reviewing some of the major contributions to the study of war, peace, militarism, and militarization. Subsequently, it discusses three major strands of literature in geography and related fields: those of theories of place, cultural hegemony, and the ideological content of militarism. The interconnections between these bodies of literature are explored throughout the article. In summary, we posit that the ideology of militarism is best conceptualized as a form of cultural or ideological hegemony, the production of which relies on the social construction of places. To analyze the interacting processes of militarization and the construction of place, we argue for grounded studies of militarism and militarization and propose a place‐based, comparative framework.

Geographies of Detention and Imprisonment: Interrogating Spatial Practices of Confinement, Discipline, Law, and State Power

This article surveys the state of emerging geographic research on detention, imprisonment, and confinement. Prisons and detention centers vary widely in location and form, but all hold human beings without consent by other human beings. We first survey geographical research on prisons and, second, on detention centers. We then argue that this geographic research offers three primary contributions to the study of imprisonment and detention. First, analyzing the spatial practices (the ordering of space and time) of these institutions provides a productive framework for understanding the materiality of social, cultural, and economic relationships. Second, this research provides an important perspective on state responses to the globalization of trade, migration, war, and security. Third, detention and imprisonment are productive sites for exclusionary discourses. In closing, we urge geographers to think deeply about how detention's indeterminacy works beyond the detention center, to be wary of implicit valorizations of imprisonment, and to take seriously the global expansion of the confinement industry.

Geoffrey Holmes and the Urban World of Augustan England

Urban history as a sub‐discipline within history began to emerge in Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s. Attention initially focused heavily on the 19th century, but the Tudor and early Stuart town also soon attracted attention. Academic interest in the post‐restoration and 18th‐century urban world emerged a little more slowly, but the closing decades of the 20th century produced a mounting volume of research on the subject. Geoffrey Holmes was one of a group of post‐war historians rewriting the history of Augustan Britain and re‐establishing its significance in the longer‐term development of the country. Though not a specialist urban historian, Holmes saw towns playing a vital part in shaping the character of the period. His research anticipated and inspired many of the facets of the rapidly‐emerging historiography on the 18th‐century town, intersecting with it in three particular areas. First, in demonstrating the important role played by towns, in particular as the home of four‐fifths of the seats in the house of commons, in the broader political system; second, in highlighting the position of London at the hub of the Augustan world; and third in revealing the part played by towns, and especially those who inhabited them, in promoting social change at the same time as securing long‐term political stability.

Peace, War and Party Politics: The Conservatives and Europe 1846–59 – By Geoffrey Hicks