Depression, Anxiety, Powerlessness and Irrational Belief in Unlimited Individual

Systemic existential conditions are indelible aspects of a client’s reflective and non-reflective modes of consciousness. These conditions impinge upon a client’s ability and willingness to think through his/her situation in the world, as this may serve to highlight the terror of living. Depression, anxiety, and a sense of powerlessness, in conjunction with a contradictory belief in unlimited individual possibility are often translations of and reaction formations against the ontological experience of terror. The problematic nature of terror, as such, is discussed, as are its effects upon those who seek counseling. Sources of terror include but are not limited to the increasing monetization of all facets of contemporary post-Modern society, the collapse of the possibility of a democratic society, the renewed global arms race, the increasing debt load shouldered by individuals, the destruction of liberal arts education, and the wholesale disregard of basic human rights as enumerated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In sum, an artificially created state of nature could account for currently existing conditions of terror and the attendant consequences of that terror: depression, anxiety, a sense of powerlessness, and an irrational belief in unlimited individual possibility.

Sexual Transcendence in Tsvetaeva's Poems to Pasternak

Mutuality, do not create impediments for the Castalian stream! Unity in distance: a more intense reality, lying beyond what the eye can see.In both Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry and her life, sexuality plays an intensely ambiguous role; she vacillates between the belief that the body is merely a “wall” hiding the soul, and the contradictory belief that sexual intimacy is the necessary vehicle to spiritual transcendence. Tsvetaeva's personal sexual adventurousness is by now a well-known fact of her biography; yet this fact is not simply a result of the poet's rebellious nature but is, rather, evidence of a profound philosophical inquiry into the very nature of sex and sexuality that she sustained throughout the course of her life and her writing. Sex is the idiom in which she writes transcendence of her own limiting subjectivity, via an exit into the radical alterity represented by the figure of the beloved.

Flavors of self-deception: Ontology and epidemiology

Mele questions the prevalence and ontological status of strong forms of self-deception, as well as our attempt at experimental demonstration. Without validated indicators outside laboratory contexts, statements about prevalence are purely speculative. Conceptualizing self-deception without positing the motivated lack of awareness of a contradictory belief is unsatisfactory in dealing with issues of “agency,” that is, how can we stop the processing of threatening information unless we recognize that the information is threatening?

Self-deceiving intentions

Contrary to Mele's suggestion, not all garden-variety self-deception reduces to bias-generated false beliefs (usually held contrary to the evidence). Many cases center around self-deceiving intentions to avoid painful topics, escape unpleasant truths, seek comfortable attitudes, and evade self-acknowledgment. These intentions do not imply paradoxical projects or contradictory belief states.

The sudden death of a millionaire: conversion and consensus in a Ghanaian kingdom

Opening ParagraphThe unexpected death of a citizen in 1977 triggered a series of events in one small Ghanaian kingdom, pointing to confusion in the locally accepted criteria for Christian conversion and to contradictions in the avenues to status and power. Since the deceased was a millionaire businessman, something of a huckster, and a person who was at the centre of an unusually complex constellation of social ties, his death forced the people of his local community to re-examine the relationships between traditional religion and Christianity, and between wealth, religious adherence and the display of status and prestige. There was long and bitter hostility between the two towns to which this man was affiliated by descent. Each town competed for the glory of ; claiming him as a member, and while once he too would have desired that, logically it could not be. There was also perennial conflict between the factions within the kingdom's capital. This enhanced the drama and helped explain the urgency of the respective townspeople's attempts to resolve the underlying structural contradictions which became manifest in the events following the death to their own advantage. At the same time this is the story of a self-made man, unusual largely because of his extreme wealth, who understood conflict and ambiguity, and who manipulated the social structure in which he found himself to his own advantage. The funeral of this one man, who simultaneously entertained contradictory belief systems and juggled opposing attributes of leadership, mobilised the attention of the entire population of both towns. It did so precisely because the ritual of his funeral was used to ‘describe in advance a desired but uncertain state of affairs. It [ritual] is about power and is itself more or less political’ (MacGaffey, 1986: 11, emphasis added).