Online research in philosophy

The relationship existing between science and psychoanalysis has long been tense, critical, even hostile. Andre Haynal addresses this relationship by examining three questions: how is psychoanalytic "knowledge" established? what methodology and epistemology underlie psychoanalytic theory? and what are the historical circumstances that have shaped psychoanalysis? Haynal is familiar with the full spectrum of analytic thought and begins with a systematic discussion of analytic theory. The second part of the book covers a series of historical topics and includes discussions of Freud and his relations with his followers. A chapter on Freud and his "favorite disciple," Sandor Ferenczi, is an engrossing account of the complex intellectual and personal connection the two men shared.

Anosognosia is literally ‘unawareness of or failure to acknowledge one’s hemi- plegia or other disability’ (OED). Etymology would suggest the meaning ‘lack of knowledge of disease’ so that anosognosia would include any denial of impairment, such as denial of blindness (Anton’s syndrome). But Babinski, who introduced the term in 1914, applied it only to patients with hemiplegia who fail to acknowledge their paralysis. Most commonly, this is failure to acknowledge paralysis of the left side of the body following damage to the right hemisphere of the brain. In this paper, we shall mainly be concerned with anosognosia for hemiplegia. But we shall also use the term ‘anosognosia’ in an inclusive way to encompass lack of knowledge or acknowledgement of any impairment. Indeed, in the construction ‘anosognosia for X’, X might even be anosognosia for some Y.

The "method of deficit analysis" in functional localization research is a method for inferring localization of brain function on the basis of evidence of abnormal behavior plus evidence concerning brain damage location. Such inferences involve two steps: first, a functional deficit analysis of the neurologically impaired patient, and second, localization of function in the normal brain. It is argued that psychological theory is required for adequate functional deficit analysis, both for the identification of the relevant functional components of the system as well as for the explanation of the behavioral pathology in terms of a deficit in one of these components.