Medusa complex is a psychological complex revolving around the petrification or freezing of human emotion, and drawing on the classical myth of the Medusa. [1]
The term Medusa Complex was coined in 1948 by Gaston Bachelard [2] to cover the feeling of petrification induced by the threat of the parental gaze. [3] A mute, paralysed fury responds to the danger of the obliteration of an individual consciousness by an external Other (and perhaps by the corresponding internalised desire to obliterate the subjectivity of others in turn). [4]
Later writers have developed Bachelard's idea in various ways.
Cultural bias is the interpretation and judgment of phenomena by the standards of one's own culture. It is sometimes considered a problem central to social and human sciences, such as economics, psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Some practitioners of these fields have attempted to develop methods and theories to compensate for or eliminate cultural bias.
King Lear is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is loosely based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between his daughters Goneril and Regan, who pay homage to gain favour, feigning love. The King's third daughter, Cordelia, is offered a third of his kingdom also, but refuses to be insincere in her praise and affection. She instead offers the respect of a daughter and is disowned by Lear who seeks flattery. Regan and Goneril subsequently break promises to host Lear and his entourage, so he opts to become homeless and destitute, goes insane, and the French King married to Cordelia invades Britain to restore order and Lear's rule. In a subplot, Edmund, the illegitimate son of Gloucester, betrays his brother and father. Tragically, Lear, Cordelia and several other main characters die.
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter, he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break. He influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among them Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dominique Lecourt and Jacques Derrida, as well as the sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Bruno Latour.
A complex is a structure in the unconscious that is objectified as an underlying theme—like a power or a status—by grouping clusters of emotions, memories, perceptions and wishes in response to a threat to the stability of the self. In psychoanalysis, it is antithetical to drives.
Face validity is the extent to which a test is subjectively viewed as covering the concept it purports to measure. It refers to the transparency or relevance of a test as it appears to test participants. In other words, a test can be said to have face validity if it "looks like" it is going to measure what it is supposed to measure. For instance, if a test is prepared to measure whether students can perform multiplication, and the people to whom it is shown all agree that it looks like a good test of multiplication ability, this demonstrates face validity of the test. Face validity is often contrasted with content validity and construct validity.
Lyn Yvonne Abramson is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She was born in Benson, Minnesota. She took her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1972 before attaining her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at University of Pennsylvania in 1978.
Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience to purge it of its emotional excesses—a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events.
"Medusa's Head", by Sigmund Freud, is a very short, posthumously published essay on the subject of the Medusa Myth.
Paul Willem Pruyser (1916–1987) was a Dutch-American clinical psychologist at the Menninger Clinic, influenced by James, Freud, Otto, and Winnicott, one of the most famous contributors to the psychological theories of religion. He created the Psychology and Culture model, which discusses the three "Worlds" in which people live — The Autistic, The Illusionistic, and The Realistic. In his book The Minister as Diagnostician (1976), Pruyser affirmed the theological expertise and clinical authority of hospital chaplains on interdisciplinary healthcare teams.
William Shakespeare's influence extends from theater and literatures to present-day movies, Western philosophy, and the English language itself. William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the history of the English language, and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He transformed European theatre by expanding expectations about what could be accomplished through innovation in characterization, plot, language and genre. Shakespeare's writings have also impacted many notable novelists and poets over the years, including Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, and Maya Angelou, and continue to influence new authors even today. Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the history of the English-speaking world after the various writers of the Bible; many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages. According to Guinness Book of World Records Shakespeare remains the world’s best-selling playwright, with sales of his plays and poetry believed to have achieved in excess of four billion copies in the over 400 years since his death. He is also the third most translated author in history.
William Shakespeare's style of writing was borrowed from the conventions of the day and adapted to his needs.
The History of King Lear is an adaptation by Nahum Tate of William Shakespeare's King Lear. It first appeared in 1681, some seventy-five years after Shakespeare's version, and is believed to have replaced Shakespeare's version on the English stage in whole or in part until 1838.
Larry Ryan Squire is an American psychiatrist and neuroscientist. He is a professor of psychiatry, neurosciences, and psychology at the University of California, San Diego, and a Senior Research Career Scientist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego. He is a leading investigator of the neurological bases of memory, which he studies using animal models and human patients with memory impairment.
Joseph Carroll is a scholar in the field of literature and evolution. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley and is now Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
Integral theory as developed by Ken Wilber is a synthetic metatheory aiming to unify a broad spectrum of Western theories and models and Eastern meditative traditions within a singular conceptual framework. The original basis, which dates to the 1970s, is the concept of a "spectrum of consciousness" that ranges from archaic consciousness to the highest form of spiritual consciousness, depicting it as an evolutionary developmental model. This model incorporates stages of development as described in structural developmental stage theories, as well as eastern meditative traditions and models of spiritual growth, and a variety of psychic and supernatural experiences.
Counterconditioning is functional analytic principle that is part of behavior analysis, and involves the conditioning of an unwanted behavior or response to a stimulus into a wanted behavior or response by the association of positive actions with the stimulus. For example, when training a dog, a person would create a positive response by petting or calming the dog when the dog reacts anxiously or nervously to a stimulus. Therefore, this will associate the positive response with the stimulus.
The European Mathematical Psychology Group (EMPG) is an informal association of scientists in mathematical psychology. The group was founded in 1971 in Paris; it has not been formally organized as a society, although has been described as the "European branch" of the Society for Mathematical Psychology. It holds a meeting each year in a European city, and beginning at the 23rd meeting, has published a proceedings from that meeting as an edited volume. As of 2001, there were approximately 100 attendees.
June Machover Reinisch is an American psychologist who has helped advance the public's general knowledge of human sexual activity. From 1982 to 1993, she was director of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. Her research at the Institute focused on sexual and psychosexual development. She has published more than 100 scientific papers in such journals as Science, Nature, JAMA, American Psychologist, Hormones and Behavior, MMWR, JPSP, Archives of Internal Medicine, and the British and American Journals or Psychiatry.
Giuseppe (Joseph) Dominic Matarazzo is an American psychologist and a past president of the American Psychological Association (APA). He chaired the first medical psychology department in the United States and has been credited with much of the early work in health psychology.
Ophelia complex is the term used by Gaston Bachelard to refer to the links between femininity, liquids, and drowning which he saw as symbolised in the fate of Shakespeare's Ophelia.