Consciousness has always been a particularly elusive concept and one vigorously argued in the scientific community. This new volume takes on the task of defining normal and altered consciousness in their most relevant clinical terms.

In States of Consciousness, Andrzej Kokoszka expands on the pioneering work of J.H. Jackson, offering contemporary models for studying consciousness as it applies to both pathology and normal altered states, e.g., relaxation, sleep, meditation, and hypnosis. He makes clear distinctions between the neuroscientific and...

It is now just 20 years since Gomatos and his co-workers at the Rocke feller University showed that the nucleic acid in reovirus particles is double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). This discovery created great excitement, for dsRNA was at that time under intense investigation as the replicative form of viral genomes consisting of single-stranded RNA. An equally interesting and important finding followed soon after: it was found that the reovirus genome consists, not of a single nucleic acid molecule, but of 10 discrete "segments," each with its specific sequence content and each transcribed into its...

From Memories to Mental Illness explores a ground-breaking hypothesis based on the premise that memories are stored as electrically associated entities reflecting the natural organization of those experiences from which they rose. In the book's first half, the neuroscience of memory storage and retrieval, emotional expression, and other basic processes are considered and a comprehensive hypothesis is formulated. The proposed theory is used in the second half as a rational theoretical explanation for such major psychiatric conditions as multiple personality disorder, depression,...

Scientific Investigations into the Flow of Human Experience.

The tension between Freud's clinical discoveries about the power of human emotions and the theoretical framework in which he embedded these discoveries has been most eloquently detailed by Freud himself. His agoniz- ing reappraisal. in 1926, of the libido theory of anxiety is just one example. But, as is usually the case, theoretical difficulties point to gaps in existing knowledge. At the time when Freud made his fundamental discovery that hysterical symptoms (and dreams) were understandable as reflections of for- bidden ("strangulated") affect, anthropology was essentially nonexistent as a...

What are the basic data of psychology? In the early years of experimental psychology, they were reports of ''brighter'' or "heavier" or other esti- mates of the magnitude of differences between the sensory stimuli pre- sented in psychophysical experiments. Introspective accounts of the ex- perience of seeing colored lights or shapes were important sources of psychological data in the laboratories of Cornell, Harvard, Leipzig, or Wiirzburg around the tum of the century. In 1910, John B. Watson called for the objectification of psychological research, even parodying the typical subjective...

Images as means of expression have fascinated and spoken to me for a long time. Yet it has been a far-reaching and circuitous journey to syn- thesize imagery and visual expression in the present form. Early in my life my interest in images expressed itself in art, first as a young child drawing, then responding to works of art and enjoying the life conveyed through colors, forms, and lines that created recognizable images and suggested different moods. The centering, transformative, and spir- itual aspects of art emerged as I sought out art in times of personal turmoil. I returned to the...

For at least half of the twentieth century, psychology and the other mental health professions all but ignored the significant adaptive pos sibilities of the human gift of imagery. Our capacity seemingly to duplicate sights, sounds, and other sensory experiences through some form of central brain process continues to remain a mysterious, alma st miraculous skill. Because imagery is so much a private experience, experimental psychologists found it hard to measure and turned their attentian to observable behaviors that could easily be studied in ani maIs as well as in humans. Psychoanalysts and...

Freud's discovery of an emotional basis for mental illness led him to pursue the emotional basis of human behavior in general. This pursuit led him to undertake observational studies of dreams (1900), everyday mistakes (1901), sexuality (1905b), character formation (1908, 1931), jokes (1905a), and the origin of guilt (1913). Volume 2 of Freud and Modern Psychology examines the texts of each of these major writings in general psychology, continuing to explore the contradiction between Freud's observations about the power of emotions and his narrow the oretical formulations about human...

This volume summarizes the results of a survey of British Upper Carboniferous sites, undertaken between 1978 and 1990 as part of the Geological Conservation Review (GCR). The GCR was the first attempt to assess the scientific significance of all Britain's geological sites and has proved a landmark in the development of a coherent geological conservation strategy in this country. To ensure that the assessments were based on a firm logical and scientific foundation, the range of scientific interest was divided into ninety-seven discrete subject 'blocks', reflecting the natural divisions of...