Amnesia

Provides a clear and comprehensive account of amnesia set in the context of our understanding of how normal memory operates.

Amnesia: Clinical, Psychological and Medicolegal Aspects, 2nd Edition explores the clinical, psychological, and medicolegal aspects of amnesia. Experimental studies of the organic amnesic syndrome are presented and memory disorders associated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) are described. The role of amnesia in cerebral disease, the neuropathology of amnesic states, and psychogenic memory loss are also considered. This book is comprised of 11 chapters and begins with a discussion on experimental studies of the organic amnesic syndrome, along with certain associated studies of normal memory. The reader is then introduced to the link between amnesia and cerebral pathology; transient global amnesia and its clinical manifestations; the amnesic syndrome and its relation to Korsakoff syndrome; traumatic amnesia; amnesias of temporal lobe origin; and memory disorders following ECT. A neuropathological examination of the human brain in cases of amnesia is presented, and examples of the psychopathology of memory are provided. The final chapter analyzes amnesia from a medicolegal point of view. This monograph will be of interest to clinicians, neurologists, psychiatrists, psychopathologists, psychologists, and medicolegal practitioners.

Originally published in 1982, this book brings together two areas of research previously studied in parallel, with little interaction (particularly in the US): normal memory processing and the amnesic syndrome. When trying to document the relationship between the two it became apparent that there was much crossover and duplication of effort in a number of areas: whether long-term memory and short-term memory truly represent independent storage systems, or are simply points on a continuum; trying to determine the primary locus of variables influencing the rate at which information is lost during retention; whether episodic memory and semantic memory represent two different storage systems, or are simply artifacts produced by different kinds of query to a single memory system and finally, whether visual and verbal memory are independent. It was written, following a meeting in 1979, by a small group of investigators, brought together to explore this commonality and to share data and theory, thus beginning the promise of a bright future of interdisciplinary interaction in memory research.

Introduction : prosperity lost -- Coming up short -- The great divide -- The trouble with markets -- How America got rich -- "An established and useful reality" -- American amnesia -- We're not in Camelot anymore -- This is not your father's party -- The modern robber barons -- A crisis of authority -- Conclusion : the positive-sum society.

Feminist Amnesia is an important challenge to contemporary academic feminism. Jean Curthoys argues that the intellectual decline of university arts education and the loss of a deep moral commitment in feminism are related phenomena. The contradiction set up by the radical ideas of the 1960s, and institutionalised life of many of its protagonists in the academy has produced a special kind of intellectual distortion. This book criticises current trends in feminist theory from the perspective of forgotten and allegedly outdated feminist ideas. Jean Curthroys show that much contemporary feminist theory, like much of today's radical thought, is muddled. The 'forgotten' theory of Women's Liberation was, she argues, deeply oppositional and moral. The repression of this theory has led to distortions, most notabley in the preoccupation with binary oppositions. Jean Curthoys argues that where Women's Liberation was once radical, much of contemporary feminist thought hides behind obscurantism, and has become conservative and orthodox. These controversial ideas will be keenly debated by all those involved in womens's studies, feminist theory and moral philosophy.

The history of sociology overwhelmingly focuses on 'the winners' from the classical 'canon' - Marx, Durkheim, and Weber - to today's most celebrated sociologists. This book strikingly demonstrates that restricting sociology in this way impoverishes it as a form of historically reflexive knowledge and obscures the processes and struggles of sociology's own making as a form of disciplinary knowledge. Sociological Amnesia focuses on singular contributions to sociology that were once considered central to the discipline but are today largely neglected. Chapters explore the work of illustrious predecessors such as Raymond Aron, Erich Fromm and G.D.H. Cole as well as examining exceptional cases of reputational revival as in the case of Norbert Elias or Gabriel Tarde. Through understanding the obstacles of recognition faced by female sociologists like Viola Klein and Olive Schreiner, and public intellectuals like Cornelius Castoriadis, the volume considers the reasons why certain kinds of sociology are hailed as central to the discipline, whilst others are forgotten. In so doing, the collection offers fresh insights into not only the work of individual sociologists, but also into the discipline of sociology itself - its trajectories, forgotten promises, and dead ends.

Immanuel Velikovsky called this book the "fulfillment of his oath of Hippocrates - to serve humanity." In this book he returns to his roots as a psychologist and psychoanalytical therapist, yet not with a single person as his patient but with humanity as a whole. After an extremely revealing overview of the foundations of the various psychoanalytical systems he makes the step into crowd psychology and reopens the case of Worlds in Collision from a totally different point of view: as a psychoanalytical case study. This way he shows that the blatant reactions to his theories (which are still going on today) have not been surprising but are actually inevitable from a psychological perspective - which equally holds for those who have defined our view of the world. At the same time he is able to reclassify the theories of Siegmund Freud and of C. G. Jung by finding a common basis for them. A journey through history, religion, mythology and art shows the overall range of the collective trauma and gives us - the patients - a message of extraordinary urgency and importance for the future.