Japan is currently undergoing a subtle but pervasive social upheaval, a period of broad structural reform and soul-searching triggered by the rigors of the collapse of the hyperinflated "Bubble Economy" of the late 1980s. As the nation confronts the irretrievable loss of that economic mass delusion, it is turning instead to the reclamation of a quality of life sacrificed for much of the 20th century to national ambition for first military, and then economic pre-eminence. Historian Jeff Kingston has claimed that the ongoing changes, ranging from the reduction of working hours to the institution of freedom of information laws, have been equal in magnitude to those following the Meiji Restoration and Japan's defeat in World War II. Arguably, they represent the long-delayed fruition of postwar democratizing reforms. This dissertation examines the role of American popular music, and particularly hip hop, in reflecting and shaping these changes. Starting with the 1920s and 1930s, when jazz-loving "modern girls" stood for the alluring and threatening decadence of urbanization, the influence of American music on Japan has been strong for decades. This influence came to full flower during and after Japan's surrender and subsequent occupation, as exemplified by successive trends for everything from rockabilly to country and western to folk. Though obviously the condition of occupation enhanced the exchange of musical texts, and did exercise particularly economic pressure on Japanese musicians to adopt American styles, it is not simply a case of cultural adaptation motivated by domination of force. The central testament to this is the eventual role African-American music - not just jazz, but rock, funk, and soul - took on as the 'music of resistance,' initially in connection with the student protests that marked Japan in the 1960's. Such an articulation shows the powerful role of Japanese desire, particularly on the part of youth, for the America represented by popular music. Most recently, hip hop has shown the continued attraction African-American music holds for Japanese people, and youth in particular. Hip hop reached Japan in the early 1980s and entered the mainstream with East End X Yuri's million-selling pop-rap singles of the mid-1990s. Its prominence continues to this day, in many cases embodied in Japanese artists who imitate African-American styles and sounds wholesale. Such imitation has been roundly criticized by international critics and commentators, condemned as contextless cultural theft and a testament to Japanese insensitivity on matters of race. In my study I examine a cadre of contemporary musicians who, while equally dedicated to hip hop, firmly resist such uncritical imitation of blackness, instead emphasizing their own unique musical and cultural innovations. I argue that this transition from imitation to innovation mirrors a broader cultural shift away from widespread deference to authority and towards a greater openness to innovation and change, and is just one way that the work of Japan's underground hip hop artists resonates with the ongoing 'quiet revolution.' Hip hop has encountered a few particularly important ongoing social changes: that from a lifetime employment system to one increasingly characterized by temporary and part-time labor; from a self-declared homogenous society to a multicultural one; and, more generally, from one defined by elite emphasis on social compliance and loyalty to a wider acceptance of iconoclasm and individuality. It is tempting to classify this as the transition from an 'oppressive' system to a 'free' one - from bad to good. But there are complexities and ambivalence inherent in the emergent situation. For example, while the new employment model provides much greater flexibility for individuals and frees them from the past tyranny of the corporate system, it also exposes them to much greater financial uncertainty. The rising sense of self-worth among minorities, for which hip hop is an important channel, simultaneously threatens to transform these identities into objectified fetishes. Individuality is not without its costs. Meanwhile, hip hop is also being deployed in ways that reinforce the old model of deference and authoritarianism, particularly by artists who promote revisionist histories and the revival of militarism. The significance of hip hop for social change derives from a long history of interaction between Japanese and African-American culture. This history resurfaces in hip hop recordings, as well as in the lifestyle of urban musicians and fans. This dissertation follows the daily lives and viewpoints of hip hop artists in Tokyo and throughout Japan, from some of its most successful to those just starting their careers. It tracks their music-making processes and their practices of cultural adaptation, and places them within the larger context of Japanese society. It ultimately describes how an art form derided as imitative and derivative has come to reflect the very unique contours of the new soil to which it has been transplanted.

Unfavorable opinions and images of the public relations industry have persisted for decades, and the industry still struggles to deal with them. Additionally, it is a demanding profession that is expected to grow faster than average but struggles to retain talent. Public relations research has also predominantly focused on how nonpractitioners perceive public relations. The present study psychoanalytically analyzed two movies with cinematic representations of public relations practitioners and 20 interviews with public relations practitioners to examine how practitioners' self-perceptions of public relations unconsciously influence their practice and expectations, as well as their stress and burnout. More specifically, stress and burnout dynamics were explored among younger and older practitioners and gender.

It is argued that physical (and not inherently psychical) properties are insufficient to constitute all else. Specifically they cannot constitute an instance (K1) of our knowledge that the number of existing things is at least one. This employs a new version of entry by entailment: Every fact as to the presence of a constituted trope is entailed by facts about the presence of the ontologically basic, where a property is ontologically basic if and only if the fact of its presence is not entailed (even allowing exhaustive definitions of all tropes in terms of their ultimate constituents) by facts about the presence of things non-identical to it. Existence is a mind-independent presence. Things can be present (to mind) as opposed to existing but must be accompanied by the presence of all of their parts and of anything else that their presence might entail. This includes some existing thing in the case that knowledge that something exists is present, since it is analytic that knowledge cannot be of what is not the case. Purely dynamical properties cannot exist apart from instances of some other property kind (on pain of regress as to what moves). Material properties can make a difference to cognitive states only in virtue of differences they can make to dynamical properties. Thus, any cognitive state present in some dynamical and material scenario must be present in an equivalent purely dynamical scenario, which cannot exist. Hence: 1) There can be no knowledge of existence, or thus trope K1, in a purely dynamical scenario. 2) There can thus neither be a trope K1 if only dynamical and material properties (and what they constitute) are present. So because there is a trope K1, there are one or more ontologically basic properties which are not dynamical or material. It is further argued that nothing ontologically basic is per se (directly and non-obscurely) conceivable except as psychicality or a categorical basis of a disposition to change or constancy (respectively, dynamism and materiality). Thus at least one ontologically basic property is either psychical or not per se conceivable. The latter proposition has less merit.

Towards a Poetics of Light; The Conceits of Light is a critical quest to map associations between rhetorical figures, psychological defences and spatial tropes in an attempt to conceive a poetic design that enacts conceit. Light is an emblem which echoes with an abundance of representations in literature, history, art and architecture and parallels may be drawn between their resemblances however apparently remote. Love, knowledge, hope and creative passion mark turns in the threads that knot ideas and their representations together. Return of the Immortals, the final project in a series of works exploring these parallels and representations, gathers together a cascade of tropes to structure a spatial experience which culminates in The Conceits of Light.

Thesis (MA(Counselling Psychology)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-136).

Although bilingualism is a common feature of clinical work with patients, the specific aspects of working with the dreams of the bilingual patient have not been much discussed. This qualitative study explored the discrepancies that arise in the linguistic expressions of the psychological complexes when dreams are worked simultaneously in the dreamer's native and second language. The aim was to learn more about the significance of including the bilingual patient's native tongue when working with dreams in a dreamer's second language. Key concepts on the study of language, dreams, psychological complexes, linguistics and psychoanalysis situated the research using various theoretical perspectives, such as Merleau-Ponty's and Ricoeur's understanding of language, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as Jungian and post-Jungian's analytical psychology. The focal point was the important role of words, phonetics, and grammar in the unconscious association process, particularly as it was revealed in the presence of complexes in dreams. This literature review served as a framework for an empirical investigation in which bilingual participants' dream texts written down in both languages (i.e., Spanish and English) were compared to find linguistic discrepancies between them. The data was collected after the administration of the Spanish version of Jung's Word Association Experiment to five participants to obtain a map of their psychological complexes. The participants wrote down three personal dream narratives in both their native and second languages, and they included their associations to each dream. The results demonstrated that the mother tongue describes better the dream ego's experience and brings in childhood and family of origin life, while revealing complexes more straightforwardly. However, for a person who has a life in two languages, both tongues would potentially carry the emotional tone of complexes in dreams. Clinically, these results suggest an analytic attitude that is sensitive to the intrinsic and lively link between words and complexes, and is alert to the sound of words in their polysemy and metaphorical dimensions in bilingual patients. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts / Clinical Psychology / PhD / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2006. / Includes bibliography.

Is hyper-sexuality intrinsically linked with leadership? Should there be a new category of leaders to include sexual compulsion as part of successful dominance? What about the leadership of these Presidents compensated for their hyper-sexuality and allowed them to rise to the most powerful position in the world? What does it say about our society when we accept, elect, and idealize this behavior? Does sexual compulsion inhibit leaders or are their benefits such as infusing them with confidence and gratification? Is it actually condemnable at all? To answer these questions I’ve had to dive as deeply as I can into the psyche of these two Presidents: John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.

The aim of this bachelor's thesis is to submit the character of Grey in Mo Hayder's novel, The Devil of Nanking to a Freudian reading with focus on repression and trauma and their impact on sexual development and obsessive behavior. The analysis of to what extent Grey's past and present experiences form the cornerstone to her mental and sexual development including repression and obsession will be based on Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories. The claim is that Grey's obsessiveness and sexuality can be explained and seen in terms of a Freudian view of trauma resulting in repression.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 183-192).