Dead things for Halloween

Your body on H1N1 vaccine.

Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls [1962]

George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead [1968]

Victor Halperin's White Zombie [1932]

10^10^16 parallel universes...theoretical physics run amuck

I don't buy this at all.

"Over the past few decades, the idea that our universe could be one of many alternate universes within a giant multiverse has grown from a sci-fi fantasy into a legitimate theoretical possibility. Several theories of physics and astronomy have hypothesized the existence of a multiverse made of many parallel universes. One obvious question that arises, then, is exactly how many of these parallel universes might there be."

"Physicists Calculate Number of Parallel Universes"

by

Lisa Zyga

October 16th, 2009

PHYSORG.COM

In a new study, Stanford physicists Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin have calculated the number of all possible universes, coming up with an answer of 10^10^16. If that number sounds large, the scientists explain that it would have been even more humongous, except that we observers are limited in our ability to distinguish more universes; otherwise, there could be as many as 10^10^10^7 universes.

To work these numbers out, Linde and Vanchurin looked back to the time shortly after the Big Bang, which they view as a quantum process that generated lots of quantum fluctuations. Then during the period of inflation, the universe grew rapidly and these quantum fluctuations were "frozen" into classical perturbations in distinct regions. Today, each of these regions could be a different universe, having its own distinct laws of low energy physics.

By analyzing the mechanism (called "slow roll inflation") that initially generated the quantum fluctuations, the scientists could estimate the number of resulting universes at 10^10^10^7 (a number which is dependent on the model they used). However, this number is limited by other factors, specifically by the limits of the human brain. Since the total amount of information that one individual can absorb in a lifetime is about 10^16 bits, which is equivalent to 10^10^16 configurations, this means that a human brain couldn't distinguish more than 10^10^16 universes.

Requiring that the human brain must be able to count the number of parallel universes may seem inappropriate, if not arrogant, but Linde and Vanchurin explain that dealing with the quantum world is different than our everyday lives in which quantum effects can be safely ignored. A crucial part of their calculation here is an investigation of quantum effects on supergalactic scales. In this kind of scenario, the state of the multiverse and observations made by an observer are correlated (similar to the Schrodinger cat experiment, where the outcome can be determined only after it is registered by a classical observer).

"When we analyze the probability of the existence of a universe of a given type, we should be talking about a consistent pair: the universe and an observer who makes the rest of the universe 'alive' and the wave function of the rest of the universe time-dependent," the scientists write.

As the scientists explain, the calculation of the number of universes is an important step toward an even larger goal: to find the probability of living in a universe with a particular set of properties. What are the chances that we live in a world in which the laws of physics are these laws that we currently observe? Answering this question requires finding probabilities that depend on knowing about other universes, among many other challenges.

How many universes are in the multiverse? by Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin

Al Gore and "global warming" poll

Was Al Gore's "Chicken Little" position on global climate warming erroneous?

Yes...6

No...4

Sure it was erroneous. Hype, fear mongering, a demonstration of bad science and logic, and big profits for Mr. Gore--and an unwarranted Nobel Peace Prize too boot. [That must be a trend now.]

H1N1 flu vaccine poll

Will you get the H1N1 flu vaccine?

Yes...2

No...11

The majority feels confident that they can weather winter's flu season and that the vaccine may have some inherent issues. Maybe those 11 will exercise what they learned in Hermitology 101 and avoid all human contact.


"H1N1 virus" poll

Obama's Peace Prize poll...picking the fruit before it is ripe

With the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to President Barack Obama, have the overall awards been diluted by this apparent unwarranted accolade?

Yes: 14

No: 11

Makes no difference: 5

Wikipedia's entry..."According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who “during the preceding year [...] shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.""

My opinion. The award was premature and based on nothing more than a "kick start" philosophy to garner world thought. It will not affect any of the other awards which are meritorious. I wish it had never been included by Mr. Nobel.

"Nobel Surprise"

by

Hendrik Hertzberg

October 19th, 2009

The New Yorker

If President Obama really had to get a gift postmarked Scandinavia this month, he would probably, on the whole, have preferred the Olympics. At least at the Olympics the judges wait till after the race to give you the gold medal. They don’t force it on you while you’re still waiting for the bus to take you to the stadium. They don’t give it to you in anticipation of possible future feats of glory, like a signing bonus or an athletic scholarship. They don’t award it as a form of gentle encouragement, like a parent calling “Good job!” to a toddler who’s made it to the top rung of the monkey bars. It’s not a plastic, made-in-China “participation” trophy handed out to everyone in the class as part of a program to boost self-esteem. It’s not a door prize or a goody bag or a bowl of V.I.P. fruit courtesy of the hotel management. It’s not a gold star. It’s a gold medal.

We can take it as a sign of what a lucky fellow our President is that winning the Nobel Peace Prize has been widely counted a bad break for him. Barack Obama has come very far very fast. Five years ago, not long after finishing a distant second for a Chicago congressional nomination, he was still one of the hundred and seventy-seven members of the Illinois state legislature. Four years ago, he took his seat in the United States Senate, ushered there not only by his own undoubted talents but also by the serial self-destruction of his opponents. One year ago, he won the Presidency with a margin of victory-nine and a half million votes-that was the largest since 1984; absent the tailwind provided by his predecessor’s abysmal record, however, that margin would have been far smaller, possibly even nonexistent. He is certainly one of fortune’s favorites. He came into office on a tide of euphoria. Lately, though, his supporters have been experiencing a vague sense of disappointment. He may have saved the world from a second Great Depression and all that, but the jobless rate keeps on climbing, the planet keeps on heating up, Guantánamo keeps on not getting closed, and roadside bombs keep on exploding. He’s had eight whole months, and he still hasn’t signed a comprehensive health-care bill. Given that his perceived political problem is exaggerated expectations, does he really need a Nobel Peace Prize before he has actually made any peace?

The award to Obama illustrates, among other things, the difference between the “hard” and the “soft” Nobels. The prizes for physics, chemistry, and medicine are never given for trying, only for succeeding. Also, there is no apparent attempt to achieve regional, national, or ethnic balance. The same cannot be said of the literature prize, which frequently goes to authors who write in languages that few if any of the judges-eighteen grandees of the Swedish Academy-can read. Anyhow, literature is a matter of taste, which is why, among American writers, Pearl S. Buck was deemed worthy of the honor while Henry James was not. (The roster of literary losers, A to Z, also includes Auden, Borges, Conrad, Joyce, Kafka, Nabokov, Proust, Tolstoy, Twain, and Zola.) As for the relatively new economics prize (full name: the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel), it is neither hard nor soft, just kind of mushy-a Golden Globe, not an Oscar.

The peace prize, first given in 1901, has always been the trickiest of the lot. For the first fifty years or so the judges, a five-member committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament, almost always honored a person or an organization devoted to working, in the words of Alfred Nobel’s will, “for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”-a formula that excluded, for example, Mohandas Gandhi. After the Second World War, the judges’ definition of peace grew more capacious, producing laureates like Martin Luther King, Jr., Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Dalai Lama. But the choice has always been, as a former chairman of the judging committee wrote in 2001, “to put it bluntly, a political act.”

The chairman of the Republican National Committee would agree. He quickly fired off a fund-raising e-mail headed “Nobel Peace Prize for Awesomeness,” calling the choice proof that “the Democrats and their international leftist allies want America made subservient to the agenda of global redistribution and control.” A trifle overwrought? Perhaps. Still, to be fair to the chairman, there’s little doubt that for eight years the most prominent figure hovering over the Nobel committee’s deliberations was not any of the nominees under consideration; it was George W. Bush. Jimmy Carter richly deserved his belated prize-he is as responsible as were Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin for the thirty years’ peace between Israel and Egypt-and Al Gore, who sounded the tocsin on climate change, deserved his. But in neither case did the judges try very hard to hide their satisfaction in delivering a rebuke to Bush. This time their message was one of relief-and of hope and confidence, not just in Obama himself but in a United States that has reëmbraced, as the prize announcement put it, “that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman.”

A few hours after the news from Oslo, Obama, looking a little abashed, even a little uncomfortable, stepped up to a portable podium in the Rose Garden and spoke of the honor that had come to him so soon-too soon, even many of his admirers admit-and so unexpectedly. “Let me be clear,” he said, and went on, first acknowledging the obvious:

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize-men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace. But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women and all Americans want to build, a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the twenty-first century.

After a few more sombre words, he turned and walked back into the West Wing, there to attend another in a series of meetings on the strategy that he soon must set for the war in Afghanistan. The prize is won, but the peace, as always, is elusive.

"How world views Obama Nobel Peace Prize"

President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is praised in many countries as a reflection of a "new hope" in world politics, but others worry it came too soon. A global roundup of views.

by

Robert Marquand

October 9th, 2009

The Christian Science Monitor

Berlin

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama only nine months into his term brought surprise and delight in many parts of the world - for those who see it as a broad marker of hope and future global harmony at a time when wars and rumors of wars are deeply troubling.

But the Norwegian Nobel committee announcement Friday brought ample doses of befuddlement and skepticism among officials used to years of hard work to end conflict. Absent a significant peace deal, they worry, awarding the prize to a new president is premature, or could backfire by creating unreasonable expectations of the White House.

The Nobel committee said the award was for Obama's efforts to bring "a new climate in international politics," for which the American leader is "the world's leading spokesman."

At this point, diplomats argue, how the White House wears the prize - in humility or in triumph - will bear greatly on whether politicians and media around the world will accept the choice of the US president, which they say is symbolic rather than substantive.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Obama said he was "deeply humbled" by the decision of the Nobel Committee. "I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize - men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace. But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build."

A changed world?

Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who won the award in 1994, captured the way the Obama presidency has changed global views of America in an effusive congratulatory letter.

"Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided the entire humanity with fresh hope," Mr. Peres wrote. "Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again."

Many average folks from across the globe said the award ratifies a weary hope for peace.

"It's OK," says Dieter Bosche, who heads a German agriculture feed company, sitting with four friends at lunch in Berlin. "It's good for the new politics Obama represents, and good for the direction of the US. We want this direction to continue."

In Mexico City, some residents responded similarly, even though Latin America had strong contenders for the award, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and Piedad Cordoba, an influential peacebroker in Colombia.

A group of messengers standing on a sidewalk praised the decision. "He is a man of peace, he deserves it," says Jose Domingo Patino.

Countering experts who see the tribute as premature, Mr. Patino's colleague, Juan Manuel Montano, says that as leader of the most influential country in the world, Obama can make more of a difference with the prize. "He is looking for ways to build relationships with countries around the world, including Mexico," says Mr. Montano.

But Obama's ability to deliver on that hope is what troubles some observers.

"I couldn't believe it," says a Scandinavian diplomat whose wife called him Friday with the news. "I actually felt a little embarrassed for Obama, and for the Nobel committee. He [Obama] is going to have to accept this with the acknowledgement that he has still to earn it."

That sentiment was echoed in Britain, where the US president still enjoys high levels of approval. "He is a great, eloquent speaker and people admire that, but Tony Blair was also very eloquent, and many Britons are now cynical about what [Blair] ultimately achieved," says Dominic Dyer, executive director of the American European Institute in London.

Mairead Corrigan, a Belfast-born peace campaigner who was a joint winner of the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland, said she was "very sad" to hear the news. "President Obama has yet to prove that he will move seriously on the Middle East, that he will end the war in Afghanistan and many other issues," she told the BBC.

India and Pakistan weigh in

In Pakistan, opinion ranged from surprise to outrage, with doubts expressed about cooperating with the US in the war on terror, paranoia about the expansion of the US Embassy in Islamabad, and fingerpointing over unrest and bombings. In one of the softer comments offered, Cyril Almeida, the assistant editor of the newspaper Dawn, says that people shouldn't have to think about why someone received such an award. "This decision will be met at the least by a collective scratching of heads, if not genuine disbelief."

In India, meanwhile, some pointed out that their country's paragon of peace, Mahatma Gandhi, never won the Nobel Peace Prize. But people also gave a nod to the choice.

"I suppose it's more about hope than actual achievement to date," says Meenakshi Banguly, senior researcher for South Asia with Human Rights Watch. She credits Obama with changing the atmopshere. "In South Asia, there was a lot of anti-Americanism that followed 9/11 and the so-called war on terror that a lot of Muslims felt was directed at their community. President Obama came out and said that very clearly, and that was a reason for hope."

Mixed views in the Middle East

In the Middle East, some worried that the award would pressure Obama to act in ways that were not in their interests.

In Israel, right-wing politicians in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party said the award might encourage Obama to force Israel into making risky concessions for peace.

Pinchas Wallerstein, a veteran leader of the Israeli settlers in the West Bank, said that most Israeli Jews feel threatened by Obama.

"Unfortunately, the Nobel Prize doesn't prove anything. [Yasser] Arafat and [Yitzhak] Rabin received the Nobel Prize,'' he said. "Unfortunately, that has no significance that's relevant to peace. It has a public relations significance."

And among Palestinians, there was the sense that little had changed in their daily lives since Obama took office.

"The prize is good for him personally, but for us, we don't see an improvements," says Nashat Aqtash, a professor at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, the West Bank. "The Palestinian Authority is getting weaker. Gaza is under siege, so what kind of peace are we talking about here?"

Syrians, however, were more positive, praising Obama for reaching out to Arabs, and Syria in particular. "Everyone here appreciates that he is trying to do something concerning the peace process between Arabs and the Israelis," says Marwan Kabalan, a political analyst.

Global poll: Obama highly popular

Former Bush administration official Philip Zelikow, at an American Academy talk in Berlin Thursday evening before the prize was announced, argued that while Obama has made significant moves internationally, "It is still all speeches…. We won't know until next year whether they [the speeches] mean anything."

Just last week, Obama's standing in the world was reinforced by a survey that indicated the US president has rapidly changed the global perception of the United States from something of a bully to a country willing to consult. (Read about the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index survey).

Russia, Kenya: Obama has brought new outlook

That assessment was palpable in Russia, where Obama's influence is credited with shifting relations away from what some called a "second cold war" with the previous administration. The choice was understandable, according to some experts.

"It seems logical," says Pavel Zoltaryov, deputy director of the official Institute of US-Canada Studies in Moscow. "It reflects the world's support for his promises to move in a new direction, and hope that he will have the strength to see it through."

In Kenya, Damaris Akaina Stephen, sipping tea in a dusty roadside shop in the northern drought-hit town of Archer's Post, 210 miles north of Nairobi, concurs: "He will succeed to bring peace across so many people, and it is good that these people recognize that he is in our hearts as a hero who can lead us by his good example."

But even in Kenya, the homeland of Obama's father as well as 2004 Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, the award was met with surprise and qualified congratulations. The country is mired in political deadlock which is delaying reforms designed to sidestep a repeat of the deadly clashes which erupted after the 2007 presidential elections.

"I'm proud that another Kenyan has won the prize," said Mohamed Leeresh, a businessman also having tea in Archer's Post. "But what peace has he brought yet? Our people are suffering from fighting brought by drought, there is no peace, only fear of violence."

Asia: focus on nuclear weapons

In South Korea, commentators pointed to something that the Nobel committee singled out: nuclear weapons. Yonhap News Agency speculated that Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world was the main reason behind him taking the prize. Seoul's Segye Ilbo also viewed Obama as having won the award largely because of his "vision and efforts" towards a world without nuclear arms.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama extended congratulations to the president from Beijing, Yonhap reported. The prime minister is set hold talks on the North Korean nuclear issue with Chinese and South Korean counterparts. Earlier in the day, Mr. Hatoyama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak agreed to a joint stance on the North's atomic weapons.

A number of Chinese dissidents were passed over in favor of Obama, included human rights activist Hu Jia and Wei Jingsheng, who spent more than a decade in prison after calling for reforms to the Communist system.

"Le Petit Chaperon Rouge"--Halloween fare

Rarely see Little Red Riding Hood championed at Halloween. She isn't a mindless zombie or a frustrated mummy but nevertheless full of psychology and horror.

From answers.com...two essays

Donald Haase wrote...

The psychological significance of fairy tales has been one of the most pervasive topics in the history of fairy‐tale studies. There are many different theories concerning the fairy tale's psychological meaning and value, but most start with the premiss that the stories are symbolic expressions of the human mind and emotional experience. According to this view, fairy‐tale plots and motifs are not representations of socio‐historical reality, but symbols of inner experience that provide insight into human behaviour. Consequently, the psychological approach to fairy tales involves symbolic interpretation, both for psychoanalysts, who use fairy tales diagnostically to illustrate psychological theories, and for folklorists and literary critics, who use psychological theories to illuminate fairy tales.

Although the psychological approach to fairy tales is usually associated with Freudian psychoanalysis and other 20th‐century theories, it actually had its beginnings in the previous century, when nationalistic awareness motivated collectors and scholars to study folk tales as expressions of the folk soul or psyche. Focusing on the relationship of folk tales to myth, scholars looked to these stories for evidence of the values, customs, and beliefs that expressed a specific people's cultural identity. Over the course of the 19th century and into the 20th, mythic and anthropological approaches to the fairy tale relied on the notion that the study of folk tales could reveal the ‘psychology’ of ethnic cultures, especially that of so‐called primitive people. This form of ethnopsychology is exemplified in Wilhelm Wundt's Völkerpsychologie (Folk Psychology, 1900-9), which maintained that the fairy tale is the oldest of all narrative forms and reveals fundamental aspects of the primitive mind.

In contrast to ethnopsychology, Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory attempted to discern the more universal psychology of human behaviour and culture. Freud found fairy tales especially useful for illustrating his theories of the mind because they seemed so much like dreams. According to Freud, both fairy tales and dreams used symbols to express the conflicts, anxieties, and forbidden desires that had been repressed into the unconscious. In writings such as Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900), ‘Das Motiv der Kästchenwahl’ (‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’, 1913), and ‘Märchenstoffe in Träumen’ (‘The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales’, 1913), Freud demonstrated that fairy tales used a symbolic language that could be interpreted psychoanalytically to reveal the latent or hidden content of the mind. For example, in his famous analysis of the Wolf Man-described in the essay ‘Aus der Geschichte einer infantilen Neurose’ (‘From the History of an Infantile Neurosis’, 1918)-Freud noted that his patient's dreams used the same symbolism as the Grimms' stories of ‘The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ to express sexual anxiety resulting from traumatic childhood experiences.

Freud's earliest followers produced numerous psychoanalytic studies of fairy tales, in which they elaborated on different aspects of his theories. Franz Riklin's Wunscherfüllung und Symbolik im Märchen (Wishfulfilment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales, 1908) pursued Freud's idea that fairy tales are a form of wish fulfilment that use dream symbolism to express repressed sexual desires. Riklin's work was supported by Herbert Silberer, who similarly argued that fairy tales demonstrate the pathology of sexual repression. In essays on ‘Phantasie und Mythos’ (‘Fantasy and Myth’, 1910) and ‘Märchensymbolik’ (‘Fairy‐Tale Symbolism’, 1912), Silberer analysed ‘The Frog King’ and a female patient's sexual dream of animal transformation to show that the fairy‐tale pattern of enchantment and disenchantment mirrors the psychological phenomenon of repression followed by the healing release that comes from psychoanalysis. In a 1928 paper on ‘Psycho‐Analysis and Folklore’, Ernest Jones also offered a psychoanalytic reading of ‘The Frog King’. In typical Freudian fashion, Jones's interpretation stressed the female's aversion to sexual intimacy, symbolized by the princess's reluctance to allow the phallic frog into her bed.

Otto Rank expanded the discussion about the psychological origin of fairy tales in his influential study Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden (The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, 1909) and in his Psychoanalytische Beiträge zur Mythenforschung (Psychoanalytic Contributions to Myth Research, 1919). Rank proposed that fairy tales are adult projections of childhood fantasies, and he specifically examined mythological and fairy‐tale heroes in the light of Freud's theories about the Oedipus complex and Family Romance. Freud's idea that fairy tales use the symbolic language of dreams received an intriguing twist in the prolific research of Géza Róheim. In works like The Gates of the Dream (1952) and ‘Fairy Tale and Dream’ (1953), Róheim did not simply agree that fairy tales resembled dreams; he asserted that fairy tales were dreams that had been retold by the dreamer. Applying the psychoanalytic principles of dream interpretation to variants of tales from Europe and around the world, Róheim produced intriguing readings of stories such as ‘Hansel and Gretel’, ‘Mother Holle’, and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.

Carl Gustav Jung, who had also been a disciple of Freud, developed a new branch of analytic psychology that has had an enormous impact on fairy‐tale scholarship and the popular reception of fairy tales. While Freudian psychoanalytic theory generally viewed pathological behaviours and symbolic expressions as manifestations of the individual's unconscious, Jung looked beyond pathology and beyond the individual mind for the source and meaning of symbols. Jung posited the existence of an impersonal and ahistorical collective unconscious that was a reservoir of images and forms universally shared by all humans. According to Jung, the symbolic language of myths, dreams, and fairy tales was composed of these timeless symbolic forms, which he called archetypes. From the Jungian perspective, archetypes were universal symbols showing the way to transformation and development.

Jung described the archetypal basis of fairy tales in works like ‘Zur Phänomenologie des Geistes im Märchen’ (‘The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales’, 1948), ‘Zur Psychologie des Kind‐Archetypus’ (‘The Psychology of the Child Archetype’, 1941), and ‘Zur Psychologie der Schelmenfigur’ (‘On the Psychology of the Trickster‐Figure’, 1954). His ideas have not only influenced the literary fairy tales of writers such as Hermann Hesse, they have also generated a great number of fairy‐tale interpretations. One of the best‐known studies is Hedwig von Beit's three‐volume work on the Symbolik des Märchens (The Symbolism of the Fairy Tale, 1952-7), which examines the archetypal basis of fairy‐tale motifs and the quest for self‐realization and redemption. The psychological quest for self‐realization is also taken up by Julius Heuscher in The Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales (1963) and by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). The difference between the Freudian and Jungian approaches to symbols is especially well illustrated in Campbell's interpretation of ‘The Frog King’. Campbell reads ‘The Frog King’ not specifically as a story of sexual anxiety and maturation, as the Freudian Jones had done, but as an illustration of the broader archetypal theme of the call to adventure-the individual's awakening to unconscious forces and a new stage of life.

The archetypal studies by Marie‐Louise von Franz have been widely recognized as classic works of Jungian fairy‐tale analysis. Von Franz, too, has dealt with individual development and redemption in Individuation in Fairytales (1977) and The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales (1980). She illuminates the classic shadow archetype in Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales (1974) and explores the basis of the female archetype in Problems of the Feminine in Fairy Tales.

The Jungian treatment of male and female archetypes has been criticized by feminists, who point out that Jung's archetypes are actually socio‐cultural constructions, not timeless psychological truths. None the less, some feminist scholars and psychoanalysts have followed the lead of von Franz and used Jungian analysis to elucidate women's issues in fairy tales. This is the case in Sibylle Birkhäuser‐Oeri's study of Die Mutter im Märchen (The Mother, 1976) and Torborg Lundell's examination of Fairy Tale Mothers (1989). In Leaving my Father's House (1992), Marion Woodman, a feminist psychoanalyst, presents a Jungian interpretation of Grimms' ‘All Fur’ and includes commentaries by her patients to show women how to take control of their lives in a male‐dominated society.

Because Jungian psychology stresses universal myths of higher consciousness and redemption, it has quasi‐religious or spiritual overtones, which has given it a wide popular appeal. Eugen Drewermann has combined the perspectives of theology and analytical psychology in a popular series of fairy‐tale interpretations called Grimms Märchen tiefen psychologisch gedeutet (Grimms' Fairy Tales Interpreted According to Depth Psychology, 1981- ). Drewermann's volumes have been criticized for relying too much on archetypal associations and too little on literary or folkloric expertise. Another example of Jungian psychology being mixed with religious beliefs is Arland Ussher and Carl von Metzradt's book Enter These Enchanted Woods (1954), which interprets selected Grimms' tales from a Jungian‐flavoured Christian perspective. Fairy tales have also been interpreted by adherents of anthroposophy, a spiritual movement that grew out of the work of Rudolf Steiner under the influence of psychoanalytic theories. The readings that Steiner included in The Interpretation of Fairy Tales (1929) sought to reveal spiritual truths and became a model for his followers, who considered fairy tales a kind of scripture that could inspire spiritual development. The unusual nature of anthroposophic fairy‐tale interpretation is evident in Paul Paede's book of anthroposophic medicine Krankheit, Heilung und Entwicklung im Spiegel der Märchen (Disease, Healing and Development in the Mirror of Fairy Tales, 1986). Paede's interpretation of ‘Cinderella’ contends that the story's symbolism deepens our appreciation of feet and their role in maintaining spiritual and physiological harmony in the human organism.

The psycho‐spiritual claims of Jungian analysis and anthroposophy are echoed in the many self‐help books of fairy‐tale interpretation published for the popular book trade, especially since the advent of New Age philosophy in the 1980s. For example, in the eclectic German series Weisheit im Märchen (Wisdom in the Fairy Tale, 1983-8), each volume is written by a different author who interprets a single tale to show readers how to achieve better relationships, self‐confidence, self‐acceptance, and other improvements in their lives. The Jungian psychotherapist Verena Kast claims to show the way to personal autonomy and better interpersonal relationships in her popular books of fairy‐tale interpretation, including one entitled Wege aus Angst und Symbiose (Through Emotions to Maturity, 1982). From a Christian perspective the American authors Ronda Chervin and Mary Neill published The Woman's Tale (1980), a self‐help book of pop psychology that promotes the idea that reading fairy tales can help women develop their personal identities. From another perspective, Robert Bly's Iron John (1990) offers Grimms' tale as a story that helps men heal their psychic wounds and realize their true masculine personality.

Although the psychotherapeutic value of reading fairy tales is speculative, some analysts have presented case histories as evidence of the fairy tale's efficacy in treating patients. The Jungian analyst Hans Dieckmann, for example, advocated in many different publications the diagnostic and therapeutic importance of the Lieblingsmärchen-the favourite fairy tale-based on his clinical experience with patients. According to Dieckmann, the neuroses of adults are exposed in their favourite childhood stories. Consistent with his Jungian orientation, Dieckmann maintained that therapy is facilitated when the patient consciously recognizes the identity that exists between the personal psyche and the cosmos. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst Sándor Lorand used a case history in 1935 to point out that fairy tales experienced in childhood can also have adverse effects that cause psychological trauma. He cites in particular a patient whose fear of castration was traced to the tale of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.

Typically, however, psychologists view the fairy tale as having a significant and positive role in the psychological development of children. These developmental psychologists consider the fairy tale not simply as a useful therapeutic tool in clinical practice, but as children's literature that should be part of every child's experience. The basic premiss is that children learn how to overcome psychological conflicts and grow into new phases of development through a symbolic comprehension of the maturation process as expressed in fairy tale. Among the earliest studies of this kind was Charlotte Bühler's Das Märchen und die Phantasie des Kindes (The Fairy Tale and the Child's Imagination, 1918), which identified psychological connections between the fairy tale and the mind of the child. Bühler pointed out that both the formal and the symbolic aspects of the fairy tale corresponded to the child's imaginative mode of perception, and that because of this correspondence the genre assumed a special function in the mental life of the developing child. In Der Weg zum Märchen (The Pathway to Understanding the Fairy Tale, 1939), Bruno Jöckel stressed the fairy tale's symbolic depiction of the conflicts and sexual maturation that occur during puberty. Josephine Bilz's study of Menschliche Reifung im Sinnbild (Symbols of Human Maturation, 1943) emphasized the maturation process more generally and showed how ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ symbolically enacts the female's development from youth to motherhood. Walter Scherf has made the case in numerous essays and in his book Die Herausforderung des Dämons (Challenging the Demon, 1987) that magic tales are dramas of family conflict in which children can identify their own problems. According to Scherf, these magic stories engage the dramatic imagination of children and allow them to overcome their conflicts, separate from the parents, and integrate themselves into society.

The discussion about the fairy tale's place in child development has been dominated by Bruno Bettelheim's book The Uses of Enchantment (1976). No study of fairy tales has been as popular or as controversial as Bettelheim's. His Freudian readings are based on the idea that fairy tales are existential dramas in which children subconsciously confront their own problems and desires on the path to adulthood. Oedipal conflicts and sibling rivalry play especially important parts in Bettelheim's analyses. Bettelheim's critics object that his psychoanalytic readings are not only reductionist but also blatantly moralistic. Opponents note, too, that Bettelheim proposes a model of socialization that is repressive and sexist. They also point to his ignorance of the fairy tale's historical development and his failure to take into account the many variants of the stories that he discusses-factors that would complicate his premiss that the fairy tale communicates timeless truths. While Bettelheim's influential work has been the focus of much criticism, these objections are typical of those lodged against the psychoanalytic view of fairy tales.

As an alternative to Bettelheim's psychoanalytic view, F. André Favat's study of Child and Tale (1977) used Jean Piaget's ideas about the stages of development to consider the affinity between fairy tales and child psychology. What draws the child to the fairy tale, according to Favat, is not the opportunity to confront conflicts symbolically as part of the socialization process. Instead, the fairy tale relaxes the tensions brought on by socialization and change, and provides a fictional realm where children can re‐experience the pleasure of a magical, egocentric world ordered according to their desires. Experimental psychologists have also worked in various ways with the fairy tale to test the theoretical claims and assertions made about the psychological importance of fairy tales for children. For example, Patricia Guérin Thomas's 1983 dissertation on ‘Children's Responses to Fairy Tales’ used Piaget's theory of cognitive development and Erik Erikson's theory of psycho‐social development to analyse the responses of children to the Grimms' stories ‘Brother and Sister’ and ‘The Queen Bee’. Although Thomas found that children do respond to the stories based on the inner conflicts and moral understanding they have at a given stage of development, she could find no evidence to support the psychoanalytic claim that fairy tales aid children in resolving psychological conflicts.

Some recent psychological studies of fairy tales have attempted to avoid the reductionism typical of psychoanalytic fairy‐tale interpretations, while others have applied new models as alternatives to Freud and Jung. The folklorist Alan Dundes has argued throughout his research that psychoanalytic theory in the study of a folk tale can be very valuable when adequately informed by a rigorous comparative analysis of the tale's variants. In her book The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales (1987), the literary scholar Maria Tatar illuminated psychological themes by using Freud's idea of the Family Romance within the interpretive constraints demanded by formal aspects, socio‐historical factors, and the editorial history of the Grimms' collection. In Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (1983), Jack Zipes used Freud's theory of the uncanny in tandem with ideas from Favat, Piaget, and the philosopher Ernst Bloch to develop a theory of the fairy tale's liberating potential; and in his book on The Brothers Grimm (1988), he advocated a new psychoanalytic approach to violence in fairy tales that would build on the work of the Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller. In Du sollst nicht merken (Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, 1981), Miller challenged the Freudian notion that violence inflicted by fairy‐tale parents is an inverted projection of the child's own negative feelings towards the parent. Instead, using ‘The Virgin Mary's Child’ and ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ as examples, Miller theorized that some fairy tales are adults' censored projections of abuse that they actually experienced as children, a fantasy possibly more in tune with socio‐historical and familial reality than adults can admit.

Postmodern literary fairy tales for adults have also stimulated new ways of thinking about fairy tales and psychology. Peter Straub's revision of ‘The Juniper Tree’ (1990), for example, links fairy‐tale violence with child abuse in a way that confirms Miller's theory. Other writers like Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, and Robert Coover have understood the socio‐historical dynamics of the fairy tale and produced fairy‐tale adaptations that complicate, undercut, and frustrate conventional psychoanalytic readings-especially as they relate to the psychology of identity, socialization, gender, and sexuality. Such revisions challenge readers to rethink classical psychoanalytic premisses and search for new models to understand the psychological implications of the fairy tale in social, historical, and cultural contexts.

Bibliography:

Dundes, Alan, ‘The Psychoanalytic Study of Folklore’, Annals of Scholarship, 3 (1985).
--“‘The Psychoanalytic Study of the Grimms' Tales’”, in Folklore Matters (1992).
Grolnick, Simon A., “‘Fairy Tales and Psychotherapy’”, in Ruth B. Bottigheimer (ed.), Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm (1986).
Laiblin, Wilhelm (ed.), Märchenforschung und Tiefenpsychologie (1969).
Lüthi, Max, “‘Psychologie und Pädagogik’”, in Märchen, rev. Heinz Rölleke (8th edn., 1990).


Jack Zipes wrote...

The first literary version of this tale, ‘Le Petit Chaperon Rouge’, was published by Charles Perrault in his collection, Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Stories or Tales of Past Times, 1697). Though it is not certain, Perrault probably knew an oral tale that emanated from sewing societies in the south of France and north of Italy. This folk tale depicts an unnamed peasant girl who meets a werewolf on her way to visit her grandmother. The wolf asks her whether she is taking the path of pins or needles. She indicates that she is on her way to becoming a seamstress by taking the path of the needles. The werewolf quickly departs and arrives at the grandmother's house, where he devours the old lady and places some of her flesh in a bowl and some of her blood in a bottle. After the peasant girl arrives, the werewolf invites her to eat some meat and drink some wine before getting into bed with him. Once in bed, she asks several questions until the werewolf is about to eat her. At this point she insists that she must go outside to relieve herself. The werewolf ties a rope around her leg and sends her through a window. In the garden, the girl unties the rope and wraps it around a fruit tree. Then she escapes and leaves the werewolf holding the rope. In some versions of this folk tale, the werewolf manages to eat the girl. But for the most part the girl proves that she can fend for herself.

Perrault changes all this in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ by making the girl appear spoiled and naïve. She wears a red cap indicating her ‘sinful’ nature, and she makes a wager with the wolf to see who will arrive at grandmother's house first. After dawdling in the woods, she arrives at her grandmother's house, where she finds the wolf disguised as the grandmother in bed. She gets into bed with him and, after posing several questions about the wolf's strange appearance, she is devoured just as her grandmother was. Then there is a verse moral to conclude the tale that indicates girls who invite strange men into their parlours deserve what they get. After the translation of Perrault's tale into many different European languages in the 18th century, the literary and oral variants mixed, and what had formerly been an oral tale of initiation became a type of warning fairy tale. When the Brothers Grimm published their first version, ‘Rotkäppchen’ (‘Little Red Cap’) in Kinder‐ und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales) in 1812, they introduced new elements such as the Jäger or gamekeeper, who saves Little Red Cap and her grandmother. In turn, they cut open the belly of the wolf and place stones into it. When he awakes, he dies. There is also an anticlimactic tale that the Grimms attached to this version in which another wolf comes to attack Little Red Cap and her grandmother. This time they are prepared and trick him into jumping down the chimney into a pot of boiling water.

Since the Grimms' version of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ appeared, their tale and Perrault's version have been reprinted in the thousands in many different versions, and they have also been mixed together along with oral variants. Most of the new versions up to the present have been directed at children, and they have been somewhat sanitized so that the wolf rarely succeeds in touching or gobbling the grandmother and the naïve girl. On the other hand, there have been hundreds of notable literary revisions by such gifted authors as Ludwig Tieck, Alphonse Daudet, Joachim Ringelnatz, Milt Gross, James Thurber, Anne Sexton, Tomi Ungerer, Angela Carter, and Tanith Lee in which the nature of sexuality and gender stereotypes have been questioned and debated in most innovative ways. For instance, there are tales in which a rambunctious grandmother eats up everyone; the wolf is a vegetarian and the girl a lesbian; the girl shoots the wolf with a revolver; and the girl seduces the wolf. Needless to say, these literary alternatives and many films, such as the adaptation of Angela Carter's In the Company of Wolves (1985) directed by Neil Jordan and Freeway (1996) written and directed by Matthew Bright, reflect changes in social mores and customs; as one of the most popular fairy tales in the world, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ will most likely undergo interesting changes in the future, and the girl and her story will certainly never be eliminated by the wolf.

Bibliography:

Dundes, Alan (ed.), Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook (1989).
Jones, Steven Swann, ‘On Analyzing Fairy Tales: “Little Red Riding Hood” Revisited’, Western Folklore, 46 (1987).
Laruccia, Victor, ‘Little Red Riding Hood's Metacommentary: Paradoxical Injunction, Semiotics and Behavior’, Modern Language Notes, 90 (1975).
Mieder, Wolfgang, ‘Survival Forms of “Little Red Riding Hood” in Modern Society’, International Folklore Review, 2 (1982).
Zipes, Jack (ed.), The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood (1983; 2nd rev. edn., 1993).



Candles at Halloween

Halloween

Halloween and the mummies

Halloween and two Poe silent films

Halloween treats...final goodies

Halloween treats from the silent film era

Halloween treats...more

Jan Brueghel the Elder's telescope

Extensive Landscape with View of the Castle of Mariemont

Jan Brueghel the Elder

1617

Technology Review
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
October 2nd, 2009

It's hard to find an invention more emblematic of the birth of modern science than the telescope. And yet surprisingly little is known about its early development. The inventor of the telescope remains unknown to this day.

Now a study of the paintings of Jan Brueghel the Elder, a Flemish painter of the Baroque era who was working in Amsterdam at the beginning of the 17th century, is throwing some light on the early development of the telescope. It has also uncovered a mystery, say Paolo Molaro and Pierluigi Selvelli at the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Trieste. One of Brueghel's works appears to show a Keplerian-style telescope in a painting dating from 15 years before this design was thought to have been built.

Although various writers in the 16th century describe glasses that can "recognize a man from several miles away," the early exploitation of this idea is credited to the Dutch lens maker Hans Lippershey, who in 1608 applied for a patent for a device "for seeing things far away as if they were nearby." However, his application was rejected, apparently because the idea was already well known.

Molaro and Selvelli, who have studied the telescopes depicted in five paintings by Brueghel, say that Lippershey is known to have given one of his earliest instruments to Archduke Albert VII of Habsburg, who had a keen interest in natural philosophy.

That's significant because Brueghel was Albert's court painter. Molaro and Selvelli say that the spyglass depicted in Brueghel's "Extensive Landscape with View of the Castle of Mariemont," dated 1608-1612, is the first painting of a telescope ever made. They go further and speculate that this instrument is the one given to Albert by Lippershey.

The earliest telescopes consisted of a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece. But Johannes Kepler suggested in 1611 that a better design would have a convex eyepiece. The advantage is a larger field of view and greater relief for the eye, which needn't be placed so close to the eyepiece. The disadvantage, which astronomers eventually came to live with, is that the image is inverted.

Kepler's design wasn't built until much later. The first reference to such an instrument appears in 1631. But here's a mystery: Molaro and Selvelli speculate that a telescope in "The Allegory of Sight," a collaboration between Brueghel and Pierre Paul Rubens dating from 1617, is actually Keplerian (see picture above).

The evidence is twofold. First is the length of the instrument: Molaro and Selvelli estimate that the extended instrument would be some 180 cm or so long. Keplerian designs are longer than the earlier Galilean designs (a misnomer, since Galileo did not invent them). Second is the size of the eyepiece, which appears to limit how close the eye can get to the eyepiece lens. That would only make sense in a Keplerian design.

The question then is who built this telescope, and what was it used for. Keplerian designs can achieve much higher magnifications than their Galilean cousins. That would have given its owner a significant advantage over anyone else scanning the heavens.

If they'd troubled to look, that is. Could it be that the owner of one of the most powerful telescopes on the planet failed to point it skywards? And in failing to do so, missed a chance at the kind of scientific immortality that Galileo was later to achieve?

Abstract:

Several early spyglasses are depicted in five paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder completed between 1608 and 1625, as he was court painter of Archduke Albert VII of Habsburg. An optical tube that appears in the Extensive Landscape with View of the Castle of Mariemont, dated 1608-1612, represents the first painting of a telescope whatsoever. We collected some documents showing that Albert VII obtained spyglasses very early directly from Lipperhey or Sacharias Janssen. Thus the painting likely reproduces one of the first man-made telescopes ever. Two other instruments appear in two Allegories of Sight made in the years 1617 and 1618. These are sophisticated instruments and the structure suggests that they may be keplerian, but this is about two decades ahead this mounting was in use.

"The Mystery of the Telescopes in Jan Brueghel the Elder's Paintings" by P. Molaro and P. Selvelli