Word: notion
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...when psychoanalysis first became fashionable. At the end of the second World War, society--consumed by the nature versus nurture effects on behavior--came up on the side of nurture, believing that personality was shaped by the environment. Anything related to genetics sounded disarmingly like eugenics and Hitler's notion of racial superiority. And so society welcomed psychotherapy, with its egalitarian tenet that we are all "brothers" whose personalities are shaped (or misshaped) by our surroundings. As Dolnick observes, "Level-headed men and women occasionally succumb to giddy excitement over the stock market or the million dollar prize." Or psychoanalysis...
...notion of happiness was the third component of the lecture. Based on their personal experiences, Freud and Lewis encountered very different levels of happiness in their lives...
...glad to hear those words, but I didn't actually believe them. They smacked to me of academic relativism, the sort of thing where any interpretation is valid, where the notion of "truth" is scoffed at, where a skillful (or lazy) reader can manipulate (or misinterpret) an argument, turn it on its head and still be celebrated as a conquering hero...
Starr allies counter that the notion that the independent counsel had no right to investigate the Lewinsky case because he gained jurisdiction on the basis of a false statement is absurd. At the time, they point out, there was no way of knowing the truthfulness of the statement by Monica to Tripp that she would not sign her affidavit until Jordan produced a job. And regardless of what prompts an investigation, facts discovered in the process of proving or disproving the original allegation are fair game. The argument, says a Starr ally, "fits the pattern of trying to politicize...
...know that any number of things about Starr's inquiry feel unsound. His indifference to the niceties of nonpartisanship, his way of delivering the evidence without the exculpatory alternatives that prosecutors generally offer would be enough. What's really unsettling is the larger dynamic. At a time when the notion of a protected personal realm is beginning to seem quaint and sepia toned, even people who don't expect government investigators on their doorstep sense that Starr has breached more than just the President's tattered defenses. By its very example, his investigation furthers a truly unwholesome idea: that relations...