Vasi van Deventer

Leadership styles and associated personality traits: Support for the conceptualisation of transactional and transformational leadership

The full range model of leadership includes laissez-faire behaviour, transactional leadership, and transformational leadership. The model conceptualises leadership in terms of the behaviours associated with various styles and this conceptualisation has been empirically supported. In this article the personality traits of managers exercising different leadership styles are explained in terms of, and add to, the description of these styles. Members of a management team were assessed in terms of their preferred leadership styles and two groups were identified. Some of the managers relied on both transformational behaviours and active transactional behaviours with an absence of behaviours associated with passive styles. The rest of the managers used behaviours associated with all the styles. An integrated personality profile was compiled for each manager. Definite trends were observed when comparing the profiles of the managers in the two leadership groups. Transformational leadership was defined in terms of the interpersonal more than the visionary aspect of leadership with interpersonal styles and work and social ethics being emphasised. Behaviours associated with transactional leadership as well as with more passive styles were also noted. The findings provide further support for the conceptualisation of leadership in terms of the full range model of leadership.

Hierarchical Recursive Organization and the Free Energy Principle: From Biological Self-Organization to the Psychoanalytic Mind

The present paper argues that a systems theory epistemology (and particularly the notion of hierarchical recursive organization) provides the critical theoretical context within which the significance of Fristons (2010a) Free Energy Principle (FEP) for both evolution and psychoanalysis is best understood. Within this perspective, the FEP occupies a particular level of the hierarchical organization of the organism, which is the level of biological self-organization. This form of biological self-organization is in turn understood as foundational and pervasive to the higher levels of organization of the human organism that are of interest to both neuroscience as well as psychoanalysis. Consequently, central psychoanalytic claims should be restated, in order to be located in their proper place within a hierarchical recursive organization of the (situated) organism. In light of the FEP the realization of the psychoanalytic mind by the brain should be seen in terms of the evolution of different levels of systematic organization where the concepts of psychoanalysis describe a level of hierarchical recursive organization superordinate to that of biological self-organization and the FEP. The implication of this formulation is that while “psychoanalytic” mental processes are fundamentally subject to the FEP, they nonetheless also add their own principles of process over and above that of the FEP. A model found in Grobbelaar (1989) offers a recursive bottom-up description of the self-organization of the psychoanalytic ego as dependent on the organization of language (and affect), which is itself founded upon the tendency toward autopoiesis (self-making) within the organism, which is in turn described as formally similar to the FEP. Meaningful consilience between Grobbelaars model and the hierarchical recursive description available in Fristons (2010a) theory is described. The paper concludes that the valuable contribution of the FEP to psychoanalysis underscores the necessity of reengagement with the core concepts of psychoanalytic theory, and the usefulness that a systems theory epistemology—particularly hierarchical recursive description—can have for this goal.

Negotiating neuroscience: LeDoux’s “dramatic ensemble”:

Some argue we now live in a “brain society” in which our subjectivity is increasingly mediated through neurological discourses. Unless we are to surrender neuroscience to neoliberal colonisation, we need to articulate effective forms of engagement with this discipline. One route is to read mainstream neuroscience texts for resistances they offer to the homo economicus. Instead of a terrain that inevitably leads to neoliberal conclusions, we find a materiality in excess of dubious ideological circumscriptions. In this article we engage with Joseph LeDoux’s notion of the self as a “dramatic ensemble,” where the self is a vulnerable, constantly reiterated achievement marked by the partial and passing play of dominances. Simultaneously, however, LeDoux undermines this account by evoking a traditional notion of the self. This play of tensions is articulated and an argument is made to privilege a subjectivity which both resists LeDoux’s flight from his own implications and neoliberal assumptions of subjectivity.Some argue we now live in a “brain society” in which our subjectivity is increasingly mediated through neurological discourses. Unless we are to surrender neuroscience to neoliberal colonisation, we need to articulate effective forms of engagement with this discipline. One route is to read mainstream neuroscience texts for resistances they offer to the homo economicus. Instead of a terrain that inevitably leads to neoliberal conclusions, we find a materiality in excess of dubious ideological circumscriptions. In this article we engage with Joseph LeDoux’s notion of the self as a “dramatic ensemble,” where the self is a vulnerable, constantly reiterated achievement marked by the partial and passing play of dominances. Simultaneously, however, LeDoux undermines this account by evoking a traditional notion of the self. This play of tensions is articulated and an argument is made to privilege a subjectivity which both resists LeDoux’s flight from his own implications and neoliberal assumptions of subjectivity.

The recursively generational brain

Modern understandings of the brain involve computation in one form or another. In large brain projects the synthesis of brain and computer is taken to its ultimate conclusion by super computer simulations of the brain and the export of brain processes in the form of neuromorphic computing. But behind these computations lurks the reality of a brain calling upon itself in the representation of itself, with each call establishing a new generation of itself. This is a recursively generational brain, a brain that is both generating and generated. This article conceptualises these processes in terms of the relational symmetries of the generating brain and the generated brain. Abstract constructs are made more tangible in an example in which geometric characteristics of a triangle are used to model the functioning of a simplified recursively generational brain. In conclusion, it is claimed that a proper simulation of the brain would necessarily be cyborgian.Modern understandings of the brain involve computation in one form or another. In large brain projects the synthesis of brain and computer is taken to its ultimate conclusion by super computer simulations of the brain and the export of brain processes in the form of neuromorphic computing. But behind these computations lurks the reality of a brain calling upon itself in the representation of itself, with each call establishing a new generation of itself. This is a recursively generational brain, a brain that is both generating and generated. This article conceptualises these processes in terms of the relational symmetries of the generating brain and the generated brain. Abstract constructs are made more tangible in an example in which geometric characteristics of a triangle are used to model the functioning of a simplified recursively generational brain. In conclusion, it is claimed that a proper simulation of the brain would necessarily be cyborgian.

Goldberg’s brain and the sex/gender distinction

The sex/gender binary has proven to be a profoundly useful conceptual distinction in the furthering of the feminist project. It has also been a controversial opposition that has given rise to an ongoing and productive debate. In this article we utilise neuroscience, specifically a text by the neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg, to trouble this binary in the hope of furthering the critical project. We argue that a cautious negotiation with the biological may be theoretically and politically productive. By taking seriously Goldberg’s notions of functional-morphological and corporeal-environmental intimacy in reading his claim of distinct gender-based cognitive styles it is possible to glimpse the variation of sex itself. This, we argue, demonstrates both the limits of binaries and celebrations of difference and reveals the complexity which we have to negotiate in the search for emancipatory change.The sex/gender binary has proven to be a profoundly useful conceptual distinction in the furthering of the feminist project. It has also been a controversial opposition that has given rise to an ongoing and productive debate. In this article we utilise neuroscience, specifically a text by the neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg, to trouble this binary in the hope of furthering the critical project. We argue that a cautious negotiation with the biological may be theoretically and politically productive. By taking seriously Goldberg’s notions of functional-morphological and corporeal-environmental intimacy in reading his claim of distinct gender-based cognitive styles it is possible to glimpse the variation of sex itself. This, we argue, demonstrates both the limits of binaries and celebrations of difference and reveals the complexity which we have to negotiate in the search for emancipatory change.

The economy of centre within the aneconomy of neurological architecture

Neuroscience may be read as part of a historical search for an integrative and agentive centre. The prefrontal cortices, the dominant locus of the executive functions, which includes the control of cognitive processes and the regulation of self in the process of fulfilling intentions, is currently such a centre. This attribution is complexified through a deconstructive reading of texts by the neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg. What emerge are dynamics that decentre attempts to determine a point from which agency may proceed. It is argued that the grounds for centric claims simultaneously undermine such ambitions.

On the Limits (of the Subject) of Psychology

The subject of psychology broaches two domains of discourse, one in which the subject belongs to psychology as its object of study and another where the discipline of psychology belongs to the subj...The subject of psychology broaches two domains of discourse, one in which the subject belongs to psychology as its object of study and another where the discipline of psychology belongs to the subject as a topic of discussion. Actually, these are not two domains of discourse but rather two domains concerning discourse: a domain where the subject belongs to discourse and a domain where discourse belongs to the subject; more precisely: a domain of being known and a domain of the knowing being. This article is about the delimitation of these two domains. Bringing them into existence requires complicated motions on (or at) the borderline that separates them. This means a special kind of writing of the subject of psychology, a writing characterized by a double stroke in the sense that it represses while it creates. In this article, the author explores the nature of this kind of delimitation, and then relates three stories to illustrate the writing that constitutes the subject of psychology as a knowing being and a being known. We see how the delimitation of the discipline of psychology splits the subject into a subject who comes Into being on both the inside and the outside of psychology, and how in an attempt to bridge this split (which is the drive for identity) a core part of the subject must be repressed, and finally how the attempt to wipe the traces of this repression constitutes an entire psychology, which reveals psychology as a double repression. The article concludes that these notions open psychology as a grammatology, meaning that the logos of the psyche is not simply revealed, but written in and through a double stroke.