Identity, Individuation and Substance

From Mental/Physical Identity to Substance Dualism

The Identity of the Transforming Substance

The story of the advances made by Dawson and Sia (in vitro transformation, 1933), Avery, MacLeod and McCarty (identification of the transforming substance, 1944) has been told many times. I shall deal here with only one aspect of the work-the progressive characterization of the transforming agent-since it was this aspect which led to the first evidence for the genetic role of DNA. It also serve...

Separation-individuation revisited: on the interplay of parent-adolescent relations, identity and emotional adjustment in adolescence.

The objective of this study was to test our alternative interpretation of the separation-individuation hypothesis. This interpretation states that separation from the parents is not a precondition for individuation, but rather separation and individuation are two parallel processes of development during adolescence. We investigated our interpretation in two ways. Firstly, we looked at descripti...

Countability: Individuation and Context

We agree with recent countability research that a satisfactory account of individuation in terms of what counts as ‘one’ unit for counting is highly relevant for characterizing a semantics of the mass/count distinction. However, we argue that an account that rests on individuation alone does not suffice to cover all the relevant mass/count data, in particular the puzzling mass/count variation d...

Identity Disturbance and Substance-Dependence in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract Background: Identity disturbance is one of the DSM-IV criteria for borderline personality disorder, but there has been little attention to its nature. Four subsets of identity disturbance (role absorption, painful incoherence, inconsistency and lack of commitment) have been assessed. This study aimed to assess the role of these subsets in patients with borderline person...