[The significance of educational biography for the professional self-image of GDR psychotherapists]. / Die Bedeutung der Bildungsbiografie für das professionelle Selbstverständnis von DDR-Psychotherapeut:innen.

OBJECTIVE: Since the reunification of Germany, a debate on the professional activities of GDR psychotherapists has rised up. This debate is partly conducted by the spirit of coming to terms with the past and partly by legitimizing therapeutic activities in the GDR. The aim of this work is to show in individual patterns the professional self-image of selected GDR psychotherapists. The study focused from a sociological perspective with the intention of differentiating this topic. In course of this, the range of political positioning of GDR psychotherapists will also be determined on a case-by-case basis and it will be shown how this was shaped in the often named "niche of psychotherapy". METHODS: Based on-biographical interviews, educational biographical trajectories of GDR psychotherapists were reconstructed. The interviews were analyzed using grounded theory in a circular process of material selection and theory development. According to the principle of maximum contrast (theoretical sampling), four women were selected for reconstruction from a sample of 39 interviews from the joint project Seelenarbeit im Sozialismus (Soul Work in Socialism) and analyzed using Teifel's (2005) coding guide based on educational theory. RESULTS: Within the four cases, extremely individual educational biographies emerge on the levels of the coding strategy (meaning/structure perspective and mode of action), each showing different characteristics with regard to their ability to adopt a reflexive stance and the adoption of professional agency. The cases also show different characteristics with regard to their different positions on the system of GDR. DISCUSSION: The results of the case reconstructions can be summarized in an overarching scheme. This shows that the role of each individual's educational access, their educational paths and their individual practice of action must be seen in relation to the influence of the political system and the ability to adopt a professional attitude. The psychotherapists of the GDR cannot be understood per se as a group acting subversively against the state.

Real systemic solutions to humanity's problems require a radical reshaping of the global political system.

Society's problems cannot be alleviated via mere policy interventions, whether individual- or system-level, when the system is the problem. To bring about true and lasting change to the better, we must replace the present global political-economic system - oligarchic capitalism backed by the power of the state - with one that would let the people take charge of their lives.

Cartoon diplomacy: visual strategies, imperial rivalries and the 1890 British Ultimatum to Portugal.

This paper offers a novel interpretation of the 1890 British Ultimatum, by bringing to the front of the stage its techno-diplomatic dimension, often invisible in the canonical diplomatic and military narratives. Furthermore, we use an unconventional historical source to grasp the British-Portuguese imperial conflict over the African hinterland via the building of railways: the cartoons of the politically committed and polyvalent Portuguese artist and journalist Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846-1905), published in his journal Ponto nos iis, from the end of 1889 and throughout 1890. We argue that the Ponto nos iis cartoons played a so far overlooked role in the unfolding of British-Portuguese affairs, as they shaped at a distance a diplomatic exchange with the British satirical journal Punch. Attacking and counterattacking his fellow cartoonists in Britain, Pinheiro surged into the role of informal diplomat. This cartoon visual and public diplomacy unfolded in the pages of both journals and was tied to the two countries' colonial conquests in Africa, where the Portuguese and British empires were competing to dominate the African hinterland through large technological systems. Hence the cartoons made visible to wider audiences the otherwise hidden role that technologies played in the two countries' affairs. In turn, the cartoons aimed at persuading the Portuguese public and ruling classes alike that only regime change, from monarchic to republican, would restore the wounded Portuguese national pride.

Economic growth and environmental technology simultaneously important for reducing energy poverty and ecological footprint in E7 economies: do political institutions play a role?

Energy poverty and climate change are major concerns for the emerging seven countries. Therefore, this study explores the economic growth impact on reducing energy poverty and ecological footprint in the emerging seven economies from 2000 to 2019. Energy poverty is measured using three disciplines: availability poverty, accessibility poverty, and affordability poverty. We applied a new dynamic method, "bias-corrected method of moments estimators (2021)," for long-run outcomes. This study used the environmental Kuznets curve-approach to measure economic growth's scale effect and technique effect to reduce energy poverty and ecological footprint. Importantly, the study explores the mediating role of politically stable institutions in mitigating environmental and energy poverty. Our findings validate that energy poverty and ecological footprint could not reduce at the initial stage of economic growth. However, the later development stage shows a positive effect on reducing energy poverty and ecological footprint. These results validated an inverted U-shaped Kuznets curve hypothesis for emerging seven. Further, the result found that strong political systems are more quick-witted and have the legislative power to swiftly implement beneficial policies to pull out of the vicious circle of energy poverty. Further, environmental technology significantly reduced energy poverty and ecological footprint. The causality analysis entails that a bidirectional exists between energy poverty, income, and ecological footprint.

Elite mobility and continuity during a regime change.

How does a regime change influence elite mobility? By collecting data on elites after the Meiji Restoration in Japan in 1868, through which Japan transitioned from a feudal regime to a modern regime, we provide new evidence that the impact of the regime change on elite mobility varies across the stages of the regime change. We analyze the impact of the regime change from two aspects: (1) the composition of elites or elite membership and (2) the internal hierarchy within them. The regime change opened an opportunity for commoners to join the elite group. After the Meiji Restoration, the share of elites whose fathers were commoners in the former regime increased, as did the influence of meritocracy on elite ranks. However, once the new regime was established, the elite hierarchy started to reflect the social stratum of the former regime and the influence of meritocracy declined.

Authoritarian Environmentalism-Captured Collaboration in Vietnamese Water Management.

This article examines collaborative environmental governance under authoritarian political structures. Building on the theoretical frame of authoritarian environmentalism, it peruses fieldwork material collected during 2009-2019 to determine the most prominent features of recent collaborative governance efforts in the field of water management in Vietnam, a historically seasonal flooding-dependent country. A key feature is technocratisation, where top-down management structures and practices prioritise technocratic solutions to environmental challenges over deliberation, awareness raising, and integration of local knowledge. Another equally important feature is authoritarian intensification, by which increasingly complex environmental management functions, coupled with the state's determination to retain political control, reinforce authoritarian governance. We jointly refer to these features as captured collaboration, signifying a strong authoritarian regime dominance in both vertical and horizontal relations of environmental governance. However, while captured collaboration still appears to be a defining collaborative characteristic, the article acknowledges rising calls for deliberative government in Vietnamese society. This is particularly outspoken in relation to the highly contested issues of hydropower construction and enhanced floods, debates that simultaneously have paved the way for a burgeoning, though much delayed, paradigm shift.

Fallibility Salience Increases Intellectual Humility: Implications for People's Willingness to Investigate Political Misinformation.

The spread of online political misinformation has ramifications for political polarization, trust in political systems, and the functioning of democracy. In this article, we advance findings on investigative behaviors-actions aimed at determining the veracity of information encountered online-in response to political misinformation. Across three preregistered studies (N = 889), we find that investigative behaviors increase accuracy discernment of political misinformation (Study 1), that intellectual humility reliably predicts investigative behaviors in this context (Study 2), and test a novel fallibility salience manipulation to increase intellectual humility (Study 3). We discuss the implications of these findings for reducing the impacts of political misinformation.

Towards sustainable environment: why green energy technology diffusion is sluggish in South Africa?

Energy security, job development, and minimal environmental damage are just a few of the reasons why green energy technologies have gained popularity. Still, developing these technologies in underdeveloped countries is sluggish due to several bottlenecks. To find and prioritize the bottlenecks to development of green energy technologies (GETs), this study has used the case of South Africa. In this study, technical, financial, social, regulatory, geographical, and institutional bottlenecks are six headings under which 22 bottlenecks are further subdivided. For prioritizing these bottlenecks, a Multi-Objective Optimization based on Ratio Analysis (MOORA) strategy combined with an Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solution (EDAS) method was used. The top three bottlenecks impacting the GETs' development involved social, institutional, and regulatory, whereas in sub-headings, corrupt political systems, knowledge of the public, and fixed investments were revealed to be the most significant hurdles. In addition to that, a framework is also developed for assessing how each bottleneck hinders the development of green energy technologies. The results of this study recommend that formulation of policy using the bottom-up approach is important. Notably, politicians at the highest levels should work together to bolster government agencies so that they can monitor and carry out the policies designed to advance GETs. Building the institutional capacity of government offices is crucial for eliminating corruption in political offices and progressing GETs in South Africa.

Development of psychology in Bulgaria after the political changes in 1989.

This article outlines the significant organizational and scientific changes that occurred in Bulgarian psychology after the fall of the totalitarian regime in 1989. These included the establishment of new university and research centers in psychology, the abolition of ideological censorship in psychology publications, free choice of research methodology and methods, free communication, and exchange of ideas with foreign psychologists, and the development of psychoanalytic practice and psychological services. The liberalization of the social conditions for the development of science, in general, made psychology a much sought-after science and practice. In this time of social transition, its authority grew significantly due to the fact that its calling was to study and solve, above all, the problems of the people, especially as they were faced with new social conditions. In the last 30 years, psychological science in Bulgaria has been significantly humanized. These changes allowed scientists to propose new methodological approaches not only to the study of the psyche, but also to the study of both Bulgarian and foreign history of psychology. Although in the last 30 years not all measures taken in the institutional management of the psychological science were positive, Bulgarian psychology was given a new opportunity to join the international scientific community.

Revival of psychology in former Czechoslovakia and the contemporary Czech Republic after the fall of Totalitarian communist regimes.

After the general societal and political change in November 1989 in Czechoslovakia, the subject "History of Psychology" became the stable component of curriculum of studying psychology at the Department of Psychology of Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. The author of this paper has taught "History of Psychology" in Czech since 1998 for more than 20 years all students of psychology and he is teaching this subject the students of ERASMUS+ program from whole Europe, studying at Charles University in Prague, now. Indivisible part of the curriculum is represented by the history of Czechoslovak and Czech psychology. In References, the most important publications in the field of history of Czechoslovak and Czech psychology are presented.

Political change as group-based control: Threat to personal control reduces the support for traditional political parties.

People desire agentic representations of their personal and collective selves, such as their own nation. When national agency is put into question, this should increase their inclination to restore it, particularly when they simultaneously lack perceptions of personal control. In this article, we test this hypothesis of group-based control in the context of political elections occurring during socio-economic crises. We propose that people who are reminded of low (vs. high) personal control will have an increased tendency to reject traditional political parties that stand for the maintenance of a non-agentic political system. We experimentally manipulated the salience of low vs. high personal control in five studies and measured participants' intentions to support traditional and new political parties. Across four of five studies, in line with the predictions, low personal control reduced support for the main traditional conservative party (e.g., Partido Popular (PP) in Spain, the Republicans in France). These results appeared in contexts of national economic and/or political crisis, and were most pronounced when low (vs. high) national agency was made salient in Studies 4 and 5. The findings support the notion that rejecting the stability of the national political system can serve as a means to maintain a sense of control through the collective self.

A comparative framework to analyze convergence on Twitter electoral conversations.

Literature on social networks and elections has focused on predicting electoral outcomes rather than on understanding how the discussions between users evolve over time. As a result, most studies focus on a single election and few comparative studies exist. In this article, a framework to analyze Twitter conversations about the election candidates is proposed. Using DeGroot's consensus model (an assumption that all users are attempting to persuade others to talk about a candidate), this framework is useful to identify the structure and strength of connections of the mention networks on the months before an election day. It also helps to make comparisons between elections and identify patterns in different contexts. In concrete, it was found that elections in which the incumbent was running have slower convergence (more closed communities with fewer links between them) and that there is no difference between parliamentary and presidential elections. Therefore, there is evidence that the political system and the role of the incumbent in the election influences the way conversations on Twitter occur.

Struggling for survival: The popularization of Darwinism and the elite's fight for power in Franco's Spain (1939-1967).

In the late 1940s in Spain, a group of young scholars, most of them newly appointed university lecturers, gained control of Arbor, the promotional journal of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC: The Spanish National Research Council), the institution that General Franco had founded after the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) to organize Spanish science. This group constituted the intellectual core of the more reactionary, Catholic traditionalist faction of Franco's regime, and they coveted greater political power, in competition with other factions of the regime. Lacking the opportunity to launch an overt political campaign within a dictatorship, the group started a fight for the cultural conquest of Spain. In this cultural struggle for hegemony, journals, magazines, cultural associations, publishing houses, newspapers, and cultural centers became their weapons. By analyzing this faction's views on and activities within the popularization of science, particularly regarding theories of evolution, this article argues that popular discourse on science played a critical role in the cultural struggle both as a "safe" channel in which to forward their claims and as a tool to gather popular attention through topics of general interest. A covert political campaign was conducted through the popularization of science and this, in turn, fueled the construction of a public sphere for science in a dictatorial context. Scientific popularization became a much-appreciated tool to achieve cultural hegemony and, as such, it also became a central element in constructing and legitimating the ideological foundations of Franco's regime.

Introduction: Science popularization, dictatorships, and democracies.

The study of science popularization in dictatorships, such as Franco's regime, offers a useful window through which to review definitions of controversial categories such as "popular science" and the "public sphere." It also adds a new analytical perspective to the historiography of dictatorships and their totalitarian nature. Moreover, studying science popularization in these regimes provides new tools for a critical analysis of key contemporary concepts such as nationalism, internationalism, democracy, and technocracy.

Charles Francis Sheridan on the Feudal Origins and Political Science of the 1772 Revolution in Sweden.

Gustav III's royal coup in 1772 reestablished strong monarchy and ended the Age of Liberty (Frihetstiden) in Sweden. The event attracted much interest and commentary across Europe. The most detailed account of the episode and sophisticated analysis of its causes was Charles Francis Sheridan's now forgotten History of the Late Revolution in Sweden (1778). Sheridan used Enlightenment history and political science to argue that the reasons for the Swedish revolution went beyond its flawed constitution and could be traced to the Swedish national character and the circumstances of its orders, determined by its longue durée history, laws, geography, and climate.

Animals for the mayor: Barcelona's zoo in the making of local policies and national narratives (1957-73).

From 1957 to 1973, Barcelona Zoo was transformed from a small-scale, antiquated establishment harboring very few animals, a place that was still in a poor condition following the Spanish Civil War, into a new, larger, modern, and internationally recognized institution that included up-to-date animal enclosures and that boasted one of the first dolphinariums in Europe, as well as a famous white gorilla as its icon. From its very beginning, this renovation involved an intense popularization campaign.In this paper, by describing the public discourse generated throughout this transformation and by analyzing the roles played by Antoni Jonch, the director of the zoo at that time; Josep Maria de Porcioles, the then-mayor of Barcelona; and General Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator who was head of state during this period, I will highlight how the context of the dictatorship not only authorized the new Barcelona Zoo but is, in fact, crucial to its understanding. The narratives that surrounded the renovation of the zoo focused on its civic and educational purpose, with a firm emphasis on modernity. The zoo was a modern space for learning about animals in order to become better people. These narratives were not only suitable to the policies, ideas, and aims of Porcioles' City Council and Franco's dictatorial regime; in fact, they completely matched them. Both local and national governments benefited from the restructuring of Barcelona Zoo and from its public discourse as a tool for social control and an instrument for their own propaganda, legitimation, and perpetuation.

Afterword: Science popularization, dictatorships, and democracies.

This Afterword to the special section on Science Popularization in Francoist Spain draws general conclusions from its case studies. Most overarchingly, the different contributions show that popularization existed under this dictatorial regime, and hence does not require a Habermasian liberal-democratic public sphere. Four more specific lessons are also drawn, each shedding new light on either science popularization or dictatorial regimes. (1) Popularization has not only been a way to promote science, it has also been used to prop up dictatorial regimes by associating them with things scientific. (2) Totalitarian regimes are much less monolithic than they appear to be at the surface; they often harbor internal weaknesses and conflicts. (3) The study of science popularization in dictatorships can help open our eyes for comparable forms of propaganda in democracies. (4) Totalitarianism is best understood not as a universal phenomenon, but in its specific historical situatedness. Studying science popularization under Franco brings out the specific traits of this regime: the legacy of the Civil War, Spanish regionalism, and the international dependencies of the Francoist state.