The muse as mother

This paper suggests that the concept of the muse in relation to the creative process is more than a myth or cultural artifact. It is argued that the muse is a psychic recollection of our memories of the female who presided over our first experiences of consciousness as we traversed the borders of inner and outer reality—that is, the mother. The shift of consciousness required in creative activity triggers recall of this figure. Object relations theory, recent findings from infant research, and the intuitive observations of several authors are used to support this thesis. Clinical examples illustrate the application of this concept in treatment.     

CRIMINALS AS HEROES: LINKING SYMBOL TO STRUCTURE

This article examines the phenomenon of the heroic criminal and describes the structural preconditions necessary for his appearance. The author argues that these lawbreakers are best understood as cultural products that represent a concept of extra-legal justice. Their criminality, at least initially, is imputed with political meaning. Such symbols emerge when the rational, formal, bureaucratic justice of the state fails to reflect popular conceptions of justice. These symbolic figures are endemic in any culturally complex state society, although usually their appeal is to a small and relatively powerless public. But at times when the perception of law as unjust is widespread, the heroic criminal may emerge as a national figure of epic proportions. At such times a virtual epidemic of such figures may appear since entrepreneurs, motivated by either politics or profit, “market” such symbols to a receptive public. Using comparative analysis, the author presents briefcase studies of Jesse James, William Bonney (Billy the Kid), John Dillinger, and Charles Arthur (Pretty Boy) Floyd to demonstrate how they became legendary figures. The author then describes more contemporary symbols of extra-legal justice and the structural factors that inspired their heroic image.     

OCCUPATIONAL SEX SEGREGATION AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY UNDER SOCIALISM:

An increase in scholarly attention to income differences between sex-typed occupations has generated a burgeoning literature. Typically-female occupations require preemployment education, not prolonged on-the-job training; receive less renumeration for work autonomy than male-typed occupations; and are concentrated in economically disadvantaged industrial sectors. However, these issues have received only preliminary consideration regarding noncapitalist societies and research has lacked an integrative, analytical focus. This study compares the earnings effects of education, type of work, and industrial sector between female- and male-dominated occupations in socialist Yugoslavia. As expected, average earnings are significantly higher in male than in female occupations. The results from the earnings regressions reveal a higher explained variance and larger economic returns to education among female- dominated occupations, especially in the managerial and professional strata. A decomposition of the earnings difference between sex-typed occupations suggests a variation in the source of inequality across skill strata. In the discussion, a comparison of capitalism and socialism reveals that while some aspects of the earnings attainment process may be unique to socialism, others are not.     

Estimating Probabilities Relevant to Calculating Relative Risk-Corrected Returns of Alternative Portfolios

In making all-or-none choices between alternative securities, Samuelson (1997b) suggested that investors of different risk-aversion should calculate from past samples of those securities their relevant Harmonic Means, or Geometric means, or other associative means representative of their respective degrees of relative-risk-aversion. Here it is shown how this learning procedure can be improved upon when you have prior knowledge that the securities have log-Normal distributions. Classical estimation theory, concerning consistent, efficient, and sufficient statistics, is shown to have a cash value by means of the calculable measure of (ex ante) “risk-corrected certainty equivalents.” Needed qualifications and testings are also presented.     

PROBLEMS WITH BINOMIAL TWO-SIDED TESTS AND THE ASSOCIATED CONFIDENCE INTERVALS

Confidence intervals for parameters of distributions with discrete sample spaces will be less conservative (i.e. have smaller coverage probabilities that are closer to the nominal level) when defined by inverting a test that does not require equal probability in each tail. However, the P‐value obtained from such tests can exhibit undesirable properties, which in turn result in undesirable properties in the associated confidence intervals. We illustrate these difficulties using P‐values for binomial proportions and the difference between binomial proportions.     

On Tiku's robust procedure — a Bayesian insight

Tiku's robust procedure for testing mean and variance from nonnormal universe is examined from the Bayesian viewpoint. The posterior distribution of the scale parameter is derived and then approximated by a Laguerre polynomial expansion while the posterior distribution of the location parameter is approximated by a linear combination of t-distributions. For the example with Darwin's data, the approximations appear to be extremely good.