Academic Exchange Quarterly

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Is the Unconscious Structured Like a Language?
  Kigan Chang

"...it is already completely clear that the symptoms resolves itself entirely in a Language analysis, because the symptoms itself is structured like a Language, because the symptom is a Language from the Word must be liberated."

How are we to understand this very precarious relationship between the unconscious and language? If the unconscious is to be identified as a language system, does it mean that we are linguistic beings through and through, caught up in the 'prison house of language' to the exclusion of an unmediated access to immanent self-knowledge of our own psyche? If the unconscious is to be likened to a language, is it constrained to comply with all of the logical operations and rules of syntax that govern the formation of sentences and propositions? On the other hand, given the case that language and the unconscious are not exactly identical (since it is a relation of homology, i.e. "like"), how are we to structure that residue of difference and to what extent? Are they so dissimilar that they could be posited as just another set of Derridean metaphysical binaries, longing to be deconstructed at some juncture in Lacan's argument proper? This paper attempts to shed light on this set of related questions.    full text

Editor's Note:
  Phil Brocato

Accelerated Learning
  Rick Sheridan

The Role of Social Capital in Academic Success
  Mike MacCallum

This paper reviews the literature on the effect of social capital on academic achievement. Using references from ERIC and PsychInfo, a comprehensive review of both the study of social capital effects and programs to increase academic achievement through the development of social capital is presented. A social capital framework provides the following suggestions for improving school success: reducing school size, giving students a voice in their own education, involving parents in schools, developing school-community relations, community service learning, and the recognition of the importance of social networks.  full text

Essay:
  Lynne Fukuda

Student Essay:
  Christopher Pasad

Student Essay:
  Michelle D. Robison

Student Essay:
  Hardson Pindu Kwandayi

Reformed Epistemology
  Kevin Rehwald

The wide range of twentieth century Christian thought can be placed into two categories regarding its specific view on the relation of theology to current philosophical trends. For the theological systems in the first category, I will, borrowing from Paul Tillich, call theologies of correlation. Such systems attempt to find some point of relation between theology and secular philosophical thought. In so doing they attempt to justify religious beliefs in the terms set by non-religious philosophers. Christian thinkers in the second category see no such point of contact and find it somehow inappropriate to apply non-religious thought to one's religious life.   full text