The whats and whys of religious belief -- A history of thanatocentric theories of religion -- Measuring faith and fear -- Are people afraid of death? -- The religious correlates of death anxiety -- Death anxiety and religion: causes and consequences -- The future of immortality, literal, and symbolic.

FRANZ BRENTANO has often been considered guilty of the‘psychologism’ which Edmund Husserl, his pupil, attacked. The charge is justified in only a limited sense: Brentano is dealing not with intentional acts but rather with intentional objects. His concern is directed, among other things, to certain logical and ontological problems such as those raised by a Meinong, even if Brentano makes use of psychological insight in order to shed light on them.

This article provides a historical overview of the Existential-Phenomenological tradition in psychiatry and psychotherapy, tracing its development from its origin in nineteenth and twentieth century philosophical thought, through its major European psychiatric proponents and schools, to its emergence as an influential approach in North America after World War II. The emphasis is on the implicit themes that provide continuity within this movement as well as on the distinctive contributions of individual thinkers. We conclude with a discussion of the present (...) status and future prospects of this tradition. (shrink)

Cet article s’appuie sur des manuscrits foucaldiens des années 1950 afin d’analyser le chantier théorique à partir duquel le jeune Foucault inaugure la réflexion qui l’amènera à une mise en question radicale des sciences humaines. En particulier, l’article suit la piste d’un ouvrage inédit que Foucault a consacré à l’analyse existentielle de Ludwig Binswanger à l’époque de son enseignement à Lille. Ce manuscrit représente le maillon manquant entre l’« Introduction » à Le rêve et l’existence (1954) et la thèse que (...) Foucault publie en 1961, Folie et déraison. Tout en adjoignant à l’analyse du manuscrit la lecture de notes et fiches de lecture de la même époque, l’article montre que la critique que Foucault finit par adresser à l’anthropologie et la phénoménologie au début des années 1960 serait déjà présente de manière implicite dans l’« Introduction » à Le rêve et l’existence. Dans cette étude, en effet, Foucault aurait déjà abandonné son enthousiasme initial pour l’anthropologie phénoménologique de Binswanger pour focaliser plutôt son attention sur le problème du langage et de l’historicité des formes d’expériences. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to provide an overview of how Existential Therapy is fundamentally different from every kind of psychotherapy, including existential psychotherapy. Existential Therapy is no kind of psychotherapy. Confusing the practicing of the two can harm people and thoughts. Existential Therapy is therapy for existence, whereas psychotherapy is therapy for life, a remedy for the problems of living. The adequate distinction between life and existence is an issue that shamefully has gone unaddressed (...) in existential philosophy, existential psychology and research, and existential psychotherapy. This essay describes the main differences between life and existence, and then takes a look at what is healthy for existence versus what is healthy for life. What is found to be most unhealthy for existence is metacarnalizing, recoiling from carnal limits. Metacarnalizing is a primary existential reversal. Existential therapy unreverses existential reversals. Existential therapy unreverses metacarnalizing. Existential therapy essentially de-metacarnalizes. The issue of metacarnalizing and de-metacarnalizing is absolutely alien to all forms of psychotherapy for life. The essay is followed by an appendix, "An Existential View of Physics," which mainly describes the metacarnalizing basis of physics throughout its history. (shrink)

This book consists of Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.

Like philosophy itself, Dune explores everything from politics to art to life to reality, but above all, the novels ponder the mysteries of mind. Voyaging through psychic expanses, Frank Herbert hits upon some of the same insights discovered by indigenous people from the Americas. Many of these ideas are repeated in mainstream American and European philosophical traditions like pragmatism and existential phenomenology. These outlooks share a regard for mind as ecological, which is more or less to say that minds (...) extend beyond the brain into the rest of the body and the surrounding environment. -/- The cross-cultural strands in Dune tie closely to Herbert’s life and interests. An outdoorsman born in the Pacific West, he had an abiding bond with a friend from the Quileute tribe, Howie Hansen. Herbert advocated for aboriginal rights and crafted well-intentioned if slightly stereotypical tales about indigenous characters, partly based on his visits with Northwest tribes. Carl Jung (1875-1961), whose idea of collective consciousness echoes aboriginal views, was among Herbert’s European influences. So was existential phenomenology, especially as developed by Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). The names of characters in one of Herbert’s novels—The Santaroga Barrier—in fact coincide with terms that Heidegger used to articulate how emotionally colored coping with our environment defines our existence. Many indigenous philosophers have treated phenomenology and its American cousin pragmatism in approving ways. Indeed, the ideas of North America’s first inhabitants seem to have been absorbed by pragmatists and even earlier by transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). -/- These different philosophies all advance a place-based psychology. Anne Waters, herself of mixed tribal heritage, generalizes the mindset of her people this way: “American Indian consciousness, and hence American Indian identity is … interdependent with our land base.” Lee Hester, a Choctaw thinker, adds that practices—not mere beliefs—are most important for native thought. American transcendentalists and pragmatists, as well as European phenomenologists, similarly see hands-on practices and environmental interactions as the core of experience. Extending this a little, they sometimes suggest experience isn’t individual but instead cultural. “Culture” is here understood as interactions within communities that define our worlds and experiences, as when we talk about the “French experience,” “culture” or “world,” or the “experience of parenthood.” This theme also shows up in indigenous thought. -/- Exploring the Dune universe, we find everything from land-based concepts of personal identity, to the idea of sharpening the mind through hands-on training, to collective notions of experience in cooperative tribes or through the genetic memory of central characters. The stories explore fate versus free will in cosmic contexts, introducing views from indigenous thought and the pragmatic philosophy of William James (1842-1910). Different forms of spiritualism mingle to shape minds and cultural mixtures around the globe, and the same occurs in the Dune series. The customs and personalities of characters fuse elements from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, and especially Islam. The series not only highlights that religion shapes psychology, but also that faith connects to place, especially paralleling Judeo-Christian-Islamic desert faiths. In capturing these points, the Dune novels show that “our values, our lifestyles and even the ways we think and feel have been strongly influenced by our locations in history and geography. The study of the human mind is fundamentally the study of place.”. (shrink)

A subset of people with severe mental health conditions feels they are on the verge of losing control, even in the absence of external threats or triggers. Some go to extreme ends to avoid affective arousal and associated expectations of a possible, impending catastrophe. We have learned about such phenomenological, emotional challenges in a group of individuals with severe, composite mental health problems and psychosocial disabilities. These individuals have had long treatment histories in the mental health care system. They have (...) been encountered at a specialized inpatient ward offering exposure-based therapy that aims at restoring self-regulation and recovery. We describe the phenomenology of anxiety and fear presented by these service users, a fear we have coined existential catastrophe anxiety. We also suggest a set of underlying, interacting, psychological mechanisms that may give rise to ECa, before comparing ECa with three other constructs previously described in the literature—annihilation anxiety, ontological insecurity, and affect phobia. These comparisons show several similarities, but also unique qualities with ECa and its suggested underlying mechanisms. The conceptualization of ECa may aid clinicians in addressing extreme experiential turmoil and engage service users in empowering therapeutic projects. (shrink)

Throughout history philosophers have relentlessly pursued what may be called "inaccessible domains." This book explores how the traditions of existential phenomenology relate to Freudian psychoanalysis. A clear, succinct, and systematic account of the philosophical presuppositions of psychoanalytic theory and practice, this work offers a deeper and richer understanding and appreciation of Freudian thought, as well as its antecedents and influences. With its unique perspective on Freud's work, Apprehending the Inaccessible puts readers in a better position to appreciate his contributions (...) and evaluate the relationship between his and other philosophical world views. The authors, both of whom have extensive backgrounds in philosophy and psychology, present balanced critical analyses of crucial developments in, for example, the evolution of the Freudian notion of the unconscious, and the engagement of existential phenomenology with Freudian psychoanalysis. Askay and Farquhar then consider-often for the first time-individual thinkers' reflections on and interpretations of Freud, ranging from the primary figures in existential phenomenology to the most prominent figures in the existential psychoanalytic movement. Even as their work offers a new approach to Freudian thought, it reasserts the importance of alternative views found in existential phenomenology as those views pertain to psychoanalysis and the question of apprehending the inaccessible. (shrink)

This book addresses nothingness as not only the untangible presence of an emotional, cultural, social, or even political void that is felt on an existential level, but has some solid foundations in reality. The death of a loved one, the social isolation of an individual, or the culture shock one may experience in another country are examples of situations in which an external sense of absence mirrors an internal psychological and philosophical sense of nothingness. Not much has been explicitly (...) written on nothingness in the history of psychology. On the other hand, nothingness seems to be implicitly embedded in many scholars' work. This duality of explicitly and implicitly expressed ideas about nothingness reveals how psychology finds inspiration in philosophy, and vice versa. The book aims to illustrate how the concept of the presence of absence--nothingness--fills a void in contemporary psychological theorizing. (shrink)

What is music? Modern society has come to view music largely as entertainment and commodity. In response, We Are Music: An Existential Journey Toward Infinity provides the reader with a holistic starting point. Music has unlimited potential to transform and enlighten, and is only impeded when bound by materialism, physicalism, and reductionism. We Are Music is an attempt to bring music back to the core of humanity as an agent of positive empowerment, self-actualization, and beyond. Embracing interconnectivity, music is (...) more deeply experienced alongside the arts, science, social sciences, math, philosophy, history, and, above all, spirituality. An endless spiral, self-perception and identity can be vastly expanded, if not questioned and transcended. Music is an infinite field and any attempt to define and describe it is problematically finite and consequently limited. Herein lies the impossibility of the book which both excites and disturbs; the paradox of being and not being. A roadmap for music lovers toward self-realization, We Are Music is for those who desire to delve deeper into the power and illusion of self through music. (shrink)

Ego psychology, more existential than scientific in tone, has made psychoanalytic theory more congenial to historical studies, especially when they deal with creative and conflicted leaders. Erikson's concept of the identity crisis points to the intersection of family-centered conflicts with social and cultural history. It also orients the historian to the reanimation of problems in earlier stages of the life-cycle, the importance of work to identity formation, and the neurotic function of over-identification with a troublesome parent. Phenomenologically descriptive (...) rather than causally explanatory, psycho-biography mediates between Freud's naturalism and Collingwood's idealism by relating conscious and unconscious purposes. It establishes congruences and resonances, helping to explain in narrative form the meaning, timing, and urgency of a leader's characteristic ideas. (shrink)

DEATH is one of the central themes of existentialist writing. This is to be expected since the focal point of all its reflection is human existence. Existentialism explores the innermost depths of experienced selfhood. Inevitably, the authentic self must face the problem of man’s origin and destiny or, in Heideggerian terms, the beginning and ending of his Being-in-the-world. Death is a profoundly human problem, inseparably bound up with the psychological and ontological structure of the human mode of being or Dasein.

This chapter contains sections titled: Heidegger and the History of Truth Foucault and the History of Truth: First Pass Foucault and the History of Truth: Second Pass References.

DEATH is one of the central themes of existentialist writing. This is to be expected since the focal point of all its reflection is human existence. Existentialism explores the innermost depths of experienced selfhood. Inevitably, the authentic self must face the problem of man’s origin and destiny or, in Heideggerian terms, the beginning and ending of his Being-in-the-world. Death is a profoundly human problem, inseparably bound up with the psychological and ontological structure of the human mode of being or Dasein.

The existential approach described by Mark Nesti offers a radical alternative to the cognitive-behavioral model which informs most contemporary applied sports psychology. Whereas standard psychological models of athlete behavior would advocate appropriate "mental skills" training such as visualizing the perfect race to help an athlete overcome performance problems, the existential approach will refer to an athletes unique emotional world to find deeper causes of their limitation. These causes may be only very indirectly linked to the athletes sporting (...) life. Existential sports psychology has gone out of phenomenological theory and existential philosophy. Mark Nesti's text is the first book to present an overview of this exciting approach. It contains case studies and a framework for psychologists to apply this approach to their work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 170-174 [Access article in PDF] A Buddhist History of the West: Studies In Lack. By David R. Loy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. 244 pp. The religious and philosophical situation of our time seems polarized between resurgent fundamentalisms and a cosmopolitan awareness bridging heretofore separated traditions. Even a few decades ago the notion of a dialogue between East and West was a (...) novelty in which demarcated traditions and cultures (say the Buddhist East and the Christian West) experimented with attempts to find a common language to speakacross the boundaries between their respective identities. In such a context,"Western Buddhists" were those pilgrims of the counterculture who "went East" in search of some civilizational and spiritual other; the West, abjected to the realm of soulless scientism or outdated religious authoritarianism, was left behind. The situation is different at the beginning of the twenty-first Christian century. The dialectical complexities, both inwardly in the soul or mind of seekers, and outwardly in the strange twists of contemporary history, emerge to forbid any simple assessments of what can be left behind or indeed what the use can be of what seekers have found in the "non-West." People of Western background begin to realize and consciously address the [End Page 170] karmic-historical presuppositions of their search, which continue to constitute a kind of historical unconscious to the formulation of any possible "Western Buddhisms." Meanwhile, while fundamentalists of many backgrounds posit "clashes of civilizations" that assume an absoluteness of traditional distinctions, cosmopolitans realize that, for all the particularity of their respective starting points, the global situation is inextricably a shared one. In such a context, what canWestern Buddhist intellectuals, cognizant of their own starting points but having learned some things along the Way that are perhaps of universal relevance, speak to our common condition?The "Buddhist History of the West" that David Loy provides is less a historical narrative of the events constitutive of the societies descending from Greco-Roman civilization through European epochs and American empire into the age of globalization than a form of psychoanalytic anamnesis of those societies' cultural constructions of reality. Loy's psychoanalytic interpretive frame is composed of Buddhist insight into the human mind's deep-seated grasping for solidity and certainty in the face of a reality fundamentally characterized by impermanence and ungroundedness (the "Lack" of the subtitle, our simultaneous awareness of death, impermanence, andontological emptiness and the ego's wish for eternal selfhood in an endless but impossibly fulfilling world). Loy's Buddhism is combined with the existential psychology of Ernest Becker and the revisionist Freudianism of Norman O. Brown called on as Western resources for the spiritual therapeutics "the West" seems to need as it enters the third Christian millennium both triumphant and in despair of any meaning to accompany its economic and pop-cultural hegemony.Seven anamnestic chapters take us through twenty-five hundred years of Western cultural constructions, from the Greek and Roman philosophical inquiries into Freedom, a kind of origin-tale of Humanism seen as a "religious" (religion for Loy being the way humans attempt to answer the problem of Lack as if to ground our groundlessness) vision of meaning as the development of human capacities for rational thought, through the intertwining of classical and Christian constructions in medieval and Renaissance periods, through the Protestant Reformation into the political and ideological space of modernity, culminating in a vision of the globalizing West as purveying a "Religion of the Market," an ironically meaningless (centered on the symbolic code for Value—Money—as a displacement of Value itself) system of meaning. This last, our contemporary situation, would perhaps be simply a problem of aesthetic tastelessness (American pop culture performing the dissolution of all surviving traditional sacred orders following the description of capitalism by Marx as causing "all that is sacred" to "melt into air") were it not for the massive social injustice and environmental devastation it structurally produces. Loy's therapeutic vision, following the Buddhist deconstruction of the demarcated "self" and Becker and Brown's cultural-historical or collective... (shrink)

In ancient China, a revered Taoist sage named Zhuangzi told many parables. In Existential Psychology and the Way of the Tao, a selection of these parables will be featured. Following each parable, an eminent existential psychologist will share a personal and scholarly reflection on the meaning and relevance of the parable for psychotherapy and contemporary life. The major tenets of Zhuangzi's philosophy are featured. Taoist concepts of emptiness, stillness, Wu Wei (i.e. intentional non-intentionality), epistemology, dreams and the (...) nature of reality, character building in the midst of pain, meaning and the centrality of relationships, authenticity, self-care, the freedom that can come from one's willingness to confront death, spiritual freedom, and gradations of therapeutic care are topics highlighted in this book. (shrink)

"This book introduces a new way of looking at the writing of history. Rather than as the production of knowledge or the telling of stories, it sees writing history as an ethical, existential and emotional engagement with the people from the past. The conceptual and philosophical basis for this view is provided by the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. In the first part, the view is presented and contrasted with other, competing views, such as those of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Michel (...) Foucualt. In the second part, the view is argued for, most importantly by an in-depth discussion of one specific tradition of history-writing, and a series of close readings of several classical works from the history of historiography. The third part, finally, explores some of the methodological consequences of this view, and applies it to a non-academic way of dealing with the past, namely historical performance practice in music. The book features a foreword by Frank Ankersmit"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Collective Regret and Guilt and Heroic Agency:A Pro-Existential ApproachIonut UnteaIntroductory Discussion: Challenging the Supposedly "Rationally Refutable" Character of GuiltStudies in social psychology point out that feelings of guilt are more likely than feelings of regret to occur in an interpersonal context (Wagner et al. 1) marked by "interpersonal harm," or harm done to others (Berndsen et al. 55, 66). In keeping with these studies, in social ontology, (...) regret seems to involve an evaluation of the kind of wrongdoing that is out of someone's control (Konzelmann Ziv 488), while the feeling of guilt implies the self-attribution of blame over something that is connected, even in a loose manner, to a blameworthy action (Gilbert, "Group Wrongs" 65, 66n3).In order to advance the argument of the reasonableness of a person's feeling of guilt if that person is part of a group that has acted wrongfully, Margaret Gilbert distinguishes between feelings of personal guilt and feelings of collective guilt ("Group Wrongs" 76), with the latter still impacting on the individual feelings of guilt. From this point of view, a person may be "personally guiltless," but can still reasonably feel guilt if that person's group behaves in a morally unacceptable way ("Group Wrongs" 66). By distinguishing between personal and collective guilt, Gilbert intends to give an "intelligible" dimension to what she calls Jaspers's "dilemma" ("Collective Guilt" 135, 136). She emphasizes Karl Jaspers's hesitation in categorizing his own feeling of guilt for what his people have done: "There is a way that he 'cannot help feeling' which is 'rationally refutable'" (Gilbert "Collective Guilt" 135; Jaspers 74). As a philosopher, Gilbert argues, Jaspers finds this existential dilemma "extremely problematic" ("Collective Guilt" 135). Nonetheless, Gilbert also concedes that these two types of guilt may be difficult to distinguish in regard to their "phenomenological conditions" at the level of [End Page 59] the "pangs and twinges" experienced by each person, but rather on the basis of the "judgment or thought" involved with that feeling ("Collective Guilt" 135).Gilbert argues that "it is indeed intelligible for group members to feel guilt over the action in question" by virtue of what she calls a "foundational joint commitment," which brings together a number of people to "intend as a body" to carry out certain actions ("Collective Guilt" 136). Although not committed to the goal of showing the intelligibility of the feeling of membership guilt as is Gilbert, I favor the acceptance of a kind of reasonableness of such a feeling, even when it conserves its "rationally refutable" character. This even applies when membership guilt may not so easily be distinguished from personal guilt. Gilbert sees joint commitment as "authority-creating," in the sense that "a person or body" may become "authorized" to apply the collective intention to the concrete settings. This is realized by making decisions for the entire group, thus bringing the collective intention into effect ("Collective Guilt" 136). This joint commitment becomes binding for individual members of the group since once they commit themselves to the group's intention, "they are not in a position unilaterally to change the collective's mind." This does not apply in situations when "they may do so by mutual consent" ("Collective Guilt" 127). What I find concerning about Gilbert's involvement of the argument of the "authority-creating" ("Collective Guilt" 136) joint commitment within the dimension of membership guilt is precisely that it discourages any contestation of the authority that decides the content of the collective intention, unless this is done by "mutual consent" ("Collective Guilt" 127). This makes the members of the collective rather passive, and unwilling to challenge the authority generated through their participation in the joint commitment.This reluctance of the members of a collective body to challenge the authority that gives content to their collective intention can easily be identified in history and in the contemporary landscapes of political authority, especially in countries led continuously for decades by authoritarian leaders. In spite of the oppressive character of their leadership, these are very rarely contested, and then only by sporadic voices who fail to generate a coherent long-term commitment from other group members. In this sense, Gilbert's... (shrink)

Narrative theories currently dominate our understanding of how selfhood is constituted and concretely individuated throughout personal history. Despite this success, the narrative perspective has recently been exposed to a range of critiques. Whilst these critiques have been effective in pointing out the shortcomings of narrative theories of selfhood, they have been less willing and able to suggest alternative ways of understanding personal history. In this article, I assess the criticisms and argue that an adequate phenomenology of personal history must also (...) go beyond narrative. Drawing on a distinction between history and narrative, I outline an account of historical becoming through a process of sedimentation and a rich notion of what I call historical selfhood on an embodied level. Five embodied existentials are suggested, sketching a preliminary understanding of how selves are concretely individuated on a pre-narrative level. (shrink)

Historically, the suspension of presuppositions arose as part of the philosophical procedure of the transcendental reduction which, Husserl taught, led to the distinct realm of phenomenological research: pure consciousness. With such an origin, it may seem surprising that bracketing remains a methodological concept of modern phenomenological psychology, in which the focus is on the life-world. Such a focus of investigation is, on the face of it, incompatible with transcendental idealism. The gap was bridged largely by Merleau-Ponty, who found it (...) possible to interpret Husserl's later work in an existentialist way, and thus enabled the process of bracketing to refer, not to a turning away from the world and a concentration on detached consciousness, but to the resolve to set aside theories, research presuppositions, ready-made interpretations, etc., in order to reveal engaged, lived experience. This paper outlines the history of the suspension of presuppositions and discusses the scope and limitations of bracketing in its new sense within existential phenomenology. The emphasis is on research practice and on the phenomenological quest for entry into the life-world of the research participant. It is argued that the bracketing of presuppositions throughout the process of research should be a cardinal feature of phenomenological psychology. Of equal importance is the investigator's sensitive awareness that the investigation of the life-world and the phenomena which appear within it is a thoroughly interpersonal process, necessarily entailing the taken-for-granted assumptions implicit in all social interaction. These presuppositions are not open to bracketing. (shrink)

The total ideology of the revolutionary-political themes of Ukrainian consciousness of the twentieth century, the poetization of the absurdly inverted hierarchy of values, was opposed by the new generation of artists with their philosophical and ethical orientation of their creativity. As I.Franko notes, they "... sought a completely modern European way to portray the peculiarity of the life of the Ukrainian people," revealing the unique collisionality of human existence, the diversity of psychological types, ideological orientations, and the human experience of (...) its existence on the background of this difficult time. However, Ukrainian writersphilosophers who talently laid the foundations of national culture, but are now returning to the generations of the Shattered Renaissance, filling black and bloody spots of troubled history of Ukraine. Among them are V. Pidmogylny, B. Antonovenko-Davidovich, G. Kosinka, D. Falkivsky, M.Ivchenko, T.Osmachka, E.Pluzhnik. This is a non-exhaustive list of the leading figures of the post-revolutionary period who were removed from the creative field, whose works are the golden fund of Ukrainian culture. (shrink)

In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it's simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre's nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience. This informative and entertaining investigation of boredom—what it is and what it isn't, its uses and its dangers—spans more than 3,000 years of history and takes (...) readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Dürer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature. Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today's world. _Boredom: A Lively History _is vital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens. (shrink)

In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it's simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre's nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience. This informative and entertaining investigation of boredom—what it is and what it isn't, its uses and its dangers—spans more than 3,000 years of history and takes (...) readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Dürer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature. Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today's world. _Boredom: A Lively History _is vital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens. (shrink)

The effects of heredity and the environment on the development of human being, which is a multidimensional being, have been discussed for many years. Studies on the religious development of man were also influenced by these discussions. In this context, in order to better understand the nature of religious development, some theories such as behavioral, cognitive or stage theories have emerged. In a sense, these theories have also identified the direction of religious development. However, many of these theories did not (...) address their religious development as a whole. This restricted the understanding of religious development. Therefore, this article has two main purposes. First, to bring the ecological theory which is the human development model proposed by Bronfenbrenner, which considers human development as a whole with the environment and events in which it lives, to the literature of our country's religion psychology. The second aim is that to contribute to a better understanding of the psychological foundations of religious development through the use of this theory. In this article where qualitative research method has been used, some quantitative study data have been used. In the article, the ecosystem, ecosystem, macrosystem, and the effect of each of the chronosystem on religious development is discussed. In this article, it is concluded that approach to religious development in the context of ecological theory can be useful.Summary: Human being is existentially open to development. The openness of human to development is not a choice but a requirement. Therefore, each individual must experience a developmental process in which physiological, psychological and sociological conditions are intertwined unless he has voluntarily terminated his existence. Psychologists, who are aware of this, attach a special importance to the phenomenon of development. Is heredity is more effective in human development, or the environment? This question is a result of the importance that psychologists attribute to development.Essentially, the roots of these debates on human development are based on the foundation of modern psychology. For example, Locke, one of the most important philosophers of the 18th century, rejected the idea of ​​Descartes, one of the 17th-century thinkers, that man came to the world equipped with all sorts of knowledge and skills. Unlike Descartes, Locke argued that the source of all human knowledge is based on experience. According to Locke, the mind of the newborn baby is an un scraped tablet = tabula rasa, but it is not only the normal knowledge but also the source of God's imagination.This perspective on human development naturally affected the problem of religious development. For example, Jung sought the basis of religious faith in the collective unconscious, referring to the hereditary foundations of religious faith in a sense. On the other hand, Pratt approached the problem of religious development on the basis of experience.In general, religious development studies carried out on more experienced grounds have brought some theoretical approaches. Goldman, for example, examined the course of religious development from childhood to adolescence. For him, religious thought is not that different from non-religious thought in terms of form and method. Fowler, on the other hand, expressed that faith is not always religious in terms of content and context, and has developed a theory of belief development that includes religious development. However, some religious development models brings a different perspective to the development of the religious phenomenon in Turkey have been developed. Three-stage religious development model developed by Karaca is one of them. According to this model, the process of religious development of human beings is completed through three stages: inner tendencies, awakening of religious interest and questioning, harmony and stability.The necessity of using multi-dimensional approaches to understand the human being is a multidimensional entity is undoubtedly a reality. For this reason, it can be stated that the diversity of the explanation models for the religious development phenomenon mentioned above is a richness. It is thought that looking at the phenomenon of religious development in terms of the ecological theory developed by Bronfenbrenner, will increase the wealth of the means to understand the phenomenon of religious development. In this context, the main aim of this article is to provide the literature on the psychology of religion in our country and to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of religious development in the context of the theory of ecological theory put forward by Bronfenbrenner in a holistic way.The qualitative research method has been used in this article, besides the explanations and analyzes, the data of the quantitative studies, which are not directly related to the subject, have also been utilized.The basic step of the ecological theory that Bronfenbrenner suggested is a structure in which many systems from family to political and cultural systems overlap to better understand human development. The microsystem, which represents the innermost layer surrounding the individual, expresses the basic structure in which the individual lives and interacts with other people, while the mesosystemincludes the developing individual and the home and the school, school and workplace. It includes connections between two or more microsystems or contexts. The ecosystem, which is an extension of the mesosystem covering both formal and informal structures and relationships, does not directly affect the individual; however, it surrounds the individual by influencing the current arrangements that the individual has been in. The part of the theory that expresses the attitudes and ideologies of the culture in which the individual lives is the macrosystem. The last link of the theory is the chronosystem. The chronosystem, which explains how socio-historical conditions, lifelong transitions and environmental events occur in a pattern, has an important place in the development history of the individual.Although human beings are born with capability for believing, this situation alone is not enough to complete the process of religious development in a healthy way. When considered in the context of ecological theory, the religious development of the individual is affected from the first degree of the microsystem which is in direct contact with his family, school, peer groups, religious groups and playgrounds. In addition, the mesosystem, ecosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem affect the religious development of the individual either directly or indirectly. However, it should be noted that the effects of these systems on religious development are always double polarized.In order to better understand the psychology of religious development in the context of ecological theory, it is thought that the cross-sectional and longitudinal studies that will be done with different groups in which the systems constituting the theory are effective will provide illuminating information about the subject. However, researchers, who will study religious development, are very careful when analyzing the relationships of the variables such as gender, age, civil status, education level, occupational groups and socio-economic level expressing the characteristics of the sample group in the experimental studies and used as independent variables. to be. Since, although the effects of these variables on the level of religiousness, the effects of these variables on dependent variables can be limited without considering the ecological theory. (shrink)

This article explores the nature of "the phenomenological attitude," which is understood as the process of retaining a wonder and openness to the world while reflexively restraining pre-understandings, as it applies to psychological research. A brief history identifies key philosphical ideas outlining Husserl's formulation of the reductions and subsequent existential-hermeneutic elaborations, and how these have been applied in empirical psychological research. Then three concrete descriptions of engaging the phenomenological attitude are offered, highlighting the way the epoché of the natural (...) sciences, the psychological phenomenological reduction and the eidetic reduction can be applied during research interviews. Reflections on the impact and value of the researcher's stance show that these reductions can be intertwined with reflexivity and that, in this process, something of a dance occurs—a tango in which the researcher twists and glides through a series of improvised steps. In a context of tension and contradictory motions, the researcher slides between striving for reductive focus and reflexive self-awareness; between bracketing pre-understandings and exploiting them as a source of insight. Caught up in the dance, researchers must wage a continuous, iterative struggle to become aware of, and then manage, pre-understandings and habitualities that inevitably linger. Persistance will reward the researcher with special, if fleeting, moments of disclosure in which the phenomenon reveals something of itself in a fresh way. (shrink)

Cultural psychology and experimental existential psychology are two of the fastest-growing movements in social psychology. In this book, Daniel Sullivan combines both perspectives to present a groundbreaking analysis of culture's role in shaping the psychology of threat experience. The first part of the book presents a new theoretical framework guided by three central principles: that humans are in a unique existential situation because we possess symbolic consciousness and culture; that culture provides psychological protection against (...) threatening experiences, but also helps to create them; and that interdisciplinary methods are vital to understanding the link between culture and threat. In the second part of the book, Sullivan presents a novel program of research guided by these principles. Focusing on a case study of a traditionalist group of Mennonites in the midwestern United States, Sullivan examines the relationship between religion, community, guilt, anxiety, and the experience of natural disaster. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 282-284 [Access article in PDF] Bruce Kuklick. A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xiii + 326. Cloth, $30.00. Scott L. Pratt. Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xviii + 316. Cloth, $49.95. Paper, $21.95. In his earlier works Bruce Kuklick has studied major figures and (...) episodes in the evolution of American thought, most famously the Golden Age of Harvard. In the present book he proposes to tell the whole story. Beginning, as it must, with Jonathan Edwards, Part I traces the long and difficult process by which philosophy gradually distinguishes itself from theology. Part II deals magisterially with the age of pragmatism, from Darwin to Dewey, and Part III with professional philosophy in the twentieth century. Kuklick's account of this latest development, briefly adumbrated in his previous books, is the freshest and (to this retired professional) most engaging part of the narrative. Once philosophy had loosened the bonds that tied it to theology, once sciences like psychology, originally parts of philosophy, had declared independence and set out on their own, and once philosophy's role as counselor to private morals and public policy had been taken over by psychoanalysis, economics, sociology, and political science, philosophers had to discover a new identity for themselves. Inspired by logical positivism and the linguistic ruminations of the late Wittgenstein, professional philosophy came to mean, very largely, a preoccupation with problems of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and epistemology. The result was that, apart from undergraduate lectures and occasional ventures into the popular media, what philosophers said and wrote, intelligible only to other philosophers, became irrelevant to just about everything of personal and public interest, and even to the traditional concerns of philosophy itself with the nature of reality and the conduct of life.The eventual arrival in the American academy of phenomenology, existentialism, and deconstruction, in spite of their apparent engagement with "real life" and their appeal to undergraduates, only bred another species of professionals and precipitated the familiar antagonism between analytic and continental philosophy. Late in the last century Richard Rorty, a preeminent analytic philosopher, broke ranks, discovered first Heidegger and Derrida, then William James and John Dewey, and declared himself a pragmatist. He characterized philosophy as a single voice in the conversation of the West, which also included literature, literary criticism, the arts, and all the sciences both natural and humane. But he remains a philosopher of language. The pragmatism of the nineteenth century was a low-mimetic [End Page 282] form of the high-mimetic idealism from which it emerged: from Royce to James. Rorty's pragmatism not only takes for granted the (often implicit) materialism and atheism of analytic philosophy, but is itself a new way of understanding and using language. It has been called, inverting James, an old name for a new way of thinking.But I need to correct this overly simple account. As Kuklick is aware, philosophy in America, though it did succeed in detaching itself from theology, has never wholly dissolved its ties to religion. Royce and James in the nineteenth century and Dewey in the twentieth continued to be preoccupied with religious questions, especially with the apparent conflict of religion and science suggested by Darwin's theory. Religious interests survive, barely, in "critical realism." And even though analytic philosophy would seem to be most comfortable with atheism, more than a few thinkers trained in analysis have combined analytic logic and religious faith. Witness the Society of Christian Philosophers. On the whole, however, professional philosophy has been devoid of religious, socio-political, or existential interest. This should not be surprising. All genuine professions serve an end beyond themselves—as medicine serves health, law justice, and theology salvation. But when philosophy becomes a "profession," it has no end but self-preservation, i.e., creating more philosophers and finding jobs for them.One slightly disconcerting feature of Kuklick's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3.2 (1996) 139-142 Concurrent Contents: Recent and Classic References at the Interface of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology Articles Abramowitz, S., C. Abramowitz, C. Jackson et al. 1973. The politics of clinical judgment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 41: 385-391.Audi, R. N. 1972. Psychoanalytic explanation and the concept of rational action. The Monist 56: 444- 464.Barondess, J. A. 1979. Disease and illness--a (...) crucial distinction. American Journal of Medicine 66: 375-376.Barrett, R. J. 1988. Interpretations of schizophrenia. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 12: 357-388.Bechtel, W. 1993. The case for connectionism. Philosophical Studies 7: 119-154.Belzen, J. A. 1995. The impact of phenomenology on classical psychiatry: Rümke's position between Jaspers and Kraepelin. History of Psychiatry 6: 349-385.Benda, C. E. 1967. Neuroses of conscience. Journal of Existentialism 7: 425-442.Binns, P. 1995. Commentary on "Contentless consciousness." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2: 61-63.Blankenburg, W. 1980. Phenomenology and psychopathology. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 11: 50-78.Bloomfield, T. M. 1979. Psychoanalysis: A human science? Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 9: 271-287.Blumenfeld, D. 1972. Free action and unconscious motivation. The Monist 56: 426-443.Boudreaux, G. 1977. Freud on the nature of unconscious mental processes. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 7: 1-32.Bracken, P. J. 1995. Beyond liberation: Michael Foucault and the notion of a critical psychiatry. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 1: 1-13.Brazier, M. 1995. Commentary on "Who should be committable?." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 1: 49-50.Bursztajn, J., and A. Brodsky. 1995. Authenticity and autonomy in the managed-care era: Forensic psychiatric perspectives. Journal of Clinical Ethics 5, no. 3: 237-242.Byrnes, J. F. 1979. Suggestions on writing the history of psychological data. History and Theory 16: 297-305.Campbell, E. J., J. G. Scadding, and R. J. Roberts. 1979. The concept of disease. British Medical Journal 2: 757-762.Carveth, D. 1988. In reply to Eagle's reply on "The epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis." Philosophy of the Social Sciences 18: 377-378.Chadwick, R. F. 1995. Commentary on "Karl Jaspers and Edmund Husserl." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 1: 83-84.Christiansen, B. 1964. The scientific status of psychoanalytic clinical evidence (III). Inquiry 7: 47-79.Davis, M. 1987. Realistic utilitarianism and the social conditions of cognitive psychotherapy. Social Theory & Practice 13: 237-259.Dega, W., et al. 1978. Ethics and mental health: Discussion. Dialectics and Humanism 5: 219-235.Dingle, H. 1949. The logical status of psycho-analysis. Analysis 9: 63-66.Dupeau, J. 1977. Freud and degeneracy. Diogenes Spring: 43-64.Eagle, M. 1988. A reply to Carveth's "The epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 18: 371-375.Elevitch, B. 1974-75. Reasons, motives and psychoanalysis. Philosophical Forum (Boston) 6: 143- 162.Elliot, P. 1995. Policies, identity, and social change: Contested grounds in psychoanalytic feminism. Hypatia 10: 41-55.Fabrega Jr, H. 1980. The position of psychiatric illness in biomedical theory: A cultural analysis. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 5: 145-168.Fisk, G. 1993. Accreditation of psychotherapists. British Journal of Hospital Medicine 50: 437-438.Flynn, B. G. 1985. Reading Habermas reading Freud. Human Studies 8: 57-76.Forrow, L., R. M. Arnold, and J. Frader. 1991. Teaching clinical ethics in the residency years--preparing competent professionals. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16: 93-112.Friedman, M. 1982. Philosophical anthropology and psychotherapy. Philosophical Context 12: 9-19.Galdston, I. 1969. The ontologic foundations of morality. Existential Psychiatry 7: 69-75.Gardner, S. 1995a. Commentary on "Irrationality and the dynamic unconscious." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 2: 175-176.Gardner, S. 1995b. Psychoanalysis, science, and commonsense. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 2: 93-113.Handelsman, M. M. et al. 1995. Does legally mandated consent to psychotherapy ensure ethical appropriateness? The Colorado experience. Ethics and Behavior 5, no. 2: 119-129.Hanlon, M. D. 1977. Commentary on Dunham's "Psychiatry, Sociology and Civil Liberties." Values and Ethics in Health Care 2: 275-278.Heaton, J. M. 1972. Insight in... (shrink)

This study aims at discovering the essential constituents involved in the experiences of guilt and shame. Guilt concerns a subject’s action or omission of action and has a clear temporal unfolding entailing a moment in which the subject lives in a care-free way. Afterwards, this moment undergoes a reconstruction, in the moment of guilt, which constitutes the moment of negligence. The reconstruction is a comprehensive transformation of one’s attitude with respect to one’s ego; one’s action; the object of guilt and (...) the temporal-existential experience. The main constituents concerning shame are its anchorage in the situation to which it refers; its public side involving the experience of being perceptually objectified; the exclusion of social community; the bodily experience; the revelation of an undesired self; and the genesis of shame in terms of a history of frozen now-ness. The article ends with a comparison between guilt and shame. (shrink)

The development of evolutionary approaches to psychology from Classical Ethology through Sociobiology to Evolutionary Psychology is outlined and the main tenets of today's Evolutionary Psychology briefly examined: the heuristic value of evolutionary thinking for psychology, the massive modularity thesis and the monomorphic mind thesis.

This volume bridges this longstanding divide by demonstrating how rigorous experimental methods can be applied to understanding key existential concerns, ...

This collection of writings on existential psychology outlines the principles of the discipline, its cultural background, and its contributions to therapy.

While developments of a shared intellectual tradition, the enactivist approach and the organizational account proffer importantly different accounts of organismic normativity. Where enactivists tend to follow Hans Jonas, Andres Weber, and Francisco Varela in grounding intrinsic affordance norms in existential concern, organizational theorists such as Alvaro Moreno, Matteo Mossio, and Leonardo Bich seek a more deflationary account of these normative phenomena. Critiques directed at both of these accounts of organismic normativity motivate the introduction of the precedential account of organismic (...) normativity, which I nevertheless locate within the enactivist approach, broadly construed. After detailing empirical evidence that would seem to vindicate the precedential account, I explore some of its implications. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide a preliminary outline of a theory of identity. The first section addresses what the sociologist Niklas Luhmann has called ‘the problem of identity’, or, in other words, the mind–society (rather than the mind–body) problem: In how far can the internal (psychological) self and the external (social) persona be integrated into a unit? The second section of the essay briefly defines a basic vocabulary of a theory of identity. ‘Identity’ is understood as the existentially necessary formation (...) of a coherence between the ‘self’ (the ‘I’ as it is experienced in thoughts and feelings), its body and its social ‘persona’ (the individual person with its social attributes). Three different major paradigms of identity formation are distinguished from one another: a sincere identity is constructed through a firm commitment of the self to its social roles; an authentic identity is constructed through the creation of a social persona on the basis of one’s unique and original self; a ‘profilic’ identity, as we call it, is shaped by successfully presenting a personal profile under conditions of second-order observation as they prevail, for instance, in the social media, but also in other contemporary social systems. In the third section of the essay, we present a sketch of the historical sequence of these three paradigms of identity. Although these paradigms are not mutually exclusive and can coexist, it seems that sincerity flourished in pre-modern society, while authenticity came to prominence along with the functional differentiation of modern society and is now, along with the increased significance of second-order observation, gradually overshadowed by the influence of profilicity. (shrink)