Neuroses are secondary mental illnesses, it being their purpose to contain psychoses.

In the period 1800–1870, French physicians approached psychic illness (Philippe Pinel’s “neurosis”) within competing “cerebralist” and “visceralist” frameworks. Cerebralism, which dominated the specialty of mental medicine, sought the origins of psychic illness in lesions of the brain and central nervous system. “Visceralism,” upheld by generalists, clung to the view of the ancients that psychic disorder was seated in the abdominal viscera. The distinction enjoyed credibility thanks to widespread acceptance of Xavier Bichat’s “two lives” doctrine, which demarcated functions of the central (...) and the “vegetative” nervous systems. Once the “two lives” conception was undercut after midcentury, cerebralists sought to draw disturbances of appetite, digestion, and eating within the domain of the central nervous system. This essay suggests that historical study of “hysterical anorexia” and related disease entities that displaced “neuroses of the stomach” has overemphasized sociocultural determinants to the neglect of the internal dynamics of biomedical science. (shrink)

Este artigo discute as implicações do segundo dualismo pulsional freudiano para a economia narcísica e o conceito de trauma, fenômenos que despontam no corpo teórico da segunda tópica psíquica. Discute-se o modelo econômico da dor física e sua retomada em Além do princípio do prazer, como um marco renovado para a teoria do trauma e sua relação com a fixação em formas de sofrimento psíquico e de adoecimento. Conclui-se que um desenvolvimento teórico sobre a dor e sua relação com o (...) masoquismo erógeno e moral são contribuições para elucidar o retorno de formações narcísicas sobre o Eu. (shrink)

What we call "neurosis" is psychosis about specific facts, but not about the logical instruments used to judge relations between facts. What we call "psychosis" is psychosis about both facts and the aforementioned logical instruments.

Philosophers have often thought that concepts such as ”knowledge” and ”truth” are appropriate objects for theoretical investigation. In a discussion which ranges widely over recent analytical philosophy and radical theory, Philosophy and Its Epistemic Neuroses takes issue with this assumption, arguing that such theoreticism is not the solution but the source of traditional problems in epistemology (How can we have knowledge of the world around us? How can we have knowledge of other minds and cultures? How can we have (...) knowledge of ourselves?) and in the philosophy of language (How can we know what our words refer to?).The author draws on Wittgenstein and recent neo-pragmatists (Putnam, Rorty, Davidson, Williams) to argue that analytical philosophy and radical theory alike stand in an ambivalent relationship with skepticism, which issues forth in varieties of ”epistemic neuroses” - manifested most clearly in the cases of metaphysical realism, relativism and causal theories of reference. Each of these projects is defined in terms possibilities that conflict with its own chances of cognitive success. Hymers explains not only the mainstream analytical philosophy of such figures as Devitt, Quine and Burge, but also structuralism (Althusser, Lacan), feminist theory (Seller, MacKinnon, Lugones) and critical theory (Marcuse), in an attempt to outline a therapeutic alternative to philosophical theoreticism. (shrink)

Drawing inspiration from Wittgenstein’s dictum that “[t]he philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness”, a number of prominent contemporary philosophers have stopped trying to refute skepticism and have instead sought to cure us of it. A similar passion for Wittgensteinian therapy animates Michael Hymers’ ambitious Philosophy and its Epistemic Neuroses. The book falls into three parts: the first aspires to debunk skepticism; the second dissects relativism; and the third is devoted to the topic of (...) self-knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophers continue to locate themselves on a landscape in which scepticism is a prominent feature. By treating sceptical scenarios, from evil demons to brains-in-vats, as "real possibilities" that would, if actual, suffice to "explain our experience as of a world beyond our senses", we can locate the strong independence of the world from knowledge characteristic of metaphysical realism. But, by taking scepticism this seriously, realists deprive themselves of any justification for other theses they nonetheless continue to advocate. In order to (...) advance beyond scepticism, metaphysical realists must then treat sceptical scenarios as mere logical possibilities, but by doing so they jettison the strong independence of the world that characterizes their own form of realism. This "concurrent need to admit and deny a thesis, especially a sceptical one", is the "neurosis" or "epistemic dissociative disorder" of Michael Hymers's title. Hymers makes a persuasive case for regarding this simple story as the right diagnosis for a succession of ills afflicting self-described metaphysical realists. On his telling of the tale, the mind-independence of the world needed for metaphysical realism requires taking scepticism seriously; but accompanying positive theses require that the same seriousness be dampened. (shrink)

I outline the main arguments of my book, Philosophy and Its Epistemic Neuroses (Westview, 2000), in which I defend an anti-theoretical approach to traditional problems in epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of language, focusing especially on external-world scepticism, the indeterminacy of reference, relativism and first-person authority, contending that these problems arise from embracing philosophical commitments that are not quite contradictory, but which suffer from what I describe as "epistemic neuroses"--an acceptance of methodological commitments that make these problems look (...) like problems at the same time as they render them insoluble. I contend that such epistemic neuroses plague both the analytical and continental traditions in philosophy alike. (shrink)

Levin follows the development of Freud's ideas up to Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, claiming that "his writings through 1905 can easily be recognized as containing virtually all the fundamental elements of his system." The interpretation has two complementary emphases: "that his early theoretical models were much more closely tied to current medical and psychological literature than has previously been acknowledged, and that, contrary to presently accepted views, Freud, from his first studies of the neuroses, consistently eschewed (...) speculations concerning possible organic explanations for these diseases". (shrink)

Available for the first time in English, this work explores a range of mental disorders in the context of Frankl's theory of human motivation. Skillfully translated and featuring extensive annotation, this English language edition remains true to the original while updating assessment and treatment protocols to be compatible with 21st century medicine. As the title suggests, On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders applies a theoretical treatise to the practical treatment of variety of disorders. This long-awaited addition to the (...) body of English language literature introduces Viktor Frankl's clinical insights to a new generation of mental health professionals, and has much to offer to practitioners of all levels of experience. (shrink)

This article combines Deleuze’s extraordinary analysis of Michel Tournier’s Friday, where we find the presentation of a duplicated, perverted, version of Robinson Crusoe when compared to Daniel Defoe’s classical version, with a critical analysis of conceptions such as being-in-the-world, stemming from Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology. My point is that without Others [Autrui], or what Deleuze calls the structure-Other [structure Autrui], it is the very possibility of ‘interpreting’ being-in-the-world which is at stake, being a world without Others, the structure-Other, one wherein a (...) pre-ontological comprehension of being is ‘uncomprehended', no longer being it possible to attain a facticity of being precisely insofar as one lives, suffers, without Others, a process of an inverted nature, not so much of the facticity of being but of its ‘defacticization’. I propose, therefore, a new conception of the limit of being-in-the-world not in terms of death but of Others, of what it is to lose Others, the structure-Other, and how this loss implies losing being-in-the-world, the very possibility of interpreting, of comprehending its different structures. The concept of Others functions then as a giant fold between being-in-the-world and what Artaud called ‘the other side of existence’, but also between the absence of Others and the creation of ‘worlds without Others’, all of which ‘minor’, ‘desert islands’, ‘plateaus’, constituted in the immanence of this absence, of the ‘outside’. (shrink)

This paper aims to integrate insights from psychoanalytic theory into business ethics research on the sources of ethical failures within organizations. We particularly draw from the analysis of sources and outcomes of neurotic processes that are part of human development, as described by the psychoanalyst Karen Horney and more recently by Manfred Kets de Vries; we interpret their insights from a stakeholder theory perspective. Business ethics research seems to have overlooked how “neurotic management styles” could be the antecedents of unethical (...) behavior within organizations. After showing the connection between five managerial neuroses and the corresponding potential ethical failures within organizations that have been already identified within business ethics research, we suggest three organizational strategies to counteract these failures. First, we argue that managers should pay greater attention at the complexity of human motivation, avoiding the simplistic view of compliance‐based approaches. Second, we discuss the importance of developing a conversation around values within organizations, enabling healthy individual growth and limiting the emergence of neurotic processes. Finally, we discuss the role of the business ethicist in facilitating such a process, suggesting a parallel between the role of the business ethicist and that of the psychoanalytic therapist. (shrink)

This paper aims to integrate insights from psychoanalytic theory into business ethics research on the sources of ethical failures within organizations. We particularly draw from the analysis of sources and outcomes of neurotic processes that are part of human development, as described by the psychoanalyst Karen Horney and more recently by Manfred Kets de Vries; we interpret their insights from a stakeholder theory perspective. Business ethics research seems to have overlooked how “neurotic management styles” could be the antecedents of unethical (...) behavior within organizations. After showing the connection between five managerial neuroses and the corresponding potential ethical failures within organizations that have been already identified within business ethics research, we suggest three organizational strategies to counteract these failures. First, we argue that managers should pay greater attention at the complexity of human motivation, avoiding the simplistic view of compliance‐based approaches. Second, we discuss the importance of developing a conversation around values within organizations, enabling healthy individual growth and limiting the emergence of neurotic processes. Finally, we discuss the role of the business ethicist in facilitating such a process, suggesting a parallel between the role of the business ethicist and that of the psychoanalytic therapist. (shrink)

This book critically examines Freud's own detailed arguments for his major explanatory and therapeutic principles, the current neorevisionist versions of psychoanalysis, and the hermeneuticists' reconstruction of Freud's theory and therapy as an alternative to what they claim was a “scientistic” misconstrual of the psychoanalytic enterprise. The clinical case for Freud's cornerstone theory of repression – the claim that psychic conflict plays a causal role in producing neuroses, dreams, and bungled actions – turns out to be ill-founded for two main (...) reasons: Even if clinical data were valid, the method of free association has failed to support the psychoanalytic theory of unconscious motivation; Clinical data tend in any case to be artifacts of the analyst's self-fulfilling expectations, thus losing much of their evidential value. The hypothesis that psychoanalytic treatment is in reality a placebo poses a serious challenge to the assumption that insight is a key causal factor when therapy is successful. This challenge has yet to be met by psychoanalysts. Similar conclusions undermine the neorevisionist versions of psychoanalysis. The most influential hermeneuticists, on the other hand, are shown to have imposed an alien philosophy on psychoanalysis, partly through their reliance on gross misconceptions of the natural sciences. Karl Popper's criticism of the Freudian corpus as empirically untestable has misjudged its evidential weaknesses, which are more subtle. If there exists empirical evidence for the principal psychoanalytic doctrines, it cannot be obtained without well-designed extraclinical studies of a kind that have for the most part yet to be attempted. (shrink)