The present article is based on a interview with a Japanese experienced caregiver who specializes in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which generally leads to the locked-in syndrome. Professional caregivers for ALS patients with ventilator experience two particular temporalities in their practice. First, they must monitor the patient continuously during a seven-hour stay. Because a single problem in the ventilator can have fatal consequences, the care of an ALS patient with a ventilator requires long periods of sustained concentration. Second, trying (...) to understand the signs of a patient with a ventilator sometimes requires three hours to go through ten alphabets. In addition to the huge effort that such communication requires, caregivers must complete the meaning of the signs with their imagination: the ten alphabets are not sufficient to understand what the patient really wants to say. This imaginative capacity, however, is based on a long relationship, which started when the patient was still able to speak and move. That is why, as this article will show, even when a patient has entered total LIS, the caregiver can continue to realize his or her wishes. (shrink)

Behind the phase of cognition analysed by Husserl, there is a phase of affection. In this phase, there are significant mental disorders occurring. Similar to the way in which the phase of cognition is divided into reference, meaning (referent), and representation of words (classification according to Husserl's theory of meaning), the phase of affection is also divided into reference, “meaning,” and figure as sphere of “meaning”. The situation as a reference can allow various predications to form different explanations, i.e. different (...) states of affairs. From the point of view of affection, this reference has another role. The affection of a situation obliges us to produce bodily “meanings,” which is a sign of health. Mental disorders can be described as some distortion in the phase of affection. Healing in this regard occurs through the restoration of creativity for “meanings” which assume the situation. (shrink)

The “phenomenological” method according to Emmanuel Lévinas consists of two steps: first, reducing the said (le dit) to the saying (le dire); and second, “hyperbole” in his own words. Reducing the said to the saying, in itself, means in this context of the methodology a method to escape from ontology and cognitive philosophy, and to discover the dimension of inter-human facticity. In the second step of “hyperbole”, Lévinas outlines the horizon of this inter-human facticity as that of affectivity. In this (...) horizon (of ethics), the self is defined as phenomena containing the affectivity related to the two extreme situations: personal (physical and mental) suffering and that of the other. Ultimately, the death of the other person and a person’s own possible death limit the internal structure of this horizon. (shrink)

This paper seeks to demonstrate the structural difference in communication of schizophrenia and autism. For a normal adult, spontaneous communication is nothing but the transmission of phantasía (thought) by means of perceptual objects or language. This transmission is first observed in a make-believe play of child. Husserl named this function “perceptual phantasía,” and this function presupposes as its basis the “internalized affection of contact” (which functions empirically in eye contact, body contact, or voice calling me). Regarding autism, because of the (...) innate lack of affection of contact, intersubjective perceptual phantasía does not occur spontaneously. Consequently, autistics do not engage in make-believe play but in stereotyped and solipsistic play. Without the formation of perceptual phantasía, there is no differentiation between phantasía and perception. For this reason, people with Asperger's syndrome consider conversation not an immediate communication of thought but a logical transmission of concepts. Schizophrenia is characterized by a distortion in the internalized affection of contact, resulting in a disturbance of perceptual phantasía, and this later is covered by various symptoms—for example, delusion as a pathological kind of communication of thought. This delusion is based on the pathological internalized affection of contact represented by a terrifying Other. (shrink)

La disociación, surgida a raíz del acontecimiento traumático, pone de manifiesto algunos caracteres fenomenológicos propios del cuerpo. En primer lugar, la destrucción de la esquematización propia del cuerpo es lo que genera el estado hipnótico. En segundo lugar, sólo si entendemos la facultad de esquematización como relacionada con la auto-conciencia podemos comprender el extraño fenómeno del sí-mismo despegado que se da en el estado de disociación. En tercer lugar, este desmoronamiento de la capacidad esquematizante tiene su origen en la destrucción (...) de un tipo muy especial y fundamental de intersubjetividad (se trata, por así decirlo, de la �phantasia �perceptiva� intersubjetiva�). (shrink)

Le silence et le sommeil constituent la base sur laquelle la cure psychothérapeutique et la créativité humaine se produisent. Or c’est avec le concept de sens latéral que Merleau-Ponty a esquissé la structure phénomé­nologique de la créativité humaine. Du point de vue du sens latéral qui surgit au creux de l’articulation intentionnelle du monde, le corps vivant apparaît comme style qui canalise la production du sens. Chaque surgissement du sens latéral est précédé par un silence qui suspend momentanément l’intention­nalité thématisante (...) et articulante. Le corps comme style n’est pas le corps réel mais le corps imaginaire qui se situe au centre du monde imaginaire en le fabriquant et en le déformant. Le corps imaginaire engendre la « déforma­tion » par rapport à l’articulation objective du monde et cette déformation constitue l’essence de la créativité. La création artistique, la cure dans la psychothérapie et le rêve sont les exemples éminents de cette créativité. Par contre, dans le silence et le sommeil qui précèdent la création et le rêve, non seulement l’articulation intentionnelle mais aussi celle du corps imaginaire sont suspendues. Le silence et le sommeil désignent le degré zéro du corps imaginaire en deçà du sens latéral. (shrink)