У статті розкриваються російсько-радянські основи ментальності мешканців Донбасу, яка характеризується автором як афективно-фрагментарна. Її ключовими особливостями є історична багатоукладність ціннісних смислів, гостре внутрішнє протиріччя, переплетення архаїко-язичницьких і християнських ідей, глибокий вплив міфо-казкових архетипів. Кілька спроб модернізації країни не змінили радянсько-російську ментальність, вона лише набула цивілізаційних атрибутів, але не напрацювала позитивних механізмів адаптації до нових реалій життя.

Tim Burton’s films are well known for being complex and emotionally powerful. In this book, Helena Bassil-Morozow employs Jungian and post-Jungian concepts of unconscious mental processes along with film semiotics, analysis of narrative devices and cinematic history, to explore the reworking of myth and fairytale in Burton’s gothic fantasy world. The book explores the idea that Burton’s lonely, rebellious ‘monstrous’ protagonists roam the earth because they are unable to fit into the normalising tendencies of society and become part (...) of ‘the crowd’. Divided into six chapters the book considers the concept of the archetype in various settings focusing on: the child the monster the superhero the genius the maniac the monstrous society. _Tim Burton: The Monster and the Crowd _offers an entirely fresh perspective on Tim Burton’s works. The book is essential reading for students and scholars of film or Jungian psychology, as well as anyone interested in critical issues in contemporary culture. It will also be of great help to those fans of Tim Burton who have been searching for a profound academic analysis of his works. (shrink)

The making of music has been sufficiently deep and widespread diachronically and geographically to suggest a genetic imperative. C.G. Jung's 'Collective Unconscious' and the accompanying archetypes suggest that music is a psychic necessity because it is part of the brain structure. Therefore, the present view of aesthetics may need drastic revision, particularly on views of music as pleasure, ideas of disinterest, differences between so-called high and low art, cultural identity, cultural conditioning, and art-for-art's sake.All cultures, past and present, show evidence (...) of music making. Music qua music has been a part of human expression for at least some forty-thousand years and it could well be speculated that the making of music accompanied the arrival of the first human beings. As Curt Sachs states, "However far back we tracemankind, we fail to see the springing-up of music. Even the most primitive tribes are musically beyond the first attempts".Why do humans continuahy create music and include it as an integral part of culture? What is music's driving force? Why do cultures endow music with extraordinary powers? Why do human beings, individuahy and as societies, exercise preferences for specific works and genres of music? In probing these questions, I chose one aspect of Jungian psychology, that of the Collective Unconscious with its accompanying archetypes, as the basis upon which to speculate a world aesthetics of music. Once we dispense with the mechanistic and designer idea of human origins, we have only the investigations of the human psyche to mine for data that could explain the myriad forms of artistic activity found the world over. An examination of human beings, I believe, must lead one ultimately to the study of human behavior and motivations, in short, to the psychology of human ethos. This study wih take the following course: first, a discussion of consciousness and the Collective Unconscious, plus a discussion of archetypes; then, a description of musical archetypal substance; and finally, what I beheve is implied to form a world aesthetics of music.By comparison to Jung, Freud gives us little in the way of understanding artistic substance because for him, all artistic subject matter stems purely from the personal experiences of the artist. In comparing Freud and Jung, Stephen Larsen states that "Where Freud was deterministic, Jung was teleological; where Freud was historical, Jung was mythological". Jung drew on a much wider cross-cultural experiential and intellectual base than Freud. His interests in so-cahed primitive peoples led him to Tunis, the Saharan Desert, sub-Saharan Africa, and New Mexico in the United States to visit the Pueblo Indians; visits to India and Ceylon and studies of Chinese culture all contributed to his vast knowledge of human experience. Jung constructed the cohective unconscious as a major part of the psyche with the deepest sense of tradition and myth from around the world. He was criticized because of his interests in alchemy, astrology, divination, telepathy and clairvoyance, yoga, spiritualism, mediums and seances, fortunetelling, flying saucers, religious symbolism, visions, and dreams. But he approached these subjects as a scientist, investigating the human psyche and what these subjects revealed about mental process, particularly what might be learned about the collective unconsciousness. Jung's ideation, in my view, is sufficiently comprehensive to support the probe of a world aesthetics of music. (shrink)

This paper deals with the theoretical concepts of image and imagery as used by the foremost imaginal psychologists. Attributing primary epistemological status to image and imagery, imaginal psychology school developed a new theory of image and imagery, questioning the older thesis on the derivative and secondary epistemological status of the image. Using Jung’s concept of the autonomous psyche of an essentially archetypal nature, Hillman started to question Jung’s concept of the Self as a central archetype symbolizing a sort of disguised (...) traditional monotheism (the Christian God, the Jewish Yahweh etc.) like Freud’s sexuality (id) or central cultural myth (the Oedipus myth). Imaginal psychology defends essential sovereignty and the equality of all images and the resultant polytheist psychology. Jungian studies set out it this direction, giving birth to parallel developments to imaginal psychology in various fields. Derrida’s and Feyerabend’s rejection of an ultimate referential frame was not identical to but corresponds to Hillman’s and Vannoy Adam’s discovery that it is fantasy that rules the psyche. (shrink)

_Memory, Myth, and Seduction_ reveals the development and evolution of Jean-Georges Schimek's thinking on unconscious fantasy and the interpretive process derived from a close reading of Freud as well as contemporary psychoanalysis. Contributing richly to North American psychoanalytic thought, Schimek challenges local views from the perspective of continental discourse. A practicing psychoanalyst, teacher, and consummate Freud scholar, Schimek sought to clarify Freud's concepts and theories and to disentangle complexities borne of inconsistencies in Freud's assumptions and expositions. This book is (...) divided thematically into three sections. The first concerns fantasy and interpretation as they play out in the analytic situation, and the manner in which analyst and patient coconstruct meaning and reconstruct and recover memory. The second consists of two seminal papers which provide the sequence of steps in the five revisions in Freud's seduction theory. Schimek's careful scholarship lays out the data of Freud's writing, which allows one to draw one's own conclusions about the implications of the changes in the theory that he made. In the third, more theoretical section, he provides a foundation for understanding many of today's discussions about unconscious fantasy, dreaming, remembering, consciousness, affect, self-reflection, mentalization, and implicit relational knowing. He clarifies and illustrates Freud's original formulations through a careful reading of sections of _The Interpretation of Dreams_, and a study of Freud's famous Signorelli parapraxis. Skillfully arranged and carefully edited by Deborah Browning and including a foreword by Alan Bass, this collection of Schimek's published and unpublished papers will be of interest to practicing psychoanalysts, psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapists, and students of the history of ideas and philosophy who have a particular interest in fantasy, interpretation, and Freud. (shrink)

Living in a province dominated by powerful oligarchs, Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) concluded that political philosophy should work to undermine aristocratic authority and prevent political devolution into feudalism. Rejecting the possibility that the free market could successfully instill civil behavior, he advocated for a strong central judicial system to work closely with citizens to promote stability and justice. This study puts Vico in conversation with other Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Rousseau, and Mandeville to show how his alternative warrants serious consideration. (...) In contrast to scholars who read Vico's New Science as a defense of the imagination, this study casts his account of poetic wisdom politically as an epistemological critique of the aristocratic mentality. Myth and Authority argues that Vico's depiction of pagan religion is a refined attempt to explain how oligarchy maintains its stranglehold on power. While Western civilization did not follow the path Vico suggested, it may now be more relevant as concerns grow about the increasing influence of the wealthy on civil institutions. (shrink)

Did the Greeks believe in their mythology? The answer is difficult, for “believe” means so many things… Not everyone believed that Minos continued to be a judge in Hell or that Theseus defeated the Minotaur, and they knew that poets “lie.” Nevertheless, their manner of not believing gave reason for concern, for Theseus was no less real in their eyes. It is simply necessary to “purify myth with reason’“ and to reduce the biography of the companion of Hercules to (...) its historic kernel. As for Minos, after a prodigious mental effort, Thucydides extracts the same kernel from his subject: “Of all those whom we know only by hearsay, Minos was the first to have a fleet.” The father of Phaedra, the husband of Pasiphaë is nothing more than a king who was master of the sea. The purification of the mythical by the logos is not an episode in the eternal struggle, from the beginning to Voltaire and Renan, between superstition and reason, a struggle which was the glory of Greek genius. The myth and the logos, despite Nestle, are not simple opposites like truth and error. Myth was a subject of serious reflections, and the Greeks had not yet finished with it six centuries after the Sophist movement which has been called their Aufklärung. Far from being a triumph of reason, the purging of myth by logos is a very dated program whose absurdity is surprising. Why did the Greeks make themselves unhappy for nothing by seeking to separate the wheat from the chaff instead of rejecting in one gesture the fantasy of both Theseus and the Minotaur, the very existence of a fabulous Minos as well as the implausible qualities with which the myth endows this Minos? (shrink)

Modern Myths and Medical Consumerism is concerned with the loss of a sense of limit in technological medicine today, and the way in which the denial of death leads to an uncontrollable, consumeristic multiplication of needs. Taking its starting point from C. G. Jung¿s analytical psychology, the book gives a symbolic interpretation based on archetypal, philosophical and socio-psychoanalytic ideas developed through the author¿s personal experience, moving from the medical to the psychoanalytical paradigm. Lanfranchi depicts ideal sources of medicine, based on (...) archetypal material drawn from Greek myth, and discusses the progressive steps of the doctor¿s consciousness¿ evolution up to contemporary times. Critiquing current medicine and its ¿modern myths¿, the book suggests the prevailing model of economic development is unsustainable, and provides prospects of a more contained ecological medicine and an ethical approach that will allow readers to reflect and move towards a more qualified attitude to mortality. The book meets the need to transform medicine into a critical domain of human experience, capable of providing essential services consistent with the naturalness of death and environmental sustainability. As such, it will be vital reading to academics in the fields of psychotherapy, analytical psychology, psychiatry and medicine, and those with a philosophical or sociological background. (shrink)

Business myth is generally treated in business ethics literature as a mental obstacle that must be removed in order to prepare the ground for rational thinking on the ethical aspect of business conduct. This approach, which focuses on the content of myth, does not explicate the nature and function of myth. Based on the study of myth in the fields of humanities and social sciences, this paper develops a theoretical framework and analytical tool-the revolving-door model-for researching (...) myth in business. The proposed framework (I) offers new perspectives on myth: the consumer's, the producer's, the mythologist's, and the ethicist's; (2) explicates various distortion mechanisms ofthe myth; and (3) enables a redefinition of the relation of business myth to business ethics. The applicability of this framework is demonstrated by means of a real case which sets the stage for examining a set of common myths. (shrink)

Review of Mădălina Moraru, Mit și publicitate (Myth and advertising) (Bucharest: Nemira, 2009).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Music, Myth, and EducationThe Case of The Lord of the Rings Film TrilogyEstelle R. Jorgensen (bio)In probing the interrelationship of myth, meaning, and education, I offer a case in point, notably, Peter Jackson's film adaptations and Howard Shore's musical scores for J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy—The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.1 Intersecting literature, film, (...) and music allows me to explore various perspectives or ways of meaning making associated with this myth. I then trace some of the implications of the analysis for musical and general education.I am particularly interested in the musical connections with myth evident in societies around the world and well established in the anthropological, ethnomusicological, and philosophical literatures. For example, Steven Feld finds the myth of the muni bird to be foundational to a New Guinea society in shaping musical expression and communal beliefs and practices.2 Likewise, as Lewis Rowell argues, Western music is rooted in and acquires its own mythos of person, power, and musical instruments; Dionysius, Apollo, Lachesis, Clotho, Atropos, Orpheus, Guido of Arezzo, St. Cecilia, and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus are among those whose impact on music are legendary, formative, and figurative.3 Associations of particular myths with operatic, orchestral, and choral repertoire in the Western classical tradition also abound, such as Wagner's operatic setting of the Lay of the Nibelung and Sibelius's evocation of the Finnish Vālhālla. Music and myth are interconnected especially in the film music of our time, for example, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Titanic, and the Star Trek and Star Wars series.In The Lord of the Rings, my present focus, Shore's musical scores help to highlight the mythic character of Tolkien's narrative, bridge the externally perceived phenomenal world and the internal and subjective "inner world," interrelate the experience of time—especially past and present—and evoke a sense of wonder and awe that otherwise may be forgotten in pervasively [End Page 44] materialistic societies. Music's role in kindling reverence goes to the heart of what these films share that make them mythic—transcendence, profundity, ambiguity, narrativity, and an aesthetic and didactic character that arouse awe, mystery, and a heightened sense of the human condition. Here, music is primarily representational,4 serving functional as well as aesthetic/artistic roles in expressing such mythic themes as the contest between good and evil (in which good is often more fragile and the odds sometimes insurmountable) and the inevitability of death, in which human beings are often at the whim of capricious gods, natural forces, and their own weakness. It adds emotional and intellectual feeling to the visual images, pointing particular attention to specific scenes and representing the tensions built or released as the narrative and visual images unfold.Music's role in blurring past and present is particularly interesting since it is an art of time. The Lord of the Rings evokes an earlier time of crisis in Middle-earth, when the survival of humanity was in jeopardy. The soundtrack assists the moviegoer to make connections between times and travel imaginatively through time, thereby bringing alive the past and imagined future in the present moment. Boundaries between past and present become fuzzier, and one is helped in moving from one time to another. Leitmotifs are of particular interest in helping to make the ambiguity of the narrative more easily accessible and comprehensible, even at risk of oversimplifying matters—a quality evocative of music's use in the speech-song performances of the Iliad, among other ancient stories.Tolkien's fairytale is not couched for children, as is his earlier The Hobbit, but written unabashedly for adults.5 The Fellowship of the Ring can be seen as an epic fairytale with "a kind of religious significance."6 In her analysis of "life symbols"—or artistic, ritualistic, and mythic systems that are read "non-discursively," having no assigned connotation and therefore felt and grasped imaginatively and intuitively—Susanne Langer suggests that fairytales are a genre below that of myth in the continuum between dream and myth. For her, "myth has … a... (shrink)

To a greater extent than in other technical domains, research and progress in Artificial Intelligence has always been entwined with the fictional. Its language echoes strongly with other forms of cultural narratives, such as fairytales, myth and religion. In this essay we present varied examples that illustrate how these analogies have guided not only readings of the AI enterprise by commentators outside the community but also inspired AI researchers themselves. Owing to their influence, we pay particular attention to the (...) similarities between religious language and the way in which the potential advent of greater than human intelligence is presented contemporarily. We then move on to the role that fiction, science fiction most of all, has historically played and is still playing in the discussion of AI by influencing researchers and the public, shifting the weights of different scenarios in our collectively perceived probability space. We sum up by arguing that the lore surrounding AI research, ancient and modern, points to the ancestral and shared human motivations that drive researchers in their pursuit and fascinate humanity at large. These points of narrative entanglement where AI meets the wider culture should serve to amplify the call to engage ourselves with the discussion of the potential destination of this technology. (shrink)

By Portuguese myths we mean several kinds of narratives, all of which actualize fundamental aspects of the Portuguese national imagination. Some are foundation narratives (Sâo Mamede, Ourique); others are historical facts that were sung so often over the years by Portuguese and foreign poets that they came to signify basic schemes of the human imagination (Inês de Castro's pure love, whose realization was frustrated by a fight between two men, father and son); other so-called Portuguese myths, on the contrary, are (...) built around concepts that give metaphysical shape to supposed characteristics that define the national soul (saudosismo, the doctrine of nostalgia, which attempts to define the Portuguese national soul as the search for a mythical initial unity that would create a wholeness in which contraries would be abolished; the Fifth Empire as its realization on Earth); other Portuguese myths express the supposed divine predestination of the people and of the Portuguese Man, based upon divine intervention in the founding of the nation in Ourique (the Fifth Empire that would be the Age of Spirit announced by Joachim de Fiore); still others are based on historically negative facts (King Sebastian and the defeat at Alcazarquibir) but transformed through archetypal elements to show the capacity for renewal out of the defeat, a renewal that goes beyond real historical renewal to include spiritual renewal of the Portuguese Man and his fatherland, which should produce the Fifth Empire conceived either in earthly or spiritual terms. To these myths I will add a legend preceding the formation of the nation, King Roderick's Legend, because it attempts to justify the loss of Visigothic Spain to the Arabs. (shrink)

By Portuguese myths we mean several kinds of narratives, all of which actualize fundamental aspects of the Portuguese national imagination. Some are foundation narratives (Sâo Mamede, Ourique); others are historical facts that were sung so often over the years by Portuguese and foreign poets that they came to signify basic schemes of the human imagination (Inês de Castro's pure love, whose realization was frustrated by a fight between two men, father and son); other so-called Portuguese myths, on the contrary, are (...) built around concepts that give metaphysical shape to supposed characteristics that define the national soul (saudosismo, the doctrine of nostalgia, which attempts to define the Portuguese national soul as the search for a mythical initial unity that would create a wholeness in which contraries would be abolished; the Fifth Empire as its realization on Earth); other Portuguese myths express the supposed divine predestination of the people and of the Portuguese Man, based upon divine intervention in the founding of the nation in Ourique (the Fifth Empire that would be the Age of Spirit announced by Joachim de Fiore); still others are based on historically negative facts (King Sebastian and the defeat at Alcazarquibir) but transformed through archetypal elements to show the capacity for renewal out of the defeat, a renewal that goes beyond real historical renewal to include spiritual renewal of the Portuguese Man and his fatherland, which should produce the Fifth Empire conceived either in earthly or spiritual terms. To these myths I will add a legend preceding the formation of the nation, King Roderick's Legend, because it attempts to justify the loss of Visigothic Spain to the Arabs. (shrink)

In all cultures and at all times, humans have been telling stories about who they were, what the world and human life is about. To the insider, myths may contain Truth, revelation and the history of ourselves; whereas to the outsider it may be considered anything from folly and pre-logical mentality, to neurotic, infantile and wishful thinking. Such judgements aside, myths tell us about human creativity, the impact of narrativity on human ways of understanding, on cultural epistemologies and the many (...) ways of world making. These issues also spark considerations concerning the linguistic and philosophical notions of meaning and truth and the peculiarities of religious language. The controversial issue of myth has been studied from many different angles. In this volume the contributions are edited according to their theoretical perspectives: 1. philosophical, 2. psychological, 3. sociological, 4. semiological and 5. cognitivist, all with introduction by the editor. This volume will be an indispensable tool for anyone with a serious interest in this field of study. (shrink)

Entification is now displayed in its nude and native state, and serves to explain the constant mental process, and the true nature of the representations of ...

This paper explores the influence of transpersonal thinking, including the mythological perspective of Joseph Campbell and the holotropic perspective of Stanislav Grof, on actor training using the neutral mask. An outline of training in the neutral mask is given, focusing on the approach of David Latham, as experienced by the author in his own training. Points of correspondence with the vision of Campbell and Grof, and their influence, are discriminated and discussed. These correspondences open up two areas of inquiry: the (...) transformative effect of the mask work when conducted in a transpersonally-oriented set, and the use of the neutral mask as an approach to the study of myth and archetype. Both are discussed, and some preliminary conclusions drawn based on experiences reported by student-actors and the author’s observations during his own research and his practice as actor and teacher. (shrink)

Archetypal psychology suggests the possibility of a leadership archetype representing the unconscious preferences of human beings as a species about the appropriate relationships between leaders and followers. Mythological analysis compared God’s leadership in the Abraham myth with modern visionary, ethical and situational leadership to find similarities reflecting continuities in human thinking about leadership over as long as 3600 years. God’s leadership behavior is very modern except that God is generally more relationship oriented. The leadership archetype that emerges is of (...) a leader that develops his/her follower by reliably maintaining a vision, behaving according to firm ethical values even when it weakens the leader’s authority, accepting suffering when the follower is unreliable, and always forgiving even when the follower behaves with hubris in an attempt to overthrow the leader. If God’s leadership principles were mandatory in management, many dysfunctional leaders would be disqualified and many of the negative consequences of poor leadership might be averted. (shrink)

It is a matter of some irony that psychiatry's most trenchant critic for over four decades is himself a psychiatrist. I refer to Thomas S. Szasz. Szasz's core thesis may be succinctly rendered: mental illness is a “myth”, a “metaphor” which serves only to obscure the social and ethical “problems in living” we face as human beings. This paper reconsiders the conceptual bases of Szasz's assault on psychiatry and assesses recent counter-arguments of his critical interlocutors. It presents a defence (...) of the Szaszian conception and emphasises the continuing relevance of his earliest work. Additionally, the paper discusses Szasz's thesis in light of the work of the influential French philosopher of medicine, Georges Canguilhem. (shrink)

In the Evolution of Culture. The idea of cultural mentalities first arose in European anthropology's confrontation with global primitive cultures. During the early twentieth century's period of confident imperialism, the European nations articulated their confrontation with non-literate cultures in a poetic imagining of the 'primitive' as a Romantic 'Other'. As psychology developed in Europe to explore the unconscious as well as madness, a new ethnology also sought to enter into the mind of the primitive as an exotic place where logic (...) and reason did not rule. (shrink)

This intriguing book undercuts everything you thought you knew about psychotherapy.

This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such as (...) mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess mental autonomy (M-autonomy) in this sense. Empirical data from research on mind wandering and nocturnal dreaming clearly show that phenomenally represented cognitive processing is mostly an automatic, non-agentive process and that personal-level cognition is an exception rather than the rule. This raises an interesting new version of the mind-body problem: How is subpersonal cognition causally related to personal-level thought? More fine-grained phenomenological descriptions for what we called “conscious thought” in the past are needed, as well as a functional decomposition of umbrella terms like “mind wandering” into different target phenomena and a better understanding of the frequent dynamic transitions between spontaneous, task-unrelated thought and meta-awareness. In an attempt to lay some very first conceptual foundations for the now burgeoning field of research on mind wandering, the third section proposes two new criteria for individuating single episodes of mind-wandering, namely, the “self-representational blink” (SRB) and a sudden shift in the phenomenological “unit of identification” (UI). I close by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between mind wandering research and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The paper aims to show that by abstracting from a specific mythical historical- stylistic context and “ideation” of the notion of the Proto-Slavic deities Perun and Veles, especially in Croatian tradition, symbolic archetypes and abstract notions of form and primordial matter (materia prima) can be extracted from mythical content. We refer to mythical texts and contents according to the reconstructions and materials brought by Radoslav Katičić, and comparative analysis by Mislav Ježić. We distinguish form (1) as that in which identity (...) and possibility of a thing consists, (2) as the reasonableness of judgment and the form of existence, and (3) as the specific structure of a thing, which unites its parts and aspects as a whole and constitutes its internal necessity. These formative notions are relativized and nullified in Veles’ appearances, in which the archetypal notion of primordial matter is encoded. Examples of Platō’s dialogues historically confirm certain aspects of decoding myth as constitutive of philosophy. The above approach also opens a view of the roots of Croatian philosophical thought, which in its genesis can be traced back to Proto-Slavic mythical archetypes. With the implementation of Christianity, the questions of identity, reason and the structure of the whole are raised radically and sharply, as shown by the text of Trpimir’s grant (852). (shrink)

Now available in a Harper Colophon edition, this classic book has revolutionized thinking throughout the Western world about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. Book jacket.

This paper presents evidence for a psychological coding process that meets the criteria that define such processes in organic nature and culture. The recognition of these previously unknown encoding sequences is derived from the recent formulation of an adaptive mental module of the mind—the emotion processing mind—that has evolved to cope with traumatic events and the unique, language derived, explicit human awareness of personal mortality. The emergent awareness of death has served as a selection factor for the evolution of a (...) two-system, emotion-processing mind, with conscious and unconscious components, an arrangement that allows for the invocation of conscious denial, which in turn has fostered the use of encoding when faced with death-related traumas. The paper offers several ways in which evolved mental adaptations have features that are shared with those that are biological. Many aspects of these mental adaptive efforts are comparable to attempts at defense that are carried out by the immune system. In addition, the adaptive approach has been the foundation for the discovery of laws of communication, and thus of the mind, that are on a parallel with those found through mathematical models drawn from Newtonian physics. (shrink)

This chapter offers a novel defence of Szasz’s claim that mental illness is a myth by bringing to bear a standard type of thought experiment used in philosophical discussions of the meaning of natural kind concepts. This makes it possible to accept Szasz’s conclusion that mental illness involves problems of living, some of which may be moral in nature, while bypassing the debate about the meaning of the concept of illness. The chapter then considers the nature of schizophrenia and (...) the personality disorders (PDs) within this framework. It argues that neither is likely to constitute a scientifically valid category, but that nonetheless their symptoms can be scientifically explained. It concludes with a discussion of the way in which Cluster B or ‘bad’ PDs involve failures of virtue or character, and argues that this does not preclude them from being appropriately treated within contemporary, multidisciplinary, mental health services. (shrink)

Archetypal Process is a pioneering study linking the ideas of process philosophy, as developed by Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, with the archetypal psychology of C. G. Jung and James Hillman. This is the first work to examine the interconnections of these two modes of thought. Archetypal Process examines the importance of cosmological thinking and the need to ground archetypal psychology in a metaphysical, philosophical framework. It treats the necessity for symbol and myth, the nature of the spirit, (...) and language as a metaphorical vehicle of thought, and finally, it adds a much-needed feminist perspective to the debate. (shrink)

Radical psychiatrists and others assert that mental illness is a myth. The opening and closing portions of the paper deal with the impact such argument has had in law and psychiatry. The body of the paper discusses the five versions of the myth argument prevalent in radical psychiatry: (A) that there is no such thing as mental illness; (B) that those called ?mentally ill? are really as rational as everyone else, only with different aims; that the only reasons (...) anyone ever thought differently was (C) because of unsophisticated category mistakes or (D) because of an adherence to the epistemology of a sick society; and (E) that the phrase ?mental illness? is used to mask value judgments about others? behavior in pseudo?scientific respectability. Reasons are given for rejecting each of these versions of the argument that mental illness is a myth. (shrink)

. There are many types of artistic representations of the legend of Don Juan, i.e. the universal archetype of the seducer who, through deception, conquers a woman and, once she succumbs to his charms, he boasts of his triumph, despises her, and shifts his interest towards another lady. In this work, I compare three of the most famous versions don Juan: The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest by Tirso de Molina, Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo (...) Da Ponte, and Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla. The first and third are theatrical pieces, while the second is an opera. The myth of Don Juan is essentially the same in all three, but the message and the moral vary according to the cultural movement the works belong to, namely the Baroque, the Enlightenment and the Romanticism, respectively. Key words: The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest, Don Giovanni, Don Juan, Tirso de Molina, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, José Zorrilla, sin, redemption, sociopath. Resumen. Son muchos los tipos de representación artística —teatro, música, ópera, ballet, literatura, cine, televisión, pintura, escultura, etc.— de la leyenda de Don Juan, el arquetipo universal del seductor que, mediante engaños, conquista a una mujer y, una vez que ella sucumbe a sus encantos, se jacta de su triunfo, las desprecia y reenfoca su interés en otras damas. En este trabajo, comparo a tres de los don Juanes más famosos: El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra de Tirso de Molina, Don Giovanni de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart y Lorenzo Da Ponte, y Don Juan Tenorio de José Zorrilla. La primera y la tercera son piezas teatrales, en tanto que la segunda es una ópera. El mito de Don Juan es, esencialmente, el mismo en estas tres obras, aunque varían el mensaje y la moraleja según el movimiento cultural al que pertenecen: Barroco, Ilustración y Romanticismo, respectivamente. Palabras clave: Burlador de Sevilla, Don Giovanni, Don Juan, Tirso de Molina, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, José Zorrilla, pecado, redención, sociópata. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates the arguments advanced by Hubert Dreyfus in his debate with John McDowell regarding the nature of skilled coping. The paper argues that there are significant methodological shortcomings in Dreyfus’ position. The paper examines these methodological limitations and attempts to clarify the problems by re-framing the issues in terms of intentionality, and the specific intentional structures that may or may not be present in skilled coping. The paper attempts to show that the difficulties facing Dreyfus arise from (...) his implicit adherence to a final myth of the mental. The last myth of the mental is the belief thatmental coping is fundamentally different than embodied coping because the former is characterized by mindedness while the latter is not. Dreyfus characterizes the mental as constituted by a kind of interiority while everyday expertise or embodied coping is characterized by exteriority to the exclusion of any type of interiority. I undermine this Cartesian assumption in Dreyfus’ position by showing that the criteria and phenomenological descriptions he uses to characterize embodied coping apply equally to mental coping. (shrink)

McDowell's claim that "in mature human beings, embodied coping is permeated with mindedness",1 suggests a new version of the mentalist myth which, like the others, is untrue to the phenomenon. The phenomena show that embodied skills, when we are fully absorbed in enacting them, have a kind of non-mental content that is non-conceptual, non-propositional, non-rational and non-linguistic. This is not to deny that we can monitor our activity while performing it. For solving problems, learning a new skill, receiving coaching, (...) and so forth, such monitoring is invaluable. But monitoring what we are doing as we are doing it degrades performance to at best competence. On McDowell's view, there is no way to account for such a degradation in performance since the same sort of content would be involved whether we were fully absorbed in or paying attention to what we were doing. McDowell claims that it is an advantage of his conceptualism that it avoids any foundationalist attempt to build up the objective world on the basis of an indubitable Given or any other ground-floor experience. And, indeed, if the world is all that is the case and our minds are unproblematically open to it, all experience is on the same footing. But one must distinguish motor intentionality, and the interrelated solicitations our coping body is intertwined with, from conceptual intentionality and the world of propositional structures it opens onto. The existential phenomenologist can then agree with McDowell in rejecting traditional foundationalisms, while yet affirming and describing the ground-floor role of motor intentionality in providing the support on which all forms of conceptual intentionality are based. (shrink)

In our opinion, the discontinuity between extant human and nonhuman minds is much broader and deeper than most researchers admit. We are happy to report that Evans & Levinson's (E&L's) target article strongly corroborates our unpopular hypothesis, and that the comparative evidence, in turn, bolsters E&L's provocative argument. Both a Universal Grammar and the “mental continuity” between human and nonhuman minds turn out to be modern myths.

In our opinion, the discontinuity between extant human and nonhuman minds is much broader and deeper than most researchers admit. We are happy to report that Evans & Levinson's (E&L's) target article strongly corroborates our unpopular hypothesis, and that the comparative evidence, in turn, bolsters E&L's provocative argument. Both a Universal Grammar and the “mental continuity” between human and nonhuman minds turn out to be modern myths.

Recent marketing theory uses the Jungian concept of the archetype to design strategies for the improvement of product selling. Mark and Pearson propose that archetypes such as the ruler, the hero, the outlaw, and the sage are useful in promoting a product. This article suggests that the concept of archetypes as well as myths such as the Prometheus myth and the myth of the expulsion from Paradise, when combined with the insights offered by Mark and Pearson, may help (...) in understanding the management of trials of dissent as well. The article presents seven motifs that recur in trials of dissent and shows how they form a part of the phenomenon of the political management of dissent: the demonization and otherization of defendants and their supporters; the tendency to employ the charge of conspiracy and thus target a group rather than a single individual; the bending of the laws of procedure; the utilization of previously-untested substantive charges; the appeal made by each side to an external principle or vision--typically, the government resorts to the law of necessity whereas the defense resorts to natural law or a vision of "true justice" ; focus on the judge as manipulator of laws; and the appellate court assuming the role of the ultimate sage, performing its task with balance and detachment. The appellate court may use softer rhetoric in an effort to minimize the damage to the appearance of legality. When it does so, the rule of law is reaffirmed as a concept that benefits all sides; there is thus unity in the commitment to the rule of law, not to patriotism or to identification with the government. In addition, an effort is made to reaffirm the maxim that the government is a government of law, not of men. (shrink)

Thomas Szasz has wrestled with the following question: Does mental illness even exist? Here, I sketch two provocative papers by Szasz and detail his reasons for criticizing the concept ‘mental illness.’ I will proceed to highlight where I think Szasz’s writing is philosophically dubious, despite its role in forcing us to think critically about ‘mental illness.’ I will conclude that his argument is best left behind as an antiquated take on neurodivergence. Finally, I will propose what I think is a (...) more promising alternative to Szasz’s view that there is a myth around mental illness. There is a myth indeed, and it involves what is often meant by ‘mental.’ With new developments in embodied cognition, I will ask us to revisit the concept of ‘mental illness,’ to correctly diagnose the problematic myth that must be confronted by the psychiatric community, and to explore what the myth of the mental means for neurodivergence. (shrink)

Mental health practitioners often come across a number of challenges in their clinical practice. One such challenge that posed a management dilemma presented with the history of reincarnation. This subject has been discussed in non-scientific literature at length but there is an absolute paucity in scientific literature. This paper describes a case where a boy presented with memories of previous life that started haunting him and caused significant anxiety. The subject of reincarnation needs extensive research in order to understand and (...) manage the resultant clinical challenges. (shrink)

The identity theory’s rise to prominence in analytic philosophy of mind during the late 1950s and early 1960s is widely seen as a watershed in the development of physicalism, in the sense that whereas logical behaviourism proposed analytic and a priori ascertainable identities between the meanings of mental and physical-behavioural concepts, the identity theory proposed synthetic and a posteriori knowable identities between mental and physical properties. While this watershed does exist, the standard account of it is misleading, as it is (...) founded in erroneous intensional misreadings of the logical positivists’—especially Carnap’s—extensional notions of translation and meaning, as well as misinterpretations of the positivists’ shift from the strong thesis of translation-physicalism to the weaker and more liberal notion of reduction-physicalism that occurred in the Unity of Science programme. After setting the historical record straight, the essay traces the first truly modern identity theory to Schlick’s pre-positivist views circa 1920 and goes on to explore its further development in Feigl, arguing that the fundamental difference between the Schlick-Feigl identity theory and the more familiar and influential Place-Smart-Armstrong identity theory has resurfaced in the deep and seemingly unbridgeable gulf in contemporary philosophy of consciousness between inflationary mentalism and deflationary physicalism. (shrink)

Le mythe participe à la fois du vécu et du réel transcendés par le symbole, qui fait appel autant au visible qu’à l’immatériel. Exprimant une fiction selon certains, ou des vérités profondes pour d’autres, il traduit des croyances sur la cosmogenèse et l’anthropogenèse. Il a pour objet de dévoiler un mystère, et l’événement fondateur du cosmos et de l’humain.Le symbole, dans sa moitié signifiante, est toujours lié au concret, c’est-à-dire au matériel, au visible et au fini. Selon Paul Ricœur, un (...) symbole possède trois dimensions concrètes : cosmique, onirique et poétique. L’autre moitié du symbole exprime la part d’invisible et d’immatériel qui a sa logique propre. Mêlant la perception sensorielle à l’immatériel et au mystère, les mythes canaques précoloniaux traduisent aussi bien la réalité descriptive du monde visible, que la création de mondes imaginaires. Nous analyserons dans l’oralité canaque ces deux notions et leurs applications dans les domaines de la nature, de l’humain et du sociétal. Nous verrons comment s’articulent le visible et l’invisible dans le mythe canaque, quelle est la place respective du réel et de l’imaginaire impliqués dans chaque mythe, et leurs fonctions respectives. Sont-ils oppositionnels comme l’indique leur définition, ou bien forment-ils un ensemble de termes indissociables et complémentaires? Nous déterminerons in fine quelles sont l’interférence et la corrélation du réel et de l’imaginaire dans les fonctionnalités qui confèrent leur originalité aux mythes canaques. A myth is involved in both the living and real transcended by the symbol that appeals as much to the visible than the intangible. Expressing fiction for some, or deep truths for other, myth reflects beliefs about cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis. It aims to unveil a mystery, and the founding event of the cosmos and the human.The symbol, in its signifying half, is always linked to the concrete, i.e. the material, visible and finish. According to Paul Ricœur a concrete symbol has three dimensions: cosmic, oneiric and poetic. The other half of the symbol expresses the invisible hand and intangible that has its own logic. Combining sensory perception to the immaterial and mystery, precolonial Kanak myths reflect both the descriptive reality of the visible world, and the creation of imaginary worlds. We will analyze in Kanak orality these two concepts and their applications in the fields of nature, human and societal. We’ll see how articulate the visible and invisible in the Kanak myth, what is the respective role of the real and the imaginary involved in each myth, and their respective functions. Are they oppositional as indicated by their definition, or do they form a set of interrelated and complementary terms? We shall determine in fine which are the interference and the correlation of the reality and the imagination in the features which confer their originality on the Kanak myths. (shrink)

There often appears to be a striking correspondence between mythic stories and aspects of reality. We will examine the processes of creative imagination within a neurobiological frame and suggest a theory that may explain the functions of myth in relation to the hidden aspects of reality. Myth is peppered with archetypal entities and interactions that operate to reveal hidden processes in reality that are relative to the human condition. The imagery in myths in a sense “sustains the true.” (...) That is, mythopoetic imagery keeps the interpretive process in experience closer to the actual nature of reality than the rational faculties operating alone are able to do. Indeed, whereas rationalizing can easily lead us awry, genuine myth rarely does. Explanations of events offered by cultures around the world are frequently couched in terms of mythic themes and events. An important function of myth is to provide a “field of tropes” that in‐forms the lived experience of people. This paper focuses especially on those aspects of myth that represent facets of the quantum universe and give us clues as to the relationship between consciousness, symbolism, and reality. (shrink)

Can we accept John McDowell’s Kantian claim that perception is conceptual “all the way out,” thereby denying the more basic perceptual capacities we seem to share with prelinguistic infants and higher animals? More generally, can philosophers successfully describe the conceptual upper floors of the edifice of knowledge while ignoring the embodied coping going on on the ground floor? I argue that we shouldn’t leave the conceptual component of our lives hanging in midair and suggest how philosophers who want to understand (...) knowledge and action can profit from a phenomenological analysis of the nonconceptual embodied coping skills we share with animals and infants, as well as the nonconceptual immediate intuitive understanding exhibited by experts. (shrink)

Building upon the insights of scholars attuned to story, narrative, and myth, this article explores the relationship between myth, science, and religion. After clarifying the interplay of the three terms—story, narrative, and myth—and the preference for the term myth, this article will argue that myth can serve as a medium through which religion, neuroscience, and mental well‐being interact. Such an exploration will cover the role of myths in religion, the neurological basis of myth, and (...) the practices of narrative psychology and bibliotherapy. The article will conclude with suggestions for understanding and utilizing the relationship between myth and the scholarly study of the relationship between science and religion. This article ultimately suggests that myth can operate as a methodological aid to the science‐and‐religion field. (shrink)

Back in 1950, while a physics major at Harvard, I wandered into C.I. Lewis’s epistemology course. There, Lewis was confidently expounding the need for an indubitable Given to ground knowledge, and he was explaining where that ground was to be found. I was so impressed that I immediately switched majors from ungrounded physics to grounded philosophy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 509 Mytheli Sreenivas Birth Control in the Shadow of Empire: The Trials of Annie Besant, 1877–1878 In March 1877, two London activists provoked a debate about poverty and overpopulation that reverberated across metropole and colony. These activists, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, republished a book by the American physician Charles Knowlton that outlined methods to prevent conception. TheFruitsofPhilosophy,which (...) Bradlaugh and Besant provocatively subtitled An Essay on the Population Question, had been in limited circulation in Britain since 1833, but the book’s legality was called into question when its previous publisher was charged with obscenity in early 1877.1 Determined to establish the legal right to publish information about contraception, on March 23rd, 1877, Bradlaugh and Besant delivered copies of The Fruits of Philosophy to the police department, the city solicitor, and local magistrates, and they announced their intent to sell the book from their premises at the Freethought Publishing Company on Stonecutter Street in East London. The following day, a crowd filled the narrow space outside the publishing house, and the two activists sold hundreds of copies of Knowlton’s book. When no arrests were made, Besant and Bradlaugh renotified the authorities that they were selling a supposedly obscene book and were informed in turn that papers were 1. S. Chandrasekhar, “A Dirty, Filthy Book”: The Writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant on Reproductive Physiology and Birth Control and an Account of the Bradlaugh-Besant Trial (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 26. 510 Mytheli Sreenivas being prepared for their arrest and prosecution. On the 7th of April, 1877, Besant and Bradlaugh were arrested and taken into custody.2 In their subsequent trial, the two activists linked birth control advocacy to a Malthusian worldview. They argued that the urban working classes and the rural poor in Britain labored under the burden of overpopulation. Humanitarian concern for impoverished people, and not intent to promote obscenity, drove them to disseminate information about birth control. Besant and Bradlaugh were eventually acquitted on a legal technicality, and Bradlaugh moved on to other issues. Besant, however, was dissatisfied with The Fruits of Philosophy because its methods were outdated by the science of the day. She was determined to write a more up-to-date guide explaining contraceptive methods and went on to found a Malthusian League to disseminate birth control information. These events—the trial and Besant’s further campaigns promoting contraception —mark a watershed moment in the history of birth control activism.3 They would shape how reproduction came to be understood not as a private matter, but as a particular sort of social problem, whose implications reverberated from London to the empire in India and back again. To outside observers, Bradlaugh and Besant may have seemed an unlikely pair to set these events into motion. Bradlaugh, at age forty-four, had a long history of association with radical causes. A celebrated atheist and antimonarchical republican, he helped to shape a tradition of mid-nineteenth-century English radicalism that developed in the wake of Chartist decline. As a member of the National Reform League in the 1860s, he had participated in public demonstrations to extend the franchise. His leadership of the National Secular Society made him a popular lecturer among Freethinkers on issues of political democracy, anticlericalism, and occasionally on neo-Malthusianism.4 2. Anne Taylor, Annie Besant: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 110–12. 3. The term “birth control” was coined in a meeting of Margaret Sanger and her associates in 1914, and thus would not have been in use in the late nineteenth century. The term contraception was not unknown, but had only limited circulation in scientific discourses. Nevertheless, I use both “birth control” and “contraception” interchangeably to mean methods to prevent conception. See Peter C. Engelman, A History of the Birth Control Movement in America (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011), xviii. 4. Taylor, Annie Besant, 80–81. Mytheli Sreenivas 511 In comparison to Bradlaugh’s prominence, Besant was relatively unknown. Her public career began after a separation from her husband, the Anglican vicar Frank Besant. Perhaps the couple were ill-suited to each other from... (shrink)

In ?Some Myths about ?Mental Illness'? (Inquiry, Vol. 18 [1975], No. 3), Michael Moore attempts to clarify and refute what he takes to be the radical (existential) position concerning the nature and diagnosis of mental illness. Moore's dissatisfaction with certain formulations and conceptualizations of the radical position is endorsed; as also the need to introduce greater rigor and precision into the discussion of mental illness. But Moore's clarifications are really misunderstandings and, in consequence, his refutations do not succeed. Moore's five?fold (...) interpretative classification of the radical thesis is retained. (shrink)

Paradoxically, abolitionism contained the seeds of empire. If we accept the general outline of Eric Williams’ thesis in Capitalism and Slavery that abolition was not purely altruistic but was as economically conditioned as Britain’s later empire building in Africa, the contradiction between the ideologies of antislavery and imperialism seems more apparent than real. Although the idealism that motivated the great abolitionists such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson is unquestionable, Williams argues that Britain could afford to legislate against the slave (...) trade only after that trade had helped to provide the surplus capital necessary for industrial “take-off.” Britain had lost much of its slave-owning territory as a result of the American Revolution; as the leading industrial power in the world, Britain found in abolition a way to work against the interests of its rivals who were still heavily involved in colonial slavery and a plantation economy.3The British abolitionist program entailed deeper and deeper involvement in Africa—the creation of Sierra Leone as a haven for freed slaves was just a start—but British abolitionists before the 1840s were neither jingoists nor deliberate expansionists. Humanitarianism applied to Africa, however, did point insistently toward imperialism.4 By mid-century, the success of the antislavery movement, the impact of the great Victorian explorers, and the merger of racist and evolutionary doctrines in the social sciences had combined to give the British public a widely shared view of Africa that demanded imperialization on moral, religious, and scientific grounds. It is this view that I have called the myth of the Dark Continent; by mythology I mean a form of modern, secularized, “depoliticized speech” —discourse which treats its subject as universally accepted. Scientifically established, and therefore no longer open to criticism by a political or theoretical opposition. In The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800-1960, Nancy Stepan writes:A fundamental question about the history of racism in the first half of the nineteenth century is why it was that, just as the battle against slavery was being won by abolitionists, the war against racism was being lost. The Negro was legally freed by the Emancipation Act of 1833, but in the British mind he was still mentally, morally and physically a slave.5It is this “fundamental question” which a genealogy of the myth of the Dark Continent can help to answer. Patrick Brantlinger, professor of English at Indiana University, is the editor of Victorian Studies. He has written The Spirit of Reform: British Literature and Politics, 1832-1867 and Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture and Social Decay. (shrink)