ObjectiveIn Belgium, people with an incurable psychiatric disorder can file a request for euthanasia claiming unbearable psychic suffering. For the request to be accepted, it has to meet stringent legal criteria. One of the requirements is that the patient possesses decision-making capacity. The patient’s decision-making capacity is assessed by physicians.The objective of our study is to provide insight in the assessment of decision-making capacity in the context of euthanasia for patients with psychic suffering caused by a psychiatric disorder.MethodTwenty-two (...) semistructured interviews with psychiatrists and neurologists were analysed with NVivo, a qualitative analysis software to code and organise transcribed data.ResultsDifferent views and approaches regarding decision-making capacity in the context of euthanasia emerged from the data.Most of the physicians have some knowledge of the cognitive ability approach on decision-making capacity. According to this approach, four abilities constitute decision-making capacity: communication, understanding, appreciation and reasoning. We observed differences in the way these abilities are valued in relation to competence. Some physicians take additional elements into consideration when assessing decision-making capacity.Physicians acquired their knowledge on the subject in many different ways. Most of the physicians reported that decision-making capacity was not part of their training.ConclusionWe conclude that physicians assess decision-making capacity in different ways and that personal values and beliefs influence their approach. As such, a common approach in assessing the decision-making capacity of a patient among the interviewed physicians is lacking. Less arbitrariness could be obtained by consistently implementing the cognitive ability approach. (shrink)

This article reflects on the value of training of health care professionals that find themselves in variously changing and complex settings, and who find themselves interacting with themes, problems and practices related to mental health. Starting from some reflections that emerged with operators involved in a professional training course within a specific research-intervention project, the contribution questions how a renewed “pedagogy of care” can help these professionals to better understand the nature and the constitutive factors of the process of signification (...) and re-signification of the experience of psychiatric illness, especially when one comes into contact with subjects involved in forced migratory experiences. (shrink)

This paper discusses the relationship between Axel Honneth’s intersubjective theory of recognition and his political theory of democratic ethical life by addressing the potentials and difficulties attached to the notion of social pathology. Taking into account the diverse uses of this concept throughout Honneth’s oeuvre, it focuses initially on two of its formulations: first, the more recent discussions presented in “The Diseases of Society”, some of which can be read in continuity with arguments presented in Freedom’s Right; second, an implicit (...) conception of social pathology that can be found in Struggle for Recognition. These formulations involve contrastingly different premises with regard to phenomenological, methodological, social-ontological and etiological matters. I argue that such differences can be better grasped if one bears in mind two distinctive ways of understanding the fundamental intuition at the basis of the notion of social pathology: either as an analogy or as a homology. By disclosing the actual or potential discrepancies between both conceptions, the aim is to outline the grounds on which they could be brought together within the framework of a comprehensive concept. With this purpose, I then critically examine a third conception of social pathology which was first presented in Suffering from Indeterminacy and later developed, with some restrictions, in Freedom’s Right. Finally, a definition of social pathology is suggested which can bring together the different contributions of each conception while avoiding their pitfalls. (shrink)

In the spring of 1784 the Marquis of Puységur, a great landowner and colonel in an artillery regiment, was called to the bedside of Victor, the son of his steward, who was suffering from pneumonia. Puységur was a follower of the new holistic medicine taught in an atmosphere of intense enthusiasm and scandal by Franz-Anton Mesmer, an Austrian doctor who had been living in Paris for several years. As a disciple of Mesmer, he intended to direct his ‘vital fluid’ onto (...) the young patient, by means of ‘magnetic passes’, to provoke ‘spasms’ which would lead to a calm state and an improvement in health. But things did not go as anticipated. Instead of displaying the anticipated spasms, the young Victor sank into a strange state of unconsciousness which, at first sight, resembled a deep sleep. Then he revived once more and came to life with a new personality. Freed from his inhibitions, he no longer spoke his habitual dialect, but the French of aristocrats, and he had no hesitation in berating his school teacher, whose secret thoughts he appeared to be able to read. Finally, he forecast the stages by which he would be cured and the remedies which would be suitable for him. Puységur wrote down all these strange facts and the following year he published a report which caused a sensation. Soon, throughout France, somnambulists appeared and observations about their subjects gathered. From that time onwards, the incomprehensible facts apparently evident in ‘provoked’ or ‘artificial somnambulism’ and also in ‘magnetic sleep’ - such expressions were used by Puységur and his followers for the state that he had just discovered - were to give rise to huge controversy. The Marquis of Puységur triggered the development nineteenth century of a movement of reflections and practices which have generally been referred to by the expression ‘animal magnetism’, invented by Mesmer. On the eve of the Revolution and throughout the nineteenth century this movement held a real fascination for philosophers, writers, and scholars. But there has been a tendency to overlook this episode in European culture, which has ultimately become a “lost continent” in our own period. (shrink)

Social suffering commands increasing public attention in the wake of several historical processes that have changed the ways victims are perceived. In making suffering eloquent by rendering it in conceptual form, philosophy runs the risk of muting suffering, thereby neutralizing its ability to mobilize responses. In the experience of suffering philosophy finds a limit it must recognize as its own. Yet only by fulfilling its duty towards suffering - only by having the abolition of suffering as its ultimate goal - (...) can philosophical thinking withstand a tacit complicity with injustice. (shrink)

Over the last three decades, the graphic novel has developed both in sophistication and cultural importance, now being widely accepted as a unique form of literature (Versaci 2007 ). Autobiography has proved to be a successful genre within comics (the word is used in the plural to denote both the medium and the philosophy of the graphic form) and within this area a sub-genre, the memoir of the artist’s own disease or suffering, sometimes known as the graphic pathology, has arisen (...) (Green and Myers 2010 ). Storytelling and healing have been linked since ancient times, and the disclosure of ones story forms part of the psychotherapeutic treatment of trauma (Herman 1997 ). This paper will examine, in both graphic and textual form, whether, among the myriad reasons that one might embark upon the labour intensive work of making a graphic memoir, some artists might be seeking some form of healing or catharsis through their work. (shrink)

Volume 11 Apollonius, or the Future of Psychical Research E N Bennett Originally published in 1927 "Admirably conceived, skilfully executed." Liverpool Post "His exposition of the case for psychic research is lucid and interesting." The Scotsman This volume summarizes the results secured by the scientific treatment of psychical phenomena, and to forecast the future developments of such research. 88pp ************** Socrates Or the Emancipation of Mankind H F Carlill Originally published in 1927 "One of the most brilliant and important (...) of a remarkable series." Westminster Gazette This volume examines the differences between humans and animals and discusses the freedom that a proper understanding of psychology will bring to the human race. The author argues that the whole psycho-physical organism will be regarded as what it is – a mechanism full of inherited tendencies and untapped energies which needs to be consciously adjusted and controlled. 90pp Morpheus or the Future of Sleep D F Fraser-Harris Originally published in 1928. "His arguments, clearly and ably presented, hold our interest." Clarion "Shows that the doctors do not as yet know much about the subject." Queen This volume discusses sleep and the part it plays in maintaining health. It contains suggestions for sufferers from insomnia, discusses dreams and their causes and suggests the probable line of investigation of sleep problems. 94pp Sisyphus or the Limits of Psychology M Jaeger Originally published in 1929. "Much acumen and knowledge. All students of psychology should read it." Manchester Guardian This volume argues that Psychology has just as an important role to play as Physics and Chemistry, because it affects the ordinary person and is not merely limited to the scientific community. The opportunities is provides, as well as its limits, are discussed. 88pp The Passing of The Phantoms A Study of Evolutionary Psychology and Morals C J Patten Originally published in 1924 "This bright and bracing little book." Literary Guide "Interesting and original." Medical Times This volume examines the evolution of the mental and moral faculties of animals. This knowledge, in the author’s opinion is critical for understanding the evolution of human mortality. 90pp. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary discussion of traumatic experience seeks better understanding and care for the suffering of individuals and societies.

The term body integrity identity disorder (BIID) describes the extremely rare phenomenon of persons who desire the amputation of one or more healthy limbs or who desire a paralysis. Some of these persons mutilate themselves; others ask surgeons for an amputation or for the transection of their spinal cord. Psychologists and physicians explain this phenomenon in quite different ways; but a successful psychotherapeutic or pharmaceutical therapy is not known. Lobbies of persons suffering from BIID explain the desire for amputation in (...) analogy to the desire of transsexuals for surgical sex reassignment. Medical ethicists discuss the controversy about elective amputations of healthy limbs: on the one hand the principle of autonomy is used to deduce the right for body modifications; on the other hand the autonomy of BIID patients is doubted. Neurological results suggest that BIID is a brain disorder producing a disruption of the body image, for which parallels for stroke patients are known. If BIID were a neuropsychological disturbance, which includes missing insight into the illness and a specific lack of autonomy, then amputations would be contraindicated and must be evaluated as bodily injuries of mentally disordered patients. Instead of only curing the symptom, a causal therapy should be developed to integrate the alien limb into the body image. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 151-154 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Happiness Project: Transforming the Three Poisons that Cause the Suffering We Inflict on Ourselves and Others The Happiness Project: Transforming the Three Poisons that Cause the Suffering We Inflict on Ourselves and Others. By Ron Leifer, M.D. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion, 1997.313 pp. This book focuses mostly on Buddhism and psychotherapy, but it ranges widely and (...) includes many reflections on Christianity. Today there are many good books that compare Buddhism with Western psychology, but this one is not to be missed by anyone interested in the topic. Leifer (a former colleague and friend of Ernest Becker, who wrote TheDenial ofDeath) is obviously a very experienced psychiatrist, with deep knowledge of psychoanalytic theory to supplement his many years of practice [End Page 151] as a therapist. This book is many things: a primer on demythologized Buddhism; a superior "self-help" book; a history of psychotherapy, including a critique of its modern medicalization; a speculative account of the evolution of human consciousness; and, not least, the most insightful interpretations of the Job, Oedipus, and Eden myths that I have encountered. The prose style is lucid, and only space limitations keep me from quoting it at length.The title turns out to be ironic, since our Happiness Projects are the main source of our unhappiness. Our selfish strivings for happiness are, paradoxically, the main cause of the suffering we inflict on ourselves and others.What we "fail to see" (avidya)is not some great mysterious wisdom. "The core of the esoteric knowledge we seek consists of secrets we hide from ourselves. We hide from them because they are not what we want them to be. The world is not what we want it to be. Life is not what we want it to be. Others are not what we want them to be. We are not ourselves what we want to be. We hide from these truths because they mystify and terrify us" (12). The basic "secret" of happiness is that the three poisons--greed, ill will, and ignorance--are the source of our pain and suffering, by creating rebounding karmic ripples. The ego is a trickster who is continually the victim of his own trickery. True happiness can only be the product of an inner transformation that changes our habitual patterns of thought and action, enabling us to "relax into existence." Leifer's psychologized Buddhism is a therapeutic path cleansed of the mystical and paranormal; there is no place here for psychic powers or any transcendental salvation (nirvana is not discussed). The focus throughout is on how we are bedeviled by our own desires.The book is organized into four main parts. The first offers Leifer's understanding of the first two Buddhist truths. The second part, "Western Views of Suffering," includes profound interpretations of Job and Oedipus Rex. Job's suffering illustrates the first truth, that life is suffering, and his patience is virtuous, even heroic, in its refusal to demand that life be different than it is--an endurance that allows him to avoid making life worse: "Patience is the willingness to suffer without aggression" (131).The key to the Oedipus story is in his answer to the Sphinx's riddle: humans are the creatures who walk on four legs as infants, on two legs as mature adults, and then on three legs (with a cane) in old age. The riddle is a metaphor for the truths of our impermanence, old age and death. But Oedipus cannot accept it. "From a Buddhist point of view, the story of Oedipus is a metaphor for neurotic mind. Oedipus was the victim of his own grasping ego--of his desires and aggressions. His fate was sealed by his own efforts to escape it. The source of Oedipus' pain and tragedy were his own ignorance, passion, and aggression: the three poisons" (135). His desire for Mom is better understood as a symbol of human desire generally: our refusal to grow up... (shrink)

This article addresses the issues related to the problem of classification of mental disorders in psychiatry in the context of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. First, some background information is provided on the history of the classification of mental disorders and the evolution that DSM has had over time is shown. Secondly, the delimitation of the normal and the pathological in psychiatry is investigated through Canguilhem's medical-philosophical thought. Thirdly, the biopolitical management of (...) class='Hi'>psychic sufferings is reflected in the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-V and its increasing medicalization. Finally, an approach to the concepts of health and disease in Canguilhem is made as it incorporates existential and experiential variables absent in the DSM-V classifications and in the psychiatric diagnosis. (shrink)

Locating the origin of psychic suffering akin to human kind requires an approach to the subject that cannot be reduced to any special method of natural sciences, psychology, history and sociology, and it oversteps particularities which are being carried by confined perspectives; cultural and historical spacing. The question of psychic suffering is a question regarding a human being in general, and thus except for insights compiled by the interdisciplinary method, we also need a philosophical investigation of the subject. (...) It is not meant in the sense of isolation, rather as coupled with that wholeness by which a human being attains its being as being one among many. In a sense given, this investigation is guided by an idea of rupturedness as a paradigm of what is considered to be psychic suffering, conditioned by the fact that suffering presupposes a sort of deficiency. The paper seeks possible solutions starting from understanding the human condition as an inherently tragic state of neediness. (shrink)

The belief in miracle, as a modality of spiritual/religious coping strategy in the face of stress and psychic suffering, has been discussed in psychological literature with regard to its positive or negative role on the health and well-being of patients and family members. In contemporary times, where pseudo-conflicts between religion and science should have been long overcome, there is still some tendency of interpreting belief in miracle – as the possibility of a cure granted by divine intervention, modifying the (...) normal course of events in a bleak medical diagnosis – as having unhealthy impacts in the care and treatment of health. This position seeks to find a base in the three characteristics of hoping in a miracle, frequently pointed out by psychological literature: it would imply a negation of reality instead of its confrontation; it would be a coping strategy focused on emotion instead of the problem; it would imply seeking to modify the supposed desire of God by extra-natural facts. In this study, we shall critically discuss this position and the dangers of its crystallization by the use of SRC scales in which the act of praying for a miracle is previously classified as a negative strategy. We revisit some tendencies in psychological literature about the subject, taking into consideration the various facets of miracle, sociocultural facts, elements of idiographic nature, and their profound outcomes in the lives of people especially in health contexts. We illustrate the dangers of a hasty generalization of the results of nomothetic studies about the role of belief in miracle with two examples of research in the Brazilian context: one carried out with pregnant women with fetal malformation and the other with family members caring for children and adolescents with cancer under chemotherapeutic treatment. In both studies, the results do not confirm the predominance of the negative aspects associated with the act of praying for a miracle, which we discuss and analyze in light of the phenomenological perspective. In this perspective, “pray for a miracle”, as experienced by patients and caregivers, can be recognized as an act of openness to life, bolstering hope, and the resignification of reality in the psyche. (shrink)

Ever since its beginning, Christianity ascribed an important role to care for bodily and psychic suffering. Up to modernity, psychological assistance was closely connected with theology. In modern times, philosophy and theology began to distance themselves from metaphysics and transcendence, thus opening the path for a purely psychological interpretation of religion and of religious life (cf. Kant, Schleiermacher). The founders of important psychological schools (Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Erich Fromm, Fritz Perls, and Carl Rogers) offered purely naturalistic interpretations (...) of the human condition and discounted transcendence. Today, pastoral psychology is situated in a field of tension between a purely naturalistic psychology and openness to a spiritual dimension and to man’s vocation for transcendence. What those recent psychological schools contribute is important for a deeper understanding of man, but it remains merely partial as long as his spiritual dimension is disregarded. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Axel Honneth deploys the categories of normal and pathological to explain contemporary society in organic terms. This article concerns itself with how these medical references function in Honneth's work to explain the social world, and what their political implications are. For Honneth, social normality is a normative resource, even if it is only accessible through the study of pathology. Socially accepted norms are taken to reflect legitimate principles, with the early Honneth taking pathology as an individual psychic suffering (...) that results from injustice, and the later Honneth taking pathology as an overextension of the logic of one social sphere into the terrain of another. The implications of Honneth's organic account of society are explored through the lens of a competing “French” account of the norm offered by Canguilhem and Foucault. These French thinkers view socially accepted norms not as reflecting legitimate principles, but as standardizing processes of normalization that stifle normativities that do not conform. It is suggested that Honneth's account of normativity must be articulated with Canguilhem's and Foucault's account of normalization. That said, through the course of the analysis, several unexpected continuities are discovered between these two different traditions. (shrink)

Marie de la Trinité est une mystique contemporaine dont Jacques Lacan fut l’analyste. Cette trajectoire est paradigmatique de la manière dont une mystique rencontre la souffrance psychique dans le paysage culturel du milieu du xxe siècle. La pensée de Jacques Lacan concernant la mystique, ainsi que des considérations psychanalytiques plus générales à propos de la paternité, sont mises en relation avec la logique apophatique de cette spirituelle. Cette mystique « antinaturelle » se déploie en une sécheresse vertigineuse, à la lisière (...) du Symbolique, et dans une fascination vis-à-vis de l’attraction du Père, impérieuse et contrariée. L’article analyse en particulier, à travers la figure de Marie de la Trinité, la manière dont la mystique contemporaine se confronte, dans le champ chrétien, à la question de la mort de Dieu, et du déclin du Père. Marie de la Trinité was a contemporary mystic who was analyzed by Jacques Lacan. The trajectory of her life is a paradigmatic example of the way in which a mystic encountered psychic suffering in the cultural landscape of the mid-20th century. Jacques Lacan’s thinking about mysticism, as well as broader psychoanalytical considerations about fatherhood, are associated here with the apophatic path of Marie. As her counter-natural mysticism unfolds she draws ever closer to the symbolic, fascinated by the dual nature of the attraction, at once imperious and impeded, exerted by the Father. This article uses the figure of Marie de la Trinité as the specific vantage point to examine how contemporary Christian mysticism is faced with the question of the death of God and the decline of the Father. (shrink)

This article, corresponding to a part of the restitution of a financed international research project between France, Brazil, Canada, Italy and Belgium, aims to offer a modelisation and qualitative evaluation of mediation care settings based on an original methodological tool that involves identifying the typical games at the foundations of creativity, following a multidisciplinary perspective. Therapeutic mediations are settings or devices organised around a “pliable medium”, often artistic, like painting, modeling, writing, ​and theatre, which are very widespread in institutional practices, (...) both in France and abroad. The scientific objectives of this research consist in a multi-disciplinary exploration (anthropology, criminology, neuroscience, clinical psychology) of the process of creative symbolisation understood as a process of transformation involving play. According to this orientation, play can be defined as a psychic process whereby a subjective experience can be explored with pleasure, and consequently symbolised and appropriated. Our fundamental and original hypothesis is that play is at the source of the creative process, conceived as a work of metabolisation by the psyche of playful experiences during the different stages of life. The review of the understanding of play in psychoanalysis, anthropology, criminology and neuroscience emphasises the richness of this model and the importance of reflecting on the typical games in the field of psychic care. A clinical example of treatment in a pictorial therapeutic mediation setting of a child with psychotic disorders makes it possible to identify a number of typical games as well as the modalities of interpretation of the therapists through play. These multidisciplinary studies lead to the presentation of a general table of typical games, and these first results highlight the richness of identifying typical games in clinical settings. Ultimately, the multidisciplinary approach shows the interest of the model of play in the evaluation of therapeutic mediation settings, with a convergence of the different disciplines emphasising the pertinence of this model. The scientific impact of this research overlaps with its societal impact, through the development of innovative tools for evaluating therapeutic mediations, in order to take account of the evolution of the different forms of social expression of psychic suffering. (shrink)

Psychology suffers from the absence of mathematically-formalized primitives. As a result, conceptual and quantitative studies lack an ontological basis that would situate them in the company of natural sciences. The article addresses this problem by describing a minimal psychic structure, expressed in the algebra of quantum theory. The structure is demarcated into categories of emotion and color, renowned as elementary psychological phenomena. This is achieved by means of quantum-theoretic qubit state space, isomorphic to emotion and color experiences both in (...) meaning and math. In particular, colors are mapped to the qubit states through geometric affinity between the HSL-RGB color solids and the Bloch sphere, widely used in physics. The resulting correspondence aligns with the recent model of subjective experience, producing a unified spherical map of emotions and colors. This structure is identified as a semantic atom of natural thinking—a unit of affectively-colored personal meaning, involved in elementary acts of a binary decision. The model contributes to finding a unified ontology of both inert and living Nature, bridging previously disconnected fields of research. In particular, it enables theory-based coordination of emotion, decision, and cybernetic sciences, needed to achieve new levels of practical impact. (shrink)

In response to distant suffering, global civil society is being consumed by a generalized witnessing fever that converts public spaces into veritable machines for the production of testimonial discourses and evidence. However, bearing witness itself has tended to be treated as an exercise in truth-telling, a juridical outcome, a psychic phenomenon or a moral prescription. By contrast, this article conceives of bearing witness as a transnational mode of ethico-political labour, an arduous working-through produced out of the struggles of groups (...) and persons who engage in testimonial tasks in order to confront corresponding perils produced by instances of situational or structural violence; it is the work of witnessing, the normative and political substance generated through the performance of patterns of social action, which matters. Using Celan's allegory of the poem as a message in a bottle, I consider bearing witness as a web of cosmopolitan testimonial practices structured around five dialectically related tasks and perils: giving voice to mass suffering against silence ; interpretation against incomprehension ; the cultivation of empathy against indifference ; remembrance against forgetting ; and prevention against repetition. (shrink)

In response to distant suffering, global civil society is being consumed by a generalized witnessing fever that converts public spaces into veritable machines for the production of testimonial discourses and evidence. However, bearing witness itself has tended to be treated as an exercise in truth-telling, a juridical outcome, a psychic phenomenon or a moral prescription. By contrast, this article conceives of bearing witness as a transnational mode of ethico-political labour, an arduous working-through produced out of the struggles of groups (...) and persons who engage in testimonial tasks in order to confront corresponding perils produced by instances of situational or structural violence; it is the work of witnessing, the normative and political substance generated through the performance of patterns of social action, which matters. Using Celan's allegory of the poem as a message in a bottle, I consider bearing witness as a web of cosmopolitan testimonial practices structured around five dialectically related tasks and perils: giving voice to mass suffering against silence (what if the message is never sent or does not reach land?); interpretation against incomprehension (what if it is written in a language that is undecipherable?); the cultivation of empathy against indifference (what if, after being read, it is discarded?); remembrance against forgetting (what if it is distorted or erased over time?); and prevention against repetition (what if it does not help to avert other forms of suffering?). (shrink)

This article reexamines Sri Aurobindo’s multifaceted response to the problem of evil in The Life Divine. According to my reconstruction, his response has three key dimensions: first, a skeptical theist refutation of arguments from evil against God’s existence; second, a theodicy of “spiritual evolution,” according to which the experience of suffering is necessary for the soul’s spiritual growth; and third, a panentheistic conception of the Divine Saccidānanda as the sole reality which playfully manifests as everything and everyone in the universe. (...) While a number of scholars have already discussed Aurobindo’s theodicy, I highlight the significance of three aspects of his theodicy that have been largely neglected. First, I emphasize the crucial theodical role of the “psychic entity,” Aurobindo’s term for the evolving, reincarnating soul within each of us. Second, I elucidate the skeptical theist dimension of his theodicy, which previous scholars have overlooked. Third, I argue that Aurobindo’s approach to the problem of evil may have been shaped, in part, by the teachings of Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa. Along the way, I also reconstruct the subtle chain of reasoning underlying Aurobindo’s various theodical arguments. In the concluding section, I suggest that there are conceptual resources within Aurobindo’s thought for responding to some of the most serious objections scholars have leveled against his theodicy. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a phenomenology of falling ill by presenting, interpreting and developing the basic model we find in Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. The three steps identified by Sartre in this process are analysed, developed further and brought to a five- step model: pre-reflective experience of discomfort, lived, bodily discomfort, suffered illness, disease pondering, and disease state. To fall ill is to fall victim to a gradual process of alienation, and with each step this alienating process is (...) taken to a new qualitative level. Consequently, the five steps of falling ill have not only a contingent chronological order but also a kind of logical order, in that they typically presuppose each other. I adopt Sartre's focus on embodiment as the core ground of the alienation process, but point out that the alienation of the body in illness is not only the experience of a psychic object, but an experience of the independent life of one's own body. This facticity of the body is the result neither of the gaze of the other person, nor of a reflection adopting the outer perspective of the other in an indirect way, but is a result of the very otherness of one's own body, which addresses and plagues us when we fall ill. I use examples of falling ill and being a patient to show how a phenomenology of falling ill can be helpful in educating health-care personnel about the ways of the lived body. (shrink)

A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes examines how some of the classic philosophical paradoxes that have so puzzled philosophers over the centuries can be dissolved. Read argues that paradoxes such as the Sorites, Russell’s Paradox and the paradoxes of time travel do not, in fact, need to be solved. Rather, using a resolute Wittgensteinian ‘therapeutic’ method, the book explores how virtually all apparent philosophical paradoxes can be diagnosed and dissolved through examining their conditions of arising; to loosen their grip and therapeutically (...) liberate those philosophers suffering from them (including oneself). The book contrasts such paradoxes with real, ‘lived paradoxes’: paradoxes that are genuinely experienced outside of the philosopher’s study, in everyday life. Thus Read explores instances of lived paradox (such as paradoxes of self-hatred and of denial of other humans’ humanity) and the harm they can cause, psychically, morally or politically. These lived paradoxes, he argues, sometimes cannot be dissolved using a Wittgensteinian treatment. Moreover, in some cases they do not need to be: for some, such as the paradoxical practices of Zen Buddhism (and indeed of Wittgenstein himself), can in fact be beneficial. The book shows how, once philosophers’ paradoxes have been exorcized, real lived paradoxes can be given their due. (shrink)

This paper examines the affective disorders plaguing many young people and the problem of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in particular. It aims to define the limits of the critique of British educationalist Sir Ken Robinson in terms of his philosophy of ‘creativity’ through a consideration of the ideas of French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, especially the notions of ‘industrial temporal objects’ and stupidity. It makes the case for adopting elements of each distinct research paradigm as a prolegomena to forging a social critique (...) of capitalist-dominated, market-led educational institutions. The former, it will be seen, identifies some of the problems facing teachers in terms of the use and application of technology, the false divide between arts and the humanities, but falls short of explaining the root of the structural and psychic malaise in neo-liberal regimes regarding classroom breakdown in general. The latter, despite the apocalyptic tone of some his pronouncements provides an update and radicalization of Deleuze’s societies of control thesis in terms of what Stiegler designates ‘uncontrollable societies’. Stiegler, it will be seen, presents a critique of technology that is all the more pressing in an age in which the loss of expectation in the lives of young people can lead to a corresponding fall off or destruction in ‘deep attention’. I want to test the hyperbole of Stiegler’s assertion that young people today suffer from a ‘colossal’ attention deficit disorder of unprecedented scale and magnitude. (shrink)

Nietzsche assesses values, moralities, religions, cultures, and persons in terms of health. He argues that we should reject those that are unhealthy and develop healthier alternatives. But what is Nietzsche’s conception of health, and why should it carry such normative force? In this paper I argue for reading Nietzsche’s concept of health as the overall ability to meet the demands of one’s motivational landscape. I show that, unlike other interpretations, this reading accounts for his rejection of particular features of a (...) prevailing, then as now, model of health; for his association of health with strength and with psychic unity; and for his claim that health is compatible with, and can even be enhanced by, functional impairments such as those from which he personally suffered. Throughout I draw connections to recent literature on health and disability. (shrink)

Judith Butler has built her theory of interpellation through critical engagement with the work of Louis Althusser. For Butler, interpellation explains how the subject emerges in and through language, and her critique of Althusser is meant to open up psychic and discursive space for resisting status quo interpellations and the dominant ideology. In this essay, I argue that Butler’s account of interpellation suffers from two problems: first, she misreads Althusser; second (and more importantly), her account is isolating and politically (...) demotivating. I then show that rereading Althusser provides us both with a criticism (albeit avant la lettre) of Butler’s position, and a new account of the resources at our disposal for resisting (and even opposing) the dominant ideology. (shrink)

Drawing from the writings of Deleuze and Foucault, various forms of political vitalism have emerged as one of the most dominant approaches to radical politics today. However, there has been considerable disagreement over the terms on which a debate over vitalism’s perceived utility should be carried out. This has allowed for a great confusion over what is at stake in the vitalist controversy. This article argues that an analysis of the most recent works of Maurizio Lazzarato, one of the most (...) prominent contemporary political vitalists, assists in clarifying the terms of the debate and provides a rebuttal of several of the most common criticisms of political vitalist thought. Through his engagement with the work of French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, Lazzarato has developed a distinct variety of neo-monadology that analyses the world in terms of micro-psychic forces. On the basis of this ontology, Lazzarato constructs a politics of multiplicity consisting of open strategies of experimentation and creation, which he argues offers the best form of resistance to neo-liberal capitalism. It is argued that Lazzarato is able to provide an answer to the three common charges that vitalism is a mysticism, suffers from a lack of normative foundations, and has an incoherent political programme. The article concludes with a reflection on the extent to which political vitalism is still haunted by a failure to give an account of and come to terms with the role of negativity in politics. (shrink)

While the metaphysical aspects of Proclus' theory of evil have recently been studied by a number of scholars, its ethical implications have largely been neglected. In my paper I am analysing the moral consequences that Proclus' concept of evil has, at the same time using the ethical perspective to throw more light on Proclus' ontology. Most importantly, I argue that the difference between bodily and psychic evil is much more substantial that it might seem from On the Existence of (...) Evils alone. Though both kinds of evil are characterized by their 'parasitical existence' , evil in bodies is unavoidable, resulting from a wide network of cosmic corporeal interactions that no partial being can ever have control of. Psychic evil, on the other hand, is a product of human choice and is independent of external circumstances, depending wholly on the soul's ability to keep its proper vertical hierarchy. In this regard it is evil in a much more serious sense of the word, being actively caused rather than just passively suffered. In the last section of my paper I throw further light on this more dangerous kind of evil, showing it as resulting from an essential bi-dimensionality of human beings. (shrink)

Both proponents and opponents of capital punishment largely agree that death is the most severe punishment that societies should consider imposing on offenders. This chapter considers how (if at all) this ‘Ultimate Thesis’ can be vindicated. Appeals to the irrevocability of death, the badness of being executed, the badness of death, or the harsh condemnation societies express by sentencing offenders to death do not succeed in vindicating this Thesis, and in particular, fail to show that capital punishment is more severe (...) than the most likely alternative punishment offenders would suffer, namely, lifelong incarceration. The most plausible vindication of the Ultimate Thesis instead resides in how being condemned to death alters a person’s psychological relation to death. Our ordinary tendencies toward “death denial” diminish the terror that our awareness of death can otherwise induce in us, thereby enabling us to pursue worthwhile lives despite knowing of death’s inevitability. But condemned individuals are continually compelled to confront both the reality and specific circumstances of their own deaths and so do not enjoy the protective psychic shield that death denial provides us. This ‘relational’ rationale does not obviously succeed in proving the Ultimate Thesis, but if the Thesis is true, this rationale is essential to its justification. (shrink)

Why do some people still choose psychoanalysis-Freud's so-called talking cure-when numerous medications are available that treat the symptoms of psychic distress so much faster? Elisabeth Roudinesco tackles this difficult question, exploring what she sees as a "depressive society": an epidemic of distress addressed only by an increasing reliance on prescription drugs. Far from contesting the efficacy of new medications like Prozac, Zoloft, and Viagra in alleviating the symptoms of any number of mental or nervous conditions, Roudinesco argues that the (...) use of such drugs fails to solve patients' real problems. In the man who takes Viagra without ever wondering why he is suffering from impotence and the woman who is given antidepressants to deal with the loss of a loved one, Roudinesco sees a society obsessed with efficiency and desperate for the quick fix. She argues that "the talking cure" and pharmacology represent not just different approaches to psychiatry, but different worldviews. The rush to treat symptoms is itself symptomatic of an antiseptic and depressive culture in which thought is reduced to the firing of neurons and desire is just a chemical secretion. In contrast, psychoanalysis testifies to human freedom and the power of language. (shrink)

Not only trauma, mourning and disease, but also disability has been recognised in the Book of Job in which the body plays an exceptional role. The protagonist is suffering physically, psychically and spiritually. Although the word, •–• [be sick, ill], never occurs in the book, his body is portrayed negatively being afflicted by some unknown illness, which would probably exclude him from the community described in Leviticus 13-14. While •’—’—“ [be silent] occurs several times in the book, it never has (...) the alternative meaning of deaf. Yet, his explicit empathy and sacrificial charity –’–’•’’— [for the blind] and –’–’’–’’•’ [for the lame] in 29:15 resonate with his own plight and undermine the possible discriminatory restrictions of like disabled in Leviticus 21:18. In this way, the Book of Job has a transgressive and yet liberating subtext, subverting the idealised body of his status quo. This subtle and veiled critique by the protagonist and therefore the book can be interpreted from a psychoanalytic perspective on physical disability and illness, where the symptoms and alleged imperfections of the body quietly cry out against social and cultural injustice of which they are the projections and mirrors when the context has silenced a concern for the body because of a lack of compassion as it is in the situation of Job. CONTRIBUTION: The intersection and cross-fertilisation of Biblical Studies, Disability Studies and psychoanalytic theory as interdisciplinary approach widens the horizons and deepens the insight of all three research fields, hopefully for the benefit of those who suffer from their bodies, their psyches and their societies. (shrink)

One gains the impression from occasional remarks in the psychiatric literature that there is a feeling of dissatisfaction with the state of flux of the various concepts, serving as tools to help us understand our patients. This paper is submitted as an attempt to point out some of the reasons why psychiatric notions suffer from certain deficiencies. If, for the time being, we set aside the specific psychiatric problems confronting us in our daily work and muse over the structure of (...) our psychological and psychiatric methods of explanation, we might come to the startling conclusion that these methods are quite inadequate. We medical people think in terms of the mechanistic natural sciences, particularly in terms of physics, chemistry and biochemistry. The importance of these auxiliary sciences to our art of healing the sick increases year after year and the outstanding results of chemotherapy, for instance, show how heavily our profession leans on chemistry. Beyond a doubt, the natural sciences are essential to the pursuit and the development of the practice of medicine, nevertheless, the question arises whether psychiatry should be based upon mechanistic methods in approaching our specific material, the human mind. Posed in this fashion, the question implies that psychiatric thinking is basically mechanistic in its general characteristics. I believe that one can prove this thesis on the premise that descriptions and explanations of human behavior are based upon neurological facts and theories. Since the purpose of neurology lies in a different direction than the goal of psychiatry, it was necessary to alter neurological concepts so that they would be more appropriate and fitting to psychic material, and this elaboration upon neurological principles when applied to mental phenomena leads to psychiatric conceptions with inherent deficiencies. (shrink)

Mortality rates for middle-aged whites in the U.S. are rising due to drugs, alcohol, and depression. Unique to our country, these “deaths of despair” disproportionately occur among the under-educated, who are at particular risk for dying young. At one time, less-educated persons aspired to work in the same factory as their parents, at union wages, with benefits. Those jobs, and the sense of community and prosperity and security they allowed, are evaporating. Many former workers suffer from chronic pain, which underlies (...) America's ongoing opioid overdose epidemic. The pain is not only physical. It is psychic, spiritual, and economic. (shrink)

Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843): A Philosophy of the Exact Sciences -/- Shortened version of the article of the same name in: Tabula Rasa. Jenenser magazine for critical thinking. 6th of November 1994 edition -/- 1. Biography -/- Jakob Friedrich Fries was born on the 23rd of August, 1773 in Barby on the Elbe. Because Fries' father had little time, on account of his journeying, he gave up both his sons, of whom Jakob Friedrich was the elder, to the Herrnhut Teaching (...) Institution in Niesky in 1778. Fries attended the theological seminar in Niesky in autumn 1792, which lasted for three years. There he (secretly) began to study Kant. The reading of Kant's works led Fries, for the first time, to a deep philosophical satisfaction. His enthusiasm for Kant is to be understood against the background that a considerable measure of Kant's philosophy is based on a firm foundation of what happens in an analogous and similar manner in mathematics. -/- During this period he also read Heinrich Jacobi's novels, as well as works of the awakening classic German literature; in particular Friedrich Schiller's works. In 1795, Fries arrived at Leipzig University to study law. During his time in Leipzig he became acquainted with Fichte's philosophy. In autumn of the same year he moved to Jena to hear Fichte at first hand, but was soon disappointed. -/- During his first sojourn in Jenaer (1796), Fries got to know the chemist A. N. Scherer who was very influenced by the work of the chemist A. L. Lavoisier. Fries discovered, at Scherer's suggestion, the law of stoichiometric composition. Because he felt that his work still need some time before completion, he withdrew as a private tutor to Zofingen (in Switzerland). There Fries worked on his main critical work, and studied Newton's "Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica". He remained a lifelong admirer of Newton, whom he praised as a perfectionist of astronomy. Fries saw the final aim of his mathematical natural philosophy in the union of Newton's Principia with Kant's philosophy. -/- With the aim of qualifying as a lecturer, he returned to Jena in 1800. Now Fries was known from his independent writings, such as "Reinhold, Fichte and Schelling" (1st edition in 1803), and "Systems of Philosophy as an Evident Science" (1804). The relationship between G. W. F. Hegel and Fries did not develop favourably. Hegel speaks of "the leader of the superficial army", and at other places he expresses: "he is an extremely narrow-minded bragger". On the other hand, Fries also has an unfavourable take on Hegel. He writes of the "Redundancy of the Hegelistic dialectic" (1828). In his History of Philosophy (1837/40) he writes of Hegel, amongst other things: "Your way of philosophising seems just to give expression to nonsense in the shortest possible way". In this work, Fries appears to argue with Hegel in an objective manner, and expresses a positive attitude to his work. -/- In 1805, Fries was appointed professor for philosophy in Heidelberg. In his time spent in Heidelberg, he married Caroline Erdmann. He also sealed his friendships with W. M. L. de Wette and F. H. Jacobi. Jacobi was amongst the contemporaries who most impressed Fries during this period. In Heidelberg, Fries wrote, amongst other things, his three-volume main work New Critique of Reason (1807). -/- In 1816 Fries returned to Jena. When in 1817 the Wartburg festival took place, Fries was among the guests, and made a small speech. 1819 was the so-called "Great Year" for Fries: His wife Caroline died, and Karl Sand, a member of a student fraternity, and one of Fries' former students stabbed the author August von Kotzebue to death. Fries was punished with a philosophy teaching ban but still received a professorship for physics and mathematics. Only after a period of years, and under restrictions, he was again allowed to read philosophy. From now on, Fries was excluded from political influence. The rest of his life he devoted himself once again to philosophical and natural studies. During this period, he wrote "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" (1822) and the "History of Philosophy" (1837/40). -/- Fries suffered from a stroke on New Year's Day 1843, and a second stroke, on the 10th of August 1843 ended his life. -/- 2. Fries' Work Fries left an extensive body of work. A look at the subject areas he worked on makes us aware of the universality of his thinking. Amongst these subjects are: Psychic anthropology, psychology, pure philosophy, logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, religious philosophy, aesthetics, natural philosophy, mathematics, physics and medical subjects, to which, e.g., the text "Regarding the optical centre in the eye together with general remarks about the theory of seeing" (1839) bear witness. With popular philosophical writings like the novel "Julius and Evagoras" (1822), or the arabesque "Longing, and a Trip to the Middle of Nowhere" (1820), he tried to make his philosophy accessible to a broader public. Anthropological considerations are shown in the methodical basis of his philosophy, and to this end, he provides the following didactic instruction for the study of his work: "If somebody wishes to study philosophy on the basis of this guide, I would recommend that after studying natural philosophy, a strict study of logic should follow in order to peruse metaphysics and its applied teachings more rapidly, followed by a strict study of criticism, followed once again by a return to an even closer study of metaphysics and its applied teachings." -/- 3. Continuation of Fries' work through the Friesian School -/- Fries' ideas found general acceptance amongst scientists and mathematicians. A large part of the followers of the "Fries School of Thought" had a scientific or mathematical background. Amongst them were biologist Matthias Jakob Schleiden, mathematics and science specialist philosopher Ernst Friedrich Apelt, the zoologist Oscar Schmidt, and the mathematician Oscar Xavier Schlömilch. Between the years 1847 and 1849, the treatises of the "Fries School of Thought", with which the publishers aimed to pursue philosophy according to the model of the natural sciences appeared. In the Kant-Fries philosophy, they saw the realisation of this ideal. The history of the "New Fries School of Thought" began in 1903. It was in this year that the philosopher Leonard Nelson gathered together a small discussion circle in Goettingen. Amongst the founding members of this circle were: A. Rüstow, C. Brinkmann and H. Goesch. In 1904 L. Nelson, A. Rüstow, H. Goesch and the student W. Mecklenburg travelled to Thuringia to find the missing Fries writings. In the same year, G. Hessenberg, K. Kaiser and Nelson published the first pamphlet from their first volume of the "Treatises of the Fries School of Thought, New Edition". -/- The school set out with the aim of searching for the missing Fries' texts, and re-publishing them with a view to re-opening discussion of Fries' brand of philosophy. The members of the circle met regularly for discussions. Additionally, larger conferences took place, mostly during the holidays. Featuring as speakers were: Otto Apelt, Otto Berg, Paul Bernays, G. Fraenkel, K. Grelling, G. Hessenberg, A. Kronfeld, O. Meyerhof, L. Nelson and R. Otto. On the 1st of March 1913, the Jakob-Friedrich-Fries society was founded. Whilst the Fries' school of thought dealt in continuum with the advancement of the Kant-Fries philosophy, the members of the Jakob-Friedrich-Fries society's main task was the dissemination of the Fries' school publications. In May/June, 1914, the organisations took part in their last common conference before the gulf created by the outbreak of the First World War. Several members died during the war. Others returned disabled. The next conference took place in 1919. A second conference followed in 1921. Nevertheless, such intensive work as had been undertaken between 1903 and 1914 was no longer possible. -/- Leonard Nelson died in October 1927. In the 1930's, the 6th and final volume of "Treatises of the Fries School of Thought, New Edition" was published. Franz Oppenheimer, Otto Meyerhof, Minna Specht and Grete Hermann were involved in their publication. -/- 4. About Mathematical Natural Philosophy -/- In 1822, Fries' "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" appeared. Fries rejects the speculative natural philosophy of his time - above all Schelling's natural philosophy. A natural study, founded on speculative philosophy, ceases with its collection, arrangement and order of well-known facts. Only a mathematical natural philosophy can deliver the necessary explanatory reasoning. The basic dictum of his mathematical natural philosophy is: "All natural theories must be definable using purely mathematically determinable reasons of explanation." Fries is of the opinion that science can attain completeness only by the subordination of the empirical facts to the metaphysical categories and mathematical laws. -/- The crux of Fries' natural philosophy is the thought that mathematics must be made fertile for use by the natural sciences. However, pure mathematics displays solely empty abstraction. To be able to apply them to the sensory world, an intermediatory connection is required. Mathematics must be connected to metaphysics. The pure mechanics, consisting of three parts are these: a) A study of geometrical movement, which considers solely the direction of the movement, b) A study of kinematics, which considers velocity in Addition, c) A study of dynamic movement, which also incorporates mass and power, as well as direction and velocity. -/- Of great interest is Fries' natural philosophy in view of its methodology, particularly with regard to the doctrine "leading maxims". Fries calls these "leading maxims" "heuristic", "because they are principal rules for scientific invention". -/- Fries' philosophy found great recognition with Carl Friedrich Gauss, amongst others. Fries asked for Gauss's opinion on his work "An Attempt at a Criticism based on the Principles of the Probability Calculus" (1842). Gauss also provided his opinions on "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" (1822) and on Fries' "History of Philosophy". Gauss acknowledged Fries' philosophy and wrote in a letter to Fries: "I have always had a great predilection for philosophical speculation, and now I am all the more happy to have a reliable teacher in you in the study of the destinies of science, from the most ancient up to the latest times, as I have not always found the desired satisfaction in my own reading of the writings of some of the philosophers. In particular, the writings of several famous (maybe better, so-called famous) philosophers who have appeared since Kant have reminded me of the sieve of a goat-milker, or to use a modern image instead of an old-fashioned one, of Münchhausen's plait, with which he pulled himself from out of the water. These amateurs would not dare make such a confession before their Masters; it would not happen were they were to consider the case upon its merits. I have often regretted not living in your locality, so as to be able to glean much pleasurable entertainment from philosophical verbal discourse." -/- The starting point of the new adoption of Fries was Nelson's article "The critical method and the relation of psychology to philosophy" (1904). Nelson dedicates special attention to Fries' re-interpretation of Kant's deduction concept. Fries awards Kant's criticism the rationale of anthropological idiom, in that he is guided by the idea that one can examine in a psychological way which knowledge we have "a priori", and how this is created, so that we can therefore recognise our own knowledge "a priori" in an empirical way. Fries understands deduction to mean an "awareness residing darkly in us is, and only open to basic metaphysical principles through conscious reflection.". -/- Nelson has pointed to an analogy between Fries' deduction and modern metamathematics. In the same manner, as with the anthropological deduction of the content of the critical investigation into the metaphysical object show, the content of mathematics become, in David Hilbert's view, the object of metamathematics. -/-. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Good Work:An Engaged Buddhist Response to the Dilemmas of ConsumerismDavid Landis BarnhillConsumerism is such an ingrained part of our culture, it is paradoxically difficult to avoid and easy to ignore. Sometimes it seems like the water we modern fish swim in.But the Buddhist call to awareness of our state of mind and the nature of reality leads us to reflect on it, to encounter it as directly as possible. (...) When we do, it is all too clear that consumerism goes directly against virtually everything Buddhism stands for. In thinking about a Buddhist response to it, what first comes to mind is the rich monastic tradition, with its trenchant analysis of the pervasiveness of desires, the ideal of life lifted free of craving, and the inviting simplicity of the communal life. But as an engaged Buddhist, I almost immediately feel that, compelling as it is, this monastic tradition is insufficient, particularly at a time when consumerism has become so devastating on a global scale. While the monastic tradition offers a model of a nonconsumer lifestyle, it does little to affect the industrialized world's accelerating exhaustion of natural resources. I sometimes put this point in mythical Buddhist imagery by saying that we live in a culture of hungry ghosts.1 But that would be optimistic. While hungry ghosts have a bloated stomach of insatiable cravings, their throats are as thin as pins. Modern culture has a gargantuan mouth and throat, and yet we still act as if our bellies are empty.So what can we as Buddhists do about such a destructive culture? Engaged Buddhism is a way of confronting social, political, and psychological poisons that threaten our world, and it offers an effective counter to consumer culture in at least three main ways. There is the extension of the Buddhist analysis of reality beyond the psychological and the metaphysical to the social, structural dimension of life of economic systems and political institutions. In the social context, the Buddhist truth of the mutual co-arising of phenomena takes on a more immense scope than the mere conditioning of consciousness, and a more concrete—and thus soiled—quality than Huayan Buddhism's mesmerizing metaphysics of Indra's net. The interpenetration of life (pratītya-samutpāda) includes billboards and boardrooms, peasants uprooted from their land as coffee is planted in their place. I live not just in interrelationship with the postglacial hills of Wisconsin but also with the mountains of toxins spewed [End Page 55] into the air to give us cheap, but very costly, energy. As Stephen Batchelor has said, "the contemporary social engagement of Dharma practice is rooted in awareness of how self-centered confusion and craving can no longer be adequately understood only as psychological drives that manifest themselves in subjective states of anguish. We find these drives embodied in the very economic, military, and political structures that influence the lives of the majority of the people on Earth."2 Engaged Buddhism gives us an incisive way to comprehend and critique our situation, and we stand on more solid ground as we view the vast and painful interconnections.Second, engaged Buddhism also can give us a vision of a social and political alternative, one that is based not on the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion but on generosity, compassion, and wisdom. But in doing so Buddhism must go beyond the limits of its own tradition and draw on the insights of contemporary social and environmental philosophies, from anarchism to bioregionalism. A creative merging of Buddhism and such ecosocial thought can help us work toward a modern life of communalism rather than consumerism, of contentment rather than self-perpetuating desire.3Third, engaged Buddhism gives us a basis for directly responding to a world of craving and suffering. Activism against the rising tide of consumerism—and against the social, political, and military structures and the deafening ideologies that support it—can emerge from a meditational steadiness. Contemplative activism avoids rage, burnout, and psychic numbness and allows us to meet greed and hatred with peace in a spirituality of resistance. Such a religiously based activism, however, needs to join hands4 with social philosophy and... (shrink)

Society and contemporary culture unquestionably assign much importance to the search for quality. So can this kind of research include the mind? In his analysis, Luigi Longhin examines the causes of mental illness and psychic-mental suffering, the notions of individuality, social violence, and utopia; and he suggests a collaboration between the neurosciences and psychoanalysis, within a correct epistemological approach. The relationship between epistemology and psychoanalysis is examined. The objectivistic and relativistic shift in contemporary epistemology, and the problem of the (...) responsibility of the techno-scientific system are emphasized. Why such a privileged connection with philosophy? The contribution of philosophy is primarily epistemological. However, both epistemology and psychoanalysis run a risk; whilst epistemology runs the risk of being a knowledge which does not know, psychoanalysts run the risk of pursuing scientific knowledge without knowing its foundations. Hence there is a need for collaboration between the two forms of knowledge: the philosophical-epistemological and the scientific-psychoanalytic. Psychoanalysis works in two directions: on the one hand, it tries to eliminate the negative components of the mind, on the other hand, it tries to develop the trusting and creative parts of the self. (shrink)

Continuing her reflections on destructive plasticity, split identities and the psychic consequences experienced by those who have suffered brain injury or have been traumatised by war and other catastrophes, Catherine Malabou invites us to join her in a philosophic and literary adventure.

Not only trauma, mourning and disease, but also disability has been recognised in the Book of Job in which the body plays an exceptional role. The protagonist is suffering physically, psychically and spiritually. Although the word, •–• [be sick, ill], never occurs in the book, his body is portrayed negatively being afflicted by some unknown illness, which would probably exclude him from the community described in Leviticus 13-14. While •’—’—“ [be silent] occurs several times in the book, it never has (...) the alternative meaning of deaf. Yet, his explicit empathy and sacrificial charity –’–’•’’— [for the blind] and –’–’’–’’•’ [for the lame] in 29:15 resonate with his own plight and undermine the possible discriminatory restrictions of like disabled in Leviticus 21:18. In this way, the Book of Job has a transgressive and yet liberating subtext, subverting the idealised body of his status quo. This subtle and veiled critique by the protagonist and therefore the book can be interpreted from a psychoanalytic perspective on physical disability and illness, where the symptoms and alleged imperfections of the body quietly cry out against social and cultural injustice of which they are the projections and mirrors when the context has silenced a concern for the body because of a lack of compassion as it is in the situation of Job. CONTRIBUTION: The intersection and cross-fertilisation of Biblical Studies, Disability Studies and psychoanalytic theory as interdisciplinary approach widens the horizons and deepens the insight of all three research fields, hopefully for the benefit of those who suffer from their bodies, their psyches and their societies. (shrink)

Not only trauma, mourning and disease, but also disability has been recognised in the Book of Job in which the body plays an exceptional role. The protagonist is suffering physically, psychically and spiritually. Although the word, חלה [be sick, ill], never occurs in the book, his body is portrayed negatively being afflicted by some unknown illness, which would probably exclude him from the community described in Leviticus 13–14. While חָרֵשׁ [be silent] occurs several times in the book, it never has (...) the alternative meaning of deaf. Yet, his explicit empathy and sacrificial charity לַעִוֵּר [for the blind] and לַפִּסֵּחַ [for the lame] in 29:15 resonate with his own plight and undermine the possible discriminatory restrictions of like disabled in Leviticus 21:18. In this way, the Book of Job has a transgressive and yet liberating subtext, subverting the idealised body of his status quo. This subtle and veiled critique by the protagonist and therefore the book can be interpreted from a psychoanalytic perspective on physical disability and illness, where the symptoms and alleged imperfections of the body quietly cry out against social and cultural injustice of which they are the projections and mirrors when the context has silenced a concern for the body because of a lack of compassion as it is in the situation of Job. Contribution: The intersection and cross-fertilisation of Biblical Studies, Disability Studies and psychoanalytic theory as interdisciplinary approach widens the horizons and deepens the insight of all three research fields, hopefully for the benefit of those who suffer from their bodies, their psyches and their societies. (shrink)

In continuation with my on-going research and presentations on sport as a field of channeling and externalizing cruelty and violence, as a field of transfiguration of drives, in this paper I will examine instincts, drives and sublimation in Freud and post-Freudian psychoanalytic literature within the context of sports. Freud was influenced by Nietzsche on his drive theory; however, in Freud it assumes a specific meaning and finds its place within the context of his overall psychoanalytic work, especially in relation to (...) his second topology of the human psyche that consists of id, ego and superego and his theory of sublimation. Ultimately, Freud reduces all drives to Eros and Thanatos and explains their workings in relation to the constitution of the psyche. Sublimation has a direct correlation to drives, which is a culture/individual specific way of treating and channeling drives; sublimation also has much to do with suffering and how we deal with suffering (and other emotions as I discuss in my book, Emotion in Sports). What I would like to explore in this paper is to understand in what ways sport is a form of sublimation and how sport may address the subject of drives, both Eros and Thanatos. Since Freud sees both of these drives as bound together in many contexts, does sport constitute one of those areas? What type of psychic constitution does the sporting culture assume? Or, to put it differently, what are the dynamic relations of the different parts of the human psyche, the id, the ego and the superego, in the practice of sport and in the community of sports? Here and elsewhere, in agreement with Jung, I will include discussion of ‘collective unconscious’, as I explore the significance of symbols of sport in the life of individuals and cultures. (shrink)

Privacy is something we all want. We seek privacy to prevent others from securing information about us that is immediately embarrassing, and so causes us pain but not material loss. We also value privacy for strategic reasons in order to prevent others from imposing material and perhaps psychic costs upon us. I use the expression “securing information” so that it covers everything from the immediate sensory data that a voyeur acquires to the financial data a rival may acquire about (...) our businesses. In the degenerate case of the Peeping Tom's invasion of our privacy, suffering is caused just by the voyeur's having acquired the information, even if nothing is ever done with it beyond the voyeur's recalling it from time to time. In all other cases, privacy prevents others from imposing costs or harms on us in ways that require that they secure information about us. (shrink)

The ArgumentPain has important biomedical socioanthropological, semiotic, and other facets. In this contribution pain and the experssion of pain are looked at from the perspective of evolutionary biology, utilizing, among others, cross-cultural data from field work in Melanesia.No other being cares for sick and suffering conspecifics in the way humans do. Notwithstanding aggression and neglect, common in all cultures, human societies can be characterized as empathic, comforting, and promoting the health and well-being of their members. One important stimulus triggering this (...) caring response in others is the expression of pain. The nonverbal channel of communication, particularly certain universal — i.e., culture-independent facial expressions, gestures, and body postures, convey much of the message from the painstricken person to the group.These behaviors signal the person's physical and psychical pain, sadness, grief, and despair in ways very similar to the signs given by infants and small children: the body loses tonus and sinks or drops to the ground, the gestures are those of helplessness. Pain and grief may be so strong that control is lost not only over the body's posture but also over the mind's awareness. In such cases the afflicted person may carry out actions endangering himself or others. In general, these behavior patterns resemble those of infants in situations of distress and danger, and it is not surprising that the response of the members of the group is basically parental: taking care, assisting and consoling.Perceptive and behavioral patterns which developed in the course of avian and mammalian phylogeny to serve the well-being of the young have proven, as was shown by Eibl-Eibesfeldt, to be powerful building blocks for actions in other spheres of human interaction. Love is one such field, the reactions to a conspecific suffering pain is another. (shrink)

In Sin Sick, Joshua Pederson draws on the latest research about identifying and treating the pain of perpetration to advance and deploy a literary theory of moral injury that addresses fictional representations of the mental anguish of those who have injured or killed others. Pederson's work foregrounds moral injury, a recent psychological concept distinct from trauma that is used to describe the psychic wounds suffered by those who breach their own deeply held ethical principles. Complementing writings on trauma theory (...) that posit the textual manifestation of trauma as absence, Sin Sick draws argues that moral injury appears in literature in a variety of forms of excess. Pederson closely reads works by Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment), Camus (The Fall), and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Brian Turner's Here, Bullet; Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds; Phil Klay's Redeployment; and Roy Scranton's War Porn), contending that recognizing and understanding the suffering of perpetrators, without condoning their crimes, enriches the experience of reading—and of being human. (shrink)

Freud relates to the notion of beyond-the-man through a double movement, if we consider the direct satisfaction of the Triebe in contrast to the possibility of refining the targets of the drives. On the one hand, the analyst accepts the idea of Nietzsche that sublimation is precisely the means by which occurs the refinement of the targets of the impulses, but simultaneously reaffirms Schopenhauer's idea that suffering is the background of all life, has the constant voltage of the drive is (...) precisely the phenomenon that strains us and propels us forward: it is the difference between the actual pleasure obtained by satisfaction with the expected pleasure that comes the factor that drives. This does not allow the body to park in any of the previously established forms of satisfaction, but instead will cause this organism in their psychic context, claim a state of profound satisfaction, which is, however, hampered by the force of resistances that the process of repression still keeps active and by the difficulties inherent in human interaction and conflict between desires and capabilities. (shrink)

_From Illiteracy to Literature_ presents innovative material based on research with ‘non-reading’ children and re-examines the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and literature, through the lens of the psychical significance of reading: the forgotten adventure of our coming to reading. Anne-Marie Picard draws on two specific fields of interest: firstly the wish to understand the nature of literariness or the "literary effect", i.e. the pleasures we derive from reading; secondly research on reading pathologies carried out at St Anne’s Hospital, Paris. The (...) author uses clinical observations of non-reading children to answer literary questions about the reading experience, using psychoanalytic theory as a conceptual framework. The notion that reading difficulties or phobias should be seen as a symptom in the psychoanalytic sense, allows Picard to shed light on both clinical vignettes taken from children’s case histories and reading scenes from literary texts. Children experiencing difficulties in learning to read highlight the imaginary stakes of the confrontation with the arbitrary nature of the letter and the "price to pay" for one’s entrance into the Symbolic. Picard applies the lesson "taught" by these children to a series of key literary texts featuring, at their very core, this confrontation with the signifier, with the written code itself.. This book argues that there is something in literature that drives us back, again and again, to the loss we have suffered as human beings, to what we had to undergo to become human: our subjection to the common place of language. Picard shows complex Lacanian concepts "at work" in the field of reading pathologies, emphasizing close reading and a clinical attention to the "letter" of the texts, far from the "psychobiographical" attempts at psychologizing literary authors. _From Illiteracy to Literature_ presents a novel psychodynamic approach that will be of great interest to psychotherapists and language pathologists, appealing to literary scholars and those interested in the process of reading and "literariness.". (shrink)

Donald Kalsched explores the interior world of dream and fantasy images encountered in therapy with people who have suffered unbearable life experiences. He shows how, in an ironical twist of psychical life, the very images which are generated to defend the self can become malevolent and destructive, resulting in further trauma for the person. Why and how this happens are the questions the book sets out to answer. Drawing on detailed clinical material, the author gives special attention to the problems (...) of addiction and psychosomatic disorder, as well as the broad topic of dissociation and its treatment. By focusing on the archaic and primitive defenses of the self he connects Jungian theory and practice with contemporary object relations theory and dissociation theory. At the same time, he shows how a Jungian understanding of the universal images of myth and folklore can illuminate treatment of the traumatised patient. Trauma is about the rupture of those developmental transitions that make life worth living. Donald Kalsched sees this as a spiritual problem as well as a psychological one and in _The Inner World of Trauma_ he provides a compelling insight into how an inner self-care system tries to save the personal spirit. (shrink)

Freud's analogies were legion: hydraulic pipes, military recruitment, magic writing pads. These and some three hundred others took features of the mind and bound them to far-off scenes – the id only very partially resembles an uncontrollable horse, as Freud took pains to note. But there was one relation between psychic and public act that Freud did not delimit in this way: censorship, the process that checked memories and dreams on their way to the conscious. At first, Freud likened (...) this suppression to the blacking out of texts at the Russian frontier. During the First World War, he suffered, and spoke of suffering under, Viennese postal and newspaper censorship – Freud was forced to leave his envelopes unsealed, and to recode or delete content. Over and over, he registered the power of both internal and public censorship in shared form: distortion, anticipatory deletion, softenings, even revision to hide suppression. Political censorship left its mark as the conflict reshaped his view of the psyche into a society on a war footing, with homunculus-like border guards sifting messages as they made their way – or did not – across a topography of mind. (shrink)

Freud’s earliest hysterical analysands reported a shared grievance about psychoanalysis: while their individual suffering was conditioned by social circumstances, Freud could not “alter these in any way.” If psychic illness is tied to repressive external conditions that the psychoanalyst cannot change, how can a method circumscribed to the individual’s inner life offer liberation, even cure? Motivated by the hysteric’s desire for a better life and Freud’s commitment to our intersubjectivity in common, contributors to this special issue consider psychoanalysis as (...) a political project that holds open the space of collective action—from the analyst’s couch to the picket line, from guerrilla psychoanalysis in revolutionary Algeria and Argentina to clinical treatment for the symptomatology of exile and homelessness. The contributors construct, critique, historicize, and reimagine psychoanalysis as grounds for universal solidarity. Contributors. Gila Ashtor, Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Alex Colston, Rachel Greenspan, Anna Kornbluh, Todd McGowan, Tracy McNulty, Ankhi Mukherjee, Fernanda Negrete, Michelle Rada, Samo Tomšič, Hannah Zeavin. (shrink)

The author's aim in this biography is to shed light on the contrasts and polarity—yet relationship—between the rational and the irrational in Gödel's work and personality. On the one hand there is the genius logician whose technical work can be said practically to have attained the limits of what rational thought can produce; on the other hand, one is struck, claims the author, by the irrationality in Gödel's personality and psychic structure, such as his belief in the existence of (...) spirits, demons, angels, the devil, and other evil-wishing forces that he thought had haunted and deprived him of a peaceful existence.As is well known from other biographies, Gödel was of a frail physical health and psychic balance, having suffered from his student days on from bouts of depression and ‘nervous’ breakdowns—generally attributed to being overworked—that required at times short hospitalization in a sanatorium and culminating toward the end of his life in a marked deterioration in his mental health that resulted in his starving himself to death out of fear of being poisoned. These events are only mentioned here in passing.The author, who teaches philosophy at the University of Lille, is naturally interested in Gödel's philosophical views as well as in his metaphysical reflections, such as his thoughts about life after death and the survival of an immaterial soul. From the 1940s Gödel kept a philosophical diary that contains 670 handwritten notes, written in the now defunct Gabelsberger shorthand. Having feared controversies whenever his metaphysical/philosophical views went against the spirit of the times, Gödel was never led to a comprehensive publication of these views, preferring to put these notes in the private format of notebooks that are now preserved in his Nachlassat Princeton University. 1 The author had several opportunities to study the two of these notebooks …. (shrink)