Clinical Neuropsychologist, 20 years’ experience, UK

Author(s):  
Markus Reuber ◽  
Gregg H. Rawlings ◽  
Steven C. Schachter

This chapter explores how dissociation of awareness of either the mind or the body can be experienced by everyone to some degree. It has been suggested that in Non-Epileptic Attack Disorder (NEAD), a protective mechanism of enabling individuals to detach from the difficult emotions they have not yet been able to make sense of has led to a detachment from the awareness of the body, thus resulting in physical symptoms that resemble epileptic seizures. Treatment therefore lies in improving both mind and body awareness. Working with individuals with NEAD or Dissociative Seizures introduces one to the multifaceted nature of humanity. Although there are common themes that emerge through psychological assessment—such as prior experience of illness, neurological insult or physical injury to a specific body part, difficulty recognizing stress in the body or mind, or a tendency to use unhelpful coping strategies during prolonged periods of stress,—no two persons with NEAD have the same seizures because each individual’s experience is unique, making the nature and clinical presentation of the seizure-like experiences idiosyncratic. Despite this, it is always possible to discover the reason that individuals with NEAD experience the symptoms they do, even if it is sometimes initially hard for the individual to accept or believe this.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 20190094 ◽  
Author(s):  
William MacLehose

While the concept of ‘stress' in the modern sense is a twentieth-century innovation, many of the symptoms we associate with the modern condition appear in historical materials going back many centuries. But how did premodern people understand and experience these symptoms and their relation to sleep? This study focuses on the rich materials from the central middle ages in Western Europe, a period during which understandings of the body, mind, emotions and sleep were radically different from the present. It analyses two examples, nightmares and insomnia, disease categories which illustrate medieval views of the impact of worries and anguish on sleep. Medical and other sources identified a number of ways in which the mind and body interacted with one another in complex ways which disrupted the humoral and mental balance of the individual.


Author(s):  
Chantal Jaquet

Lastly, on the basis of this definition, the author shows how affects shed light on the body-mind relationship and provide an opportunity to produce a mixed discourse that focuses, by turns, on the mental, physical, or psychophysical aspect of affect. The final chapter has two parts: – An analysis of the three categories of affects: mental, physical, and psychophysical – An examination of the variations of Spinoza’s discourse Some affects, such as satisfaction of the mind, are presented as mental, even though they are correlated with the body. Others, such as pain or pleasure, cheerfulness (hilaritas) or melancholy are mainly rooted in the body, even though the mind forms an idea of them. Still others are psychophysical, such as humility or pride, which are expressed at once as bodily postures and states of mind. These affects thus show us how the mind and body are united, all the while expressing themselves differently and specifically, according to their own modalities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Surjo Soekadar ◽  
Jennifer Chandler ◽  
Marcello Ienca ◽  
Christoph Bublitz

Recent advances in neurotechnology allow for an increasingly tight integration of the human brain and mind with artificial cognitive systems, blending persons with technologies and creating an assemblage that we call a hybrid mind. In some ways the mind has always been a hybrid, emerging from the interaction of biology, culture (including technological artifacts) and the natural environment. However, with the emergence of neurotechnologies enabling bidirectional flows of information between the brain and AI-enabled devices, integrated into mutually adaptive assemblages, we have arrived at a point where the specific examination of this new instantiation of the hybrid mind is essential. Among the critical questions raised by this development are the effects of these devices on the user’s perception of the self, and on the user’s experience of their own mental contents. Questions arise related to the boundaries of the mind and body and whether the hardware and software that are functionally integrated with the body and mind are to be viewed as parts of the person or separate artifacts subject to different legal treatment. Other questions relate to how to attribute responsibility for actions taken as a result of the operations of a hybrid mind, as well as how to settle questions of the privacy and security of information generated and retained within a hybrid mind.


Author(s):  
Nitu kumari singh (Gautam) ◽  
Laxmi Paudyal

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a challenging problem as the psychological changes which occur in adolescent period are much more stressful and complex. Premenstrual syndrome also known as premenstrual tension (PMT) is a collection of emotional symptoms, with or without physical symptoms, related to menstrual cycle of girls. Menstruation is a normal physiological cycle or process in all females of the reproductive age group. However some women, girls feel or affected by menstrual problem. Among those, PMS is one of the disorder and it is mainly due to hormonal imbalance in the body. Yoga which helps to harmonize the mind and breath with the body through various breathing techniques, yoga posture (asanas) and meditation which also helps in relieving pain. Yoga, tailored to chronic low back pain which helps to produce significant reduction in pain and depression. Several yoga poses helps to ease PMS and also help the mind and body to adapt with stress, anxiety and depression making to feel relaxed and calm, as well as enabling us to cope with psychological symptoms of PMS. The study was conducted with the aim to evaluate the effectiveness of structured teaching programme (STP) regarding selected yoga techniques to relieve the symptoms of PMS among adolescent girls. Researcher adopted an evaluatory approach with pre-experimental one group pre-test and post-test design in the study. Self- structured knowledge questionnaire was used to assess the knowledge among adolescent girls regarding selected yoga technique to relieve the symptoms of PMS. Split half method was used to check the Reliability of the Tool and the tool was found reliable ( r= 0.88). probability simple random sampling techniques was used to select 100 adolescent girls from 3 high school. Findings revealed that the post-test knowledge score (26.49±2.48) was higher than pre-test knowledge score (10.25±2.46). The calculated ‘t’value in knowledge (51.34 p<0.05). The study found significant association between knowledge and demographical variables. Study concludes that structured teaching programme was effective in improving the knowledge of adolescent girls regarding Yoga techniques to relieve the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome.


2020 ◽  
pp. 171-214
Author(s):  
Sarah Waters

Chapter five examines a series of suicides at car manufacturer Renault, situating them in the transition from an industrial model to a knowledge economy, in which value is expropriated from the resources of the mind. Suicides did not take place in the emblematic spaces of the factory, where cars were once mass produced, but in a state-of-the art research centre, where cognitive workers conceptualised and designed cutting-edge cars of the future. In the knowledge economy, the mind is treated as an endlessly productive resource that reproduces itself continuously and is unencumbered by the physical limitations of the body. I argue that suicides were the end point of a form of vital exhaustion that transcends the corporeal defences of the physical body and depletes the mental and emotional resources of the self. Suicides do not reflect a deterioration in formal or material conditions of work, but rather a transformation in forms of constraint, as the individual worker internalises modes of discipline and becomes his or her own boss. Suicides affected workers who experienced a phase of chronic overwork in which the quest to achieve productivity targets pushed them to work continuously and obsessively.


Author(s):  
Markus Reuber ◽  
Gregg H. Rawlings ◽  
Steven C. Schachter

This chapter describes the experience of a specialist cognitive behavioral therapist in Non-Epileptic Attack Disorder (NEAD). Offering therapy for people with NEAD can involve frustrations, difficulties, concerns, and, without a doubt, imposter syndrome. Nevertheless, knowing someone personally growing up with NEAD definitely inspired the therapist to work in this field. The therapist also had an understanding of what NEAD was as a layperson before the therapist became a professional. Moreover, the therapist had lived experience of how this condition affects the person and how it affects family members and friends, relationships, and careers. It creates worry and uncertainty in everyone around, in terms of what the problem is and how to help. Fortunately, the therapist learned quickly about the mind and body connection and how to explain this to patients, and it started to click with people and improve helpful engagement. The more the therapist became experienced, the more the therapist understood, and the less people had episodes in their assessments.


Author(s):  
Markus Reuber ◽  
Gregg H. Rawlings ◽  
Steven C. Schachter

This chapter focuses on the experience of a nurse when working with children and adolescents with Non-Epileptic Seizures (NES). Young people today have challenges on many levels, and for some, the total load becomes so great that they develop “seizures” for which a biological cause cannot be identified. Young people who develop NES have often been overloaded for a long time, many describing family problems, long-term bullying problems, exclusion or problems at school. The nurse is also increasingly meeting young people who struggle to adapt to youth culture. They are exhausted from trying to find a balance in their lives—a balance between achievement and rest, between their own needs and society’s demands, between “what the mind wants” and “what the body can tolerate.” Some come from families who have strong ideals that are not compatible with youth culture. This can result in a loyalty conflict that seems impossible to solve.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Gunne Grankvist ◽  
Petri Kajonius ◽  
Bjorn Persson

<p>Dualists view the mind and the body as two fundamental different “things”, equally real and independent of each other. Cartesian thought, or substance dualism, maintains that the mind and body are two different substances, the non-physical and the physical, and a causal relationship is assumed to exist between them. Physicalism, on the other hand, is the idea that everything that exists is either physical or totally dependent of and determined by physical items. Hence, all mental states are fundamentally physical states. In the current study we investigated to what degree Swedish university students’ beliefs in mind-body dualism is explained by the importance they attach to personal values. A self-report inventory was used to measure their beliefs and values. Students who held stronger dualistic beliefs attach less importance to the power value (i.e., the effort to achieve social status, prestige, and control or dominance over people and resources). This finding shows that the strength in laypeople’s beliefs in dualism is partially explained by the importance they attach to personal values.</p>


2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 482-487
Author(s):  
S. Suresh

Stress is believed to be a state of the mind as well as the body, created by certain biochemical reactions in the human body as well as psychological responses to situations, and is reflected by a sense of anxiety, tension and depression and is caused by such demands by the environmental forces or internal forces that cannot be met by the resources available to the person. The greater the gap between the demands and the resources, the greater is the degree of stress. Some of the individual strategies for coping with stress include: readjustment of life goals, support from family and friends, planning certain events of life in advance and keeping the body in good physiological shape by proper diet, exercise, yoga, meditation and biofeedback. Some of the organizational strategies for coping with stress include organized health maintenance facilities as a part of the organizational life, matching of employees qualifications with job requirements, job enrichment and job work redesigns, equitable performance appraisal and reward systems, participation in organizational decision making and building team spirit in the sense that there should be no interpersonal conflict within the group. All these strategies or a combination thereof should be applied to make the work environment less stressful to a level which is positive and challenging.


2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bracha Hadar

This paper suggests an integration of two therapeutic domains in which the author was trained and certified: group analysis and bioenergetic analysis. Bioenergetic analysis is a psychodynamic psychotherapy, which sees the individual as a psychosomatic unity and combines work with the body and the mind. The author considers the pioneering book The Group as an Object of Desire by Morris Nitsun as a facilitating environment for the ideas of this paper to be accepted. Nitsun opens up the importance, on one hand, and the neglect, on the other hand, of sexuality and the body in the discourse of group analysis. The paper brings the body to the front of group analysis. It illuminates the body as the stage on which the drama of shame occurs. The paper discusses five dimensions of shame, categorized into five degrees of pathology, having to do with the developmental stages in which it occurred. The most archaic one (degree 1) is the most malignant and inhibits the social life of the individual. The fifth degree, social shame, is necessary in order to be part of society. A bridge of understanding between group analysis and bioenergetic analysis is suggested in which social shame, the more superficial one, serves as a defence against or displacement of the bodily shame. The ultimate space for working, therapeutically, on shame is the group, provided the body is not dissociated from the arena. A clinical example of working with a group in the integrated model is described, followed by a discussion. It is suggested to consider the matrix as the group body-mind instead of only the group mind.


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