The Pathogenic and Therapeutic Potential of the Gaze of the Other in the Clinic of “Eating Disorders”

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 291-297
Author(s):  
Cecilia Maria Esposito ◽  
Giovanni Stanghellini
Keyword(s):  
Eating Disorders ◽  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Control ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
Embodied Self ◽  
Body Subject

Building on the optical-coenaesthetic disproportion model of so-called eating disorders, this paper provides a framework for the psychotherapy of people affected by these conditions. This model characterizes “eating disorders” as disorders of embodiment and identity, where a sense of unfamiliarity with one’s own flesh, experienced as shifting and incomprehensible, leads to an impairment in the constitution of the Self and thus of one’s own identity. Since there is a deficit of the coenaesthetic experience of the embodied Self, greater importance is assumed by body perception conveyed from without. To these persons, their corporeality is principally given as a body-object “to be seen” from a third-person perspective, rather than as a body-subject “to be felt” from a first-person perspective. The Other’s look serves as an optical prosthesis to cope with dis-coenaesthesia and as a device through which these persons can define themselves. They are unable to accept the hiatus between “being a body” and “having a body,” constitutively present in every human being, forcibly trying to recouple it, and finally ending up objectifying themselves to succeed. The external foundation of the Self thus takes the form of a constriction one can never be completely free of. Psychotherapy should thus accompany persons affected by eating disorders in their encounter with the miscarried dialectic between feeling oneself from within and seeing oneself from without through the gaze of the Other, so keenly feared by people desperately in search of self-control. Tactfully, the clinician accompanies the patient in taking a stance towards her symptom as the outcome of this miscarried dialectics, which is one premise for overcoming it. The clinician’s gaze becomes the herald of recognition, allowing the patient to feel accepted in terms of her individuality. Feeling themselves touched by a gaze that waives its alienating potential in order to signify acceptance reactivates the identity-forming dialectics. Their body is thus revealed as the receiver of gazes, but also rediscovers its own possibility for self-determination starting out from these gazes. This intersubjective resonance between the clinician’s gaze and the patient reactivates the identity-making dialectics between body-subject and body-object, creating the relational premises for overcoming the symptom.

Distinct Regions of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex Are Associated with Self-referential Processing and Perspective Taking

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 935-944 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnaud D'Argembeau ◽  
Perrine Ruby ◽  
Fabienne Collette ◽  
Christian Degueldre ◽  
Evelyne Balteau ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Imaging Study ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Referential Processing ◽  
Third Person Perspective

The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) appears to play a prominent role in two fundamental aspects of social cognition, that is, self-referential processing and perspective taking. However, it is currently unclear whether the same or different regions of the MPFC mediate these two interdependent processes. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study sought to clarify the issue by manipulating both dimensions in a factorial design. Participants judged the extent to which trait adjectives described their own personality (e.g., “Are you sociable?”) or the personality of a close friend (e.g., “Is Caroline sociable?”) and were also asked to put themselves in the place of their friend (i.e., to take a third-person perspective) and estimate how this person would judge the adjectives, with the target of the judgments again being either the self (e.g., “According to Caroline, are you sociable?”) or the other person (e.g., “According to Caroline, is she sociable?”). We found that self-referential processing (i.e., judgments targeting the self vs. the other person) yielded activation in the ventral and dorsal anterior MPFC, whereas perspective taking (i.e., adopting the other person's perspective, rather than one's own, when making judgments) resulted in activation in the posterior dorsal MPFC; the interaction between the two dimensions yielded activation in the left dorsal MPFC. These findings show that self-referential processing and perspective taking recruit distinct regions of the MPFC and suggest that the left dorsal MPFC may be involved in decoupling one's own from other people's perspectives on the self.

scholarly journals The Seven Selves of Dementia

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Bomilcar ◽  
Elodie Bertrand ◽  
Robin G. Morris ◽  
Daniel C. Mograbi
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Psychosocial Influences ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
Embodied Self

The self is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, encompassing a variety of cognitive processes and psychosocial influences. Considering this, there is a multiplicity of “selves,” the current review suggesting that seven fundamental self-processes can be identified that further our understanding of the experience of dementia. These include (1) an embodied self, manifest as corporeal awareness; (2) an agentic self, related to being an agent and influencing life circumstances; (3) an implicit self, linked to non-conscious self-processing; (4) a critical self, which defines the core of self-identity; (5) a surrogate self, based on third-person perspective information; (6) an extended self, including external objects or existences that are incorporated into the self; and, finally, (7) an emergent self, a property of the self-processes that give rise to the sense of a unified self. These are discussed in relation to self-awareness and their use in making sense of the experience of dementia.

scholarly journals Lived body and the Other’s gaze: a phenomenological perspective on feeding and eating disorders

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milena Mancini ◽  
Cecilia Maria Esposito
Keyword(s):  
Eating Disorders ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lived Body ◽  
First Person ◽  
Level Of Evidence ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Feeding And Eating Disorders ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
Third Person

AbstractAccording to the phenomenological perspective, the lived body disorder is a core feature of feeding and eating disorders (FEDs). Persons with FEDs experience their own body first of all as an object looked by another person, rather than coenaesthetically or from a first-person perspective. In particular, the main features of this disorder are: alienation from the own body and from the own emotions, disgust for it, shame, and an exaggerated preoccupation for the way in which one appears to the others. Phenomenological research has recently highlighted that the gaze of the Other plays an important role. Because persons with FEDs cannot have an experience of their own body from within or coenesthetically, they need to apprehend their own body from outside through the gaze of the Other. This way of apprehending one’s own body when it is looked by another person is called by Sartre the ‘lived body-for-others’. Normally, the constitution of one’s own body, and consequently of one’s own Self and identity depends on the dialectic integration between the first-person apprehension of one’s body (lived body) that it is based on coenaesthesia, and the third-person one, that it is based on the sense of sight (lived-body-for-others). When the dialectic is unbalanced toward the pole of the lived-body-for-others, experienced from without, the symptom occurs. Starting from these clinical observations, the so-called Optical-Coenaesthetic Disproportion model has been developed. In this paper, we describe this model, its philosophical and clinical foundations, and finally its clinical implication and its relationship with other disciplines, i.e., neurosciences. Level of evidence: V.

Praktiken und Praxis

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-56
Author(s):  
Thomas Alkemeyer
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Lived Body ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Discipline Formation ◽  
Material Basis ◽  
Embodied Self ◽  
Self Formation

Two forms or rather perspectives of observations appear alongside practice theories: The first perspective can be called the „theatre perspective“: practice here is observed as a regular, spatiotemporally ordered, socially structured, and therefore recognizable historical form of „practical doings and sayings“, in which participants are understood as mere carriers of practices and their bodies as the raw material for processes of formation. In the other perspective, understood as the perspective of the participants themselves, practices come into view as ongoing, conflictual, and contingent accomplishments, in which participants occur as intelligently collaborating contributors with so called „lived bodies“. These bodies are affectable, sites of experience, and media of a sensitivity that allow an embodied self to orientate itself (with)in a practice. This paper proposes a methodological mediation of both perspectives by taking into account both a sociological analysis of discipline, formation, or adjustment, and the reflexive sensing in action, which can be modeled phenomenologically. Thus, a „lived-body-in-accomplishment“ comes into view that serves the material basis of subjectivation procceses, i. e. the (self-)formation of a constitutionally conditioned (political) agency.

Nina Simone as Poet and Orchestrator

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-147
Author(s):  
Marcus R. Pyle
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Nina Simone

How do you fashion an identity in a society that, at every turn, tries to snuff you out? In this article, I address Nina Simone's praxis of renaming and reinvention to demonstrate strategies of resistance. To this point, I analyze the musico-poetic setting of Nina Simone’s songs “Images” (1964) and “Four Women” (1965) to argue that her artistic musical choices sonically orchestrate varying issues of Black female subjectivity, identity, and self-making. In Simone’s songs, she refuses to discount the materiality of the Black body; instead, she envelops the Black body with signifiance and significance. The sonic bearers of semantic content become extensions of the Self—transmutable and heterodox. The compositional and poetic subtleties in these songs claim that the gaze of the Other can potentiate exteriority and freedom—what I term the “exo(p)tic.”

scholarly journals MASCULINITY AS AN IDENTITY AND AS A CLUSTER OF TRAITS

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-158
Author(s):  
Renata Zieminska
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Male Gender ◽  
The Self ◽  
Simple Idea ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Binary Model ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person Perspective

The paper presents the concept of masculinity within the non-binary and multilayered model of gender/sex traits. Within that model, masculinity is not a simple idea, but rather is fragmented into many traits in diverse clusters. The experience of transgender men and men with intersex traits suggests that self-determined male gender identity is a mega trait that is sufficient for being a man. However, masculinity is not only psychological, as the content of the psychological feeling of being a man refers to social norms about how men should be and behave. And male coded traits are described as traits that frequently occur within the group of people identifying as men. Therefore, I claim that there are two interdependent ideas in the concept of masculinity: the self-determined male gender identity (first-person perspective) and a cluster of traits coded as male (third-person perspective). Within non-binary model the interplay between the two interdependent ideas allows to include borderline masculinities.

scholarly journals Image schemas, mimetic schemas and children's gestures

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Zlatev
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Natural Interaction ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
The One

Abstract Mimetic schemas, unlike the popular cognitive linguistic notion of image schemas, have been characterized in earlier work as explicitly representational, bodily structures arising from imitation of culture-specific practical actions (Zlatev 2005, 2007a, 2007b). We performed an analysis of the gestures of three Swedish and three Thai children at the age of 18, 22 and 26 months in episodes of natural interaction with caregivers and siblings in order to analyze the hypothesis that iconic gestures emerge as mimetic schemas. In accordance with this hypothesis, we predicted that the children's first iconic gestures would be (a) intermediately specific, (b) culture-typical, (c) falling in a set of recurrent types, (d) predominantly enacted from a first-person perspective (1pp) rather than performed from a third-person perspective (3pp), with (e) 3pp gestures being more dependent on direct imitation than 1pp gestures and (f) more often co-occurring with speech. All specific predictions but the last were confirmed, and differences were found between the children's iconic gestures on the one side and their deictic and emblematic gestures on the other. Thus, the study both confirms earlier conjectures that mimetic schemas “ground” both gesture and speech and implies the need to qualify these proposals, limiting the link between mimetic schemas and gestures to the iconic category.

The Poverty of Philosophical Method

2019 ◽  
pp. 64-82
Author(s):  
William G. Lycan
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Good Argument ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
Interaction Problem

Cartesian mind–body dualism is widely thought to have been simply refuted by sound argument. This chapter maintains that the case against dualism is very weak. There is no very good argument for materialism, and the objections to dualism are convincing only to materialists. In particular, the dreaded Interaction problem is not notably hard for a committed dualist to handle; and the other standard objections simply presuppose a third-person perspective that would not be tolerated by the dualist in the first place. Materialism is not significantly better supported than dualism. In the process, the chapter sets out a number of sociophilosophical observations that explain our impression that dualism has been simply shown to be untenable. The sociophilosophical observations, more generally, explain how an illusion is created to the effect that purely philosophical reasoning can either prove or refute a significant doctrine or claim.

The Self as Activity

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Weger ◽  
Klaus Herbig
Keyword(s):  
Self Esteem ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Ideal Self ◽  
The Real ◽  
Self Compassion ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Self Schema ◽  
Core Self

The self is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon that is often described through its subcomponents (e.g., self-control, self-esteem, self-compassion). The entity that unifies these subcomponents is more elusive and difficult to access, at least with standard psychological methods. In the current inquiry we set out to illuminate and extend the understanding of the self by exploring the differentiation of the self as a “content” versus a “process” (e.g., self-schema vs. self-activity). We also differentiate the “self” from the “I,” exploring characteristics of a 3rd- versus a 1st-person perspective to this core psychological entity. We pursue an empirical 1st-person inquiry that is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on concepts from both psychology and religious studies (in particular the “essential” or “core” self in psychology, as well as the “real” or “ideal” self in religious studies in the form of the “I Am” statements in the Gospels). Our approach illustrates how a consideration of phenomenological, 1st-person qualities of selfhood allows for an enriched, empirically based understanding of crucially important but subtle dimensions of I-ness that remain inaccessible to 3rd-person exploration.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document