Marbles, Clocks, and the Postmodern Self

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert O. Piehl

This article traces the construct of self from its modern origins in Cartesian dualism through postmodern psychoanalytic forms. As the self crosses the postmodern divide, a new configuration based on relationality emerges that alters classic metapsychological postulates. The postmodern concepts of nonreductive physicalism and holonic hierarchies serve to explicate a version of personhood derived from the Trinitarian doctrine of God. Because these transformations radically affect psychotherapeutic theory and practice, an understanding of the postmodern self that is both authentically biblical and current epistemologically is crucial for Christian therapists. To aid this end, the article employs an analogy that uses marbles and clocks to demonstrate the shift from the conception of the modern self to the postmodern person.

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-224
Author(s):  
Erik Gunderson

This is a survey of some of the problems surrounding imperial panegyric. It includes discussions of both the theory and practice of imperial praise. The evidence is derived from readings of Cicero, Quintilian, Pliny, the Panegyrici Latini, Menander Rhetor, and Julian the Apostate. Of particular interest is insincere speech that would be appreciated as insincere. What sort of hermeneutic process is best suited to texts that are politically consequential and yet relatively disconnected from any obligation to offer a faithful representation of concrete reality? We first look at epideictic as a genre. The next topic is imperial praise and its situation “beyond belief” as well as the self-positioning of a political subject who delivers such praise. This leads to a meditation on the exculpatory fictions that these speakers might tell themselves about their act. A cynical philosophy of Caesarism, its arbitrariness, and its constructedness abets these fictions. Julian the Apostate receives the most attention: he wrote about Caesars, he delivered extant panegyrics, and he is also the man addressed by still another panegyric. And in the end we find ourselves to be in a position to appreciate the way that power feeds off of insincerity and grows stronger in its presence.


2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 109-119
Author(s):  
Petar Opalic

The introduction presents different contents and historical aspects of the relation between philosophy and psychiatry, with the issues of metapsychiatry among the most general ones. Subsequently, several problems of metapsychiatry are addressed, as problematizing of psychiatric theory and practice. The questions to which metapsychiatry, alone or together with other sciences could provide answers, are briefly addressed. Those are primarily the issues of singularity and consistency of a particular psychiatric entity, the issue of causality in psychiatry, the reality of psychiatric categories, the issue of the relation of psychiatry and common sense, of modular or holistic organization of mental contents, the relation between practicism and intellectualism in psychiatry, of the Cartesian dilemma in psychiatry and the issue of autonomy of the contents of spiritual life. The main issue that metapsychiatry ought to provide an answer to is the relation between physical and psychic substantiality in psychiatry, solved until now, as e already said, from the viewpoints of idealistic nomism. materialism, neutral monism ontological epiphenomenalism, and Cartesian dualism. As a conclusion, the author points to certain advantages offered by metapsychiatric analyses, i.e. defragmenting the relation between philosophy and psychiatry.


Author(s):  
Guillermo J. Larios-Hernandez

This chapter exposes how the realization of digital transformation (DT) derives from the decisional communication of rule-making “chosen” alternatives, which originate in the self-referenced informational space, according to the dual perspective of reality adopted in evolutionary economics. Based on a critical analysis of scholarly literature to identify key proposals that support the definition of DT strategies, this research establishes the relevance of the fundamental tenets of autopoiesis theory, such as operational closure, structural coupling, and languaging, in the context of digitalization, to harmonize such DT strategy proposals to the structure of the organization in terms of decision premises. The internal availability of these decision premises determines the type of digitalization potential that can be self-observed by the organization, reinterpreting the attributes of DT in a framework that recognizes the sets of DT alternatives as decision premise dichotomies, with implications for theory and practice.


2018 ◽  
pp. 124-177
Author(s):  
Laura Kounine

This chapter deals with the role of the self and conscience in defending oneself against the charge of witchcraft. To add depth to intellectual concepts—and teleologies—of the self, we must understand how the individual self was understood, felt, and experienced. Particularly for the crime of witchcraft, the crux of the trial was premised on the moral question of what kind of person would commit such a crime. Those on trial for witchcraft in the Lutheran duchy of Württemberg invoked the idioms of ‘mind’, ‘conscience’, ‘heart’, or ‘self’ in constructing their defence. Through four case studies, ranging from 1565 to 1678, this chapter examines the different ways in which people could conceptualize their person, and shows that change over time in the ‘development’ of the modern self was not a uniform or directly linear pattern.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Lonny Harrison

This paper compares Dostoevsky’s The Gambler (1866) to certain features of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) to show that the two texts demonstrate the emergence of a simulacral culture of the modern self. The De Quincean model of subjectivity is presented as a prototype of the modern self before The Gambler is investigated in its light. Insofar as the self is constructed in the context of social environments, modernity is characterized by a mimetic mode we might call intensity, where the modern self finds and creates its identity through repetitive patterns of mediated experience. In particular, it is argued that the first-person narrators of Confessions and The Gambler exemplify the obsessive cycle of self-production—a characteristically modern addiction to the decentring and multiplication of the self, rooted in the need for the intoxicating effect of strong sensations and imaginary experience. Self-production functions in a cycle of passion, transgression, and suffering, followed by anticipation of change and renewal, on a par, psychologically, with rebirth or resurrection. The major difference between the works is that, while Confessions emphasizes the causality of social conditions, The Gambler is predicated on the uniquely Russian sense of destiny (sud’ba).


2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ko Ling Chan ◽  
Cecilia L.W. Chan

The research studies the relationship between theory and practice in the context of an agency. Eight social workers from an agency were recruited for in-depth interviews. Results showed that the conception of theory and practice was influenced by the self, the client and the agency.


Author(s):  
Signe Hedeboe Frederiksen ◽  
Karin Berglund

Entrepreneurship education (EE) theory and practice show increasing interest in the concept of identity work as integral to entrepreneurial learning. EE offers various approaches to guiding students towards entrepreneurial identities, but critics note that these meet neoliberal manifestations of the entrepreneurial self, leaving little room for alternative identities to be cultivated in EE. Concerned with this critique, we aim to contribute to the EE literature through a detailed investigation of the identity work practices enacted in a case of EE, which explicitly seeks to facilitate the entrepreneurial identity construction of students. Through an in-depth analysis of teacher–student interactions, we identify three practices: setting new rules to activate the entrepreneurial self, playing by the rules by figuring the script and bending the rules protecting the self. Our analysis highlights the significance of resistance and notions of authenticity, which leads us to rethink the meaning and conditions of entrepreneurial identity work in EE.


2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Raymond L. M. Lee
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  

In late modernity, the question of death has become more transparent. Modern consciousness either procrastinates on this question or takes death to signal the end of the self. The revival of death consciousness opens up a new field of investigation into the meaning of the modern self. When contrasted with premodern notions of death, the modern self facing death is seen to be isolated, distant, and struggling to preserve its autonomy. Death in modernity is a mirror for reflecting the precariousness of the self.


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