Social Constructionism and the Role of the Unconscious in Hypnotic Responding: A Single Case Experiment

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 156-163
Author(s):  
David P. Fourie
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Unconscious Mind

AbstractThere seems to be wide acceptance by both professionals and lay people that hypnotic and especially hypnotherapeutic responding is based on the long-standing but still hypothetical dichotomy between the conscious and unconscious minds. In this simplistic view, hypnotic suggestions are considered to bypass consciousness to reach the unconscious mind, there to have the intended effect. This article reports on a single-case experiment investigating the involvement of the unconscious in hypnotherapeutic responding. In this case the subject responded positively to suggestions that could not have reached the unconscious, indicating that the unconscious was not involved in such responding. An alternative view is proposed, namely that hypnotherapeutic responding involves a cognitive process in which a socially constructed new understanding of the problem behaviour and of hypnosis, based on the client's existing attribution of meaning, is followed by action considered appropriate to the new understanding and which then confirms this understanding, leading to behaviour change.

scholarly journals TO THE STUDY OF THE MECHANISM OF TRIGGERING THE PLACEBO EFFECT: PLACEBO AND AUTO-SUGGESTION

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-228
Author(s):  
A.V. Khaikin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Placebo Effect ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Linear Structure ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Positive Expectation ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Subject ◽  
State Of Research

The current state of research on the placebo effect is considered. The task is set to develop the idea of the role of positive expectation in the mechanism of placebo implementation. A number of assumptions concerning the nature of placebo and approaches to its study are put forward. Consideration of the effect in its linear structure can contribute to the study of the nature of the placebo. It is useful to understand this phenomenon as consisting of a stage of psychological triggering and a stage of psychosomatic and physiological implementation. In turn, it is useful to consider the first of them as consisting of a preliminary stage of forming a positive (or negative – with nocebo) expectation, confidence in a certain effect of a placebo agent, and the stage of actually triggering a placebo. When implementing the placebo effect, the active expectation of a certain internal process and its result activates the mechanism of auto-suggestion, within which the expected is realized. The placebo is triggered by the implementation of one of the types of autosuggestion process, which does not presuppose any purposeful actions of the subject, for example, orders addressed to the unconscious. A significant part of the studies of the placebo effect nature can be carried out within the framework of the study of the mechanisms and patterns of this way of autosuggestion, which is triggered by the confident active expectation of the subject in the onset of certain internal changes. It is clear that such studies can be carried out in contexts other than those of placebo and nocebo implementation, for example, neutral in relation to the physical and emotional state and make their conduct not burdened with ethical problems. Which, of course, can significantly contribute to the intensification of the study of the placebo nature. It is concluded that the proposed concept develops the thesis about the necessary role of positive expectation in the implementation of the placebo effect, explaining the role of expectation in the mechanism of its launch. Understanding the mechanism of the placebo effect as a mechanism for self-suggestion will significantly simplify the conditions for experimental studies of placebo patterns and creates a context for further research.

Translators of the Soul: Bingham Dai, Pow-Meng Yap, and the Making of Transcultural Psychoanalysis in the Asia Pacific

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-185
Author(s):  
Howard Chiang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Health Science ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Cultural Narratives ◽  
Asia Pacific Region ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Conceptual Innovation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Unconscious Mind

This essay argues that Asian psychoanalysts developed a new style of science, what I call transcultural reasoning, in the twentieth century. This conceptual innovation drew on the power of cultural narratives to elucidate the unconscious mind across different historical and geographical contexts. Focusing on the life and work of two experts in particular, Bingham Dai (1899–1996) and Pow-Meng Yap (1921–71), this article reconsiders the role of biography in the history of psychoanalysis and elucidates the importance of the Asia Pacific region to the transformation of mental health science in the twentieth century.

scholarly journals DREAM AND REALITY IN THE POETRY OF DAVID GASCOIGNE (LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE POEM AND THE SEVENTH DREAM IS THE DREAM OF ISIS)

2018 ◽  
pp. 32-38
Author(s):  
Liudmyla Pradivlianna
Keyword(s):  
Visual Images ◽  
Visual Effects ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
French Version ◽  
The Core ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Unconscious Mind ◽  
Century Literature

Surrealism, the XX century literature and art movement, inspired an impressive number of scientific research regarding different aspects of the phenomenon. This paper studies surrealism as a type of artistic thinking which raised the role of the unconscious in poetry. It focuses on the core of surrealist aesthetics – an automatic image, which allowed the poets to study human irrational states, such as dreams. Focusing on the themes of dreams and dream-like narrations, surrealists created poetry which was formed by specific images. An automatic image coming directly from one’s unconscious mind was expected to reveal new knowledge about the world and people. But as the poet ’functions’ only as a conductor of the unconscious images, it is the reader who has to create meanings in this kind of poetry.The paper regards surrealism in terms of a lingvo-poetic experiment and analyzes the linguistic characteristics of the automatic texts in the early poetic collection of David Gascoyne (1916–2001). It outlines the peculiarities of the British poet’s techniques which are built upon French surrealist concepts and theories and examines phonetic, semantic and syntactic aspects of his poetry. David Gascoyne’s lyrics demonstrates the poet’s commitment to the French version of surrealism, his interest in the unconscious and dream-like narration. The streams of arbitrary visual images, deep emotionality, the artistic use of the word, semantic increments of meaning make Gascoigne’s texts open to interpretation. And though the poet actually refers visual effects (we rather see dreams), specific dream-like patterns are created not only by lexical, but also by phonetic repetitions, via intonation in which lexemes acquire a new semantic load.

The unconscious and the social in Saussure

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 307-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Social ◽  
General Linguistics ◽  
The Many ◽  
Unconscious Mind

Summary Saussure stood between two figures, Whitney and Meillet, each of whom was relentlessly opposed to the dominant psychological establishment of his time. Saussure himself was much more ambivalent about psychology, never portraying it as standing in clear opposition to the interests of linguistics or sociology as the others did. Yet among the many changes that took place in his general linguistics courses between the First in 1907 and the Second in 1908–1909 was a withdrawal from the topic that was at the heart of the Neogrammarian psychology of language, analogy. With it came withdrawal from all but a few psychological considerations, and a proportionate increase in the number of sociological ones. In particular, the role of the unconscious mind in insulating language from deliberate change was taken over by the force of the social group. The timing of this shift coincides with that of the publication of Sechehaye (1908), inspired by Saussure and dedicated to him by his colleague and former student, and the abrupt dismissal of the book by Saussure’s friend and confidante Meillet as being entirely psychological with no interest in or for sociology. Saussure shared many of Meillet’s concerns about the autonomy of linguistic science, and his shift from the psychological to the social may have been more directly motivated by Meillet’s reactions than has been generally recognised – not least because Meillet would later portray the direction of influence as flowing unilaterally from Saussure to himself, as a way of securing Saussure’s posthumous authority for his ongoing programmatic calls for a sociologically-based linguistics.

scholarly journals Creativity through the prism of the unconscious in S. Freud's concept of psychoanalysis

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-20
Author(s):  
Ol'ga Nikolaevna Tomyuk
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Global World ◽  
Modern Era

The modernizing global world with new sociocultural practices actualizes the study of creativity as a constitutive phenomenon of human personality in the context of the challenges of modern era. The object of this research is creativity as a cultural phenomenon. The subject is creativity in the S. Freud's concept of psychoanalysis. In the era of change and uncertainty, when the role of creativity is increasing, the ideas of S. Freud acquire special significance. The article considers the unconscious in the context of the social, in correlation with social factors and as a key position in creativity. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study includes cultural-historical and comparative methods. The systemic approach allowed viewing the phenomenon of creativity as a system in combibation of elements. The author also used the methods of analogy, analysis, comparison, and generalization. The discovered by Freud mechanism of sublimation is considered through the lens of creativity, as a way of redirecting energy displaced into the field of the unconscious by social factors, the sphere of creativity. The psychoanalytic concept serves as the methodological basis for explaining creativity as a complex process in combination of the conscious and unconscious.

scholarly journals Creativity through the prism of the unconscious in S. Freud's concept of psychoanalysis

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-27
Author(s):  
Ol'ga Nikolaevna Tomyuk
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Global World ◽  
Modern Era

The modernizing global world with new socio-cultural practices actualizes the study of creativity as a constitutive phenomenon of human personality in the context of challenges of the modern era. The object of this research is creativity as a cultural phenomenon, while the subject is creativity in the S. Freud's concept of psychoanalysis. In the era of transformations and uncertainty, when the role of creativity is growing, the ideas of S. Freud acquire special significance. The article considers the unconscious in the context of social, in conjunction with social factors and as the key position in creativity. The theoretical and methodological framework us comprised of the cultural-historical and comparative methods. Systemic approach allowed considering the phenomenon of creativity as a system in the assembly of elements. The author also applies the methods of analogy, analysis, comparison, generalization. Sublimation mechanism, discovered by Freud, is viewed in the context of creativity, as a method for redirection of energy displaced into the field of the unconscious by social factors, into the sphere of creativity. The concept of psychoanalysis serves as the methodological basis for explaination of creativity as a complex process of cumulation of conscious and unconscious.

scholarly journals Imagination: from the image to symbol, from the symbol to text

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Vera Volkova ◽  
Nataliya Malakhova ◽  
Ilia Volkov
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Subject Field ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
The Mind

This article is dedicated to conceptualization of the subject field of imagination. Imagination stops being a byproduct of the creative process. It is defined as the ability to exceed boundaries of creative process in mental combinations of the aspects of knowledge and being, sensation and reason. Research methodology is substantiated by the complementarity and intersection of different discourses on imagination on the basis of dialectics as an ancient mode of thought. Imagination is determined from the perspective of ontoepistemology and accumulation of structural-organizational attachments into image. The unity of being and knowledge (ontoepistemology) manifests in segmentation of the image and derivation of structural generalizations, all of which allow determining multiple meanings of the objects discovered by means of visualization and symbolization. Being correlate of the symbol, image is visualized, and reveals the meanings of human life. Symbol saturates image with the content. Image has power over people and their mind by not complying with the rules. Imagination is a method for reconstructing cognitive process. It is perceived as an instrument for comparing, uniting, and coordination of diverse elements of cognition. Imagination mentalizes the image, helps to comprehend it through a number of transitions, inside which takes place integration of segments of the image into a symbol. Then, through generalization of the image (symbols, words, meanings), its form turns into a text, read by the mind, for example, a rhizome that removes contradistinction of internal and external, subjective and objective. Mentalization of the image, symbolization of its segments and their translation into in the text takes place by integration of structural attachments into the image. The author suggests that this conceptual construct allows determining the role of imagination among other representations of human sciences.

Hypnosis

1984 ◽  
Vol 144 (6) ◽  
pp. 665-666
Author(s):  
Philip Snaith
Keyword(s):  
Medical Profession ◽  
College Hospital ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Postgraduate Level ◽  
Widespread Acceptance ◽  
Psychology Courses ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Good Quality Research ◽  
Dental Schools ◽  
Unconscious Mind

Hypnosis has never reached a widespread acceptance as a therapeutic technique and psychiatrists, especially, appear to give it a wide berth. Since the time when John Elliotson (1791–1868) was forced to resign from the Chair of Medicine at University College Hospital because of his advocacy of mesmerism, the attitude of the medical profession has been one of frank hostility subsiding, in this century, into a lingering mistrust of medically qualified hypnotists. Hypnotherapy is regarded as a form of ‘alternative medicine’ and a recent survey (British Medical Journal, 1978) found that organized teaching of the subject occurred in two of the 33 medical schools and two of the 18 dental schools in Britain. Although I have no exact figures, in a conversation with Professor Gwynne Jones, we suspected that there was also widespread disregard of the subject in psychology courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. “Why” asked Sir William Trethowan (1976), in a somewhat sceptical vein, “if hypnotherapy is so effective as some authors of books claim it to be, is the subject not more widely taught on medical courses?”. He partly answered his own question by pointing to the lack of good quality research, but I would add a more fundamental inhibitor and that is the manner in which the subject is presented; if the interested trainee in psychiatry or clinical psychology picks up any of a number of recommended texts, disillusion will rapidly follow. Hypnotherapy is too frequently presented in terms which seem to be frankly anti-scientific and at variance to all other teaching. The expectation of the dramatic disappearance of symptoms, and even disease, at the authoritative command of the practitioner, is clearly allied to the practice of the fairground rather than accredited healing; psychiatrists, especially, shudder at such frequently repeated statements as that hypnosis enables the therapist to ‘directly converse with the unconscious mind of the patient’.

Consciousness and Lesser States: the evolutionary foothills of the mind

Philosophy ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Gillett
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Biological Science ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Brain Circuits ◽  
Mental Acts ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Self Production ◽  
Unconscious Mind

Consciousness and its relation to the unconscious mind have long been debated in philosophy. I develop the thesis that consciousness and its contents reflect the highest elaboration of a set of abilities to respond to the environment realized in more primitive organisms and brain circuits. The contents of the states lesser than consciousness are, however, intrinsically dubious and indeterminate as it is the role of the discursive skills we use to construct conscious contents that lends articulation and clarity to the mental acts which cumulatively make up our mental lives. I lay out a tripartite structure for the formation of mind in which the ongoing interaction between brain and world, the formative effect of socio-cultural context and the self production of a relatively coherent narrative all play an important part in making a mind. The latter two influences clearly transcend biological science and suggest that human minds have features which broadly align with certain Freudian insights but do not support the reification of the causally structured unconscious that Freud envisaged.

The Social Construction of Violence: The Case of Sexual and Domestic Violence

1999 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlene L. Muehlenhard ◽  
Leigh Ann Kimes
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Over Time

What counts as “violence” is socially constructed, has varied over time, and reflects power relationships. Informed by social constructionism, we illustrate these points using as examples sexual violence and domestic violence. We review changes in how society and social scientists have defined and understood these topics during the last 30 years. We then discuss 3 areas of continuing controversy: who should decide if sexual or domestic violence has occurred, what to count as sexual and domestic violence, and the role of gender in defining sexual and domestic violence.

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