scholarly journals Accepting change in psychotherapy from consciousness to awareness

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-08
Author(s):  
Giulio Perrotta

Accepting to face a path of psychotherapy is not in itself sufficient to achieve the goals set in the therapeutic agreement between patient and professional. The present work analyses the differences between "consciousness" (and knowledge) of one's dysfunctional state, "will" to achieve change and "awareness of change", passing through all the traps that the mind can set for us, starting from the alterations of the states of consciousness to the wrong perceptual processes (which rework the external sensory data collected by the sense organs) to the not necessarily dysfunctional use of defense mechanisms, the imperfect centering on the knowledge of one's own needs and requirements, the excessive rigidity of one's system of beliefs, certainties and mental constructs, the use of irrational ideas based on empirical data falsely considered correct, the subjection of social influences and conditionings to impressions and systematic errors determined by cognitive dissonances and social and moral disengagements. The present work then focuses on the goals that the therapist must achieve to help the patient in his or her process of awareness and acceptance of change, and on recent techniques focused on the patient's emotional and emotional needs.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrizio Tressoldi ◽  
Lance Storm

This brief study presents the accumulated evidence for a range of meta-analyses on nonlocal (anomalous) perception (a.k.a. a communication anomaly) conducted between 1935 and 2020. What emerged from thirteen meta-analyses related to six different states of consciousness, is a more than tenfold gap in effect size (ES), ranging from the lowest ES for forced-choice normal state of consciousness (i.e., non-noise-reduction), to the highest ES for free response unconscious physiological reactions and modified states of consciousness (e.g., dreaming, ganzfeld, etc.). The evidence accumulated over more than 80 years of investigation clearly shows that nonlocal perception is possible, and effects can be enhanced by altering normal states of consciousness, thus facilitating an alternative form of perception seemingly unconstrained by the normal biological characteristics of the sense organs and the brain. This research expands our understanding of the mind-brain relationship and the nature of human mind.


2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 995-996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antti Revonsuo

The approach of Hobson et al. is limited to the description of global states of consciousness, although more detailed analyses of the specific contents of consciousness would also be required. Furthermore, their account of the mind-brain relationship remains obscure. Nielsen's discussion suffers from conceptual and definitional unclarity. Mentation during sleep could be clarified by reconceptualizing it as an issue about the contents of consciousness. Vertes & Eastman do not consider the types of memory (emotional) and learning (implicit) that are relevant during REM sleep, and therefore dismiss on inadequate grounds the possibility of memory functions associated with REM sleep.[Hobson et al.; Nielsen; Vertes & Eastman]


Author(s):  
Devi Venashinee Muruges

Indian psychology lays enormous importance on the research of religious experiences and the expansion of approaches by which to accomplish them. In addition to that, it also provides understanding of the different states of consciousness. Hence, it is undeniable that Indian psychology will be able to make a definite therapeutic contribution to many psychological problems. For mental health practitioners dealing with Hinduism, there are teachings within various texts that directly strengthen counseling and mental services. Some of the examples include perceiving the conscious and the unconsciousness aspects of the mind, utilizing meditation to support people with mental health issues, yoga exercises to curb anxiety and stress, and many others. Therefore, this chapter intends to elucidate the application of Hinduism in therapy.


Author(s):  
Jerrold Winter

There are about 400,000 species of plants in this world. Only a small fraction, perhaps 100 in number, contain hallucinogenic chemicals. Nearly a century ago, Lewis Lewin, professor of pharmacology at the University of Berlin, in speaking of drugs he called phantasticants, said “The passionate desire which . . . leads man to flee from the monotony of daily life . . . has made him discover strange substances (which) have been integral to human evolution both societal and cultural for thousands of years.” An unusual problem presents itself to me in writing about these drugs: They straddle the worlds of science and mysticism. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines mysticism as the practice of religious ecstasies (religious experiences during alternate states of consciousness), together with whatever ideologies, ethics, rites, myths, legends, and magic may be related to them. Science I am comfortable with; mysticism not so much. Yet in our exploration of the agents found in this chapter, we will encounter many persons speaking of drug-induced mystical experiences. I have attempted to get around my unease by first providing the history and the pharmacology of these agents and then touching only lightly on mysticism, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. What shall we call these chemicals? Hallucinogen, a substance that induces perception of objects with no reality, is the term most commonly encountered and the one that I have settled on for the title of this chapter. However, it comes with a caveat. Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, our prototypic hallucinogen, has pointed out that a true hallucination has the force of reality, but the effects of LSD only rarely include this feature. Two additional terms that we will find useful are psychotomimetic and psychedelic. We have already considered the former, an ability to mimic psychosis, in our discussion of amphetamine-induced paranoid psychosis in chapter 4 and the effects of phencyclidine in chapter 6. A psychedelic was defined in 1957 by Humphrey Osmond, inventor of the word, as a drug like LSD “which enriches the mind and enlarges the vision.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 769-806
Author(s):  
Peter Goldberg

A psychosomatic model of dissociation is proposed that addresses the ever adjusting mind-body relation—the constant titration of the quality and degree of the psyche’s embeddedness in the sensorial and temporal life of the body. The model highlights the function of hypnoid mechanisms (autohypnosis, distraction, somatic autostimulation) and of altered states of consciousness in facilitating and masking the work of mind-body dissociation. Transient altered states, which enable new and creative forms of mind-body experience in everyday life and in the therapy situation, are contrasted with pathological forms of retreat into alter worlds—rigidly organized, timeless, often inescapable trancelike states of mind-body dislocation. These pathological dissociative structures reshape the life of the mind and of the body, requiring new clinical approaches to these phenomena.


Author(s):  
Devi Venashinee Muruges

Indian psychology lays enormous importance on the research of religious experiences and the expansion of approaches by which to accomplish them. In addition to that, it also provides understanding of the different states of consciousness. Hence, it is undeniable that Indian psychology will be able to make a definite therapeutic contribution to many psychological problems. For mental health practitioners dealing with Hinduism, there are teachings within various texts that directly strengthen counseling and mental services. Some of the examples include perceiving the conscious and the unconsciousness aspects of the mind, utilizing meditation to support people with mental health issues, yoga exercises to curb anxiety and stress, and many others. Therefore, this chapter intends to elucidate the application of Hinduism in therapy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Lange ◽  
Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov

Teesid: Artikkel käsitleb tõlkeprotsessi ilukirjandusliku teksti tõlkimisel, kus keeleline ja sotsiaalkultuuri­line informatsioon on allutatud kunstilisele struktuurile. Et tekst ei kodeeri tähendust ühemõtteliselt, nõnda et seda saaks de- ja rekodeerida, rakendab tõlkija tähenduse lahti tinglikust keelemärgist ja vormistab selle teisiti, toetudes tekstis ära tuntud tugipunktidele. Tõlge on tõlkija intentsionaalne lausung, mis sõltub tema teadmistest ja kognitiivsest filtrist. Teoreetilise tõlkepoeetika rakendamist praktikas kirjeldab tõlkija Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov Jaan Malini luuletuse „Keele meel“ tõlkimise näitel.S U M M A R YThe article describes the process of translation in the light of Henri Meschonnic’s suggestion that the poetic compatibility of source text and target text is of central significance, not the differences between the languages and cultures involved. Departing from the premise that no text is determined by its linguistic or social contin­gencies, the goal of translation is to produce a new text that does in the new language what the original text does in the original language. The linguistic and cultural information of a source text is subject to its poetics.In order to illustrate the practical implications of this approach, the article highlights translational solutions that cannot be explained in linguistic terms given that they attempt to maintain the specifics of the original. The translator proceeds by pretending to know what a text (and its author) is doing; it is the cognitive filter of the translator that gives the source text its meaning. In an account of her translation of Jaan Malin’s ”Keele meel“ into English, Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov begins with the analysis of the poem. This entails separating the whole into its component parts and identifying their relations. Reading with a view to translating unravels the texture of a poem, exposing the lexical, semantic and phonetic strands that constitute its coherence. The article then offers an account of how the translator experiences the original and navigates through it towards a new poem in translation, recognising that languages differ in what they can and must do. The latter, primarily a grammatical reality, is accompanied by a semantic one: the implications that stem from lexical connotations are inevitably different in the original poem and in the new poem. However, the supposed intent of the original is what a cognitive approach sees as a possibility of translation. This does not involve the transferral of isolated lexicalised items, but allows the translator to overcome the dilemma of retaining both form and content by adopting the role of writer, by working with language that is at no more at her disposal than it is for the writer of the original.The analysis of the original enables the translator to avoid seeing the poem as fixed language in a solid object or searching for a single invariant meaning. Between the reader and the poem a situation of dialogue is established that involves asking questions of the poem in order to find what meanings it insists on. Questions like what does this word (image, rhyme, comma, etc.) do in/to the poem? how would the poem be different if this word (rhyme, etc.) were replaced by another or removed altogether? give the translator an idea of all the features that constitute a text; thus the use or absence of metre, form, layout, punctuation, lineation, rhyme, diction and syntax, etc. in the translation can be settled. Questions have to be directed not only at the denser parts of the poem, but even at those places where there seems to be univalence of meaning or standard language usage. Any detail or device, singly or together with another element(s), may be a hinge on which the poem turns. The guiding principle is that any choice made by the writer inevitably involved the rejection of alternatives. The elements on the page are both more and less than any answer anyone (translator or reader) can give. The objective is to interact with the text rather than wander aimlessly through the space that is opened up by reading.In producing multiple drafts which explore and experiment with the devices employed in the original, the translator highlights the comprehensive set of values that account for its coherence. This, in turn, will test the translating language and its possibilities; the translating language may become subtly altered in the translation process, as the translator works under the influence of the syntactic and semantic systems of the original. There is an interdependence between imitation and creation in play here, which the translator explores. It is a process of synthesising, as the translator homes in on the most tenacious elements of the original and the expressive potential of her own language.Reading a text generates conjectures that are infinite in number, but ultimately they will have to be tested against the text’s coherence. Translating with a focus on stylistic features as mental constructs rests on the claim that the mind stands between a word and its referent. By aiming to translate the mind rather than linguistic expression, a translator can discover options and make textually relevant choices between them.


1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene Subbotsky

The study addressed the phenomenon according to which even educated adult individuals often confuse sensations received from physical objects (such as colour, sound, taste, weight, temperature) with physical properties of the objects that initiated these sensations. This means that in many cases scientific education fails to achieve its goal, which is to create in an individual the physical-scientific view of the world. To examine this phenomenon four experiments were conducted with the aims to determine to what extent: (1) children of various ages and adults were able (a) to acknowledge the fact that sensations appear due to the work of the human mind or sense organs and are not physical properties of the objects that produce them; (b) to appreciate the difference between the mind and sense organs as contributors to the production of sensations (Exp. 1); (2) various types of training could enhance children’s and adults’ understanding that sensations do not belong to the physical properties and objects (Exps. 2-4). The results of Experiment 1 conducted with 6- and 9-year-old children and adults did not reveal an age-related increase in the appreciation of the subjective character of sensations. However, 9-year-old children and adults (but not 6-year-old children) showed a diffentiated approach to various types of sensations, attributing pain mainly to the subject and softness-hardness mainly to the objects. Experiment 2 (direct explanation treatment), and Experiment 3 (cognitive conflict treatment) yielded no improvement in 6- and 9-year-old children’s appreciation of the subjective character of sensations and only partial improvement in adults. In Experiment 4 (social conflict treatment) adult subjects only were involved; the experiment showed a significant improvement in the subjects’ judgements about colour sensations and a marginal improvement in their judgements about weight sensations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthieu Ricard

AbstractIn Buddhism, happiness is achieved when a person can perceive the true nature of reality, unmodified by the mental constructs we superimpose upon it. This authentic happiness comes from having an exceptionally healthy state of mind that underlies and suffuses all emotional states and that embraces all the joys and sorrows that come one's way. The mental states necessary for authentic happiness are not simply found or happened upon. Rather, happiness is achieved through mental training that purges the mind of afflictive emotions, such as hatred and compulsive desire, which literally poison the mind, and above all through the eradication of ignorance. This article discusses the Buddhist conception of happiness and its attainment. In particular, the article addresses the methods and practices that Buddhism employs to train the mind to achieve authentic happiness and the recent developments in contemplative neuroscience that complement and advance these methods.


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