Self-cannibalism and cannibalism: a perverse defence against depression

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-51
Author(s):  
Ravi Lingam ◽  
Simon Mason
Keyword(s):  
Systems Of Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Developmental History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Increasing Risk ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Personality Disordered ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Do So

This observational article describes three cases of self-cannibalism and cannibalism by patients in a secure setting. These are studies of severe personality disordered patients, each of whom have perpetrated terrible offences, usually on others. In our view, the inner world of the cannibalistic patient is committed to a narcissistic biting grip on his objects and is bent upon appropriating their good aspects. In our practice, we have observed a countertransference enactment that may be characterised as a roadblock to explore the past: to feel, to understand, and to repair. The aim of the perverse pact is to remain in a stuck state to protect the self from any awareness of feelings of depression. This is an enactment of the inherently deathly, inner relationship of the individual perpetrator. We believe it is essential to attempt to open up a space to explore the unthinkable act of cutting and eating flesh in the context of the person’s developmental history. Failure to do so within systems of care sets in motion a repeating cycle of a traumatic victim–victimiser dynamic associated with ever increasing risk.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walden
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The book’s epilogue explores the place of musical portraiture in the context of posthumous depictions of the deceased, and in relation to the so-called posthuman condition, which describes contemporary changes in the relationship of the individual with such aspects of life as technology and the body. It first examines Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to view how Bernard Herrmann’s score relates to issues of portraiture and the depiction of the identity of the deceased. It then considers the work of cyborg composer-artist Neil Harbisson, who has aimed, through the use of new capabilities of hybridity between the body and technology, to convey something akin to visual likeness in his series of Sound Portraits. The epilogue shows how an examination of contemporary views of posthumous and posthuman identities helps to illuminate the ways music represents the self throughout the genre of musical portraiture.

Louise Bourgeois’s Melancholy Objects to be Used

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-164
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Object Relations ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
Mental Process ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Louise Bourgeois ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual

Over a decade before the French-American sculptor Louise Bourgeois underwent psychoanalysis in New York (1952–1985), her work mined territories of psyche, body, home, and exile. Bourgeois’s papers from 1940 onward reveal that she shared Freud’s description of neurotics, hysterics, and artists as suffering from reminiscences. Scottish psychoanalyst W. R. D. Fairbairn identified the last of these in 1943 as “war neuroses,” just six years before Bourgeois debuted her first mature sculptures. These abstract “personages” served as melancholy surrogates for lost objects, the friends and family Bourgeois left in 1938 in Occupied France. In the 1960s, she further reduced the body to ambivalent amalgams of part-objects made from plaster and latex, suggesting swollen nodes, skin, and sex organs. Of particular interest are two papers published by Fairbairn in 1938 that extend the inner world of the individual to the field of object relations via the transposition of the symbolically “restored object.” Fairbairn conceived the radical notion of restitution, the mental process of repairing damage in the artist’s inner object world. These principles resonate with Bourgeois’s métier and a postwar sculptural aesthetic that probed the phenomenal experience of anxiety, exile, and psychoanalysis on the Self and others.

Biological Ideas and Their Cultural Uses

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 111-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Benton
Keyword(s):  
Biological Evolution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Do So

The topic of my talk is a very ancient one indeed. It bears upon the place of humankind in nature, and upon the place of nature in ourselves. I shall, however, be discussing this range of questions in terms which have not always been available to the philosophers of the past when they have asked them. When we ask these questions today we do so with hindsight of some two centuries of endeavour in the ‘human sciences’, and some one and a half centuries of attempts to situate the human species within a theory of biological evolution. And these ways of thinking about ourselves and our relation to nature have not been confined to professional intellectuals, nor have they been without practical consequences. Social movements and political organizations have fought for and sometimes achieved the power to give practical shape to their theoretical visions. On the one hand, are diverse projects aimed at changing society through a planned modification of the social environment of the individual. On the other hand, are equally diverse projects for pulling society back into conformity with the requirements of race and heredity. At first sight, the two types of project appear to be, and often are, deeply opposed, both intellectually and politically.

scholarly journals ANALYSIS OF COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH IN ARCHITECTURE AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE LATE TWENTIETH-EARLY TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Articult ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 137-148
Author(s):  
Evgenia I. Vinogradova ◽  
◽  
Evgeny V. Kilimnik ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Research ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The article analyzes the work of Western and Russian scientists, conducted in the past three decades, on the relationship of psychology and architecture. It is shown that in the West, the neuropsychological aspects of the relationship of psychology and architecture are studied thanks to modern neurobiological equipment, while in Russia there is a clear gap between the representatives of neuroscience, their technical support, and the architectural scientific community. As a result of the analysis conducted in the article, it is concluded that two research blocks can be distinguished. The first of them highlights the relationship between the psyche of the viewer and architecture. This may include research, both revealing the features of the perception of objects, and the influence of an architectural object on the viewer. Another block of research is connected with the psyche of the architect: and here the features of the design process itself are examined, as well as the influence of the personality of the architect on the features of the architectural object. It is concluded that the topic of reflecting the individual or individually-typological psychological characteristics of the personality of an architect in a specific architectural work remains undeveloped both in the West and in Russia, although it is extremely relevant today.

scholarly journals Madness vs. Culture in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (41) ◽  
pp. 636-650
Author(s):  
Maysaloon Khalid Ali
Keyword(s):  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Behavioral Patterns ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Individual Values ◽  
The Past ◽  
Normal Life ◽  
Inner World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The Relationship

       The purpose of this research is to explain the relationship between madness and the culture of societies, where madness is closely related to cultures. Madness is defined as a group of behaviors characterized by abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Culture has a tremendous influence on the individual values framework of a society as it is a set of traditional beliefs, rituals, customs and values transmitted and shared in a particular society. Anyone who deviates from these rules will be considered insane.     Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is a novel that expresses her perceptions of the idea of madness throughout history; especially since the writer herself was diagnosed as mentally ill. In this novel, the writer chooses the character of Septimus and his relationship with the outside world. Septimus was responsible, obedient, and loved by his employer, yet his inner world was separated from the outside one. It was exacerbated by the fact that he was distanced from the daily habits of the masses and became a stranger and unfit for normal life. Trapped between the past and the present, he failed to leap over a painful memory, and he gradually fell into a state of madness.

scholarly journals The Warren Commission, Postmodernity and the Rise of Conspiratorial Thinking in America

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Lobo
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Local Narratives

The era of post-modernity has completely changed the way that we see, recognize and question the world, and what we accept to be true. During and after the 1960s many witnessed the rise of a greater multiplicity of local narratives. Prior to this, the grand narratives of the past, such as religion, the Enlightenment, and science were taken as whole, singular truths. However, such metanarratives tend to ignore the individual experiences that do not fit neatly into categories constructed by major institutional authorities. This disconnection from the personal pushed more people to doubt, in favour of the narrative(s) where the Self is visible and heard. It can be argued that this revolution in thought, and meaning and narrative-making in America grew after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. By examining Jean-Francois Lyotard’s theory of postmodernity, and those who expanded on his ideas, we can highlight how the assassination of JFK marked the onset and rise of the postmodern conspiracy theory. This includes the deconstruction of trust, the breakdown of “objective” reality and identity markers as well as the use of new mass media technologies, such as the film camera and the television.

Grand Days, Dark Palaces

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Rae ◽  
Christian Reus-Smit
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Justice ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Do So

Exploring contradictions inherent in liberal orders, this chapter questions the treatment of liberalism in the International Relations academy as a relatively straightforward set of beliefs about the individual, the state, the market, and political justice. It asserts that the contradictions and tensions within liberal internationalism are in fact deep and troubling. Highlighting some of liberalism's obscured and sometimes denied contradictions — between liberal ‘statism’ and liberal ‘cosmopolitanism’; between liberal ‘proceduralism’ and liberal ‘consequentialism’; and between liberal ‘absolutism’ and liberal ‘toleration’ — the chapter explores their implications for liberal ordering practices internationally. It concludes that liberal political engagement necessitates a more reflective standpoint and more historical sensibility if we are to be aware of how contradictions have shaped liberal orders in the past and are likely to continue to do so in the future.

God in the Book of the Twelve

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-116
Author(s):  
James D. Nogalski
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Book Of The Twelve ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Character Of God ◽  
Do So

This essay considers the nature and character of God in the Twelve. To do so requires one to extrapolate assumptions about God on multiple levels: individual units, thematic developments, and modes of speech. When these elements are evaluated within the individual books and across the Book of the Twelve as a curated collection, a portrait of YHWH’s actions and motives develops that highlights YHWH’s covenantal expectations across time (from the eighth century to the Persian period) and for the future (a Day of YHWH still to come). The resulting portrait has a didactic purpose designed both to warn Jerusalem’s cultic elite of their responsibility and to admonish the people of YHWH to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Empires within and without: the conquest of the self and the Florentine avant-garde

Modern Italy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Bertrand Marilier
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Psychological Understanding ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Intellectual Formation ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Intense Debate

This article examines the relationship of the young Giovanni Papini to the notion of imperialism. The period of Papini's intellectual formation was a time of intense debate among the Italian intelligentsia concerning imperialism and its relationship to nation and culture. He joined the conversation with a distinctive interpretation of the idea, one that could at once make him heir apparent to the tradition of Umbertian nationalism, while also rejecting the positivist slant of his forebears. William James's porous conception of the subject and Papini's sense of his own fragmented subjectivity provided the ground for a psychological understanding of imperialism: one that relied on knowledge and appreciation, which translated into literature at the individual level, and into culture at that of the nation. Ultimately, however, disappointments abroad, the demands of nationalist politics, and Papini's own avant-garde posture, led him to abandon his intellectual empire in favour of a more concrete one.

scholarly journals Experiencing the past? The development of a phenomenological archaeology in British prehistory

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brück
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Past ◽  
Epistemological Status ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Embodied Engagement ◽  
Ancient Monument ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Considerable Discussion

In recent years the development of a phenomenological archaeology has provoked considerable discussion within the discipline, particularly within British prehistory. This paper provides a review of this challenging body of research, outlining its problems and potentials and setting it within its broader disciplinary context. Phenomenology has been used to great effect to critique the Cartesian rationalism inherent in traditional archaeological approaches, encouraging imaginative and valuable reinterpretations of the architecture and landscape settings of different monuments. Nonetheless, there are a number of significant problems raised by this work. The suggestion that the archaeologist’s embodied engagement with an ancient monument or landscape can provide an insight into past experiences and interpretations is critically considered. The epistemological status of the knowledge-claims made, including how and whether the patterns identified should be verified, is discussed. The contribution of phenomenology to postprocessual debates surrounding concepts of the self, the individual, embodiment and emotion are also explored. The work of key proponents of phenomenology such as Tilley and Thomas provides a particular focus, although a range of other authors are also considered.

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