To Resurrect a Ghost

1998 ◽  
pp. 186-191
Author(s):  
Donald V. Poochigian
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
The Body ◽  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Empirical Verification ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind

Cartesian dualism has largely been replaced by empirical theories of the mind. Central to this development is Gilbert Ryle’s criticism of an immaterial ‘ghost’ inhabiting the material ‘machine’ of the body. A metaphysical self is incredible, and even if it is credible, both it and its manifestation in phenomenal experience are unknowable by others. Failure of this approach occurs when it is realized that existence of the physical is just as incredible as existence of the metaphysical. Free will is also inconceivable without the assumption of a metaphysical self, it being the ‘ghost in the machine’ after all. As for consciousness, it is presupposed by the empirical. What counts as physical manifestations of mind are the effects or causes of phenomenal experience. Without this criterion the individual is a unity, it being impossible to separate the psychological since effectively it encompasses every aspect of the individual. Additionally, it is in phenomenal experience that the empirical is observed, and observation is the basis of empirical verification. To advocate the scientific method of intersubjective verification while denying the existence or significance of the phenomenal is inconsistent. At root, the mental attributes are ontologically distinct. Limited to only one ontological substance, empiricists either redefine or exclude troublesome attributes, commiting the error of confusing distinct kinds of substances. Dualism can accommodate all of the properties of mind in a single coherent theory by acknowledging these kinds of substances.

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.

Fast Cars and Vital Exhaustion

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-214
Author(s):  
Sarah Waters
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Vital Exhaustion ◽  
Physical Limitations ◽  
Art Research ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Conditions Of Work

Chapter five examines a series of suicides at car manufacturer Renault, situating them in the transition from an industrial model to a knowledge economy, in which value is expropriated from the resources of the mind. Suicides did not take place in the emblematic spaces of the factory, where cars were once mass produced, but in a state-of-the art research centre, where cognitive workers conceptualised and designed cutting-edge cars of the future. In the knowledge economy, the mind is treated as an endlessly productive resource that reproduces itself continuously and is unencumbered by the physical limitations of the body. I argue that suicides were the end point of a form of vital exhaustion that transcends the corporeal defences of the physical body and depletes the mental and emotional resources of the self. Suicides do not reflect a deterioration in formal or material conditions of work, but rather a transformation in forms of constraint, as the individual worker internalises modes of discipline and becomes his or her own boss. Suicides affected workers who experienced a phase of chronic overwork in which the quest to achieve productivity targets pushed them to work continuously and obsessively.

Clinical Neuropsychologist, 20 years’ experience, UK

2020 ◽  
pp. 229-232
Author(s):  
Markus Reuber ◽  
Gregg H. Rawlings ◽  
Steven C. Schachter
Keyword(s):  
Epileptic Seizures ◽  
Body Part ◽  
Body Awareness ◽  
Physical Symptoms ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Epileptic Attack ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Experience Of Illness

This chapter explores how dissociation of awareness of either the mind or the body can be experienced by everyone to some degree. It has been suggested that in Non-Epileptic Attack Disorder (NEAD), a protective mechanism of enabling individuals to detach from the difficult emotions they have not yet been able to make sense of has led to a detachment from the awareness of the body, thus resulting in physical symptoms that resemble epileptic seizures. Treatment therefore lies in improving both mind and body awareness. Working with individuals with NEAD or Dissociative Seizures introduces one to the multifaceted nature of humanity. Although there are common themes that emerge through psychological assessment—such as prior experience of illness, neurological insult or physical injury to a specific body part, difficulty recognizing stress in the body or mind, or a tendency to use unhelpful coping strategies during prolonged periods of stress,—no two persons with NEAD have the same seizures because each individual’s experience is unique, making the nature and clinical presentation of the seizure-like experiences idiosyncratic. Despite this, it is always possible to discover the reason that individuals with NEAD experience the symptoms they do, even if it is sometimes initially hard for the individual to accept or believe this.

Stress and Coping Strategies

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 482-487
Author(s):  
S. Suresh
Keyword(s):  
Performance Appraisal ◽  
The Body ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Coping With Stress ◽  
Health Maintenance ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Strategies ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Coping

Stress is believed to be a state of the mind as well as the body, created by certain biochemical reactions in the human body as well as psychological responses to situations, and is reflected by a sense of anxiety, tension and depression and is caused by such demands by the environmental forces or internal forces that cannot be met by the resources available to the person. The greater the gap between the demands and the resources, the greater is the degree of stress. Some of the individual strategies for coping with stress include: readjustment of life goals, support from family and friends, planning certain events of life in advance and keeping the body in good physiological shape by proper diet, exercise, yoga, meditation and biofeedback. Some of the organizational strategies for coping with stress include organized health maintenance facilities as a part of the organizational life, matching of employees qualifications with job requirements, job enrichment and job work redesigns, equitable performance appraisal and reward systems, participation in organizational decision making and building team spirit in the sense that there should be no interpersonal conflict within the group. All these strategies or a combination thereof should be applied to make the work environment less stressful to a level which is positive and challenging.

The Body of Shame in the Circle of the Group

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bracha Hadar
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
The Body ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
Bioenergetic Analysis ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Bodily Shame ◽  
The Mind

This paper suggests an integration of two therapeutic domains in which the author was trained and certified: group analysis and bioenergetic analysis. Bioenergetic analysis is a psychodynamic psychotherapy, which sees the individual as a psychosomatic unity and combines work with the body and the mind. The author considers the pioneering book The Group as an Object of Desire by Morris Nitsun as a facilitating environment for the ideas of this paper to be accepted. Nitsun opens up the importance, on one hand, and the neglect, on the other hand, of sexuality and the body in the discourse of group analysis. The paper brings the body to the front of group analysis. It illuminates the body as the stage on which the drama of shame occurs. The paper discusses five dimensions of shame, categorized into five degrees of pathology, having to do with the developmental stages in which it occurred. The most archaic one (degree 1) is the most malignant and inhibits the social life of the individual. The fifth degree, social shame, is necessary in order to be part of society. A bridge of understanding between group analysis and bioenergetic analysis is suggested in which social shame, the more superficial one, serves as a defence against or displacement of the bodily shame. The ultimate space for working, therapeutically, on shame is the group, provided the body is not dissociated from the arena. A clinical example of working with a group in the integrated model is described, followed by a discussion. It is suggested to consider the matrix as the group body-mind instead of only the group mind.

Mind-Body Dualism in the Textual Record

2019 ◽  
pp. 100-140
Author(s):  
Edward Slingerland
Keyword(s):  
Weak Form ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Moral Emotions ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Warring States ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Individual Self

The xin is most commonly characterized in pre-Qin texts as a locus of thought and decision making, sometimes linked to cognition or moral emotions like worry or compassion, but primarily concerned with what we could very well call “reason.” Especially once we enter the Warring States, it is represented as at most only vaguely located in the body, with an extremely tenuous relationship to both the body itself and other bodily parts. It is reasonable to describe the xin as metaphysical, somehow free of the limitations of the physical world. Focusing on the term xin (heart, heart-mind, mind), this chapter uses qualitative textual analysis to make the case that early Chinese texts were written by people who embraced, at least implicitly, a “weak” form of mind-body dualism. This includes the idea that the mind is at least somewhat immaterial, qualitatively different from the other organs, and the seat of reason, free will, and the individual self.

scholarly journals Interactions between Personality and Types of Mindfulness Practice in Reducing Burnout in Mental Health Professionals

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (13) ◽  
pp. 6721
Author(s):  
Raquel Ruiz-Íñiguez ◽  
Ana Carralero Montero ◽  
Francisco A. Burgos-Julián ◽  
Justo Reinaldo Fabelo Roche ◽  
Miguel A. Santed
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mindfulness Practice ◽  
Personality Factors ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Registration Number ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind

Research on mindfulness-based interventions reports mainly on improvements at the group level. Thus, there is a need to elaborate on the individual differences in their effectiveness. The aim of this study was twofold: (1) to examine which personality factors could influence burnout reduction associated with different types of mindfulness practice and (2) to evaluate the interaction between personality factors and the amount of home practice; both aims were controlled for sociodemographic characteristics. A total of 104 Cuban mental health professionals, who participated in a crossover trial, were included. The effect of personality (Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors) was analyzed through regression analysis. First, the results revealed that Emotional Stability and Vigilance could negatively moderate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions. Second, participants who scored low in Sensitivity or Vigilance could benefit more from the body-centered practices (i.e., body scan and Hatha yoga practices), but no significant results for the mind-centered practices (i.e., classical meditation) were found. Third, participants who scored high in Self-reliance could benefit more from informal practice. Other personality factors did not appear to moderate the effect of the interventions, though previous experience in related techniques must be considered. Recommendations and clinical implications are discussed. Trial registration number is NCT03296254 (clinicaltrials.gov).

scholarly journals Ken Donald and Muscular Christianity

2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 305
Author(s):  
Mark Loane
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Physical Development ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Public ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
The World ◽  
Muscular Christianity ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind

?MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY? was a system which relied upon sport to allow people to grow in a moral and spiritual way along with their physical development. It was thought that . . . in the playing field boys acquire virtues which no books can give them; not merely daring and endurance, but, better still temper, self restraint, fairness, honor, unenvious approbation of another?s success, and all that ?give and take? of life which stand a man in good stead when he goes forth into the world, and without which, indeed, his success is always maimed and partial [Kingsley cited from Haley, in Watson et al].1 This system of thought held that a man?s body is given him to be trained and brought into subjection and then used for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes [Hughes, cited in Watson et al].1 The body . . . [is] . . . a vehicle by which through gesture the soul could speak [Blooomfield, cited in Watson et al].1 In the 1800s there was a strong alignment of Muscular Christianity and the game of Rugby: If the Muscular Christians and their disciples in the public schools, given sufficient wit, had been asked to invent a game that exhausted boys before they could fall victims to vice and idleness, which at the same time instilled the manly virtues of absorbing and inflicting pain in about equal proportions, which elevated the team above the individual, which bred courage, loyalty and discipline, which as yet had no taint of professionalism and which, as an added bonus, occupied 30 boys at a time instead of a mere twenty two, it is probably something like rugby that they would have devised. [Dobbs, cited in Watson et al]1 The idea of Muscular Christianity came from the Greek ideals of athleticism that comprise the development of an excellent mind contained within an excellent body. Plato stated that one must avoid exercising either the mind or body without the other to preserve an equal and healthy balance between the two.

scholarly journals Postacie kobiece Starego Testamentu w alegorycznej egzegezie Orygenesa

Vox Patrum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Mariusz Szram
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
The Body ◽  
Spiritual Warfare ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Intellectual Abilities ◽  
Bodily Feelings ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Church

The article systematises the metaphors ascribed by Origen (185-253/254) to the well-known female characters of the Old Testament utilising the method of allegorical exegesis of the text of Scripture. Females appearing on the pages of the historical books of Bible are – according to the Alexandrian – allegories of hu­man virtues or defects. They embody the spiritual warfare between the spirit and the body, between the mind and the feelings. In the collective sense they symbo­lize the synagogue or the church chosen from the Gentiles, and in the individual sense – the human soul in its relation to God. Origen refers to the telling names of women, translating them and embedding into the spiritual context often giving the several different allegorical meanings to the same biblical person. Despite the often-quoted in his writings beliefs characteristic to the ancient world, procla­iming that the woman is a symbol of bodily feelings and the man – a symbol of the intellectual abilities, majority of allegorical interpretations relating to the Old Testament women indicates a personification of the virtues worthy of imitation. This phenomenon is conditioned with the meaning of the names of those persons and the role attributed to them by the biblical authors, but Origen’s interpretations are original and based on his own concept of spiritual life. They deny opinions of misogyny of Origen and the early Christian writers in general.

scholarly journals Defining the dystopian chronotope: Space, time and genre in George Orwell’s 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'

2018 ◽  
pp. 9-39
Author(s):  
Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga
Keyword(s):  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Relation ◽  
Structural Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The City

The paper examines George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as a canonical example of the dystopian novel in an attempt to define the principal features of the dystopian chronotope. Following Mikhail Bakhtin, it treats the chronotope as the structural pivot of the narrative, which integrates and determines other aspects of the text. Dystopia, the paper argues, is a particularly appropriate genre to consider the structural role of the chronotope for two reasons. Firstly, due to utopianism’s special relation with space and secondly, due to the structural importance of world-building in the expression of dystopia’s philosophical, political and social ideas. The paper identifies the principal features of dystopian spatiality, among which crucial are the oppositions between the individual and the state, the mind and the body, the high and the low, the central and the peripheral, the past and the present, the city and the natural world, false and true signs.

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