Renaissance Psychologies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Lanier Reid
Keyword(s):  
Wave Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
Immortal Soul ◽  
Rhythmic Cycles ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Immediate Experience ◽  
Plot Design

Thirteen writershave comprehensively explained theRenaissance scheme of physiology-psychology used for nosce teipsum, to ‘know oneself’, and other scholars have analysed key features likehumours, bodily spirits, passions, reason, inner wits, soul and spirit, mystic apprehension.Only poetswith epic scope, like Spenser and Shakespeare, depict human nature holistically, yet these finest poets have radically distinct psychologies.Spenser’s Christianised Platonism prioritises the soul, his art mirroringdivine Creation as dogmatically and encyclopedically conceived. He looks to the past, collating classical and medieval authorities in memory-devices like the figurative house, nobly ordered in triadic mystic numerical hierarchyto reform the ruins of time. Shakespeare’s sophisticated Aristoteleanism prioritises the body, highlighting physical processes and dynamic feelings of immediate experience, and subjecting them to intense, skeptical consciousness. He points to the future, using the witty ironies of popular stage productions to test and deconstruct prior authority, opening the unconscious to psychoanalysis. This polarity of psychologies is radical and profound, resembling the complementary theories of physics, structuring reality either (like Spenser) in the neatly-contained form of particle theory, or (like Shakespeare) in the rhythmic cycles of wave theory. How do we explain these distinct concepts, and how are they related? These poets’ contrary artistry appears in strikingly different versions of a ‘fairy queen’, of humour-based passions (notably the primal passion of self-love), of intellection (divergent modes of temptation and of moral resolution), of immortal soul and spirit, of holistic plot design, and of readiness for final judgment.

Becoming Gypsy: Tell Me What the Body Knows in Flamenco Dance

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-35
Author(s):  
Diane Oatley
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
The Body ◽  
Physical Interaction ◽  
Embodied Knowledge ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The World ◽  
Language And Cognition ◽  
Experiences Of Women

Abstract In The Meaning of the Body, philosopher Mark Johnson makes a case for the significance of movement in terms of the body processes he holds as essential to the generation of meaning and knowledge acquisition in physical interaction with the world–equally essential as language and cognition. The article employs this theory in interpreting the experiences of women learning flamenco dance in Spain. The investigation of the perceptions of women studying flamenco dance, a dance tradition often defined as “gypsy,” indicates that exposure to flamenco dance and culture leads to revision of stereotypes regarding embodiment and difference, but respondents did not relate this revision to bodily engagement, or physical processes particular to dancing flamenco. Although Johnson’s failure to properly account for the role of the unconscious proved to be a serious shortcoming in the theory, and one which had implications for the findings, application of the theory disclosed the parameters of a discourse on the body in flamenco. The theory thus represents a radical gesture in redefining embodiment in its own right in a manner that precludes dualism with the consequent opening of a range of alternative perspectives on the articulation of embodied knowledge.

‘Dying to Live’: Remembering and Forgetting May Sinclair

May Sinclair ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Raitt
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
May Sinclair

For Sinclair, the past was a wound. She feared being unable to escape it, and she feared in turn her own persistence in a form that she could not control. Mystic ecstasy – what she called the “new mysticism” – was a way of entering a timeless realm in which there was no longer any past to damage her. But she was also fascinated by what could never be left behind – hence her interest in heredity, the unconscious, and the supernatural. However, the immanence of the future can also emancipate us from the past, in Sinclair’s view, and this is the key to why mystical experience was so immensely appealing to her. Mystical experience could take the self out of the body and thus out of past traumas and into the future. False dying – like that which creates ghosts – traps the psyche in its own pain and forces it to re-experience the suffering of its life; real dying – mystical dying – involves forgetting the self and the world.

Psychoanalysis Twenty-Five Years after the Death of Sigmund Freud

1965 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 965-968
Author(s):  
Martin Grotjahn
Keyword(s):  
Medical Treatment ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Practical Importance ◽  
The Body ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Psychoanalytic Training ◽  
The Past ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Insight Into

Twenty-five years after the death of Sigmund Freud psychoanalysis has proven its value as a method of investigating the unconscious. The body of knowledge as represented by psychoanalysis has grown mostly with the application of psychoanalysis to neighboring fields. Psychoanalysis as a tool of medical treatment has not lived up to the expectations, while psychoanalysis as a technique of training therapists is considered of greatest practical importance. The American societies and institutes have become the centers of international psychoanalytic training. The past twenty-five years have given much valuable insight into the life and work, the genius and creativity of Sigmund Freud and the pioneers of psychoanalysis.

THE METAPHYSICAL MOTIVES IN THE POETRY OF BOLESŁAW LEŚMIAN

2019 ◽  
pp. 503-509
Author(s):  
Anastasiia Pospolita
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
New Words ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Other World ◽  
National Poetry

The research is devoted to the metaphysical motives in the poetry of Bolesław Leśmian. This is an important milestone in the history of Polish literature. The legacy of such poets determines not only the nature of national poetry, but also has a significant impact on the development of world literature. Bolesław Leśmian created his unique metaphysical world. Its structure, organization and other features and innovations are the subject of our study. The aim of the study is to show the metaphysical motives in the poetry of Bolesław Leśmian, based on the critical reception of the representatives of the Polish and Ukrainian literary studies from the past and present century. The main features of the soul topos in Lesmian’s poetry are its transcendent origin, connection to corporalness, death, individuality, permanent motion. In our study, we came to the conclusion that Man can exist only in conjunction with nature. With its help, he can know the otherworldly, God, but when he merges with it, he becomes a different form of being, but does not die. Because man can not know God, he is afraid of the unknown and the unconscious she suffers. Man seeks to know God, but he is not her guardian or ruler. The other world is a redeveloped, separate world, there are travels, the poet is constantly looking for similarities to the earth. It is fictional, therefore, M. Glovinsky calls it “represented”. B. Leśmian’s poetic world is sensational and the perception and understanding of his world is through our senses. The dream in poetry of Bolesław Leśmian is not only a leading motive but also an element of the composition and often acts as the theme of the poem. To represent his metaphysical world, Bolesław Leśmian uses the technique of installation, introduces new words, oxymorons and other artistic techniques characteristic of the epoch of modernism. According to metaphysics, the highest value is earthly existence, and vice versa: the impossibility of being, the inability to become bodily, which feels thinking, is the fundamental source of all suffering. Bolesław Leśmian seems to open the opposite world to us, the unceasing motion of that which does not exist, unmanaged in the side of existence, and realizes the painfulness of the unassembled form of existence, which is as strong as the suffering of the body.

Derrida on Pornography: Putting (It) Up for Sale

Derrida Today ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Morris
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
English Translation ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Past ◽  
French Original ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Critical Discourses ◽  
Academic Debate

Over the past thirty years, academic debate over pornography in the discourses of feminism and cultural studies has foundered on questions of the performative and of the word's definition. In the polylogue of Droit de regards, pornography is defined as la mise en vente that is taking place in the act of exegesis in progress. (Wills's idiomatic English translation includes an ‘it’ that is absent in the French original). The definition in Droit de regards alludes to the word's etymology (writing by or about prostitutes) but leaves the referent of the ‘sale’ suspended. Pornography as la mise en vente boldly restates the necessary iterability of the sign and anticipates two of Derrida's late arguments: that there is no ‘the’ body and that performatives may be powerless. Deriving a definition of pornography from a truncated etymology exemplifies the prosthesis of origin and challenges other critical discourses to explain how pornography can be understood as anything more than ‘putting (it) up for sale’.

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

Body and Desire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael A. Cadenhead
Keyword(s):  
Full Range ◽  
The Body ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ethical Discourse ◽  
Sex And Sexuality ◽  
Diachronic Analysis

Although the reception of the Eastern father Gregory of Nyssa has varied over the centuries, the past few decades have witnessed a profound awakening of interest in his thought, particularly in relation to the contentious issues of gender, sex, and sexuality. The Body and Desire sets out to retrieve the full range of Gregory’s thinking on the challenges of the ascetic life through a diachronic analysis of his oeuvre. Exploring his understanding of the importance of bodily and spiritual maturation in the practices of contemplation and virtue, Raphael Cadenhead recovers the vital relevance of this vision of transformation for contemporary ethical discourse.

Stress management: Corpus-based insights into vernacular interpretations of stress

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Laurel Smith Stvan
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
American English ◽  
Physical Symptom ◽  
The Body ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
The Past ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Semantic Shift

Examination of the term stress in naturally occurring vernacular prose provides evidence of three separate senses being conflated. A corpus analysis of 818 instances of stress from non-academic texts in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Corpus of American Discourses on Health (CADOH) shows a negative prosody for stress, which is portrayed variously as a source outside the body, a physical symptom within the body and an emotional state. The data show that contemporary speakers intermingle the three senses, making more difficult a discussion between doctors and patients of ways to ‘reduce stress’, when stress might be interpreted as a stressor, a symptom, or state of anxiety. This conflation of senses reinforces the impression that stress is pervasive and increasing. In addition, a semantic shift is also refining a new sense for stress, as post-traumatic stress develops as a specific subtype of emotional stress whose use has increased in circulation in the past 20 years.

Acta Fluens – Generatives Handeln und Improvisation im Jazz

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Davide Sparti
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Obwohl jede menschliche Handlung mit einem gewissen Grad an Improvisation erfolgt, gibt es kulturelle Praktiken, bei denen Improvisation eine überwiegende Rolle spielt. Um das Risiko zu vermeiden, einen zu breiten Begriff von Improvisation zu übernehmen, konzentriere ich mich im vorliegenden Beitrag auf den Jazz. Meine zentrale Frage lautet, wie Improvisation verstanden werden muss. Mein Vorgehen ist folgendes: Ich beginne mit einem Vergleich von Improvisation und Komposition, damit die Spezifizität der Improvisation erklärt werden kann. Danach wende ich mich dem Thema der Originalität als Merkmal der Improvisation zu. Zum Schluss führe ich den Begriff affordance ein, um die kollektive und zirkuläre Logik eines Solos zu analysieren. Paradigmatisch wird der Jazzmusiker mit dem Engel der Geschichte verglichen, der nur auf das Vergangene blickt, während er der Zukunft den Rücken zugekehrt hat, und lediglich ihr zugetrieben wird. Weder kann der Improvisierende das Material der Vergangenheit vernachlässigen noch seine genuine Tätigkeit, das Improvisieren in der Gegenwart und für die Zukunft, aufgeben: Er visiert die Zukunft trotz ihrer Unvorhersehbarkeit über die Vermittlung der Vergangenheit an.<br><br>While improvised behavior is so much a part of human existence as to be one of its fundamental realities, in order to avoid the risk of defining the act of improvising too broadly, my focus here will be upon one of the activities most explicitly centered around improvisation – that is, upon jazz. My contribution, as Wittgenstein would say, has a »grammatical« design to it: it proposes to clarify the significance of the term »improvisation.« The task of clarifying the cases in which one may legitimately speak of improvisation consists first of all in reflecting upon the conditions that make the practice possible. This does not consist of calling forth mysterious, esoteric processes that take place in the unconscious, or in the minds of musicians, but rather in paying attention to the criteria that are satisfied when one ascribes to an act the concept of improvisation. In the second part of my contribution, I reflect upon the logic that governs the construction of an improvised performance. As I argue, in playing upon that which has already emerged in the music, in discovering the future as they go on (as a consequence of what they do), jazz players call to mind the angel in the famous painting by Klee that Walter Benjamin analyzed in his Theses on the History of Philosophy: while pulled towards the future, its eyes are turned back towards the past.

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