Illness and the paradigm of lived body

This paper suggests that the paradigm of lived body (as it is developed in the works of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Zaner) provides important insights into the experience of illness. In particular it is noted that, as embodied persons, we experience illness primarily as a disruption of lived body rather than as a dysfunction of biological body. An account is given of the manner in which such fundamental features of embodiment as bodily intentionality, primary meaning, contextural organization, body image, gestural display, lived spatiality and temporality, are disrupted in illness causing a concurrent disorganization of the patient's self and world. The paradigm of lived body has important applications for medical practice. It provides a fuller account of illness than does the prevailing reductionist Cartesian paradigm of body, more directly addresses the existential predicament of illness, and orients the clinical focus around the personhood of the patient.     

Being, <Emphasis Type="Italic">aevum</Emphasis>, and nothingness: Edith Stein on death and dying

This article seeks to present for the first time a more systematic account of Edith Stein’s views on death and dying. First, I will argue that death does not necessarily lead us to an understanding of our earthly existence as aevum, that is, an experience of time between eternity and finite temporality. We always bear the mark of our finitude, including our finite temporality, even when we exist within the eternal mind of God. To claim otherwise, is to make identical our eternity with God’s eternity, thereby undermining the traditional Scholastic argument, which Stein holds, that there is no real relation between the being (and, therefore, (a)temporality) of God and the being of human persons. Second, I will argue that Stein excludes the category of potentiality from her discussion of death as a relation between the fullness or actuality of being and nothingness. In fact, death is more a relation between possibility/potentiality and nothingness than a relation between actual fullness and nothingness. What Stein describes as fullness ought to be read as potential.

隐喻的具身性与文化性

自从Lakoff和Johnson在《Philosophy in the Flesh —The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought》一书中将认知科学划分为第一代认知科学与第二代认知科学以来,隐喻成为了心理学家、语言学家和哲学家研究的热点领域之一。隐喻的构造基于我们的具身体验,基于我们的文化背景。隐喻的具身性与文化性是相互融合、不可分割的。     

Temporality and psychopathology

The paper first introduces the concept of implicit and explicit temporality, referring to time as pre-reflectively lived vs. consciously experienced. Implicit time is based on the constitutive synthesis of inner time consciousness on the one hand, and on the conative–affective dynamics of life on the other hand. Explicit time results from an interruption or negation of implicit time and unfolds itself in the dimensions of present, past and future. It is further shown that temporality, embodiment and intersubjectivity are closely connected: While implicit temporality is characterised by tacit bodily functioning and by synchronisation with others, explicit temporality arises with states of desynchronisation, that is, of a retardation or acceleration of inner time in relation to external or social processes. These states often bring the body to awareness as an obstacle as well. On this basis, schizophrenia and melancholic depression are investigated as paradigm cases for a psychopathology of temporality. Major symptoms of schizophrenia such as thought disorder, thought insertion, hallucinations or passivity experiences may be regarded as manifesting a disturbance of the constitutive synthesis of time consciousness, closely connected with a weakening of the underlying pre-reflective self-awareness or ipseity. This results in a fragmentation of the intentional arc, a loss of self-coherence and the appearance of major self-disturbances. Depression, on the other hand, is mostly triggered by a desynchronisation from the social environment and further develops into an inhibition of the conative–affective dynamics of life. As will be shown, both mental illnesses bear witness of the close connection of temporality, embodiment and intersubjectivity.     

Diabetes,Chronic Illness and the Bodily Roots of Ecstatic Temporality

This article studies the phenomenology of chronic illness in light of phenomenology’s insights into ecstatic temporality and freedom. It shows how a chronic illness can, in lived experience, manifest itself as a disturbance of our usual relation to ecstatic temporality and thence as a disturbance of freedom. This suggests that ecstatic temporality is related to another sort of time—“provisional time”—that is in turn rooted in the body. The article draws on Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Heidegger’s Being and Time, shedding light on the latter’s concept of ecstatic temporality. It also discusses implications for self-management of chronic illness, especially in children.

“具身”涵义的理论辨析

“具身”是当代心理学和认知科学领域的热门话题, 其基本涵义是指认知对身体的依赖性。经典认知科学主张“非具身”, 认为认知是一种信息的表征与加工, 从本质上讲与承载它的身体无关。“弱具身”强调了认知对身体的依赖性, 但是却保留了认知的计算和表征功能。“强具身”则极力主张认知是被身体作用于世界的活动塑造出来的, 身体的特殊细节造就了认知的特殊性。在怎样理解“具身”方面, 存在着不同的解释。从本文作者的观点来看, 具身的性质和特征表现在4个方面：(1)身体参与了认知, 影响了思维、判断、态度和情绪等心智过程。(2)我们对于客观世界的知觉依赖于身体作用于世界的活动, 身体的活动影响着关于客观世界表象的形成。(3)意义源于身体, 抽象的意义有着身体感觉—运动系统的基础。(4)身体的不同倾向于造就不同的思维和认识方式。有关具身的研究将从理论和实践两个层面对心理学产生冲击。     

The long-lasting now: Disorganization in subjective time in long-standing pain

This paper presents a phenomenological-hermeneutical case study on long-standing pain (LP), a public health problem of great importance. Although there has been intensive research interest in this phenomenon, most studies have been based on traditional medical and cognitive-behavioral approaches. Our thesis is that new frames of reference can provide additional heuristic insights.
The phenomenon of LP shows a strong association with existential factors. Our case study focuses on the meaning-structure of lived temporality , a fundamental existential constituent in the lifeworld of the pain patient. A series of in-depth interviews with four subjects showed that lived temporality is disrupted in pain experience, causing a disorganization of the patient's being in the world. The results generate several hypotheses about implications for time estimation in pain experience.     

Gender as Lived Time: Reading The Second Sex for a Feminist Phenomenology of Temporality

This article suggests that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex offers an important contribution to a feminist phenomenology of temporality. In contrast to readings of The Second Sex that focus on the notion of “becoming” as the main claim about the relation between “woman” and time, this article suggests that Beauvoir's discussion of temporality in volume II of The Second Sex shows that Beauvoir understands the temporality of waiting, or a passive present, to be an underlying structure of women's existence and subordination. Accordingly, I argue that Beauvoir does not see “woman” as a mere becoming, as that which unfolds in time, but instead understands becoming a woman to be realized as lived time. As such, Beauvoir's account shows that gender and temporality are deeply entangled, and thus she challenges the classic phenomenological account of temporality as a general, given structure of human existence. More specifically, I argue that her account shows how a particular experience of time is an underlying structure of sexual objectification, a claim that expands on the feminist phenomenological claim that a particular relation to space becomes a way in which women take up and negotiate their own subordination and objectification.     

Penser les temporalités à l’accueil des urgences psychiatriques : paroles d’intervenants de la crise

ObjectiveTo explore the relation to times in crisis units and psychiatric emergencies by crisis stakeholders.MethodIt is in a qualitative logic that the collection and analysis of data are discussed. 9 crisis stakeholders participated in the study. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analyzed using the Grounded Theory.ResultsThe Grounded Theory shows significant phenomena resulting the experience of temporality in psychiatric emergencies: plural human temporalities (1), impacts of multiple temporalities (2), reorganizing temporalities of the relationship (3), and appropriation of temporality (4). The manner of appropriating time depends essentially on the emotional control and the reflexivity of the therapeutic actions.ConclusionCrisis stakeholders are in temporality of immediacy, speed and subjective urgency and suggest us thinking in less quickly and better. Team exchanges are so many suspended moments that contribute to the resumption of a thought process and avoid acting too quickly. Participants would like the relational component to be privileged with patients.     

Phenomenological Views on Intersubjectivity: Towards a Reinterpretation of Consciousness

Intersubjectivity and consciousness are reinterpreted according to the dynamic and relational coordinates of lived experience. Consciousness is not just another property of the subject, but rather the condition itself of his/her own being-in-the-world. The different aspects of consciousness are the moments and movements which constitute its intentional structure. These structures lead us to reinterpret material embodiment, temporality, and intersubjectivity as the “complex” steps taken by consciousness, which in its movements does not turn inward, on itself like a transcendental, reasoning, and self-centred consciousness, but, on the contrary, as an embodied consciousness immersed in others and in the world.

Cyberpsychology, Human Relationships, and Our Virtual Interiors

Recent research suggests an "Internet paradox"—that a communications technology might reduce social involvement and psychological well–being. In this article I examine some of the limitations of current Internet communication, including those of access, medium, presentation , and choice , that bear on the formation and maintenance of social relationships. I also explore issues central to human meaning in a technological culture—those of the history of the self, of individuality, and of human relationships—and suggest that social forces, technological and otherwise, have increasingly eroded our social interconnectedness and even produced psychological fragmentation. Finally, by considering the psychology of privacy, subjectivity, and intimacy, I look at the historical and developmental processes of internalization by which we construct the "virtual interior" of mind. Understanding this link between human meaning and technological culture, in the form and pattern of our virtual interiors, may help us to see opportunities as well as dangers for the growth of our humanity, our ethics, and our spirituality.     

Minima sensibilia: Against the dynamic snapshot model of temporal experience

In our wakeful conscious lives, the experience of time and dynamic temporal phenomena—such as continuous motion and change—appears to be ubiquitous. How is it that temporality is woven into our conscious experience? Is it through perceptual experience presenting a series of instantaneous states of the world, which combine together—in a sense which would need to be specified—to give us experience of dynamic temporal phenomena? In this paper, I argue that this is not the case. Several authors have recently proposed dynamic snapshot models of temporal experience—such as Prosser and Arstila, building upon Le Poidevin—according to which, perceptual experience has no temporal content of a non‐zero extent. I argue that there is an absence of motivation for such a view; I develop and defend the claim that perceptual experience minimally presents something of some non‐zero temporal extent as such.     

Getting stuck: temporal desituatedness in depression

The DSM characterizes major depressive disorder partly in temporal terms: the depressive mood must last for at least two weeks, and also must impact the subject "most of the day, nearly every day." However, from the standpoint of phenomenological psychopathology, the long-lasting quality of the condition hardly captures the distinctiveness of depression. While the DSM refers to objective time as measured by clocks and calendars, what is especially striking about depression is the distortions to lived time that it involves. But is there any relation between a) these disruptions to temporal experience and b) the tendency for depressive symptoms to persist and endure? To explore the connection between lived time and objective time, I investigate the embodied and enactive nature of intentionality among subjects suffering from depression. What I call 'affective framing' is a spontaneous, pre-reflective way of filtering information that involves bodily attunement and allows subjects to focus their attention on what they feel is important. I will argue that affective framing ordinarily has a forward-looking temporal structure and a "teleological direction" that is rooted in our embodiment. However, depression involves a distortion in future-directed intentionality, so that a subject becomes temporally desituated and cut off from the future. This contributes to many of the characteristic features of depression, including apparent lack of motivation, inability to imagine future possibilities, alterations in lived time, and a sense that one is "stuck." To gain a better understanding of this disruption to the futuredirected structure of affective framing in cases of depression, I look to concepts from complex dynamic systems theory and the notion of 'habit.' My proposed account aims to shed light on how a disruption to future-directedness impacts bodily attunement and reinforces depression as a long-term condition.     

Configurations of time,the body,and verbal communication: Temporality in patients who express their suffering through the body

This paper focuses on the study of temporality used as a clinical pointer to processes of affect regulation in patients who express their suffering through a discourse driven by bodily allusions. Differences between symptoms revealed by body language that conveys an experience of conflict (psychoneurotic symptoms) and somatizations are reviewed. Somatization is examined as a benchmark for the failure to resolve states of tension. The body in the session is conceptualized as a speech event. The body is considered as a psychical construction organized in the exchanges with a fellow human‐being. It is thus established as a support for subjectivity. Two discourse registers are described: the discourse of the evoked body and the discourse of the perceived body. The study of Greek mythology allows us to distinguish two different types of temporality : Chronos and Kairos. Chronos represents chronological whereas Kairos subjective time. Both are present in the subject; but if greater mental disorganization supervenes, Chronos predominates as it paves the way for a defence against suffering, designed to avoid the unbearable meaning of ceasing to be. Adherence to one or other mode of temporality signals different conceptions of analytic work. The topics addressed are illustrated by various clinical vignettes .     

Imagination and Reality: On the Relations Between Myth, Consciousness, and the Quantum Sea

There often appears to be a striking correspondence between mythic stories and aspects of reality. We will examine the processes of creative imagination within a neurobiological frame and suggest a theory that may explain the functions of myth in relation to the hidden aspects of reality. Myth is peppered with archetypal entities and interactions that operate to reveal hidden processes in reality that are relative to the human condition. The imagery in myths in a sense "sustains the true." That is, mythopoetic imagery keeps the interpretive process in experience closer to the actual nature of reality than the rational faculties operating alone are able to do. Indeed, whereas rationalizing can easily lead us awry, genuine myth rarely does. Explanations of events offered by cultures around the world are frequently couched in terms of mythic themes and events. An important function of myth is to provide a "field of tropes" that in-forms the lived experience of people. This paper focuses especially on those aspects of myth that represent facets of the quantum universe and give us clues as to the relationship between consciousness, symbolism, and reality.     

Terminator or Super Mario: Human/Computer Hybrids, Actual and Virtual

Abstract: Is a human/computer hybrid feasible: If so, in what ways would such hybridization affect our concept of what it means to be human? There are two forms of such hybridization, the actual and the virtual. Actual hybridization involves the implantation of mechanical devices in the human body. In actual hybridization the computer comes to us and to our body to enhance our functioning in our world. In virtual hybridization we go to the computer, projecting our minds into the world of cyberspace and being formed there. Perhaps the most common form of virtual hybridization is the immersion our children experience in the world of video games. Both forms of hybridization encourage us to think of ourselves only in terms of function, just when most of our theologians find that humans reflect the image of God through our relationships. This emphasis on function best serves the military, but leaves us in the theological community with a dissatisfying concept of what it means to be human.     

A community psychology of object meanings: Identity negotiation during disaster recovery

What do material goods intended for personal consumption mean to community? We use the extreme example of natural disaster recovery in a community to explore this question. Our work describes how members make sense of material objects that transition from private to public possessions (damaged goods) and public to private possessions (donated goods). By blending consumer and community psychology perspectives with our narratives, we employ a three-dimensional framework for analyzing object meanings: (1) material objects as agents of communitas (a shared sense of “we”), (2) material objects as agents of individualism (a focus on “me”), and (3) material objects as agents of opposition (the “we” that speaks for “me” and “us” versus “them”). This theoretical frame allows us to show how different conceptions of identity lead to conflicting meanings of objects within community, and to explain how and why object meanings shift as objects move across time and space from private to public and from scarcity to abundance. We also provide implications for coping with disasters that consider collective and individual identities as well as oppositional stances in between.     

The time-image and Deleuze's transcendental experience

In this paper I examine the meaning of Deleuze's transcendental empiricism by means of the kind of experience that his project opens up for us – an experience that I want to call transcendental. Primarily on the basis of his works on cinema, famously dedicated to freely investigating Bergson's thought, I argue that Deleuze's notion of the time-image, together with his search for its real and necessary conditions, consists in the liberation of experience from its Kantian limitative conditioning. I then examine both the new kind of subjectivity (the fissured ego) that emerges from this enlarged experience and the new conception of temporality (time out of joint) that subtends it. Finally, I try to bring out the concrete relations between (transcendental) experience, thought and the brain that Deleuze brings to light in his analysis of great cinema's reinvention of the relationship between time and movement.