The body of the other: intercorporeality and the phenomenology of agoraphobia

How is our experience of the world affected by our experience of others? Such is the question I will be exploring in this paper. I will do so via the agoraphobic condition. In agoraphobia, we are rewarded with an enriched glimpse into the intersubjective formation of the world, and in particular to our embodied experience of that social space. I will be making two key claims. First, intersubjectivity is essentially an issue of intercorporeality, a point I shall explore with recourse to Merleau-Ponty’s account of the prepersonal body. The implication of this claim is that evading or withdrawing from the other remains structurally impossible so long as we remain bodily subjects. Second, the necessary relation with others defines our thematic and affective experience of the world. Far from a formal connection with others, the corporeal basis of intersubjectivity means that our lived experience of the world is mediated via our bodily relations with others. In this way, intercorporeality reveals the body as being dynamically receptive to social interactions with others. Each of these claims is demonstrated via a phenomenological analysis of the agoraphobe’s interaction with others. From this analysis, I conclude that our experience of the world is affected by our experience of others precisely because we are in a bodily relation with others. Such a relation is not causally linked, as though first there were a body, then a world, and then a subject that provided a thematic and affective context to that experience. Instead, body, other, and world are each intertwined in a single unity and cannot be considered apart.     

The transformation of intercorporeality in melancholia

In this article the author seeks to highlight a specific disorder related to bodily experience in melancholia conceived as a severe form of clinical depression. The article is divided into three parts. In the first section, the author investigates the intersubjective dimension of bodily experience in light of the categories of Außen- and Innenleiblichkeit. In the second section, I explore a specific disturbance of the dimension of intercorporeality. The excessive feeling of the bodily (außenleibliche) visibility of his/her own sufferance is a fundamental aspect of depression. At a pre-reflexive level, we constantly assume the noncoincidence between one's own bodily expression and the Other's experience/reading of these expressions. An alteration of this (pre-reflexive) awareness occurs in melancholia. The patient feels as if the melancholic condition would be transparent to the other. In the third section, the author intends to show the alteration of the embodied communication between the melancholic person and the other investigating two particular phenomena: the exchange of gaze in a face to face encounter, and the disturbance of the oral sense, revealing a specific form of irresponsiveness and the experience of void.     

‘We Pray by His Mouth’: Karl Barth,Erving Goffman,and a Theology of Invocation

Rereading the opening question of the Westminster Catechism, “What is the chief end of man?”, I contend in this essay that the act of invocation — giving God thanks, praise, and petitions — is the act in and through which human being itself is founded, constituted and achieved. I take important cues from Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics and The Christian Life, and from sociologist Erving Goffman's work on the shifting “footings” involved in everyday interactions. I argue for an account of the human being as a being‐with‐God, human acting as acting‐with‐God, and human salvation as a restoration to the genuine human partner's work — indeed, the true leitourgia— of thanks, praise and petition to God.     

Exemplification: The self-presentation of moral character

How do people come to terms with moral self-presentations and disconfirming behaviors? Subjects were exposed to the self-presentation of either an exemplifier (presenting himself as morally virtuous) or a pragmatist (presenting himself as morally adaptable) and then learned whether the self-presenter had or had not cheated for self-serving reasons in an earlier experiment Subjects clearly distinguished between exploitativeness and hypocrisy in their attributions, and considered a cheating exemplifier more hypocritical and self-deluding, but less exploitative and devious than a cheating pragmatist A second experiment manipulated subjects' involvement with the cheating of an exemplifier and a pragmatist by making half of the subjects its victims As in Experiment 1, uninvolved subjects considered the cheating exemplifier more hypocritical and less exploitative than a cheating pragmatist, however, involved subjects (victims) considered a cheating exemplifier more hypocritical but no less exploitative than a cheating pragmatist The results are discussed in terms of strategic self-presentation and the attribution of moral character     

Projecting perfection by hiding effort: supplementing the perfectionistic self-presentation scale with a brief self-presentation measure

Extensive research has illustrated the relevance of individual differences in perfectionistic self-presentation, but there has been little work on how perfectionistic self-presentation is expressed. The current research addressed this issue by examining the tendency to project a perfectionistic image by hiding effort. This research develops and evaluates a brief unifactorial measure as an extension of perfectionistic self-presentation. It is shown that the Perfectionistic Self-Presentation Hiding Effort Scale is reliable and valid in terms of its links with multidimensional perfectionism dimensions. Further, individual differences in seeming perfect while hiding effort accounted for unique variance in depression and social anxiety. Factors and processes that contribute to attempting to seem perfect while hiding effort are discussed.     

Looking back on Goffman: The excavation continues

I would like to thank Yves Winkin, Dean MacCannell, Charles Bosk, and review editor Jim Ostrow for providing helpful comments on several earlier drafts of this essay.     

The self-serving attributional bias: Beyond self-presentation

An experiment was conducted to provide empirical support for the notion that asymmetrical causal attributions for favorable and unfavorable outcomes result from a self-serving attributional bias that occurs independently of self-presentational concerns. Subjects did either well or poorly on an ego-involving test for which their performance, attributions, and evaluations of the test were either public or private. A pattern of self-serving responses for subjects' attributions and evaluations of the test was found in the private conditions, thus providing evidence of the influence of outcome favorability on individuals' perceptions of causality. Theoretical and practical implications of these finding are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered.     

Doing as if: The histrionic self-presentation style

The histrionic self-presentation style is introduced as a concept that describes specific individual differences in self-presentation, namely, performing explicit As-If-behaviors in everyday interactions. The As-If-Scale (AIS), a trait measure of histrionic self-presentation, shows good internal consistency and test–retest reliability as well as convergent and discriminant validity in several samples. Construct validation involved determining relations between the AIS and the Big Five, histrionic role concepts, motives, competencies, humor and ambivalence. Furthermore, the AIS yielded incremental validity in predicting behaviors related to histrionic self-presentation over and above the self-monitoring construct. The possible impact of the histrionic style for research on self-presentation and other fields is discussed. It is argued that histrionic phenomena are pervasive within many facets of our western culture and therefore deserve further examination.     

Increased performance with increased personal control: A self-presentation interpretation

Past research has found that allowing people a choice of task materials sometimes increases performance on the task. A self-presentation interpretation for this effect was tested and supported in two experiments. In Experiment 1, subjects performed better on a paired-associate learning task when allowed to select some of the words for the test, but only when they believed the experimenter would know of their choice and their performance. In Experiment 2, subjects performed better on what they believed was a cognitive abilities test when allowed to select the test, but again only when they believed their performance would be known by those who were aware of the choice. It was concluded that providing increased control over a task often results in increased concern for self-presentation that may lead to a better performance on the task.     

The Cartesianism of phenomenology

Continental Philosophy Review -     

The phenomenology of virtue

What is it like to be a good person? I examine and reject suggestions that this will involve having thoughts which have virtue or being a good person as part of their content, as well as suggestions that it might be the presence of feelings distinct from the virtuous person’s thoughts. Is there, then, anything after all to the phenomenology of virtue? I suggest that an answer is to be found in looking to Aristotle’s suggestion that virtuous activity is pleasant to the virtuous person. I try to do this, using the work of the contemporary social psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and his work on the ‘flow experience’. Crucial here is the point that I consider accounts of virtue which take it to have the structure of a practical expertise or skill. It is when we are most engaged in skilful complex activity that the activity is experienced as ‘unimpeded’, in Aristotle’s terms, or as ‘flow’. This experience does not, as might at first appear, preclude thoughtful involvement and reflection. Although we can say what in general the phenomenology of virtue is like, each of us only has some more or less dim idea of it from the extent to which we are virtuous—that is, for most of us, not very much.     

Exploring choking experiences in elite sport: The role of self-presentation

ObjectivesThe aims of this study were twofold: first, to examine the role of self-presentation within the lived-experience of choking in sport; and second, to explore whether the 2 × 2 framework of self-presentation (Howle, Jackson, Conroy, & Dimmock, 2015) holds the potential to further our understanding of acute sporting failure under pressurized conditions.Design and MethodAn empirical phenomenological research design was adopted to address the research aims. Purposefully selected participants completed phenomenological interviews, which explored in detail their experiences of choking and clutch performance under pressure. The sample consisted of 9 elite athletes (6 male and 3 female) (Mage = 27.14; SD = 5.27) from a range of sports (netball, rugby union, golf, tennis, and cricket).ResultsParticipants reported a tendency to hold protective-agentic self-presentation motives, low self-presentation efficacy, and self-presentational concerns prior to, and during the choke. Conversely, acquisitive-agentic self-presentation motives, and self-presentation efficacy were experienced before and during clutch performances. However, alongside self-presentation, other psychological constructs also preceded and accompanied the choking experience (e.g., unfamiliarity and perceived control).ConclusionThis exploratory study is the first to identify the value of examining choking in sport through the lens of the 2 × 2 self-presentation framework, with self-presentation motives appearing to influence the choking experience. Yet, it is also evident that self-presentation may not explain all choking episodes.     

The phenomenology of negation

Negation is a fundamental component of communication (no-answers), cognition (logical negation), perception (different color), attitude (dislike), emotion (hatred), and volition (disagreement). Its many uses make it difficult to provide an integrated definition of the concept. The aim of this paper is to show that an integrated definition of the concept can be arrived at by means of a phenomenological method structuring it into three general essences labelled lack, otherness and obstruction.

The imp of the reverse: A phenomenology of the unconscious

The debate regarding the unitary versus multiple nature of the human person is examined with special attention to the division between conscious and unconscious. The roots of the unconscious are traced to the experience of alienation or feeling divided within. An existential analysis is provided in order to shed light on the nature of the unconscious. The experience of feeling divided within is explained as a metaphor that is taken literally. An existential-phenomenological explanation of the unconscious is provided which preserves the essential unity of the human person.