Transcendental Meditation,Reiki and Yoga: Suffering,Ritual and Self-Transformation

The paper explores three practices of eastern spirituality taken up by westerners for apparently secular purposes. As an 'emic' account that proceeds inductively from the author's experience, it shows how each of these practices is an attempt to change the meaning of suffering through the creative medium of ritual. Rituals are often used as initiations from one form of subjectivity to another. Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, and Reiki are undertaken as means of self-transformation. They may be adopted as 'magical' ways of achieving personal aims, but they also have the potential to take practitioners beyond the ego towards 'sacred' understandings or 'otherness'. The sacred (or 'spiritual'), however, is not necessarily 'the good'. The paper considers the effects of these practices. Do they become forms of self-mastery and power for the individual ego or do they hold out the promise of a more ethical self (in Lévinas's sense of 'ethics')? In other words, do they help resolve the problem of suffering through creating a more communicative body and a self-for-others?     

Reminders of an agentic ingroup buffer disease uncontrollability

Chronic illness has negative impacts beyond those on physical health. In particular, because it is often experienced as uncontrollable, chronic illness might reduce people's general sense of personal control and, subsequently, personal well-being. Drawing on recent theory and research, we proposed and tested in four experiments (N_total = 1323) a potential buffer to these negative effects: thinking about an agentic social ingroup in one's life. In Study 1, patients suffering from a chronic illness that was either high or low in medical disease controllability were asked either to think about an agentic ingroup or a personal issue. Low perceived disease-related control was associated with low perceived personal control only when participants' personal self, but not when their ingroup, was salient. In three follow-up vignette studies, we asked participants to take the perspective of a person who suffered from a health problem of low medical disease controllability and attended a self-help group that was described as either high or low in agency. The findings supported the predicted buffering effect: participants who reflected on a target suffering from a low control disease thought that the target would experience more personal control when the agentic (vs. the nonagentic) self-help group was salient. These findings suggest ingroups can serve as a source of personal control in the context of health-related threats to the extent that they are perceived as agentic. Thus, focusing on agentic properties of (health-related) ingroups might be a promising novel strategy when designing effective group-based interventions to cope with chronic illness.     

A Theory of Tragic Experience According to Hegel

Abstract: Hegel's theory of tragedy is often considered to be primarily a theory of the objective powers involved in tragic conflicts—for Hegel, these are paradigmatically competing ethical notions—and of the rationality which underlies and drives such conflicts. Such a view follows naturally from a close reading of Hegel's discussion of classical Greek tragedy in his Lectures on Aesthetics. However, this view gives rise to the question of whether Hegel's theory of tragedy can account for the significance of tragic experience, in particular the experience of tragic suffering; it has been argued repeatedly that it cannot. In contrast, I want to suggest in this paper that a theory of tragic experience can be derived from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. This Hegelian theory of tragic experience, I argue, should be understood as complementing rather than challenging Hegel's theory of objective tragic conflict.     

Between a suffering body and a body in a state of need: Aulagnier’s theory of discourses on the body applied to primitive mental states

ABSTRACT

In her theory of discourses on the body, Aulagnier makes the comparison of the concept of ‘a suffering body’ and the concept of ‘a body in a state of need’. The last type is what she thinks is often found in addiction, anorexia and in borderline states, conditions marked by a radical negativity. On the other hand, ‘a suffering body’ is a concept that indicates a relation and two bodies, mother’s and child’s, that communicate. Suffering and infantile sexuality is a first attempt to accept separation by weaving a net of fantasy over the abyss of lack and separation. If pleasure and suffering are lacking as representations, the sensory reactions may exist physiologically but without psychical existence. The concepts of ‘a suffering body’ and 'a body in a state of need' will enable us to think about important structural differences between neurotic-, borderline- and psychotic conditions. As a foundation for her concepts lies a metapsychological elaborations of three kinds of processes for representation: the primal-, the primary- and the secondary process.     

Reclaiming Embodiment within Critical Psychology: A Material‐Discursive Analysis of the Menopausal Body

Social and Critical Psychology have been accused of ‘disembodying’ the discipline through the negation of embodied experience. In contrast, Bio‐Medicine and Biological Psychology focus on the body, within a realist framework. A material‐discursive approach, and a critical‐realist epistemology, is proposed as a way forward to examine embodiment in a socio‐cultural context, wherein the materiality of the body is recognised, but always mediated by culture, language, and subjectivity. As a case example, women's experience of embodied change at menopause is examined. The bio‐medical positioning of the menopausal body as the site of disease, distress, and debilitation, necessitating medical management, is contrasted with women's reports of minimal distress, and effective negotiation of midlife changes. Cultural context, relational factors and the positioning of embodied changes as symptoms, or as natural, are key factors determining women's coping. This material‐discursive approach thus allows us to ‘re‐embody’ psychology and move beyond the mind–body divide.     

Recognition,ideology, and the case of “invisible suffering”

The purpose of this paper is to expose, and provide a possible solution to, an internal inconsistency in Axel Honneth's critical theory of recognition. 1 Honneth requires a way of making his claim that misrecognition causes subjective suffering, with the potential to cognitively disclose injustice, consistent with his account of ideological recognition as a form of misrecognition that engenders compliance with an oppressive social order. Only by reconciling these claims—that is, by showing how ideological recognition can engender an acceptance of domination whilst at the same time causing subjective suffering—can Honneth's theory of recognition retain the kind of critical capacities he desires. As a means of achieving this reconciliation, I propose the notion of “invisible suffering.” In the case of ideological recognition, I suggest that the suffering caused by misrecognition has its disclosive power blocked by the faux‐affirmation that the ideology discursively accords, and this renders the experience of suffering, qua painful indicator of social injustice, invisible to the subject. Drawing on insights from medical sociology, I show how the need to supplement Honneth's theory of recognition with the idea of invisible suffering is revelatory of the kind of critical theoretical stance demanded by his ontological commitments.     

“I Desire to Suffer,Lord, because Thou didst Suffer”: Teresa of Avila on Suffering

Teresa of Avila's desire for suffering cannot be interpreted as the mere passive assumption of a feminine sacrificial role. On the contrary, Teresa was able to transform her suffering into the incarnated performance of her relationship with God: By desiring suffering and by understanding it and her ability to confront it as proof of divine love, she was able to reinforce her self‐confidence and strength. This article discusses Teresa of Avila's experience and interpretation of suffering in the context of the female ascetic‐mystic Christian tradition. It criticizes Teresa's positive conceptualization of suffering but examines in depth the potential of her ability to actively manage and control it. Although Teresa was able to affirm her personality through ascetic practices such as self‐humiliation and mortification, the general applicability of such practices to the management of suffering is fraught since they leave the suffering individual in a vulnerable position. Although Teresa of Avila finds fulfillment and, paradoxically, self‐actualization through self‐denial and the surrender of her will, such practices entail the substantial risk of total self‐annihilation.     

Prologue

The discussant begins by describing her British Object-Relations perspective. She emphasizes the difference between obstructive or critical forces within the personality which are best described as a part of the self and those which are felt by the patient to have a quality of otherness about them: the latter are better conceptualized as internal objects since this is closer to the patient's subjective experience. The author stresses the importance—in Scharff's patient's inner world—of the useless maternal—and impotent paternal—object. ‘Stupid’ rather than ‘bad’ objects can affect introjective processes and limit the patient's intellectual functioning because, where the world is seen as uninteresting and unstimulating, it is therefore not worth attending to nor learning from. The author also made a further point. She saw the patient's repetitive bitter self-criticisms, although partly arising out of deprivation, depression, and abuse, as also possibly containing an element of masochistic pleasure in suffering and failure. This would raise delicate technical issues in balancing a sensitive approach to the real suffering with a clearly stated recognition of the addictive repetitive masochistic quality which accompanies it and which may be blocking recovery.     

Freud's psychoanalysis: A moral cure

That psychoanalytical treatment in its classical Freudian sense is primarily a moral or ethical cure is not a very controversial claim. However, it is far from obvious how we are to understand precisely the moral character of psychoanalysis. It has frequently been proposed that this designation is valid because psychoanalysis strives neither to cure psychological symptoms pharmaceutically, nor to superficially modify the behaviour of the analysand, but to lead the analysand through an interpretive process during which he gradually gains knowledge of the unconscious motives that determine his behaviour, a process that might ideally liberate him to obtain, in relation to his inner desires, the status of a moral agent. There resides something appealing in these claims. But it is the author's belief that there is an even deeper moral dimension applying to psychoanalytical theory and praxis. Freudian psychoanalysis is a moral cure due to its way of thematizing psychological suffering as moral suffering. And this means that the moral subject – the being that can experience moral suffering – is not primarily something that the psychoanalytical treatment strives to realize, but rather the presupposition for the way in which psychoanalysis theorizes psychological problems as such.     

Phenomenology of Bodily Integrity in Disfiguring Breast Cancer

In this paper, I explore the meaning of bodily integrity in disfiguring breast cancer. Bodily integrity is a normative principle precisely because it does not simply refer to actual physical or functional intactness. It rather indicates what should be regarded and respected as inviolable in vulnerable and damageable bodies. I will argue that this normative inviolability or wholeness can be based upon a person's embodied experience of wholeness. This phenomenological stance differs from the liberal view that identifies respect for integrity with respect for autonomy (resulting in an invalidation of bodily integrity's proper normative meaning), as well as from the view that bodily integrity is based upon ideologies of wholeness (which runs the risk of being disadvantageous to women). I propose that bodily integrity involves a process of identification between the experience of one's body as “Leib” and the experience of one's body as “Körper.” If identification fails or is not possible, one's integrity is threatened. This idea of bodily integrity can support breast cancer patients and survivors in making decisions about possible corrective interventions. To implement this idea in oncology care, empirical‐phenomenological research needs to establish how breast cancer patients express their embodied self‐experiences.     

Somaesthetics and The Second Sex: A Pragmatist Reading of a Feminist Classic

This paper explains the discipline of somaesthetics, which emerges from pragmatism's concern with enhancing embodied experience and reconstructing the aesthetic in ways that make it more central to key philosophical concerns of knowledge, ethics, and politics. I then examine Beauvoir's complex treatment of the body in The Second Sex, assessing both her arguments that could support the pragmatic approach of somaes‐thetics but also those that challenge its bodily focus as a danger for feminism.     

Depression in South Asian women: Asian women's beliefs on causes and cures

A qualitative, grounded theory approach within a constructivist paradigm is employed to explore perceptions of causes and cures of depression in South Asian women. Ten Asian women suffering from depression and three of their carers were interviewed about their beliefs around the cause of their own and their relative's depression, and the implications of these beliefs for treatment. Findings suggested that understanding their experience of conflicting cultural expectations, distinctions between psychosocial, spiritual, physical health problems and communication problems (general and culture specific) were central to these women's experiences of depression The implications of results for services are discussed and limitations of the study considered in line with criteria developed for constructivist research.     

Women pastors and the idealization of suffering

Many women entering the Christian ministry are justifiably angry at the rejection, resentment, and condescension they often experience. What to do? Neither denial nor repression is the answer. Anger must be seen rather as a logical outcome of pioneer effort, a spiritual testing. To minister is to identify with Jesus in the role of suffering servant, and feel the pain of the hungry, while to reject suffering is to narcotize life. When suffering is part of fulfilling God's purpose, it can reach its highest idealization.     

What's Gained from Depression? A Proposal on Theodicy and Epinosic Gains

Abstract: Many depression-sufferers testify to experiences of goodness that arise from their depression, or ‘goodness because of depression’. These realities often inspire efforts to reconcile suffering and divine benevolence. Yet some sufferers who experience ‘goodness because of depression’ reject theodical thinking and therefore seek other frameworks for reflection on their suffering and its accompanying goods. This essay draws from psychology's notion of epinosic gains to propose an analogous framework that aids sufferers in discussing and interpreting instances of ‘goodness because of depression’ apart from theodical justifications. While the proposed framework is grounded in first-person reflections on depression and is articulated in relation to another Christian framework for depression from Tasia Scrutton, this constructive proposal has the potential to serve theological reflection on a wider range of suffering beyond depression.     

On the Patient's Becoming an Individual: The Importance of the Analyst's Personal Response to a Deprived Patient and Her Dreams

What patients mainly want—which Ferenczi noted as early as 1932 in his clinical diary and which Bion later expressed in his Cogitations (1992)—and what some patients need, is to experience how the analyst lives and processes the interpersonal events that lie at the origin of their affective and mental suffering. This is especially true with schizoid patients who were profoundly emotionally deprived in childhood. In this paper, the author investigates this crucial aspect of the intersubjective analytic relationship in his treatment of just such a patient, an extremely silent and inert young woman. Through a detailed examination of clinical material from various stages of her analysis, he explores how the analyst's unconscious emotional response serves as both a tool for comprehension and a key element of environmental facilitation—a “new beginning,” to use Balint's phrase—that may help the patient attain a level of development and emancipation that he or she has never experienced before.     

The prefigurative politics of place-making: Analysis of a neighbourhood-based campaign for a social centre

This article analyses the production of meaning embedded in places through prefigurative practices. Although the use of space by activist groups is widely studied in the sociology of social movements and urban geography, this article extends the body of literature on place-making by analysing the prefigurative dimension between militant practices and living spaces. Drawing on walking interviews with Montreal's activists that campaigned for a social centre in Canada, this article argues that the strategies inform place-making of local grassroots mobilisations that aimed to develop urban alternatives, and that the meaning attributed to places depends on the individual and collective experience of activists engaging in prefigurative politics. In this sense, place-making derives from the lived collective experience therein and the individual's treatment of these spaces. The results show that the repetition of the action, as well as its emotional and symbolic intensity, are factors that favour the contribution of prefigurative practices to the place-making process.