Woman as Vulnerable Self: The Trope of Maternity in Levinas's Otherwise Than Being

Much due criticism has been directed at Levinas's images of the feminine and “the Woman” in Time and the Other and Totality and Infinity, but less attention has been paid to the metaphor of maternity and the maternal body that Levinas employs in Otherwise Than Being. This metaphor should be of interest, however, because here we find an instance in which Levinas uses a female image without in any way seeming to exclude women from full ethical selfhood. In the first three sections of this paper I explain how maternity functions in Otherwise Than Being. I argue that maternity is used as (1) an image of the vulnerability or passive sensibility that characterizes the relation with the Other, as well as (2) a metaphor for Levinas's account of ethical responsibility as substitution. In the final section of the paper, I defend the claim that Levinas's maternal metaphors are not disparaging to real, empirical women. I also discuss a remaining worry that feminists may have about the metaphor: namely, that it characterizes pregnancy and motherhood in ways that challenge some pro‐choice assumptions.     

Gendered Reason: Sex Metaphor and Conceptions of Reason

Reason has regularly been portrayed and understood in terms of images and metaphors that involve the exclusion or denigration of some element—body, passion, nature, instinct—that is cast as “feminine.” Drawing upon philosophical insight into metaphor, I examine the impact of this gendering of reason. I argue that our conceptions of mind, reason, unreason, female, and male have been distorted. The politics of “rational” discourse has been set up in ways that still subtly but powerfully inhibit the voice and agency of women.     

Portrait of Our Lady: Mary, Piero, and the Great Mother Archetype

Mary the God-bearer is explored symbolically from the perspective of the archetype of the Great Mother as described by Carl Jung and Erich Neumann. Drawing from primordial and collective origins, the dark and the chthonic as well as the light and spiritual aspects of the archetype are considered as represented in the work of fifteenth century Italian painter Piero della Francesca. Piero's images of Mary incorporate body as well as spirit, power as well as vulnerability, death, as well as life and rebirth. The feminine presence of the Great Mother archetype creates a powerful dynamic on an unconscious level in both men and women that culminates in radical transformation.     

Methods of Group Psychotherapy by Raymond J. Corsini

Abstract

I call attention to the metapsychology of sense, and the role sense plays–phenomenologically and symbolically–in the life of the clinician and the group. Each group member asserts influence in taking a role as the perceiver and the perceived, the senser and the sensed. We reach for sense, for without sense reference, we cannot grasp or even talk about psychic reality. It serves as sign and symbol, as metaphor, analogy, illustration, and model. Sense fixes experience yet may fixate experience and interfere with developing abstract thoughts. Clinical vignettes illustrate how the leader may utilize his or her particular clinical sensibility to reach the group and focus attention, to link sense to psychic qualities: to the personality of the members, the group culture and process, and the live clinical interaction.     

Perversion,eating disorders and sex roles

Abstract

Russell J.M. Perversion, Eating Disorders and Sex Roles. Int Forum Psychoanal 1992;1:98-103. Stockholm. ISSN 0803-706X

Perversion is presented as a fascination with something we also regard as repugnant. A perversion like exhibitionism is a metaphor illuminating the stereotypically masculine. An eating disorder such as bulimia provides a metaphor illuminating the stereotypically feminine. It also fits the account given of perversion. Stereotypes for masculine and feminine, though cultivated in social expectations, are rooted in the infant fantasy world. One is fascinated with the fate of what one has ejected (projected). This contributes to a groundwork for masculinity and exhibitionism. One is fascinated and ambivalent about what one takes in (introjects) which contributes to a groundwork for femininity and bulimia. Genitalia are discovered subsequently, as appropriate representations of these options. Our capacity to be socialized into gender roles, and our discovery of our genitalia en route to this socialization, are foreshadowed by these deeper and earlier styles.     

GOD EMBODIED IN,GOD BODYING FORTH THE WORLD: EMERGENCE AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

Abstract. I expand on Philip Clayton's application of emergence—in the context of a metaphysical position he calls emergent monism—to conceiving God's relationship to the world. Like Clayton, I adopt a panentheistic perspective, but in a way that I argue is consistent with classical philosophical theism and its grammatical analysis of Christian discourse about divine transcendence. In order to exploit further the analogical potential of an emergentist account of human mentality and agency, I argue that the standard panentheistic metaphor The world is the body of God should be complemented by the metaphor God is the body of the world.     

Foucault,Rape, and the Construction of the Feminine Body

In 1977, Michel Foucault suggested that legal approaches to rape define it as merely an act of violence, not of sexuality, and therefore not distinct from other types of assaults. I argue that rape can not be considered merely an act of violence because it is instrumental in the construction of the distinctly feminine body. Insofar as the threat of rape is ineluctably, although not determinately, associated with the development of feminine bodily comportment, rape itself holds a host of bodily and sexually specific meanings.     

A Note on Hahn's Philosophy of Logic

Hans Hahn, mathematician, philosopher and co-founder of the Vienna Circle, attempted to reconcile the validity and applicability of both logic and mathematics with a strict empiricism. This article begins with a review of this attempt, focusing on his view of the relation of language to logic and his answer to the question of why we need logic. I then turn to some recent work by Stephen Yablo in an attempt to show that Yablo's fictionalism, and in particular his use of metaphor, can shed light on Hahn's philosophy of logic.     

Mythological Underpinnings of Feminine Development

In the manner of Oedipus Rex, the myth of Myrrha—a story about a daughter's initiation of sex with her father—promises to divulge insights about feminine development. Given parallels between these two myths, the author asks why Jung identified Electra rather than Myrrha as the feminine counterpart to Oedipus, and revisits Freud's and Jung's differing interpretations of the incest theme in personality development. To break open the metaphor of Myrrha's incest, the author analyzes a similar account of incest in the Old Testament story of Lot and his wife and finds that they share a theme of female bitterness related to wounding of the mother and its arresting effect on the daughter's maturation. The article then considers the Demeter-Persephone myth, a tale not of incest but rape in Persephone's initiation into womanhood. In contrast to Myrrha, Persephone's development unfolds with strong maternal support tempered by the opposing claims on her by the masculine. The article draws these stories together to illuminate the archetypal forces that drive feminine development as well as the human affairs that resist and complicate them. The article concludes with a case study of a client whose developmental “stuckness” follows the contours of the Myrrha myth.     

Psychoanalytic reflections on a particular form of language distortion.

A female obsessive patient communicated with her sister via a distortion of the Hebrew language, in which she masculinized the feminine gender second person pronoun and certain nouns. This treatment of words is analyzed in terms ranging from the concrete to the metaphoric uses of language. Lacan's emphasis on the meaning of the word is explored and is seen as an amplification rather than a replacement of the object relations approach to language and metaphor.     

Donna Haraway's Cyborg Touching (Up/On) Luce Irigaray's Ethics and the Interval Between: Poethics as Embodied Writing

In this article, I argue that Donna Haraway's figure of the cyborg needs to be reassessed and extricated from the many misunderstandings that surround it. First, I suggest that we consider her cyborg as an ethical concept. I propose that her cyborg can be productively placed within the ethical framework developed by Luce Irigaray, especially in relationship to her concept of the “interval between.” Second, I consider how Haraway's “cyborg writing” can be understood as embodied ethical writing, that is, as a contemporary écriture feminine. I believe that this cyborgian “writing the body” offers us a way of both creating and understanding texts that think through ethics, bodies, aesthetics, and politics together as part of a vital and relevant contemporary feminist ethics of embodiment. I employ the term “poethics” as a useful way to describe such a practice.     

Feminist Philosophy and the Philosophy of Feminism: Irigaray and the History of Western Metaphysics

Irigaray demonstrates that metaphysics depends upon the specific negation and exclusion of the female body. Readings of Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman tend to highlight the status of this excluded materiality: is there an essential female body which precedes negation or is the feminine only an effect of exclusion? I approach Irigaray's work by way of another question: is it possible to move beyond a feminist critique of metaphysics and towards a feminist philosophy?     

Bioethics' Gender

I argue that the field of bioethics is gendered feminine, but that the methods it uses to resist this gender identity pose real harm to actual women. Starting with an explanation of what I take ‘gender’ to be, I enumerate four drawbacks to being gendered feminine. I then argue that bioethics suffers from three of the same four drawbacks. I show how the field escapes the fourth disadvantage by adopting a masculine persona that inflicts damage on women, and conclude by urging bioethicists to reflect on their complicity in abusive power systems such as gender, race and class.     

Female Passion and the Matrix of Mother,Daughter, and Body: Vicissitudes of the Maternal Transference in the Working Through of Sexual Inhibitions

The maternal object is rarely seen as a girl's source of identification as a vibrant, sexually desirous woman. In this paper, I propose that the mother's capacity both to convey her own pride and pleasure in her female body, its sexual and procreative capacities, and to confer the privilege of passion on her daughter is requisite for a girl's full, pleasurable possession of her body and sexuality. Using observations from two analyses, I explore ways in which transformations of the negative transference manifestations of thwarted maternal sexuality and its pernicious expressions within the mother–daughter relationship paralleled recovery of a fuller capacity for sexual pleasure and agency. To offer clinical pathways toward development of female analysands' capacities for feminine pride and sexual passion, theories must allow for adaptive resolution of oedipal-period conflicts—resolution that can lead to a mature mutuality between mother and daughter.     

Linking Metaphor and Dreams in Clinical Practice

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to weave together selected aspects from the theoretical domains of metaphor and dreams. With respect to dreams, the paper draws on theorists who argue for the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. Of particular interest is the symbolic value that may be placed on the manifest dream. Establishing the significance of the manifest dream is an important step toward linking its imagery with our daytime figurative language in a meaningful way. Further, the notion that dreams symbolically capture our self-state lends support to the idea that there may be thematic correspondence between our dreams and metaphors. This may be most apparent when we compare dominant metaphors with recurring dreams.     

A systematic review of studies comparing body image concerns among female college athletes and non-athletes, 1997–2012

Research prior to 2001 indicated that athletes experienced better body image than non-athletes, with no differences among sport types. Since then, female athletes have become increasingly sexually objectified in the media, and the sociocultural beauty ideal has shifted to emphasize appearing both athletic and thin. Part I of this paper explores the literature describing these changes. Part II presents a systematic and comprehensive literature review of 10 recent studies comparing body image concerns (BIC) among collegiate female athletes and non-athletes to identify the current status of BIC in female athletes. Findings indicate that involvement in collegiate athletics provides some protection from BIC; however, this protection appears attenuated for athletes in more feminine sports (e.g., gymnastics), and higher level athletes (Division I). Researchers should examine how sociocultural pressures unrelated to competition predict female athletes’ BIC using measures that focus on objectification, positive body image, body functionality, and thin- and athletic-ideal internalization.     

Psychopharmacological enhancement: a conceptual framework

The availability of a range of new psychotropic agents raises the possibility that these will be used for enhancement purposes (smart pills, happy pills, and pep pills). The enhancement debate soon raises questions in philosophy of medicine and psychiatry (eg, what is a disorder?), and this debate in turn raises fundament questions in philosophy of language, science, and ethics. In this paper, a naturalistic conceptual framework is proposed for addressing these issues. This framework begins by contrasting classical and critical concepts of categories, and then puts forward an integrative position that is based on cognitive-affective research. This position can in turn be used to consider the debate between pharmacological Calvinism (which may adopt a moral metaphor of disorder) and psychotropic utopianism (which may emphasize a medical metaphor of disorder). I argue that psychiatric treatment of serious psychiatric disorders is justified, and that psychotropics are an acceptable kind of intervention. The use of psychotropics for sub-threshold phenomena requires a judicious weighing of the relevant facts (which are often sparse) and values.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FEMININE GENDER ROLE STRESS, BODY IMAGE, AND EATING DISORDERS

The Feminine Gender Role Stress (FGRS) scale was used in two studies to determine whether eating disorders could be linked to the cognitive tendency among women to appraise specific situations as highly stressful because of rigid adherence to the traditional feminine gender role. Study 1 showed the FGRS scale could distinguish eating disorders from other psychiatric disorders in an inpatient setting and from normal college women. This suggests that women who have eating disorders report higher than usual levels of stress as a result of rigid adherence to the traditional feminine gender role. Study 2 looked at cardiovascular reactivity to a "feminine" (i.e., body image threat) and a control stressor and determined the FGRS scale could predict which women are threatened by feminine stressors. Results from these studies suggest feminine gender role stress may be the missing link between cultural values of femininity and vulnerability for eating disorders.     

Believing in Make-Believe: Looking at Theater as a Metaphor for Psychotherapy

In this essay, I explore the theatrical dimensions of psychotherapy. I argue that many of the historical, practice-related, and conceptual connections between theater and therapy often are only alluded to in the literature, but rarely made explicit. In doing so, however, it seems apparent that, as a metaphor for psychotherapy, theater perhaps offers a more appropriate fit than those narrative and conversational metaphors that have been employed so far. Proposing that theater is, in fact, the metaphor on which psychotherapy bases itself, I briefly examine some of its implications for how therapy might be conceptualized and performed. I conclude by inviting other therapists to consider — by openly acknowledging theater as a metaphor for psychotherapy — if they might then become more engaging, creative, and imaginative in their work.     

“Loving Nature” Nature’s Way: Exploring Radical Participation With Nature Through the Metaphor of Complex,Dynamic Self-Systems

The Western metaphor of self-as-identity—as a static, inherently exclusive entity—has been instrumental, historically, to our radical separation from nature, and still hampers a reviving of genuine participation with nature. Suggesting an alternative to this metaphor (informed by literacy as technology), I explore the more nature-informed metaphor of dynamic, complex self-systems, involving both natural and human subsystems. Through this latter metaphor, I re-vision radical participation with nature: in the process of perception, in epistemology/ontology, and in the ways of indigenous, oral cultures. This systems metaphor also sheds contrasting light on literacy-informed, Western ways.