Investigating Psychology and Transcendence

Psychology has not fully engaged with the possible reality of transcendence, spirit, or the divine, largely due to unexamined assumptions that prevent taking religious experience and transcendence seriously. Eugene Long’s reflections on experience and transcendence, key ideas from hermeneutic philosophy, including Brent Slife’s conception of “strong relationality,” Peter Berger’s analysis of modern dilemmas and “many realities,” Louis Dupré’s discussion of an ingrained “objectivism” that has long colored and probably distorted Western philosophy, theology, and the social sciences, and Vaclav Havel’s suggestion of a “need for transcendence” in a postmodern world roughly cohere and go a long way toward dismantling the “encapsulated self” that must either reject transcendence altogether or reach it only by way of a blind and indefensible “leap” out of the modern situation.     

Testimonial Injustice and a Case for Mindful Epistemology

In her 2007 book Epistemic Injustice Miranda Fricker identifies testimonial injustice as a case where a hearer assigns lower credibility to a speaker due to “identity prejudice.” Fricker considers testimonial injustice as a form of epistemic injustice since it wrongs the speaker “in her capacity as a knower.” Fricker recommends developing the virtue of “testimonial justice” to address testimonial injustice. She takes this virtue to involve training in a “distinctly reflexive critical social awareness.” The main goal of this article is to argue that Fricker's proposed training falls short of the target and that a cultivation of the capacity of being present—the ability to be mindful—would be necessary to develop the critical social awareness that Fricker requires. I want to explore the impact of compassion and open-mindedness—virtues cultivated in mindfulness training—on testimonial justice specifically and virtue epistemology generally. In attempting to develop an epistemic account informed by mindfulness—a mindful epistemology—my primary goal is to bring Buddhist insights on how to anchor the mind by training it to be fully present and attentive into the focus of mainstream Western philosophy. More specifically, I argue that doing so allows us to appreciate the crucial role that a prediscursive level of cultivation plays in the development of testimonial justice.     

Empathy as a hermeneutic practice

This essay will argue for the centrality of empathy in the doctor-patient relationship — as a core of ethically sound, responsible therapeutics. By “empathy,” I intend an explicitly hermeneutic practice, informed by a reflexive understanding of patient and self. After providing an overview of the history of the concept of empathy in clinical medicine, I discuss current definitions and the use of Balint groups in residency training as a way to develop empathic competence in novice physicians.     

Reciprocity and Rivalry: A Critical Introduction to Mimetic Scapegoat Theory

This paper presents a critical overview of René Girard’s mimetic theory, identifies several concerns about the adequacy of mimetic theory’s account of human agency and interdependence, and suggests ways this account might be clarified and enhanced. We suggest that mimetic theory tends to reify or hypostatize the core reality of mimetic desire, which sometimes is spoken of as a kind of trans-individual entity that directs human action, no doubt because of Girard’s concern to avoid any taint of individualism or subjectivism. We argue, however, that hermeneutic and dialogical philosophies like those of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Mikhail Bakhtin explicate profound human relationality and interdependence in a way that obviates individualism without overriding or obscuring personal responsibility. The concern of many Girardian theorists that hermeneutic philosophy covers over or even rationalizes conflictual and violent human dynamics, we contend, is unfounded. However, we insist that most contemporary social theory, including hermeneutic thought, fails to do full justice to the challenges posed by envy, enmity, and scapegoating violence in human affairs and to the struggle for a good or decent life that mimetic theory richly portrays. Thus, we explore some of the possibilities for a fruitful cross-fertilization of mimetic theory and hermeneutic/dialogical viewpoints. Similarly, we argue that recent work on virtue ethics in theoretical psychology contains rich resources for elaborating what would be involved in a so-called “positive” or “creative” mimesis that moves beyond the destructive kinds of mimetic entanglement upon which Girardian thought has tended to concentrate. Finally, we suggest that any effort of this sort to clarify what Girard terms our “interdividual” human reality and to investigate positive mimesis would be greatly assisted by Eugene Webb’s delineation of a fundamental kind of “beneficient motivation” or positive “existential appetite,” a third species of human desire in addition to the two that Girard clearly identifies, namely finite needs and the kind of insatiable, artificial craving that the term mimetic desire usually designates.     

Distance Learning: Empathy and Culture in Junot Diaz’s “Wildwood”

This essay discusses critical approaches to culture, difference, and empathy in health care education through a reading of Junot Diaz’s “Wildwood” chapter from the 2007 novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I begin with an analysis of the way that Diaz’s narrative invites readers to imagine and explore the experiences of others with subtlety and complexity. My reading of “Wildwood” illuminates its double-edged injunction to try to imagine another’s perspective while recognizing the limits to—or even the impossibility of—that exercise. I draw on post-colonial theory and feminist science studies to illuminate a text that is created and interpreted in a post-colonial context—the Dominican diaspora in the United States. The essay offers a model of historical and critical analysis that health care educators can use to frame the concept of empathy in the classroom and the clinic.     

Pragmatic,Existentialist and Phenomenological Interpretations of Marxism

In his book, Hermeneutics and Reflection (2013), Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann outlines what he sees as the fundamental differences between Edmund Husserl’s “theoretical” phenomenology and Martin Heidegger’s “a-theoretical” phenomenology, which he frames in terms of the distinction between “reflective observation” and “hermeneutic understanding”. In this paper, I will clarify the sense of these terms in order to elucidate some of the crucial similarities and differences between Husserl and Heidegger. Against von Herrmann’s characterization of the Husserlian project, I argue that we should not consider these differences in terms of “reflection”, since this runs the risk of misconstruing Husserlian phenomenology with the philosophical tradition he was striving against. Taken together, by way of a close reading of von Herrmann, the following discussion will serve as a brief sketch of the early Heidegger’s turn away from Husserlian phenomenology and toward his own hermeneutic phenomenology.     

＂I Effaced Myself＂ and ＂The Disappearance of the Subject＂： A Comparison between Zhuangzi and Jean Baudrillard＇s Anti-Subjectivism

In the chapter ＂The Adjustment of Controversies＂ in his eponymous work, Zhuangzi has the character Nanguo Ziqi declare ＂I effaced myself,＂ thereby holding that one can return to the state of naturalness only after breaking with the ＂self＂ that is in opposition to ＂objects,＂ abandoning his subject-object standpoint and entering a state of ＂effacement＂ wherein one fuses with the Dao. Coincidently, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard also repeatedly stresses the ＂disappearance of the subject＂ in his later philosophy, trying to dissolve subject-centrism by means of a counterattack by the object wherein its logic would entrap the subject. Although they lived in different times, both Zhuangzi and Baudrillard note the same human predicament--the situation wherein the ＂I as subject＂ constantly obscures the ＂real I.＂ Their resolutions of the predicament are similar： both put their hopes in the dissolution of the ＂I＂ or self in subject-object relations, with Zhuangzi declaring ＂I effaced myself＇ and Baudrillard mooting the ＂disappearance of the subject.＂ They differ, however, on how to dissolve the ＂I＂ （myself）. Briefly, Zhuangzi advocates ＂effacing myself through the Dao,＂ that is, quitting one＇s ＂fixed mindset＂ and ＂egoism＂ and returning to the Dao by means of ＂forgetting＂ or ＂effacing＂; Baudrillard, on the other hand, proposes to ＂efface oneself through the object,＂ i.e., replace the supremacy of the subject with that of the object. Baudrillard＇s theory has often been criticized as pataphysics because of its nihilism without transcendence; in contrast, Zhuangzi＇s view, which construes the whole world as the unfolding of the Dao, seems more thought-provoking.     

Die exzentrische Psyche

The reflexive modernization of western societies corresponds with a modernization of mental structures. Having lost its structural rigidity the human mind is attaining more variability, fluidity and accessibility; it becomes more flexible, vivid, communicative and much more connected with social life. On the other hand a modernized psyche which is internally less armored and secure and externally less isolated and defined seems at the same time rather unsettled and can be disturbed more easily. A decrease of psychic stability, in the classical sense of character formation, may correspond with an increase of liability to disturbances. This mental ambivalence generates all kinds of critical diagnoses of our times complaining about a cultural decline and blaming a morbid society which comes under pathogenic suspicion. Is there a new type of “social character” in globalized capitalism after the authoritarian personality disappeared in sync with the authoritarian society and the narcissistic personality disappeared in sync with the culture of narcissism? Does the self suffer from a neoliberal pressure towards self-responsibility, from a depressive exhaustion by abundant options or from the power of economic, social and cultural acceleration? Or is the self even completely dissipating in the social and digital networks of modernity? Considering some worrying phenomena of the present age I make the case for psychoanalytic serenity. I recommend an unbiased, precise and sober view, an attitude of evenly suspended attention avoiding the projective distortions of our own profession. There is indeed a new social character evolving from the manifold forms of mental externalization and desperately seeking social resonance: becoming eccentric a modernized psyche reveals to the social world what it is made of.     

Response to Ranganathan

This essay responds to Bharat Ranganathan's “Comment” on my essay, “The Concept of Dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (2011). Addressing key criticisms in this “Comment,” I make the following points. First, neither the idea of inherent dignity being “imparted” to humans, nor the Universal Declaration's implication—through its use of terms such as “inherent” and “inalienable”—that humans participate in transcendent reality, necessarily presuppose a Christian metaphysics. Second, a concept such as “inherent dignity” must be affirmed to be intrinsically heuristic unless we are to assume that its meaning can be completely known within the conditions of existence; but this affirmation does not render such concepts “indeterminate of sense.” Finally, Ranganathan's distinction between“weak” and “strong” senses of transcendence is untenable. If human truths beyond all contingencies are knowable (“weak” transcendence), then there must be a real dimension of meaning that transcends all contingencies (“strong” transcendence).     

Alexithymia and the reflexive self: Implications of congruence theory for treatment of the emotionally impaired

Abstract

This paper attempts to articulate a so far neglected dimension of congruence theory, the reflexive self to self transaction. My claim is that self reflexivity is a tacit but fundamental assumption behind Carl Rogers’ formulations of the relationship—what he refers to as “congruence” or “incongruence"—between experience and its symbolization in awareness. Gendlin's elaboration of the congruence theory in terms of “experiencing” and “inward sensing” has made clear and explicit the important role self reflexivity plays in the relationship between symbols and “unformed emotional experience.” A case vignette of Focusing is used to demonstrate the relevance of self reflexivity to our understanding of verbal expression of emotions, and by extension, to our understanding and treatment of alexithymia and related conditions of emotional impairments.     

A Religious Experience: A Psychological Interpretation of Kevin Kelly’s Conversion to Christianity

This paper, presented at the Group for New Directions in Pastoral Theology meeting in October 2012, uses the work of Sigmund Freud and Donald Capps to interpret a religious experience. The religious experience—a narrative about being born again—is recounted from the first story on the first episode of the radio program This American Life, which focuses on the religious conversion of Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine. Using Freud’s “A Religious Experience” as a model for interpretation, I employ psychoanalytic ideas (such as the castration complex) to provide an initial reading of the experience, and I then use Capps’s work on male melancholia and on life cycle theory to further the interpretation. I argue that this young man’s religious experience is reflective of what Capps calls “the religion of honor” and “the religion of hope”; that the timing of his religious experience can be understood by means of life cycle theory; and that, theologically speaking, his experience can be understood using the language of the spirit and the soul.     

Forcing materialism upon metaphysics: Three approaches to Adorno's method

Recent Adorno scholarship has been shaped by the idea that his critical theory cannot account coherently for its own method. Call this the Problem of Adornian Critical Theory (PACT). In this paper, I examine three recent approaches to Adorno—the “ethics of resistance” (associated with Gordon Finlayson and Brian O'Connor), “negative naturalism” (associated with Fabian Freyenhagen), and “inverse theology” (associated with Peter E. Gordon). Individually, I argue, all three approaches are subject to a key limitation that prevents them from being able to solve the PACT. But, by synthesising them, we can see how the scholarship already—effectively—possesses a solution to it. The synthesis that results is characterised in terms of “materialist metaphysics”—a position Adorno can clearly be read as articulating in the “Meditations on Metaphysics” chapter of Negative Dialectics.     

THREE THEORIES OF HUMAN NATURE

In The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Steven Pinker maintains that at present there are three competing views of human nature—a Christian theory, a “blank slate” theory (what I call a social constructivist theory), and a Darwinian theory—and that the last of these will triumph in the end. I argue that neither the outcome of such competition nor the particular content of these theories is as clear as Pinker believes. In this essay I take a critical as well as a constructive look at the challenge presented by a Darwinian theory of human nature—a challenge to the social sciences and the humanities and also to theology and more specifically to a Christian understanding of human nature.     

Constructing and Understanding an Incident as a Social Problem: A Case Study of University Entrance Exam Cheating in Japan

The recent work of Frances Chaput Waksler—The New Orleans Sniper: A Phenomenological Case Study of Constituting the Other—demonstrates, by close examination of the case of the New Orleans Sniper of 1973, how people constitute and unconstitute an “Other” in certain situations. This paper explores the process by which people constituted the Other in Japan in February of 2011 through the course of an incident that surprised Japanese people: university entrance exam cheating by use of the Internet question-and-answer bulletin board. I will further examine how the incident can be constructed as a social problem with the construction of a victim and a villain. For data, I use reports from newspapers with nationwide circulation and reports from news agencies present at the time of the event. I also cite additional data from Internet news sites. Although my research here is small and elementary and my analysis is sociological rather than phenomenological, it is inspired by Waksler’s work. I will show how peoples’ commonsense knowledge frames their understanding and construction of an event. This paper will show that Waksler’s ideas about the New Orleans Sniper and her analysis of this case are applicable to another event in a different time at a different place: contemporary Japanese society.     

Making sense of the lived body <Emphasis Type="Italic">and</Emphasis> the lived world: meaning and presence in Husserl,Derrida and Noë

I argue that Husserl’s transcendental account of the role of the lived body in sense-making is a precursor to Alva Noë’s recent work on the enactive, embodied mind, specifically his notion of “sensorimotor knowledge” as a form of embodied sense-making that avoids representationalism and intellectualism. Derrida’s deconstructive account of meaning—developed largely through a critique of Husserl—relies on the claim that meaning is structured through the complication of the “interiority” of consciousness by an “outside,” and thus might be thought to lend itself to theories of mind such as Noë’s that emphasize the ways in which sense-making occurs outside the head. But while Derrida’s notion of “contamination” rightly points to an indeterminateness of meaning in an outside, extended, concrete lived world, he ultimately reduces meaning to a structure of signification. This casts indeterminateness in terms of absence, ignoring the presence of non-linguistic phenomena of embodied sense-making central to both the contemporary enactivist program and to the later Husserl, who is able to account for the indeterminateness of meaning in lived experience through his distinction between sense (Sinn) and more exact linguistic meaning (Bedeutung). Husserl’s transcendental theory of meaning also allows for a substantive contribution to sense-making from the side of the perceived object—an aspect missing from Noë’s account. Thus, in contrast to Derrida and to Noë, Husserl accounts for sense-making in terms of both the lived body and the lived world.     

Rethinking the Crisis in Social Psychology: A Dialectical Perspective

This paper examines the crisis in social psychology as a multifaceted process. The epistemological, theoretical, and methodological tensions and controversies that arise in the extensive, reflexive debate on the crisis in social psychology are considered in their interconnections with psychological practice. The paper argues that despite the dominant tendency to return to “business as usual”, the increasing disunity and fragmentation of social psychology only indicate that its crisis has deepened. The paper offers a critical account of the main strategies for the resolution of the crisis in social psychology and suggests a dialectical perspective as a tool for a critical reflection on important theoretical and methodological issues of psychology as a discipline (the relationship between theory and practice, relationship between individual and society, empiricism, etc.)     

EDUCATION,SOCIAL CREATIVITY,AND THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

The evolution of society, the transcendence of existing social structures, and how society creates itself rests in a function of education. In this article the author examines education's work as that of social creativity. The need for pedagogies of “educate hope” and “imaginative possibilities” is explored. Social epistemology and social imaginary are discussed as dimensions of social creativity within the postmodern society. The aesthetic imperative in education is argued as important to developing the capacities and capabilities in youth to imagine alternative future possibilities of democratic society. The author concludes by examining the role of education in the evolution of society.     

Developing a Public Hermeneutic for the Future of Theological Education?

Abstract : This article considers whether there is a need to develop a public hermeneutic for theological education. Churches and theological schools are rethinking the programs they are providing and other new ways to enhance their process of leadership formation for ministry. In a dynamically global context, where churches have been “disestablished”—as in Canada—the religious needs of the wider public remain important. I suggest that more attention needs to be given to the public questions of “belonging.” Perhaps a notion of public ministry as active accompaniment of people and communities provides a helpful metaphor or public hermeneutic for theological schools in charting their future.