Listening to Somatosensory States in Psychoanalysis: Body,Trauma, and Poetry

ABSTRACT

The author starts from the apparently outdated James-Lange theory of emotion to rediscover elements of modernity for contemporary psychoanalysis: from James’ bodily-sensory dimension to Damasio’s “feeling of what happens,” to Bucci’s attention to the patient’s visceral narrative in session. William James stated that bodily sensations are the first elements on the path toward consciousness. Damasio emphasizes that “Consciousness is rooted in the representation of the body”. Bucci presents a framework for identifying linkages between bodily and symbolic states and to observe the various degrees of patients’ “visceral speech” in session. These parallels support a sensibility to listen to language as the voice of the body: the relationship between the patient’s narrative and the bodily-sensory dimension can be grasped through the patient’s “imagery” which may reference earlier somatic experience. Particular emphasis is given to the story-telling of trauma.     

The Subject (of) Listening

Jean-Luc Nancy's phenomenology of listening (trans. 2007) makes a series of claims about the sonic/auditory nature of the subject. First among these is the claim that the subject is a subject to the extent that it is listening, that it is all ears. The subject emerges on the back of the resonance of timbre in the body and the body's becoming-rhythmic. These claims are phrased often in musical terms, or making use of terms and rhetoric from the domains of music theory and music psychology. This article explores the role of music in Nancy's phenomenology with a particular view to the nature of listening in the contemporary world: both how listening is figured as a part of what Nancy terms the inoperative community and how listening figures the cognitive and phenomenological constitution of the subject.     

Listening

In this paper we reflect on the kind of listening that happens in research whilst taking part in a keep fit group and getting sweaty, that pushes us to ask an interviewee ‘Are you alright?’ and haunts us when the project is over. This is the kind of listening that weaves through, around and beyond what is immediately heard, including the unspoken, the articulateness of objects and the listening that comes through participating. The paper stems from a project concerned with how people live, experience and manage cultural diversity and ethnic difference in their everyday lives in urban England. Divided into two sections, the first part introduces our methods that included participant observation, interviews and repeat in-depth discussion group meetings. The second section reflects on our experiences of listening whilst doing, explores feelings that mediate listening and considers the time involved in listening.     

The Body Stripped Down

Abstract— According to terror management theory, cultural beliefs and standards provide protection from fears associated with mortality by convincing individuals that their existence matters more than that of any mere mortal animal. The body threatens the efficacy of such mechanisms by reminding us that we are animals nonetheless, and therefore fated to death. I present research demonstrating that existential concerns contribute to uneasiness with the body, especially regarding sex, and also to pervasive concerns with how the body measures up to cultural standards, most obviously regarding women's appearance. These findings show that in effort to defend against threats associated with the body's physicality, people may deny themselves pleasure and endanger their health.     

The Extended Body: The Social Body of Jesus according to Luke1

Abstract : Informed by body phenomenology and contemporary concepts of the social body, this article aims to interpret the particular movements and transformations of Jesus’ body as presented in the Gospel of Luke. From the outset Jesus’ body is inscribed in a Jewish genealogy. Likewise, the Gospel depicts the character of Jesus via the various landscapes he passes through as well as through the social interactions of which he is a part. While Jesus’ body is initially described as being energized by the mobile presence of the Spirit, it increasingly closes in and, at the end, simply disappears. Luke describes Jesus’ ascension and resurrection as radical transformations of Jesus’ body, by which Jesus’ body‐and‐mind (Leib) extends into a social body, at home in God as well as among his followers. This social body also crosses the genetic and cultural boundaries between Jews and Gentiles. Only through this extensiveness can Jesus’ body become accessible worldwide.     

The Body Grid as an Assessment Tool for Body Image

The aim of this study was to analyze the body grid (BG) as an assessment tool for body image in a sample of patients with breast cancer, after surgery. We explored two measures of cognitive structure, percentage of variance accounted for by the first factor (PVAFF) and polarization, and we compared measures of body image and body self-esteem obtained by means of the BG with those obtained via a validated body image questionnaire. Our sample was composed of 23 patients (12 subjected to radical mastectomy, 11 subjected to conserving surgery) and 24 healthy controls. Participants were administered the BG and the Multidimensional Body Self Relations Questionnaire (MBSRQ). We analyzed the similarities between instruments using correlations and nonparametric tests. We have also provided two case studies to exemplify the use of the BG.

?We found statistical differences in cognitive structure between patients and healthy controls. There were no differences between women subjected to mastectomy and women with breast conserving surgery in the level of PVAFF, but there were significant differences between them in the level of polarization. We found significant correlations between body image indices of both instruments, especially self-evaluated attractiveness (MBSRQ) and distance between real and ideal body (BG). We found similar distributions of these indices in all of the samples. We concluded that the BG provides useful information about body image. The results show that both instruments assess similar constructs. This suggests that the BG is a valid instrument for body image assessment.     

Listening to Dialogue

In accordance with Progressivism, Matthew Lipman, introduced an educational model for renewal and change by means of the child. With his Philosophy for Children programme he wished to offer an alternative for the intellectualistic oriented education which silenced children. The answer to the search for freedom and change, Lipman finds in the symbioses between ‘Philosophy’ and ‘Children’. Philosophy expressed in critical thinking and communication, was the basis to emancipate the child from the oppression of the adult and to cause change. According to Lipman the main purpose of philosophy is to free every individual from determination. This plea is being elaborated by dialogue. The main issue of our paper concerns the question whether Lipman’s alternative ‘Philosophy for Children’ can fulfil the promise of change and freedom. To answer this question we will investigate thoroughly where dialogue and change in Philosophy for Children stand for. Finally we will propose another perspective of dialogue. A dialogue stressed on listening. Listening to how the world appears to us and how we appear to ourselves. Nancy Vansieleghem is working on a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education at the Department of Education at the University of Gent, Belgium. Her main area of research is philosophy of dialogue and public space.     

Listening and understanding

The activities involved in mediating reinforcement for a speaker's behavior constitute only one phase of a listener's reaction to verbal stimulation. Other phases include listening and understanding what a speaker has said. It is argued that the relative subtlety of these activities is reason for their careful scrutiny, not their complete neglect. Listening is conceptualized as a functional relation obtaining between the responding of an organism and the stimulating of an object. A current instance of listening is regarded as a point in the evolution of similar instances, whereby one's history of perceptual activity may be regarded as existing in one's current interbehavior. Understanding reactions are similarly analyzed; however, they are considerably more complex than listening reactions due to the preponderance of implicit responding involved in reactions of this type. Implicit responding occurs by way of substitute stimulation, and an analysis of the serviceability of verbal stimuli in this regard is made. Understanding is conceptualized as seeing, hearing, or otherwise reacting to actual things in the presence of their "names" alone. The value of an inferential analysis of listening and understanding is also discussed, with the conclusion that unless some attempt is made to elaborate on the nature and operation of these activities, the more apparent reinforcement mediational activities of a listener are merely asserted without an explanation for their occurrence.     

Listening to Pictures

A review of Peter Steele’s: The Whispering Gallery: Art into Poetry, in which Steele writes poems on and to paintings and the sculpture Black Sun (By Inge King) in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Each work on which there is a poem is reproduced. In this book Steele writes more to the ‘contour’ of the topic-work than he did in Plenty. His poems – as ever sidenoted – are tensed between the topicality of the work of art in question, and Kant’s aesthetic which involves ‘the free play of the cognitive faculties’. In ths tension lies the particular pleasure of Steele’s poetry.     

The Role of Short Vowels in Arabic Listening Comprehension

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - The goal of the present study was to investigate the effect of short Arabic vowels on listening comprehension. It is well documented that short vowels affect...     

Listening comprehension in preschoolers: The role of memory

The current study analyzed the relationship between text comprehension and memory skills in preschoolers. We were interested in verifying the hypothesis that memory is a specific contributor to listening comprehension in preschool children after controlling for verbal abilities. We were also interested in analyzing the developmental path of the relationship between memory skills and listening comprehension in the age range considered. Forty‐four, 4‐year‐olds (mean age = 4 years and 6 months, SD =4 months) and 40, 5‐year‐olds (mean age = 5 years and 4 months, SD =5 months) participated in the study. The children were administered measures to evaluate listening comprehension ability (story comprehension), short‐term and working memory skills (forward and backward word span), verbal intelligence and receptive vocabulary. Results showed that both short‐term and working memory predicted unique and independent variance in listening comprehension after controlling for verbal abilities, with working memory explaining additional variance over and above short‐term memory. The predictive power of memory skills was stable in the age range considered. Results also confirm a strong relation between verbal abilities and listening comprehension in 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children.     

The Silence of the Body

As a practice meant to release the subject from the narcissism that informs the concerns and preoccupations of her or his ego, psychoanalysis aims at a transformation of the subject comparable to the Buddha's quest for enlightenment. In order to clarify this subtle and difficult dimension of psychoanalytic work, this essay draws upon a clinical example and discusses it in the context of both Freud's and Lacan's ideas about the role of narcissism in the formation of the ego, and the Buddha's doctrine of Anatta, which insists that the concept of the Atman, or self, is based upon an illusory thought.