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.     

CAUSALITY, INTENSIONALITY AND IDENTITY: MIND BODY INTERACTION IN SPINOZA

According to Spinoza mental events and physical events are identical. What makes Spinoza's identity theory tempting is that it solves the problem of mind body interaction rather elegantly: mental events and physical events can be causally related to each other because mental events are physical events. However, Spinoza seems to deny that there is any causal interaction between mental and physical events. My aim is to show that Spinoza's apparent denial of mind body interaction can be reconciled with the identity theory. I argue that Spinoza had both an extensional and an intensional concept of cause and when Spinoza seems to deny mind body interaction he is having in mind the intensional concept of cause. This intensional concept of cause corresponds to that of causal explanation. I will argue that Spinoza anticipated Donald Davidson's view that even though mental events cannot be explained by referring to physical events and vice versa, mental and physical events are causally related to each other.     

Children's Causal Explanations of Psychogenic Bodily Reactions

In Experiment 1, 4‐, 5‐, 8‐ and 11‐year‐old Japanese children (n = 69) and adults (n = 21) explained their reasons for bodily induced reactions (e.g. overeating leads to vomiting) and psychogenic bodily reactions (bodily outcomes originating in the mind, e.g. frustration leads to vomiting). Children gave vitalistic explanations, that is, explaining causal connections by referring to a vital force, in responses concerning bodily induced reactions, whereas adults typically gave these explanations in responses concerning psychogenic bodily reactions. In Experiment 2, 5‐, 8‐ and 11‐year‐old children (n = 96) and adults (n = 24) explained bodily induced and psychogenic bodily reactions, and psychological behaviour, for example, that frustration leads to nail biting. As in Experiment 1, vitalistic explanations tended to be found for psychogenic tasks but were seldom found in either children's or adults' explanations of psychological behaviour. The findings suggest that with age vitalistic causality obtains cross mind‐body implications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

BION'S THINKING ABOUT GROUPS: A STUDY OF INFLUENCE AND ORIGINALITY

One of Bion's least‐acknowledged contributions to psychoanalytic theory is his study of the relationship between the mind of the individual (the ability to think), the mentalities of groups of which the individual is a member, and the individual's bodily states. Bion's early work on group therapy evolved into a study of the interplay between mind and bodily instincts associated with being a member of a group, and became the impetus for his theory of thinking. On the foundation of Bion's ideas concerning this interaction among the thinking of the individual, group mentality, and the psyche‐soma, the author presents his thoughts on the ways in which group mentality is recognizable in the analysis of individuals.     

Das verkörperte Selbst und der Andere

Bodily experience and mentalization cannot be attributed to separate experiential fields, they are interrelated. Many twentieth and twenty-first century concepts of the embodied self in philosophy and psychosomatics have gone beyond dualistic models of mind and body. In accordance with these modern theories, a dialectical concept is presented that seems to be more adequate, highlighting two dialectical relationships. The first is between mentalization and bodily experience. On the one hand bodily experience always reaches beyond mentalization and on the other hand mentalization is constantly working on bodily experience and trying to represent it mentally. The second is between mentalization and intercorporeality. The embodied self is by no means a solipsistic self; rather, the mutual relatedness in a bodily encounter comes prior to all mentalization, which in turn remodels it into self-representations, e.g. the body image. These two dialectical relationships are important to take into account when trying to understand clinical phenomena, such as hypochondriasis, ideas of reference in schizophrenia or the psychological sequelae of Parkinson’s disease.     

Jung's psychoid concept and Bion's proto‐mental concept: a comparison

Jung and Bion both developed theoretical concepts propounding a deeply unknowable area of the psyche in which body and mind are undifferentiated and the individual has no distinct identity, from which a differentiated consciousness arises. In Jung's case, this is enshrined in his psychoid concept and the associated notion of synchronicity and, in Bion's case, in his proto‐mental concept and his ideas on group dynamics. It is by means of these two concepts that Jung and Bion approach and locate a combined body‐mind, a monism, in which body and mind are seen as different aspects of the same thing. This paper reviews the claim that although the two concepts are associated clinically with very different situations, their commonality may arise from a similar intellectual basis: both men appear to have been influenced by the same source of vitalist ideas in philosophy including Henri Bergson, and Jung's ideas also exerted a direct influence on Bion.     

The body of the analyst and the analytic setting: Reflections on the embodied setting and the symbiotic transference

In this paper the author questions whether the body of the analyst may be helpfully conceptualized as an embodied feature of the setting and suggests that this may be especially helpful for understanding patients who develop a symbiotic transference and for whom any variance in the analyst's body is felt to be profoundly destabilizing. In such cases the patient needs to relate to the body of the analyst concretely and exclusively as a setting ‘constant’ and its meaning for the patient may thus remain inaccessible to analysis for a long time. When the separateness of the body of the analyst reaches the patient's awareness because of changes in the analyst's appearance or bodily state, it then mobilizes primitive anxieties in the patient. It is only when the body of the analyst can become a dynamic variable between them (i.e. part of the process) that it can be used by the patient to further the exploration of their own mind.     

Spinoza on the Limits of Explanation

Commentators standardly ascribe to Spinoza a belief in an exceptionless conceptual closure of mental and physical realms: no intention can allow us to understand a bodily movement, no bodily injury can make intelligible a sensation of pain. This counterintuitive doctrine, most often now referred to as Spinoza's 'attribute barrier', has weighty repercussions for his views on intelligibility, nature of the mind, identity, and causality. I argue against the standard reading of the doctrine, by showing that it produces an inconsistent epistemological picture, contradicting Spinoza's theory of mind and his commitment to universal intelligibility. The alternative account I propose is also philosophically more compelling and plausible as an account of thought in its essential intentionality.     

The body in clinical cognitive theory: from beck to mindfulness

Working with the body in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is often seen as a ‘means to an end’; that is, a vehicle for diverting attention from negative thought patterns, thereby fostering a detached metacognitive awareness of problematic thinking. The MBCT literature, however, accords the body a more central role. The literature expresses both the idea that the body is integral to a basic level of meaning creation experienced as a ‘bodily felt sense of something’ and that direct sensory or bodily awareness can contribute to a critical change in the felt sense of emotional difficulties. Tracing the development of the concept of the body in clinical cognitive theory, the paper concludes that these ideas of the body are anticipated in earlier revisions to Beck's schema theory. The paper concludes that research into the psychological mechanisms behind bodily awareness would be a fruitful supplement to the current research focus on metacognitive awareness.     

Rudolph Hermann Lotze's philosophically informed psychology

This essay deals with four main topics: the notion of philosophical psychology; the idea that physical events and mental events cannot be compared to one another; psychophysical mechanism; and the theory of local signs. These are all key elements in the Medicinische Psychologie of Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817‒1881). By philosophical psychology, Lotze understands not only the collection of experimental data regarding physiological and mental states but also their philosophical processing outlining an interpretation of the real nature of the mind‒body connection. Within this framework, Lotze introduces the psychophysical mechanism as based on a key philosophical idea: mind and body are incomparable, but, nevertheless, they are in reciprocal relation (Wechselwirkung). In virtue of said special relation, movements that take place in the mental sphere of reality are transferred or translated in the bodily sphere and vice versa. This rearrangement (Umgestaltung) from one sphere of reality to the other is termed by Lotze “transformation to equivalent.” Through the concept of equivalence, Lotze supports the idea that the mind and the body form an organic whole. However, psychophysical mechanisms should not be seen as not a fixed series of physical changes followed by an equally fixed series of mental changes: physical changes are “read,” organized, and then transformed by the mind into something purely mental. This, in turn, produces new mechanical force and more physical changes. Lotze's legacy and long-term impact is finally read against the background of his contributions.     

The bodily complexity of truth‐telling in qualitative research: Some implications of Gendlin's theory

Abstract

Gendlin's philosophy of the body is used as an approach to the “truth values” of qualitative research. In this view, our bodily participation in life provides a grounded quality to understanding, a shared reference point for an experientially‐grounded language that can “'work.” This understanding is a bodily‐informed practice and involves the body's access to “more than words can say.” As such, the body is intimate to understanding and such bodily‐informed sense‐making adds a dimension to the ways we have access to and present truth. Implications of this approach for qualitative methodology will be discussed, in particular the implications for the informant's task, the interviewer's task, the task of analysis and the task of the reader.     

Mind,Soul and Spirit: Conceptions of Immaterial Identity in Different Cultures

The cognitive science of religion has recently focused attention on whether concepts of mind, soul, and spirit derive from the same or different intuitive foundations of immaterial identity. The present research is the first to look at intuitions about these three concepts simultaneously in different cultures. Methodologically, hypothetical transplants or transfers of minds or brains have been commonly used to examine the development of inferences about the continuity of mental identity despite bodily displacement. The present research extends the transfer paradigm to compare inferences about transfers of “soul” and “spirit” as well as the “mind.” American, Brazilian, and Indonesian undergraduate participants were presented with a series of scenarios in which a character's soul, mind, or spirit is transferred to another character's body. Participants made judgments about the consequences of such transfers on behaviors selected to potentially differentiate underlying intuitive categories. Results indicate that intuitions of soul, spirit, and mind do appear to draw from different but overlapping intuitions, which are recruited in different ways depending on religion and country. For American and Indonesian participants, the mind transfer was judged more often to result in a displacement of cognitive attributes compared to bodily, social, and moral attributes. Across the three countries, the transfer of spirit led more frequently to judgments about displacement of passion than of ability; religiosity was associated with giving more weight to the transfer of the soul, thus resulting in a greater displacement of all types of attributes. The results emphasize the importance of considering how different intuitive foundations, such as essentialism, intuitive psychology, and vitalism, might be recruited by culture to highlight different aspects of immaterial identity.     

A feminist psychotherapeutic approach to working with women who eat compulsively1

Feminist psychoanalytic theorists argue that eating problems demonstrate ways in which conscious and unconscious gendered feelings about women are split off and projected on to their bodies. As such, they are complex ways in which women attempt to negotiate and express their identities within their paradoxical social position in contemporary western society. They are not just consumers but also objects of consumption. This paper explores material from a feminist psychodynamic therapy group for women with a variety of eating problems, focusing on how interweaving both discursive and unconscious approaches to understanding the gendered function of weight can facilitate change. Feminist psychodynamic therapists work with the concept that the body is an interface between conscious and unconscious mind within both an internal and a social world. This framework enables the client to understand the connections between socially constructed frameworks of femininity, emotions and bodily sensations, rather than to act on them through some form of bodily abuse. This approach is based on my adaptation of Susie Orbach's (1978) ‘Fat is a Feminist Issue’ therapeutic model for working with compulsive eaters. While arguing that a feminist psychoanalytic framework is crucial in this type of work, I suggest that it is essential to combine this with cognitive and behavioural therapeutic interventions in order to provide a pedagogic structure in which food, eating and body size come to be seen as meaningful.     

Can the Mind Command the Body?

People naturally intuit that an agent's ethereal thoughts can cause its body to move. Per intuitive physics; however, one body can only interact with another. Are people, then, covertly puzzled by the capacity of thoughts to command the body? Experiment 1 first confirms that thoughts (e.g., thinking about a cup) are indeed perceived as ethereal—as less detectible in the body (brain), and more likely to exist in the afterlife relative to matched percepts (e.g., seeing a cup). Experiments 2–5 show that thoughts are considered less likely to cause behavior than percepts (e.g., thinking of a cup vs. seeing one). Furthermore, mind–body causation is more remarkable when its bodily consequences are salient (e.g., moving an arm vs. brain activation). Finally, epistemic causes are remarkable only when they are ascribed to mental- (e.g., “thinking”) but not to physical states (“activation”). Together, these results suggest that mind–body interactions elicit a latent dualist dissonance.     

The relationship of Laing's concept of ontological insecurity to extraversion and neuroticism

Four components were extracted from Laing's concept of ontological insecurity and operationally measured. The desire to be noticed was found to be correlated with extraversion while doubts in one's existence was related to neuroticism. The desire to be remembered after death and the rootedness of the mind in the body were not related to extraversion or neuroticism scores.     

Antoine Le Grand on the identity over time of the human body

ABSTRACT

This paper studies Antoine Le Grand's account of organic identity over time in human bodies. In response to Aristotelian critics who argued that the Cartesian rejection of the Aristotelian ontology of matter and form had put in jeopardy the diachronic identity of material substances in general and of living bodies in particular, Le Grand argued that the identity over time of the human body could be accounted for without the traditional notions of matter and form. The paper shows how he drew on both the Cartesian metaphysics of mind and body and contemporary views on human anatomy and organic generation to develop a unique account of bodily identity over time in human animals.     

Further developments of the concept of fantasy

After the Isaacs' seminal work on the nature and function of unconscious phantasy (1948), several authors (mostly in the British Society) have reflected on the topic and tried to extend the concept of fantasy. In this paper I shall examine the contributions of Winnicott, Gaddini, Joseph and Anne Marie Sandler that aim at broadening this psychoanalytic concept. The authors that I have considered share a focus mostly on the early stages of child development. Both Winnicott and Gaddini belong to a line of thinking that explores the vicissitudes of the primary emotional development of the infantile self (in the mother‐infant relationship) involving the earliest processes of holding and bodily and kinaesthetic fantasy that form the bodily integrity of the person. The Sandlers focused mostly on the concept of the past unconscious understood as a place of primitive vicissitudes with a deficit in figuration where the process of repression is missing. The present unconscious phantasy (that is located in the here and now) has the function of rendering the past unconscious phantasy partly accessible; otherwise it would remain unknowable.     

Neuroscience and the Embodiment of Psychoanalysis—With an Appreciation of Damasio’s Contribution

ABSTRACT

This article contends that psychoanalysis benefits from a neurobiological perspective. It is suggested that Antonio Damasio’s view on the neurobiology of mind and self is particularly useful in this regard. The article presents a review and discussion of Damasio’s basic assumptions on body, emotion, feeling, unconscious and conscious mind, and embodied self. It explains how Freud’s hypotheses that ego is first and foremost a bodily ego is underpinned by contemporary neurobiological research and theory. A clinical illustration highlights that changes in sense of self encompasses changes throughout the whole body, as felt from the inside and as observed from the outside.     

Friction in the interstices: Emotion and landscape in Stone Butch Blues

This article analyzes the role of emotion in Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues. Widely understood as one of the first modern transgender novels, Stone Butch Blues depicts the bodily changes of its protagonist, Jess Goldberg, from living as a “he–she,” to passing as male, to living as neither male nor female. This article analyzes how Jess's body, identity, and feelings shape and are shaped by the spaces ze encounters throughout the novel. Finding that Jess experiences emotions as bodily boundaries and metaphorical geographies, I draw from the work of Sara Ahmed to argue that Jess's decision at the novel's end not to pass as female or male is a choice to push back at the gendered norms of hir world through a body and politics shaped by emotion. Turning to contemporary trans* – transgender, transsexual, and trans – movements for social change, I argue that Jess's politics of bodily and emotional abrasion can help in the development of a trans* politics of emotion.