Conceptions about the mind-body problem and their relations to afterlife beliefs,paranormal beliefs,religiosity, and ontological confusions

We examined lay people’s conceptions about the relationship between mind and body and their correlates. In Study 1, a web survey (N = 850) of reflective dualistic, emergentistic, and monistic perceptions of the mind-body relationship, afterlife beliefs (i.e., common sense dualism), religiosity, paranormal beliefs, and ontological confusions about physical, biological, and psychological phenomena was conducted. In Study 2 (N = 73), we examined implicit ontological confusions and their relations to afterlife beliefs, paranormal beliefs, and religiosity. Correlation and regression analyses showed that reflective dualism, afterlife beliefs, paranormal beliefs, and religiosity were strongly and positively related and that reflective dualism and afterlife beliefs mediated the relationship between ontological confusions and religious and paranormal beliefs. The results elucidate the contention that dualism is a manifestation of universal cognitive processes related to intuitions about physical, biological, and psychological phenomena by showing that especially individuals who confuse the distinctive attributes of these phenomena tend to set the mind apart from the body.     

Mind-body dualism and the compatibility of medical methods

In this paper we analyse some misleading theses concerning the oldcontroversy over the relation between mind and body presented incontemporary medical literature. We undertake an epistemologicalclarification of the axiomatic structure of medical methods. Thisclarification, in turn, requires a precise philosophical explanation ofthe presupposed concepts. This analysis will establish two results: (1)that the mind-body dualism cannot be understood as a kind of biologicalvariation of the subject-object dichotomy in physics, and (2) that thethesis of the incompatibility between somatic and psychosomatic medicineheld by naturalists and others lacks solid epistemologicalfoundation.     

Supervenience and Basic Christian Beliefs

A field-oriented interpretation of Whiteheadian societies of actual occasions, when used to explain the notion of "strong supervenience" as applied to the mind-brain problem, allows one to claim that not only higher-level properties such as consciousness but even higher-level entities such as the mind or soul are emergent from lower-level systems of neuronal interaction. Moreover, it also explains the preexistence of God to the world and Christian belief in eternal life with the triune God in a way that is impossible within the limits of a theory of strong supervenience.     

蒙医心身互动疗法的叙事特征

医学领域叙事的主要构成要素包括叙事主体、叙事能力、叙事疗效等,但鲜有研究深入探讨医学叙事构成要素的特点及其作用。蒙医心身互动疗法经过20多年的探索与发展,在叙事构成要素方面具有独特的创新性：叙事主体为主持医生和受益学员;主要叙事受益者为庞大的听众团体;稳定、高效、可重复使用的叙事框架加强了不同案例之间的可对比性;丰富多样的聆听形式以及“心身兼治、多病同治”的治疗特点突破了现有医学叙事研究中治疗病种的局限性。

     

The Primary Care Health System as a Core Resource in Response to Terrorism

Abstract

Living through a terrorist event or under threat of attack affects both mental and physical health. A nation's primary care system plays a critical role under such circumstances. This article reviews the American experience after September 11, 2001 and advocates for integration of mental and physical health services in primary care settings as a key counter-terrorism strategy. Americans put their trust in primary care providers. The nation's healthcare system must develop and implement a strategy that informs and supports primary care providers in meeting the mental health needs of a nation confronted by terrorism.     

Linking mind,body and language: free association revisited

Psychoanalysis differs from other theories because of the great significance it attributes to a man's unconscious. Psychoanalysis differs fundamentally from other therapeutic methods in its use of free association and the significance and power it gives to this method when investigating unconscious phenomena. The present article begins with a brief review of the history of free association and its use as a method. After that, I discuss the relationship between free association and memory, neuropsychoanalysis and semiotics. Free association is linked with implicit memory and seen as a way of remembering; unconscious experiences are given a verbal form with the help of free association. The psychoanalytical setting and transference together constitute a psychic space, in which it becomes possible for the patient to get into touch with his or her bodily, psychic and verbal experiences and material simultaneously. The author sees free association specifically as a form of mental processing which is typical to psychoanalysis; it is a core process where the experiences of mind, body and language and their expressions link together. Free association is simultaneously the result of a memory activity and creative activity and, above all, a combination or synthesis of these two processes.     

Building bridges between body and mind: The analysis of an adolescent with paralyzing chronic pain

This paper describes the evaluation, initial psychotherapy and subsequent psychoanalysis of an adolescent who presented with a severe psychosomatic process involving total body pain and profound fatigue. The author details the complex and multifaceted nature of the psychosomatic process as it unfolded in the treatment. The psychosomatic problem was not a single entity, but rather was comprised of diverse interwoven elements such as somatization, conversion on pre-oedipal and oedipal levels, conflicts over aggression, sexuality, identity, masochism, secondary gain, anaclitic depression, internalized self-other interactions with a depressed mother and transgenerational transmission of trauma. The author uses the case material to discuss technical approaches to problems that often arise in the analytic treatment of patients with complicated chronic pain and fatigue as the primary complaints. Such approaches include respecting the mind-body split as a primary defense, speaking the language of the body along with the language of the mind and developing the verbal sphere around the non-verbal symptoms. The author emphasizes that complicated chronic pain problems are common and can be helped by psychoanalysis as long as the unique and complex features are understood and reflected in the technical approach.     

Reductionism's Demise: Cold Comfort

Abstract. Nonreductive physicalism, as opposed to reductionism, enjoys wide popularity by virtue of being regarded as comporting with the traditional image of human beings as free and ontologically unique without the difficulties of mind‐body dualism. A consideration of reasons, both good and bad, for which reductionism is rejected suggests instead that the move to nonreductive physicalism does nothing to mitigate the implications of a physicalist account of human nature.     

What Does It Mean to Be Human? A Personal and Catholic Perspective

A philosopher-poet-theologian ponders the implications of the multimillion-year biogenetic process that produced Homo sapiens and is beginning to reveal itself ever more clearly as evolution of the mind and consciousness. As meaning trappers and makers, called to actualize the divine image imprinted upon us, we are now facing biological and cultural evolution with deliberate human input as well as the evolution of evolution. As communicating animals that are becoming ever more aware of our adaptive behavior, we have the potential of affecting our own destiny by listening to the spirit within and nurturing the genes and memes that give rise to physical, intellectual, creative, and moral excellence. In the matrix of cyberspace we have the opportunity to heal the two-culture split, to reinvent ourselves, to incubate/weave the emergent religions of the future, and to create our multiple "Ways" appropriate to the dawning Age of Global Dialogue.     

身体美学的启迪与反思

舒斯特曼提出来的“身体美学”日渐得到人们的重视。利用传统中国哲学和中国医学中所包含的身心一元论思想指导下的身体观来说明身体美学的可能性和重要意义,思考有中国文化特色的身体美学的一个重要特点及其对于当前流行的美容实践的启迪。