Phantom narratives and the uncanny in cultural life: psychic presences and their shadows

Abstract

In this paper the author explores the emotional factors that are activated at the level of the cultural unconscious, that produce experiences of the uncanny that are expressed through Phantom Narratives. Phantom Narratives as a hybridized term is the author’s way of linking personal and social activity of unconscious story formation through psychic presences (images). Phantom Narratives are expressions of the unconscious at the level of the group that shows the psyche’s way of narrating its relationship to the group, through the expressions of cultural, social, and political issues. The uncanny, at the level of the social, is seen as those disturbances of feelings that alienate us from the familiar social world of others. What is uncanny about Phantom Narratives is how group emotional dynamics are represented as psychic presences. Making use of the author’s own subjectivity (i.e. psychoanalytic literary genre) he uses an approach from analytic psychology (Jungian) called amplification, which allows for the elaboration of symbolic processes, to create a meaningful (semantic) context for exploration.     

Felt presence: paranoid delusion or hallucinatory social imagery?

Cheyne and Girard characterize felt presence (FP) during sleep paralysis attacks as a pre-hallucinatory expression of a threat-activated vigilance system. While their results may be consistent with this interpretation, they are nonetheless correlational and do not address a parsimonious alternative explanation. This alternative stipulates that FP is a purely spatial, hallucinatory form of a common cognitive phenomenon—social imagery—that is often, but not necessarily, linked with threat and fear and that may induce distress among susceptible individuals. The occurrence of both fearful and non-fearful FPs in a multiplicity of situations other than sleep paralysis attacks supports the notion that FPs are hallucinatory variants of social imagery and that they are not necessarily bound to threat-activated vigilance. Evidence linking FPs with anxiety disorders supports the notion that the distress they evoke may be mediated by a more general affective distress personality factor. To illustrate the predominantly spatial character of FP hallucinations, similarities between FP and phantom limbs are summarized and the possibility that these two phenomena are parallel expressions (self- vs. other-presence) of a mirror neuron system is considered.     

Mobile Persuasion: Can Screen Size and Presentation Mode Make a Difference to Trust?

Guided by the Modality, Agency, Interactivity, and Navigability (MAIN) model of technology effects and the heuristic–systematic model (HSM) of information processing, this study explicates underlying mechanisms by which variations in screen size (large vs. small) and presentation mode (video vs. text) contribute to user perceptions of media content on their smartphones. Results from a between‐subjects experiment (N = 120) indicate that large screen size and video mode promote heuristic processing while small screen size and text mode encourage systematic processing. Heuristic processing leads to greater affective and behavioral trust while systematic processing is associated with cognitive trust. Phantom model analysis reveals the effects of large screen size and video mode on purchase intentions are sequentially mediated by type of information processing and multidimensional trust.     

The phantom limb in dreams

Mulder and colleagues [Mulder, T., Hochstenbach, J., Dijkstra, P. U., Geertzen, J. H. B. (2008). Born to adapt, but not in your dreams. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 1266–1271.] report that a majority of amputees continue to experience a normally-limbed body during their night dreams. They interprete this observation as a failure of the body schema to adapt to the new body shape. The present note does not question this interpretation, but points to the already existing literature on the phenomenology of the phantom limb in dreams. A summary of published investigations is complemented by a note on phantom phenomena in the dreams of paraplegic patients and persons born without a limb. Integration of the available data allows the recommendation for prospective studies to consider dream content in more detail. For instance, “adaptation” to the loss of a limb can also manifest itself by seeing oneself surrounded by amputees. Such projective types of anosognosia (“transitivism”) in nocturnal dreams should also be experimentally induced in normally-limbed individuals, and some relevant techniques are mentioned.     

Normal body scheme and absent phantom limb experience in amputees while dreaming

While dreaming amputees often experience a normal body image and the phantom limb may not be present. However, dreaming experiences in amputees have mainly been collected by questionnaires. We analysed the dream reports of amputated patients with phantom limb collected after awakening from REM sleep during overnight videopolysomnography (VPSG). Six amputated patients underwent overnight VPSG study. Patients were awakened during REM sleep and asked to report their dreams. Three patients were able to deliver an account of a dream. In all dreaming recalls, patients reported that the amputated limbs were intact and completely functional and they no longer experienced phantom limb sensations. Phantom limb experiences, that during wake result from a conflict between a pre-existing body scheme and the sensory information on the missing limb, were suppressed during sleep in our patients in favour of the image of an intact body accessed during dream.     

Body image and psychosocial differences among stable average weight, currently overweight, and formerly overweight women: the role of stigmatizing experiences

Substantial research has compared obese and nonobese persons on body image and psychosocial adjustment. While differences in body satisfaction are often observed, the literature is less clear on other dimensions. Extant differences are typically thought to result from the social stigmatization and maltreatment experienced by obese persons, especially females. The present study of 165 women compared three cohorts who were currently overweight, never overweight, or formerly overweight. Relative to never-overweight women, currently overweight women reported more body dissatisfaction/distress, overweight preoccupation, and dysfunctional appearance investment, as well as more binge eating, lower social self-esteem, and less satisfaction with life. Consistent with the “phantom fat” phenomenon, formerly overweight women were comparable to currently overweight women but worse than never-overweight women on overweight preoccupation and dysfunctional appearance investment. Correlations confirmed that, among overweight but not formerly overweight women, more frequent stigmatizing experiences during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood were significantly associated with currently poorer body image and psychosocial functioning. Scientific and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.