Bodily Level Research Articles

Psychic retreat to the body in the face of annihilation anxiety

This paper aims to present the body as a possible psychic retreat in the face of annihilation anxiety. The sensations produced on the body seem to be a preferable place of psychic retreat in the patient's efforts to assuage her tormented intrapsychic reality. In such cases, unconscious phantasies are experienced mostly on the bodily level because of their intensity and primitive nature. Accordingly, self- and object representations tend to reside in the body and are accessible via the body. In this regard, bodily sensations offer a sense of continuity and cohesion, and allow for the further psychic elaboration of the unconscious conflicts.

Agency: its nature and role in recovery from severe mental illness

Agency: its nature and role in recovery from severe mental illness

Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology

Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology

The ‘autistic’ level of the Oedipus complex

In this paper, the author describes some of the tripartite constellations occurring in the material of children on the autistic spectrum. These could be thought of as constituting a primitive, ‘autistic’ level of the Oedipus complex where the fundamental anxieties are existential ones. It is suggested that these fears of annihilation are experienced on a bodily level, and that this physical aspect appears to be a distinguishing feature of the experience of the Oedipal constellation in children with autism. The clinical illustrations concern the experience of bodily mutilation within the feeding relationship; Oedipal aspects of sense perception; the nature of the link between masculine and feminine elements making up the psychic skin; and the balance between the child, the mother, and the mother' internal figures. Some implications for cognitive development are discussed.

From Abstract Concepts to Experiential Knowledge: Embodying Enlightenment in a Meditation Center

How do abstract philosophies turn into lived reality? Based on 2 years of ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of vipassana meditation practitioners in Israel and the United States, the paper follows the process through which meditators embody the three main Buddhist tenets: dissatisfaction, impermanence and not-self. While meditators consider these tenets central to Buddhist philosophy, it is only through the practice of meditation that the tenets are experienced on the bodily level and thereby are “realized” as truth. This realization takes place in the situated environment of the meditation center, where participation in long meditation retreats facilitates the production of specific subjective experiences that infuse the knowledge of Buddhist tenets with embodied meaning. The paper illustrates how abstract concepts and embodied experience support one another in the construction of meditators’ phenomenological reality and suggests a general framework for studying the variety of relations that exist between the conceptual and embodied dimensions of different types of knowledge.

L’aube de la vie corporopsychique

The connections between physiological and psychical live are often understood only as a developmental process of the human being starting from a pure bodily level and ending at the emergence and development of consciousness. Nevertheless, the difference in nature of physiological and psychical phenomena remains an enigma for our understanding. Indeed, Descartes’ dualism, which refers this difference in nature to a duality of substances, is no more acceptable. On the other hand, is there room for an epistemological dualism which differentiates physical and psychical phenomena not according to differences of substances but according the kind of causality entailed: efficient causality for physical phenomena, intentionality for the psychical ones?

Perceiving subjectivity in bodily movement: The case of dancers

This paper is about one of the puzzles of bodily self-consciousness: can an experience be both and at the same time an experience of one′s physicality and of one′s subjectivity? We will answer this question positively by determining a form of experience where the body′s physicality is experienced in a non-reifying manner. We will consider a form of experience of oneself as bodily which is different from both “prenoetic embodiment” and “pre-reflective bodily consciousness” and rather corresponds to a form of reflective access to subjectivity at the bodily level. In particular, we argue that subjectivity is bodily expressed, thereby allowing the experience of the body′s subjectivity directly during perceptual experiences of the body. We use an interweaving of phenomenological explorations and ethnographical methods which allows validating this proposal by considering the experience of body experts (dancers).

What Contributes to Fortigenic Appraisal of Inordinate Demands? Everything!

The construct of appraisal of inordinate demands is reviewed. A diversity of variables that contribute to fortigenic appraisal is introduced, with each described and illustrated, the purpose being to increase awareness of how all-embracing influences on appraisal are. Although this is done in a reductive and linear way, relationships between variables are emphasised. A subsidiary purpose is to highlight fortigenesis, which concerns the origins of strengths. A third purpose is to point out systemic implications of emergence through inter-participation. At the bodily level, neuro-anatomical, and neuro-chemical factors are considered. Genetic versus/and environmental influences are introduced and discussed. Cognitive variables are touched upon, with particular attention to schemas and stereotypes. Emotions are illustrated in terms of awe as an emotion. Personality variables are dealt with in terms of traits, characteristic adaptations, and identity. Some consideration is given to cultural variables. Spirituality and religion are briefly noted. To conclude, lifespan development is also touched on. Finally, with an emphasis on systems thinking, complex systems — and emergence from them — are considered to indicate how all of the ‘spheres’ presented are interactive and inter-participatory.

The Body in its Animal Being

Aristotle defined human being as the Philosophical efforts to understand what is human have had an overwhelming tendency to focus upon side of equation-in other words, what makes us different from animal. Even such widely divergent views as transcendental idealism and cognitive science are united in their focus upon rational: latter painting reason as constituting principle of experience and former modeling our consciousness upon logical operations of a computer program. To one we are God, to other we are machine, and to neither are we an animal. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological philosophy, which centers upon body, may be seen as a return to animal side of rational For just as it is our rationality which sets us apart from our evolutionary cousins and great-uncles, it is our embodied nature which unites us with them, for this much we have in common. Both to eidetic eye of phenomenologist and to scientist with his prying scalpel and microscope, flesh of man is akin to that of beast. And those human actions and qualities which we associate with body are those which we consider to be more animalistic: qualities such as sexuality, actions such as eating. Our animal being is our bodily being and vice versa. Despite this, Merleau-Ponty has surprisingly little to say about animals or about animal in man. Only in Nature lectures does he deal with animals at any length and even here his remarks are obscure and in need of interpretation. Even more troubling is his approach to topic in lectures. Here he eschews phenomenological approach in favor of analysis of scientific theory and research. Although his goal is ostensibly to speak from within a wild, Nature, his approach to animals follows that of natural scientist, treating them as objects to be observed, manipulated, and theorized about. As Elizabeth A. Behnke points out, the working or companion animals we share our Umwelt with on an everyday basis are seldom mentioned, and then only in passing-typically, in contexts significantly different from those of our everyday commerce with them. Similarly, question of human-animal relation is treated only ontologically, and there is only fleeting reference to human-animal sociality.' If our goal is to retrieve this brute and savage mind beneath all cultural material that is given,2 then ought we not to seek it in a real and genuine encounter with brute? In other words, we should look to our lived relations with working and companion animals that share our lives. Therefore, my goal in this essay will be to perform a phenomenological study of such an animal, situated in context of MerleauPonty's philosophy. It is my intent to study an animal with which I possess as close a relationship as possible. This will allow me to bring all my perceptual powers into play, including those which operate on what we may call a bodily level, and which are normally effaced by scientific methods of inquiry. I have chosen domestic cat as subject of my inquiry. Cats are very nearly ubiquitous in Western world. For this reason my readers will very likely be familiar with animals and with situations I describe and therefore better able to ground my phenomenological reflections in their own lived experiences. Moreover, there has already been some phenomenological work on cats which draws upon MerleauPonty's philosophy: Elizabeth A. Behke's article From Merleau-Ponty's Concept of Nature to an Interspecies Practice of Peace. Now Behnke's goals differ significantly from mine. Her primary goal is to exhibit what she calls her intercorporeal/interspecies practice of peace. Mine is to explore what MerleauPonty calls pre-objective or pre-reflective as it exists in both human and non-human animals. Nevertheless, our projects overlap to some extent, and I will be making reference to her article, both to draw upon her work and to point out where mine can be of help to hers. …

PEDAGOGY AS FRIENDSHIP

This essay engages the question of conservatism in academia as one of affective investments that implicate individuals at the bodily level of sensations and desires. It attempts to shift attention from an ideological critique of education based on identity relations to considerations of the multiplicity of relations possible between teachers and students, and the potential that fluidity creates for manifesting powerful affective connections and disconnections to their respective communities of belonging. The essay considers a (conservative) student's response essay to tease out the tension that arises in the classroom encounter: a student's refusal to participate in the academic discourse of the classroom opens up another movement, as yet unauthorized, that invites non-confrontational, open-ended responses from both teacher and student that in the end (productively) invite unexpected, difficult, and creative work. By refusing to meet students in a confrontational stance, teachers can subvert the power of identity construction and strike new modes of connectivity and learning.

Ethical Reasoning And The Embodied, Socially Situated Subject

My discussion is concerned with how symbolic power constitutively structures our very identities in relation to one another and at the bodily level of lived experience. Although many accounts of the self and of subjectivity as socially situated have difficulties in their explanations of agency, Zaner's work suggests a basis upon which the self's independence from others can be understood. His phenomenology of embodied subjectivity explains how the emerging self presupposes presence with others. At the same time, however, "co-presence" also reveals the self's distinct perspective and capacity for "circumstantial possibilizing," that is to say, "actualizing another possible than the actual." My aim is to examine critically the intersections between Zaner's phenomenology and other theoretical accounts of the socially situated self. I also show how Zaner's work contributes to these discussions a way of understanding the possibility of agency that is rooted in embodied experience.

Interactive Resonance in Work with Children and Adolescents: A theory-based concept of interpersonal relationship through play and the use of toys / Interaktionsresonanz in der Arbeit mit Kindern und Jugendlichen—Ein theoriebegründetes Konzept der interpersonellen Beziehung über Spiel und Spielzeug / La Resonancia Interactiva en el trabajo con niños y adolescentes: un concepto teórico de relación interpersonal a través del juego

Play therapists give evidence of Interactive Resonance by playing with the child and by responding to the child's play through their own playing activities on a bodily level, by verbal or nonverbal means. This enhances their capacity to be primarily supportive and encouraging and to give the child space, thus increasing the child's symbolizations on a deeper level. This concept is supported by developmental psychological theories: Stern's theory of self and the theory of attachment behavior enrich the client-centered theory of personality and of empathic interventions. They indicate how empathy and authenticity can be offered in play interactions with a child or an adolescent. Brief descriptions of how in practice the therapist reacts to the child's actions present examples of how to proceed in games with rules, role playing, fights, and setting boundaries.

Play therapy with emotionally damaged adolescents

Adolescence is a critical period of development for all individuals, but particularly for those who have suffered earlier emotional difficulties or abuse. If these problems go unresolved, patterns of behaviour which become established during this period may be more difficult to change later on. However, more traditional talk therapies may be resisted by adolescents. This article argues that non-directive play therapy, given age-appropriate adaptations, offers an approach which, since it encompasses both play and verbal communication, is well suited to addressing adolescent concerns, particularly those of early adolescence.This argument is illustrated by two accounts of therapy with a boy and a girl, both in early adolescence, which show how a more traditional non-directive counselling approach was combined with play therapy by the adolescents themselves, allowing exploration of emotional difficulties on all levels of mental functioning. The cases show how traumatic or painful early memories may be reworked on a bodily and emotional level, without the feeling of over-intrusion risked by a directive or interpretive stance.

Rosa Parks' Performativity, Habitus, and Ability to Play the Game

The work of Pierre Bourdieu has not been widely considered in American "continental" philosophy apart from a recent collection edited by Richard Shusterman and as a subject of criticism in Judith Butler's Excitable Speech. At the very least, his work has not achieved the level of recognition of other French thinkers such as Michel Foucault or even Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Nonetheless his work does continue the trajectory of these thinkers, and his social ontology as well as his discussion of habitus is a valuable extension of discussions of identity theory. A philosophy has to be broad enough to answer the questions raised in connection with its claims. Discussions of identity implicate considerations of social ontology, which will explain how we are able to be produced in such a way that we are unable to identify that production. In this essay, I will begin by briefly situating Bourdieu's work along the trajectory of French thinking by outlining Merleau-Ponty's influence on Bourdieu's work. I will then turn to relate Bourdieu to current discussions of the productions of subject identity. In order to do this, I will outline Judith Butler's concerns about Bourdieu's sociology of practice. Butler uses Rosa Parks' now legendary act of insurrection in 1955 Alabama in order to highlight what she takes to be Bourdieu's shortcomings. I will reconsider the case of Parks' performativity in order to show that Bourdieu's work explains her act, thus showing how Bourdieu has something to contribute to understandings of subjectivity after all. My overall aim is to consider the strengths of both views despite their differences, and to show the ways in which the two views, while functionally distinct, are different perspectives on the same phenomena. Ontology and discussions of the social production of subject identity could benefit from a consideration of the extent to which resistance is possible as well as the extent to which it is limited. This is precisely the philosophically interesting point, and the point in Butler's work to which Bourdieu's work is relevant. Bourdieu's Position on the Trajectory In many ways Bourdieu's work extends what is implicit or addressed preliminarily in Merleau-Ponty's work. In particular, Bourdieu echoes Merleau-Ponty's notions of bodily learning and the habitual body, as well as style and sedimentation of meaning. Habit, in Merleau-Ponty's sense, is not a mechanistic reflex, but would more aptly be described as proficiency. Habit has to do with movements learned at the bodily level, rather than through cognitive memorization. Thus our knowledge of them is embodied, not relegated abstractly to the mind. Merleau-Ponty points out that the body actually possesses memories of learned behaviors-in certain postures, gestures, and movements. "A movement," he says, "is learned when the body has understood it" (Phenomenology of Perception, 139). He says that: The grasping of a habit is indeed the grasping of a significance, but it is the motor grasping of a motor significance.... [For example,] to know how to type ... is a knowledge in the hands, which is forthcoming only when bodily effort is made.... The subject knows where the letters are . . . as we know where one of our limbs is, through a knowledge bred of familiarity... Habit expresses our power of . . . changing our existence by appropriating fresh instruments... . It thus elucidates the nature of body image .... It is a system that is open on to the world, and correlative with it. (Phenomenology of Perception, 143,144) Thus the body is effected and can learn and understand without the mediation of cognitive processes. Moreover, there is a depth or a thickness to the body which builds up through repeated actions to become a storage of past behaviors, rendering our future behavior more predictable and therefore less and less contingent. Later he will develop this into what he calls personal "style," and also "sedimentation" of meaning (see Signs, 96). …

Psychosomatic symptoms, embodiment and affect Weaving threads to the affectively experienced body in therapy with a neurotic and a borderline child

In the treatment of patients with psychosomatic symptoms, the restoration of the link with the affectively experienced body is of crucial importance. The affectively experienced body is the seat of emotional life and the basis upon which words and language can process the meaning of emotions. We will focus on the restoration of the link with the affectively experienced body in a neurotic patient and in a patient with a borderline character structure. In the course of the therapeutic process, intense countertransference feelings, often experienced on a bodily level, are important indications of the aspects of affective life that have been ejected or foreclosed by the patient with psychosomatic symptoms. If the therapist can contain the primitive affects that have been ejected by the patient, then these affects can be ‘digested’ and given back or communicated to the patient in a tolerable and meaningful way. Thus, the patient can reintegrate aspects of his affective life and rebuild the link with the bodily seat of his affects. Becoming (re)connected with ‘the affectively experienced body’ is a therapeutic process with significant differences on the neurotic and pre-neurotic levels. Restoring the link with the affectively experienced body for the child with a neurotic character coincides with repairing the contact with the self, for the child with the borderline patterns, it gradually helps to build up this contact with the self. For psychoanalytic theory, this emphasis on embodiment or ‘bodiliness’ and affect is of crucial importance in that it completes an emphasis on finding words for affects. An interplay of restoring the link with the affectively experienced body — in itself a process in which language plays an important part — and finding words for what is felt on a bodily level enriches analytic theory and improves the prospects of therapy for psychosomatic patients.

When Fear Blinds the Mind's Eye

The dissolution of Yugoslavia had profound effects on the cultural matrix of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the most culturally diverse of the formerly federated republics. The author describes the consequent dynamics in a multi-cultural psychotherapeutic team during the period March-October 1991. All were overwhelmed by deep suffering, often reflected at the bodily level, but primitive defence mechanisms seemed especially prominent in a minority subgroup who identified with nationalistic parties.

Psychometric, diurnal, and electrophysiological correlates of activation.

Several studies were performed using Thayer's Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List (AD-ACL). Factor analysis of college students' scores identified a single activation factor representing a continuum ranging from sleep through wakefulness. Next, changes over the diurnal cycle in activation factor scores were demonstrated. One-week test-retest reliability was also investigated. Finally, activation scores were related to pulse rate, respiration rate, and skin resistance level under passive and active conditions. Correlations between factor scores and electrophysiological measures were higher than were intercorrelations of electrophysiological measures, indicating that scores on this revised activation factor represent a valid measure of phenomenological bodily activation level.