Mind-body Relationship Research Articles

How people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease perceive their illness: a qualitative study between mind and body

BackgroundAlthough many studies on people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) have examined the mutual impact of physical status and emotional experience, there is limited knowledge about the way COPD people first-hand perceive their condition. This study was designed to investigate the illness perceptions of the patients and, secondarily, to explore their beliefs about the mind-body relationship.MethodsThis qualitative study has exploited an ad-hoc semi-structured interview to collect personal perspectives of participants on their illness. Twenty-seven patients (15 males and 12 females), with a mild to severe COPD, were recruited within the Respiratory Rehabilitation Unit of Don Carlo Gnocchi Foundation, in Milan. The thematic analysis of the interviews’ content was facilitated by NVivo (12th version, QSR International®).ResultsThe thematic analysis of the corpus resulted in four master themes. Illness experience has been considered the primary one. Indeed, dealing with COPD every day allows these people to portray a specific representation of the mind-body relationship, to gain a certain degree of expertise and to develop a perspective on the future.ConclusionsIndividual perceptions of the illness vary among people with COPD, but some common experiences characterize them. Many patients share a profound belief that their mental state and their physical symptoms are highly interrelated.

Alone amidst X-men: Rogue, sexuality, and mental illness

ABSTRACT In this article, I examine the ways in which the character of Rogue has been defined by her sexuality and mind-body relationship; by her psychological struggle to accept that she is unable to express or explore her sexuality without harm to others, and the consequences of that expression. Her inability to touch another person without absorbing their memories and persona is reflected in a constant narrative focus on frustrated sexuality. I examine post-Freudian critique of hysteria as a diagnosis used to stigmatise and control women who do not conform to the passive sexual and social roles expected of them. Rogue’s central struggle is one for control- of her deviant mutant body, of her sexuality and of her mind-body relationship. She can be seen as a hysteric through Foucault’s proposition that hysteria exists as a label for female sexual agency; created to control that agency through the structures of patriarchal, medical power. Rogue illustrates a dichotomy between different approaches to the treatment of mental health and its relationship to female sexuality: that of passive acquiescence to paternalistic medical structures; and that of active self-care, self-knowledge and self-acceptance.

Awatary i powłoki: (bez)cielesność w literaturze cyberpunkowej

Artykuł porusza problem cielesności i jej granic w wybranych powieściach literatury cyberpunkowej, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem ewolucji reprezentacji ciała w przestrzeni wirtualnej, która stanowi główny znak rozpoznawczy omawianego gatunku. W ogólnym ujęciu wspomniana ewolucja postępuje od swoistej negacji ciała we wczesnej prozie cyberpunkowej, poprzez jego estetyzację w utworze Zamieć Neala Stephensona, po kwestię związku ciała z umysłem poruszoną w powieści Modyfikowany węgiel Richarda Morgana. Zagadnienie cielesności w omawianych tekstach stanowi zarówno problem, jak i wyzwanie ontologiczne, ulokowane zostaje bowiem w technologicznie determinowanych środowiskach, które zmuszają tekstualne podmioty, a tym samym czytelnika, do ciągłej rewizji granic i statusu własnej cielesności w świecie coraz bardziej przypominającym cyberpunkowe scenerie.

Psychosomatic Phenomenon According to the Stages of Development

The psychosomatic term, report to the item of psychological origin of certain organic diseases, affective repercussions of the state of physical disease on the individual and studies of mind-body relationships with emphasis on the explanation of somatic pathology. The term can also be understood, as an ideology about health, falling ill and about health practices, is a field of research on these facts and, at the same time, practice. Thus, the objective of this work is to discuss, from a literature review, the psychosomatic manifestations that occur in the development phases in the context of the psychology area. The study is methodologically based on the literature review. For this work, the bibliographic search of articles indexed to the VHL Portal (Virtual Library in Saude) and in the Web of Science was carried out. The disease is often an escape from a conflict situation or appears due to the need for attention and affection, need to be cared for. The psychosomatic approach decreases treatment time, avoids unnecessary complementary tests and abbreviates the patient's suffering.

A influência entre os domínios cognitivo e motor em estudantes de 07 a 09 anos

Atualmente há um crescente aumento evidenciado pelos órgãos avaliadores acerca do desempenho escolar insatisfatório, ou baixa proficiência escolar. O desenvolvimento dos aspectos da memória, da aprendizagem e da indissociável relação corpo-mente para a aprendizagem do sujeito, traz à luz o conceito da cognição incorporada, ou da mente corporalizada – embodied cognition, para os quais o sistema motor influencia a cognição, ou desenvolvimento cognitivo, composto basicamente pelas funções executivas - conjunto de habilidades cognitivas necessárias para aprender coisas novas, raciocinar ou concentrar-se diante de um ambiente distrator - flexibilidade cognitiva, controle inibitório, memória de trabalho, resolução de problemas, raciocínio e planejamento. O objetivo do presente estudo é comparar o desenvolvimento motor e o funcionamento executivo em estudantes de 07 a 09 anos, com desempenho escolar insatisfatório (I) e satisfatório (S). Foi utilizada como metodologia quantitativa um estudo comparativo transversal com os seguintes instrumentos: i) TGMD2 (teste motor); ii) Teste de Trilhas (funções executivas); iii) IMC (relação peso\altura); iv) questionário sociodemográfico; v) avaliação do desempenho escolar dos estudantes (segundo critério da escola para conceitos de proficiência geral não construída - I e em construção - S). Os resultados apontam que não houve significância na comparação entre desempenho motor nos grupos de desempenho escolar I e S para esta amostra; porém, encontrou-se significância entre Funções Executivas (Teste de Trilhas) e Desempenho Escolar I e S. Conclui-se que tanto o desenvolvimento motor quanto o funcionamento executivo, podem influenciar no desempenho escolar, quando estes não forem devidamente desenvolvidos e se encontrando a baixo das recomendações da literatura, como evidenciado. Estudos desta natureza ainda são em pequeno número, sobretudo os estudos empíricos no contexto do cotidiano escolar dos estudantes; também se considera a relevância do trabalho mediante pesquisas similares internacionais e nacionais que demonstram a preocupação com o ainda presente dualismo corpo-mente na escola. Espera-se que esta pesquisa possa contribuir para a emergente interface entre as áreas pedagógicas e da saúde, colaborando para que os profissionais do ensino discutam com maior propriedade os conceitos de sistemas bioecológicos, seus affordances, e àqueles afetos ao novo paradigma do embodied cognition, ou seja, da mente corporalizada, e desenvolvam oportunidades e estimulações de qualidade para o corpo/movimento das crianças na escola.

Satisfaction in the Soul: Common Factors Theory Applied to Traditional Healers in Rural Nepal.

To explore the relationship between traditional healers and conventional psychotherapy, we conducted a combined ethnographic study and structured observational rating of healers in the middle hill region of central Nepal. We conducted in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations of healing with 84 participants comprising 29 traditional healers and 55 other community members. Overall, our observations and participant responses yielded a range of interventions that improved health through belief, satisfaction in the soul, social support, transference, and symbolic narration. The findings from our overall ethnography suggest that healers offer a platform for their patients to accept a disease state, cope with it, and to experience palliation of distress. We additionally focused on one participant who saw multiple healers for a case study, during which we rated healing behavior using an observational measure of empathy, emotional validation, and therapeutic alliance. Using this measure, healers who were perceived as successful, scored high on alliance, empathy, promoting expectations of recovery, and use of cultural models of distress. The results of our structured observation suggest healers draw upon processes also observed in psychotherapy. Further research is needed to explore if these practices can be generalized to healers in other parts of Nepal and other settings. [spirituality, mental health, ethnopsychology, shamanism, mind-body relations].

Confederates in the Attic: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Cardiovascular Disease, and the Return of Soldier's Heart.

Da Costa originally described Soldier's Heart in the 19th Century as a syndrome that occurred on the battlefield in soldiers of the American Civil War. Soldier's Heart involved symptoms similar to modern day posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity felt to be related to an abnormality of the heart. Interventions were appropriately focused on the cardiovascular system. With the advent of modern psychoanalysis, psychiatric symptoms became divorced from the body and were relegated to the unconscious. Later, the physiology of PTSD and other psychiatric disorders was conceived as solely residing in the brain. More recently, advances in psychosomatic medicine led to the recognition of mind-body relationships and the involvement of multiple physiological systems in the etiology of disorders, including stress, depression PTSD, and cardiovascular disease, has moved to the fore, and has renewed interest in the validity of the original model of the Soldier's Heart syndrome.

Mindfulness-based self-care education for healthcare professional students in Japan

[Background] Recent studies have consistently shown that medical students experience a high rate of psychological symptoms. In this situation, teaching mindfulness in medical school has the potential to prevent student burnout. However, there are few consistent educational programs in medical schools throughout Japan.[Method] Since 2015, Showa University (Tokyo) has practiced an intensive self-care program based on mindfulness for 600 first-year healthcare professional students in the schools of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, and rehabilitation. The target objectives of this program were as follows: understand the needs of self-care, enhance self-awareness, evaluate evidence of mindfulness for mental diseases, and practice formal/informal mindfulness-based activities. This program consisted of a 90-minute lecture, followed by consecutive reflective activities, including completing personal journals and portfolios. The students were required to plan how to make use of what they learned in this course. The students were asked to complete a questionnaire upon completion of the course.[Results] The questionnaire indicated that more than 90% of the students were satisfied with the program, and about 25% started regular mindfulness-based practices such as meditation and breathing methods aimed to reduce test anxiety. Descriptions from the e-portfolio showed that the participants understood evitable stressors and the importance of the body-mind relationship.[Conclusion] Mindfulness-based self-care education can encourage healthcare students to understand the necessity of self-care during the early stages of their professional training. This program for the first year students will be followed by a course on Professionalism for healthcare professional students during their subsequent years of university education.

Analogous Systems Principles and Concepts of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Congruence Couple Therapy

Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) applies

Introducción a las categorías conceptuales del bioderecho en la discrecionalidad jurídica

La identificación de la denominada dispersión epistemológica en las decisiones en bioderecho se evidencia en la incorporación crítica al materialismo, en particular, y a las nuevas formas de fisicalismo, ya que su base epistemológica se encuentra en un contexto mucho más amplio que la explicación unificadora de la relación mente-cerebro. De ahí que teorías de la argumentación adoptadas por autores como Wroblesky, Aarnio y Alexy identifican una doble exigencia en la justificación: por un lado, la llamada justificación interna, regulada por la lógica a la hora de conectar las premisas o conectar los enunciados que forman parte del razonamiento judicial y, por el otro, la justificación externa, focalizada en los argumentos o razones utilizadas para justificar aquellas premisas o enunciados. El bioderecho implica reconocer que se plantea una crítica al materialismo y al fisicalismo, camino que ya la psicopatología recorrió para entender fenómenos como la intencionalidad, la interpretación de conductas humanas y los supuestos interpretativos de la arquitectura de la decisión jurídica.El estudioso del bioderecho debe identificar esos supuestos, muchas veces irreflexivos; ello implica dar razones acerca de la relación mente-cuerpo subyacente; de los elementos que componen la acción humana jurídicamente relevante; la configuración de los bienes humanos básicos involucrados en la litis en el bioderecho; elementos todos estos que hacen necesario repensar el estatuto cognoscitivo del derecho, en general, y del bioderecho, en particular.

Diagnosis pressure and false positives: Toward a non-reductionist, polytomic approach of child mental problems

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses diagnosis pressure and false positives in child mental health care. Diagnosis pressure is the pressure to give a diagnosis even though the criteria for the diagnosis are not all satisfied. Such pressure may be exerted by clients, their context, or professionals. False positives are incorrectly assigned as mental disorders. The paper discusses prevalence of diagnosis pressure and false positives, some of their causes, and advantages and disadvantages of “getting” a diagnosis. Two relevant issues are discussed, namely, categorical versus dimensional approaches of mental disorders and the mind–body relation. Instead of mental health models that are based on a disorder–no disorder dichotomy or that reduce mental problems to either the brain or society, a polytomic (multifaceted) approach is proposed in which all people with mental problems, light or severe, have a place and can get the support they need. It is argued that Daniel Dennett’s view of the relation between body and mind is fruitful such that mental-health problems can be explained at different levels of abstraction: physical, functional, intentional, and/or moral. The Network Approach is briefly discussed as a promising application of what is proposed in the article.

Developing a Capacity for Bodily Concern: Antonio Damasio and the Psychoanalysis of Body–Mind Relationship

ABSTRACTThe author starts from the assumption that the body is the mind’s primary object. He explores the link between his clinical research about the Body–Mind relationship and neuroscience, by focusing particularly on the contribution by Antonio Damasio who has emphasized the importance of the bodily roots of mental functioning. In many patients nowadays, developing a capacity for “concern for one’s own body” is a stepping stone toward a genuine non-imitative mental functioning. This perspective contrasts with psychoanalytic orientations that give priority to recognition of the other and intersubjective dynamics.

‘A bud from the tree of life’: William McDougall’s response to Freud

In the interwar period, William McDougall, Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford, then Professor of Psychology at Harvard and Duke universities, was probably Britain’s pre-eminent psychological theorist. While he has been little studied in recent times, he developed a complex and detailed system of psychology centred on instinct and social relations that was very widely circulated in his day. A distinctive aspect of his approach is that he largely rejected reductionism and associationism, preferring a psychological model with a strong note of personalism. He was active in identifying the parallels between his approach and Freud’s, and his non-reductive intuitions generate an interesting rejoinder to Freud. This paper reviews McDougall’s system of psychology, discusses the points of intersection he identified with Freudian ideas, and comments on McDougall’s complaint about the narrowness of the Freudian focus on sex.

On the 75th Anniversary of the William Alanson White Institute THE LONG VIEW: Quo Vadis?

Contrary to our conceit of immutable scientific truth, psychoanalysis, imbedded in its time and place, changes inexorably and largely out of awareness as the socio-cultural paradigms change. We are now entering a period of extreme inversion of our previous assumptions about the mind-body relationship; a virtual cartesian revolution that powerfully influences the nature of current psychoanalytic treatment. This is seen most clearly in our valorization of mind over body, particularly in gender issues. We are converging with the paradigmatic Artificial Intelligence view that bodies are fungible and irrelevant to mental functioning. How this changes our unconscious perception of therapist, patient and therapeutic process will be explored.

Is the mind-body relationship mysterious?

AbstractWhy do some philosophers (Nagel, McGinn, Chomsky), despite all we know about evolution and embryology, think that consciousness makes the mind-body relation a problem still unsolved and perhaps insoluble by those with human brains? They ask how consciousness arises in matter, not in living organisms, whereas non-philosophers ask how far down the ladder of life it extends and when it arises in individuals of sentient and intelligent species. They desire the privacy of Locke's closet, furnished with phenomenological properties; and besides replacing Aristotle's ‘folk’ conception of causation by Hume's, they mathematicise physical explanation in line with Newton's First Law of Motion. Non-philosophers operate with ‘vague’ concepts of life, sentience and intelligence which allow them to treat these things as truly and naturally emergent. Machines that perform intelligent tasks are no more conscious of the reasons for their movements than actors performing them on the stage.

Secular Existential Meaning-Making Coping Among Cancer Patients in Portugal: A Qualitative Study

For understanding the role of culture in coping in different cultural settings, we have conducted studies among cancer patients in 10 countries, within the framework of an international study on meaning-making coping. This article reports on part of the results we obtained from a study in Portugal; specifically, the reported findings are restricted to nonreligious/spiritual coping methods, methods we call secular existential meaning-making coping. The main aim is to identify the diversity of coping methods using a cultural lens. Thirty-one participants with various kinds of cancer were interviewed. Six different kinds of coping methods related to secular existential coping emerged from thematic analyses of the interviews: discourse of the self, positive solitude, nature, positive transformational orientation, body–mind relationship, and working. Findings revealed that these six methods facilitated patients’ psychological adaptation to the oncological disease. The findings suggest the importance of considering cultural and social context when exploring coping strategies among cancer patients.

The four-cluster spectrum of mind-body interrelationships: An integrative model

Despite the shift toward a biopsychosocial paradigm of medicine, many physicians and mental health professionals (MHPs) find it difficult to treat patients with psycho-somatic disorders. This situation is particularly troublesome due to the high prevalence of these conditions. Although progress has been made over the last few decades in understanding mechanisms underlying the mind-body relationship, disparities remain between research and its clinical implementation. One possible reason for this is the lack of a comprehensive, agreed-upon model that incorporates a biopsychosocial framework and is rooted in an understanding of the various psychobiological pathways. Such a model would enable better communication between physicians and MHPs, allowing them to provide coordinated, stratified treatment. In this paper, four archetypal case studies, together with standard care options are presented to illustrate the current state of affairs. A four-tiered conceptual model of mind-body interrelationships based on pathophysiological and psychopathological mechanisms is suggested to help optimize the treatment of somatic complaints. This Four-Cluster model consists of: (1) Organic Conditions: Structural, or degenerative processes that can affect mood and psychological responses but are not clearly exacerbated by stress. (2) Stress Exacerbated Diseases: Biological disorders with a distinct pathophysiology, such as inflammatory or autoimmune diseases, whose progression is clearly exacerbated by stress. (3) Functional Somatic Syndromes: Conditions wherein heightened sensitivity to stimuli together with hyper-reactivity of the autonomic system form a vicious cycle of mutually enhancing learning processes. These processes involve biological mechanisms, such as central sensitization and psychological mechanisms such as catastrophization and selective attention. (4) Conversion Disorder: Physical manifestations of psychological distress, expressed somatically. Symptoms are solely an expression of problems in patients' psychic functioning and are not caused by biological pathology. Finally, suggested management of the aforementioned case studies is presented through the lens of the Four-Cluster model and a proposed integration of our model with existing theories is discussed. As it is rooted in an understanding of psychobiological pathways of illness, the proposed model enables a new way to discern which form of mind-body interaction is manifesting in different diseases and proposes a way to coordinate treatment plans accordingly, to enhance the accuracy and efficacy of care.

Who first created the Chinese term for psychology-Xin Li Xue?

Shu-Chang Yan's (2018) recent article challenged the popular notion that the formal translation of psychology into Chinese-Xin Li Xue ()-was first made by the Japanese scholar Nishi Amane (1829-1897) in 1875 (Nishi, 1875; Zhao, 1983, 1991) when translating Joseph Haven's Mental Philosophy (see Haven, 1869; Howland, 2002; Koizumi, 1971). In the archive of Shanghai News, a popular newspaper in 19th- and 20th-century Shanghai (see Ye, 2017; Zhao & Zhang, 2004), Yan discovered that a Chinese intellectual with the penname of Zhi Quan Ju Shi () had already used Xin Li Xue as the name for psychology or mental philosophy on November 28, 1872- 3 years earlier than Nishi's book Haven's Psychology. The 1872 article was about the author's conversation with a Western missionary on the relation between science and the church in the West and a similar prospect in China- that is, that science was gaining the momentum to push aside religion. In the article, Zhi Quan Ju Shi designated some disciplines, including chemistry, astronomy, and psychology, with the same terms used in modern China. Yan thus argued that before Nishi's translation of psychology was widely accepted in China, Zhi Quan Ju Shi had already coined the same term and published it in mass media. Yan then continued to explore who used the penname of Zhi Quan Ju Shi in Shanghai News. Finally, Yan explained why Zhu's publication of the term did not have as profound an influence as Nishi's book. At the end of the 19th century, with the import of psychological knowledge, some Western missionaries and Chinese intellectuals translated the subject into other terms similar to Xin Li Xue, such as Xin Ling Xue () by C. W. Mateer in 1876 and Yongjing Yan in 1889 and Xin Xue () by Yan Fu in 1886 (see Wang, 2015; Zhao, 1983). They were all products of traditional Chinese culture encountering Western psychology. However, those terms were not widely accepted because the contributors were dictionary editors or newspaper journalists outside psychological institutions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The Problem of Meaning in AI and Robotics: Still with Us after All These Years

In this essay we critically evaluate the progress that has been made in solving the problem of meaning in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. We remain skeptical about solutions based on deep neural networks and cognitive robotics, which in our opinion do not fundamentally address the problem. We agree with the enactive approach to cognitive science that things appear as intrinsically meaningful for living beings because of their precarious existence as adaptive autopoietic individuals. But this approach inherits the problem of failing to account for how meaning as such could make a difference for an agent’s behavior. In a nutshell, if life and mind are identified with physically deterministic phenomena, then there is no conceptual room for meaning to play a role in its own right. We argue that this impotence of meaning can be addressed by revising the concept of nature such that the macroscopic scale of the living can be characterized by physical indeterminacy. We consider the implications of this revision of the mind-body relationship for synthetic approaches.

The Four-Cluster Spectrum of Mind-Body Interrelationships: An Integrative Model.

Despite the shift toward a biopsychosocial paradigm of medicine, many physicians and mental health professionals (MHPs) find it difficult to treat patients with psycho-somatic disorders. This situation is particularly troublesome due to the high prevalence of these conditions. Although progress has been made over the last few decades in understanding mechanisms underlying the mind-body relationship, disparities remain between research and its clinical implementation. One possible reason for this is the lack of a comprehensive, agreed-upon model that incorporates a biopsychosocial framework and is rooted in an understanding of the various psychobiological pathways. Such a model would enable better communication between physicians and MHPs, allowing them to provide coordinated, stratified treatment. In this paper, four archetypal case studies, together with standard care options are presented to illustrate the current state of affairs. A four-tiered conceptual model of mind-body interrelationships based on pathophysiological and psychopathological mechanisms is suggested to help optimize the treatment of somatic complaints. This Four-Cluster model consists of: (1) Organic Conditions: Structural, or degenerative processes that can affect mood and psychological responses but are not clearly exacerbated by stress. (2) Stress Exacerbated Diseases: Biological disorders with a distinct pathophysiology, such as inflammatory or autoimmune diseases, whose progression is clearly exacerbated by stress. (3) Functional Somatic Syndromes: Conditions wherein heightened sensitivity to stimuli together with hyper-reactivity of the autonomic system form a “vicious cycle” of mutually enhancing learning processes. These processes involve biological mechanisms, such as central sensitization and psychological mechanisms such as catastrophization and selective attention. (4) Conversion Disorder: Physical manifestations of psychological distress, expressed somatically. Symptoms are solely an expression of problems in patients' psychic functioning and are not caused by biological pathology. Finally, suggested management of the aforementioned case studies is presented through the lens of the Four-Cluster model and a proposed integration of our model with existing theories is discussed. As it is rooted in an understanding of psychobiological pathways of illness, the proposed model enables a new way to discern which form of mind-body interaction is manifesting in different diseases and proposes a way to coordinate treatment plans accordingly, to enhance the accuracy and efficacy of care.