Psychic Systems Research Articles

Unzuverlässigkeit bei heterodiegetischen Erzählern: Konturierung eines Konzepts an Beispielen von Thomas Mann und Goethe

Abstract Heterodiegetic narrators are not present in the story they tell. That is how Gérard Genette has defined heterodiegesis. But this definition of heterodiegesis leaves open what ›absence‹ of the narrator really means: If a friend of the protagonist tells the story but does not appear in it, is he therefore heterodiegetic? Or if a narrator tells something that happened before his lifetime, is he therefore heterodiegetic? These open questions reveal the vagueness of Genette’s definition. However, Simone Elisabeth Lang has recently made a clearer proposal to define heterodiegesis. She argues that narrators should be called heterodiegetic only if they are fundamentally distinguished from the ontological status of the fictional characters: Heterodiegetic narrators are not part of the story for logical reasons, because they are presented as inventors of the story. This is, for example, the case in Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities (1809): In the beginning of this novel the narrator presents himself as inventor of the character’s names (»Edward – so we shall call a wealthy nobleman in the prime of life – had been spending several hours of a fine April morning in his nursery-garden«). Based on that recent definition of heterodiegesis my article deals with the question whether such heterodiegetic narrators can be unreliable. My question is: How could you indicate that the inventor of a fictitious story tells something which is not correct or incomplete? In answering this question, I refer to some proposals of Janina Jacke’s article in this journal. Jacke shows that the distinction between homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narrators should not be confused with the distinction between personal and non-personal narrators or with the distinction between restricted and all-knowing narrators. If you make such differentiations, then of course heterodiegetic narrators can be unreliable: They can omit some essential information or interpret the story inappropriately. Heterodiegetic narrators of an invented story can even lie to the reader or deceive themselves about some elements of the invention. That means: A heterodiegetic narration cannot only be value-related unreliable (›discordant narration‹), but also fact-related unreliable. My article delves especially into this type of unreliability and shows that heterodiegetic narrators of a fictitious story can be fact-related unreliable, if they tell something which was not invented by themselves. In that case, the narrator himself sometimes does not really know whether he tells a true or a fictitious story. Such narrators are unreliable if they assert that the story is true, although they are suggesting at the same time that it is not. I call this type of unreliable narrator a ›fabulating chronicler‹ (›fabulierender Chronist‹): On the one hand, such narrators present themselves as chroniclers of historical facts but, on the other hand, they seem to be fabulists who tell a fairy tale. This type of unreliability occurs especially if a narrator tells a legend or a story from the Bible. My article demonstrates this case in detail with two examples, namely two novels by Thomas Mann: The Holy Sinner (1951) and Joseph and His Brothers (1933–1943). My article also discusses some cases where it is not appropriate or counter-intuitive to call a heterodiegetic narrator ›unreliable‹: i. e. the narrator of Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain (1924) and the narrator of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795/1796). On the one hand, these narrators show some characteristics of unreliability, because they omit essential pieces of information. On the other hand, these narrators are barely shaped as characters, they are nearly non-personal. However, in order to describe a narrator as unreliable, it is – in my opinion – indispensable to refer to some traces of a narrative personality: Figural traits of a narrator provoke the reader to identify all depicting, describing and commenting sentences of a narration as utterances of one and the same ›psychic system‹ (Niklas Luhmann). Only narrators who can be interpreted as such a ›psychic system‹, provoke the reader to assume the role of an analyst or ›detective‹, who perhaps identifies the narrator’s discordance or unreliability. In my article the unreliability of a narration is understood as part of the composition and meaning of a literary work. I argue that a narrator cannot be described as unreliable without designating a semantic motivation for this composition by an act of interpretation. Therefore, my suggestion is that a narration should be merely called unreliable if it encourages the reader not only to imagine the told story, but also to imagine a discordant or unreliable storyteller.

The Nonidentical as a Problem of a Systemic Approach to Scientific Music Pedagogy

The “nonidentical” is Adorno’s term for anything that cannot be grasped by a concept or a system of concepts: sensual experience and events; emotions, understood as unconscious but influential layers of the psychic system; emergent results of interactions; the possibility of non-alienated and non-reified social circumstances. Within practices of music pedagogy, the nonidentical is relevant under all these aspects: the naming of musical issues does not encompass (let alone substitute for) the musical phenomenon (and it is not self-evident how to conceptualize appropriate deictic actions). Emotionality should not be tamed (and it is an open question how to bring it to bear in a sensible way). Emergent results of the interaction in music lessons are a problem for planning classes, a planning which has to consider learning outcomes. The school system is almost completely shaped by economics of education (and cannot easily try to simulate processes of non-alienated and non-reified interactions between all participants). Corresponding research has to focus on identities constituting practices in music pedagogy; but it can develop a sensitivity to realizations of the nonidentical and induce new practices which are structured according to Critical Theory. The paper is concerned with the complementarity of identities and the nonidentical with regard to music pedagogy in a broader perspective, classifying practices of music pedagogy within a system of this discipline–on the basis of a logic of reflection.

Seen from the Viewpoint of a Fish: Posthumanist Observation in Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s ‘Leviathan’

This article conceptualises Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s experimental documentary Leviathan (2012) using Niklas Luhmann’s observation theory and Cary Wolfe’s writing on posthumanism which, significantly influenced by Luhmann’s attack on anthropocentrism in social theory, questions the importance of human agency for social and psychic systems. Leviathan, I argue, engenders perspectives drawn from visual culture that enable a rethinking of hierarchical humanist ethics based on species membership, contributing to posthumanist critical discourse.Leviathan offers a radically non-anthropocentric take on the topic of industrial fishing, presented via innovative use of camera placements and cinematic points of view. Unpredictable camera movements involving contingent framing and angles generate an open-ended work not tied to the human gaze. Shooting from a caught marine animal’s point of view forces the viewer to assume an unexpected perspective. To analyse this particular perspective, I turn to Luhmann’s theories about an observation not tied to human subjectivity, where the subject of observation is simultaneously an object, and where the external world is equally inaccessible to humans and nonhumans alike. In this schema, present in any observation is a constitutive blindness that can only be seen by another observer, but it is this very blindness which makes the observation possible.

Beyond individual-centric privacy: Information technology in social systems

ABSTRACTIn the public debate, social implications of information technology are mainly seen through the privacy lens. Impact assessments of information technology are also often limited to privacy impact assessments, which are focused on individual rights and well-being, as opposed to the social environment. In this article, I argue that this perspective is too narrow, in terms of understanding the complexity of the relation between information technology and society, as well as in terms of directions for managing this relation. I use systems theory to show that current approaches focus mostly on individual impact of information technology developments rather than their mediating role in society itself. I argue that this should be complemented by an analysis of impact on individuals (psychic systems) via co-construction of the environment (social system). I then take up the question of what the role of information technology in social systems would look like in terms of the social relations of trust and power, and how this can complement privacy in discussions on impacts of information technology.

Comunicación y emociones como categorías sociológicas

Recognizing the autopoietic closure of social and psychic systems, we analyze the plausibility of consider emotions as explanatory basis of social order and as ‘new’ source of knowledge of society. With this objective, we problematize the research program on emotions conceptualized as a self-description which rest on transcendental postulations –ontology, return to the subject, intersubjectivity– placing the emotions in a field of encounter between subject and society, and as a constitutive dimension of society. Although it is true that emotions are thematizable presuppositions in the communication, these cannot be the basis of society or a knowledge theory, even if they serve to take a stance on the side of emotion, with the risk of turning the reflection into a moral prescription.

El aporte del sistema biológico, psíquico y social a la construcción de la temporalidad en niños con VIH

On this article, temporality is understood as a psychological process which children with HIV build in a autopoietic way, with the contribution of three systems: the biological system, the psychic system and the social system. The epistemological bases of the systemic theory developed by Luhmann are taken, in the way it assumes that children with HIV are formed with those autopoietical systems and each one of them, in a structural mating, contributes to the building of his/her temporality model.

El aporte del sistema biológico, psíquico y social a la construcción de la temporalidad en niños con VIH

On this article, temporality is understood as a psychological process which children with HIV build in a autopoietic way, with the contribution of three systems: the biological system, the psychic system and the social system. The epistemological bases of the systemic theory developed by Luhmann are taken, in the way it assumes that children with HIV are formed with those autopoietical systems and each one of them, in a structural mating, contributes to the building of his/her temporality model.

Vygotsky and beyond: horizons for the future of psychology / Vygotski y más allá: horizontes para el futuro de la psicología

In this article some usually overlooked aspects of Vygotsky’s work are presented. First, the understanding of the mediation system as a trans-organic, extended branch of the psychological system. Second, the semantic nature of conscience and the systemic neuropsychological organization of higher functions. Third, the leading role played in the psychic system by directive functions. Fourth, the understanding of human evolution as open and permanently provisional. Last, a reference is made to the role of psychology in the process of human auto-evolution, which Vygotsky viewed as a mission.

Functional Conjugation of the Different Regulatory Responses to the Stress Stimuli in Healthy Human Subjects

Present article discusses the physiological mechanisms of the state employees adaptation during active training in temporary groups. It is suggested that adaptive mechanisms to adverse effects may be studied basing on the concept of functional isomorphism of the psychic and immune systems. Adaptive mechanisms were studied through the monitoring of the stress factors’ impact upon the law enforcement officers when training outside the places of permanent deployment. The specific purpose of present study was to evaluate the physiological indicators of the psychic, immune and endocrine systems dynamics at different stages of adaptation of the live organism to a stressful situation, hoping to get better insight into possible relations between psychic and immune domains. Through monitoring of the dynamics of the endocrine and immune responses to the psychic stimuli, it was possible to correlate the stages of the stress onset to the phases of specific immune reactions. Strong correlations between the parameters characterizing activation of the psychic and immune responses support the hypothesis of the presence of “strong cooperation” between psychic and immune domains. It supports earlier hypothesis that we are monitoring different manifestations of the functioning of a complex inseparable psycho-immune meta-system.

LA "GUBERNAMENTALIDAD" SISTÉMICA EN EL DOCENTE UNIVERSITARIO CONTEMPORÁNEO

The notion of governmentality is presented here is part of a methodological foucultiana apprehension made by master Carlos Noguera, however, and as a contribution of the doctoral research reforms to higher education and university teaching that the author of this text is to develop, integrate the theoretical perspective of Niklas Luhmann or systems theory to explain how new forms of governing higher education, the contemporary university teaching has become psychic systems of operation or operations research and teaching, which allow self-reference and government itself and be governed by a system of cognitive production from the immaterial labor of the two psychic systems of teaching operation under two systems: economic: human capital and cognitive capital and the Reformed higher education.

Don DeLillo’s Falling Man and the Protective Shield Against Stimuli

This paper links the disenchantment of Keith Neudecker, protagonist of Falling Man , to psychical energies mobilized against perceived threats in his immediate environment. This mobilization, or hypercathexis of the protective shield, impoverishes the remaining psychical system, much like a nation whose bloated defense budget cripples the society that is supposed to be defended. It follows that if the external threats to which Keith responds are unchanged by 9/11, his psychic life will also be unchanged. This fact explains DeLillo’s choice to represent 9/11 and its aftermath with familiar narrative structures even though it is an event that supposedly “changed the world forever.”

La résilience : un concept inutile en psychotraumatologie

Resilience is a term originally used in physical sciences to describe the shock-resistance of a material. Recently, it has been used in psychopathology to describe the ability to withstand stress or to bounce back into life, in the face of adversity. In relation to the issue of psychological trauma, it is assumed by the authors to be innate or to be the result of early good quality mother-infant bonding. In this article, we propose an alternative hypothesis that eliminates the concept of resilience. Faced with a potentially traumatogenic event, the subject is likely to develop a traumatic neurosis. This consists of registering the traumatic image by unknowingly adding it into the interior psychic system. It would be able to, if there is already present a recorded trace at the conscious and unconscious representations, in their original aspect of enjoyment (the “Paradise Lost”, Freud). The traumatic image comes to this place as “an object lost and found” which is a source of unconscious enjoyment, but which also carries an anguish of annihilation. The whole question is to know whether this object could be accommodated in the psychic system and if the links of attachment which it forms with the psyche, will be sustainable or not. The reception and also the maintenance of the intensity of the traumatic image and its effects depend therefore on the connection which the subject preserves, prior to the critical event, with the trace of a “paradise lost”. If he is waiting for a place for full enjoyment, the object lost/found, which constitutes the traumatic image, naturally will find its place by the trace left by the “Paradise Lost”. If he is not waiting, or only slightly waiting for a place for full enjoyment, the traumatic object will leave him almost indifferent, and it will either not be received within the psychic system, or it will disappear comfortably and easily. Thus, the traumatic neurosis requires prior neurotic functioning characterized (Here, neurotic is to differentiate from “normal neurotic”), which will nourish the psychodynamic psychotherapy of these patients. This will serve to resolve neurotic embarrassment, which requires the existence to a point of completion. The concept of resilience says nothing about the nature of the phenomenon that would designate.

Feedback as Real-Time Constructions

This article offers a re-description of feedback and the significance of time in feedback constructions based on systems theory. It describes feedback as internal, real-time constructions in a learning system. From this perspective, feedback is neither immediate nor delayed, but occurs in the very moment it takes place. This article argues for a clear distinction between the timing of communicative events, such as responses that are provided as help for feedback constructions, and the feedback construction itself as an event in a psychic system. Although feedback is described as an internal, system-relative construction, different teaching environments offer diverse conditions for feedback constructions. The final section of this article explores this idea with the help of examples from both synchronous oral interaction and asynchronous text-based interaction mediated by digital media.

The King of Norway: negative individuation, the hero myth and psychopathic narcissism in extreme violence and the life of Anders Behring Breivik

The paper discusses negative individuation and the hero myth as developmental concepts. It is suggested that in negative individuation healthy psychological development is hindered and goes astray. Aggression then becomes the central psychic system. Repressed anger is the core element in psychopathic narcissism (Diamond) and malignant narcissism (Kernberg). Both Diamond and Kernberg extend narcissistic personality structure to antisocial, psychopathic personality in an effort to better understand extreme violence. According to Freud, love (libido) and hate (the death drive) are the major motivational systems in the human psyche. In contrast to Freud, Jung sees libido as a life force in general, not simply as a sexual drive. Jung writes about evil and the shadow but does not present a comprehensive theory of the negative development of an individual's life. The concept of negative individuation connects the shadow and the death drive with psychopathology, psychiatry and psychotherapy. In this paper, I explore these concepts in the light of contemporary affect theory according to Kernberg. I also ask how ideology is tied to extreme violence and how it is possible that narcissistic personality structures can lead to such radically different outcomes as were manifested in the lives of Anders Behring Breivik and Steve Jobs.

Autisme : une rencontre avec un « visage brisé »

Much has already been said regarding the study of the function of the face in the constitution of subjectivity, referring to the mirror's phase. However, when it comes to autism, it is necessary to consider the pre-mirror's phase, when the access to the imaginary and the symbolic appears very sketched. This study is based on an analysis of the relation of the subject to the face, in a pre-mirror phase. It claims to establish a metapsychology of the draft of the psychic system capable of signaling failures of the autistic function/face. This analysis allows us to argue that the relation of the subject to the face still initiates a pre-mirror phase. It represents a moment of instinctual and primordial settlement for the subject in a precursory of the other symbolic, characterized by a first shape. Autism is characterized by the failure of this first meeting with the proto-Other, characterizing the phenomenon of “broken face”. This paper intends to contribute to studies about early intervention in infants at risk of autism.

SYNCHRONIZATION OF IMMUNE AND PSYCHIC SYSTEMS ASSOCIATED WITH SOCIAL STRESS

The article is devoted to the research of the synchronization of immune and psychic systems providing multilayer (functional) protection in accordance with the identically developed strategies. We have discussed evolution interaction of the systems with the following references: mentality in macroworld and immune system in microworld. Their functional isomorphism maintains the dynamic homeostasis according to the principle of reciprocal control, and during their functioning systems presents not the amount of separate parts but “the whole range of events” effect.

Luhmann como intérprete de Husserl: El problema del sentido

A common interpretation of the relation between Niklas Luhmann´s theory of social systems and Edmund Husserl´s phenomenology maintains that the concepts of meaning of both authors are close to each other. This reading was elaborated by some commentators and emphatically encouraged by Luhmann himself. The aim of our paper is to examine critically such an interpretation. We argue that phenomenological and systemic perspectives do not really match regarding the concept of meaning. What follows will show how the sociologist generalized concepts in social and psychic systems, which Husserl elaborated in order to shed light on consciousness. On the other hand, we will point out that while Luhmann focused on the matter of meaning from a functionalist and empirical perspective, Husserl showed this issue by describing the essential structures of transcendental subjectivity. Equally, we will hold that while Luhmann´s concept of meaning has to do with self-reference of psychic and social systems, Husserl´s theory stresses hetero-reference of consciousness. Throughout this paper we will state that every time the sociologist interpreted the notions of horizon and world according to the concepts of complexity and contingency, he surely moved away from phenomenology. These aspects lead us to point out that between one and another perspective in reference to meaning, disagreements prevail over affinities. The differentiation of language and meaning and the approach to the concept of world as a horizon unity, which cannot be reduced to a mere addition of things, are shown as convergences between both authors.

System Theory as Global Sociology-Japanese Ramifications of Parsonian and Luhmannian Thought

This article explores various engagements of system theory with Germany and Japan, looking in particular at the theories of Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann. Talcott Parsons based his sociological theory on the idea of a system of the values of a given society. Niklas Luhmann’s extended version was based on the idea of self-reproduction (or “autopoiesis”) of social systems within all modernized societies. Two studies have recently re-examined system theory on basis of its engagement with Japan: Gunther Distelrath has subjected Parsonian theory on Japanese modernity to a structural revisioning in Die japanische Produktionsweise (1996); and Peter Fuchs has reconciled what he calls the “dividualism” of the Japanese psyche with the Luhmannian theory of functional differentiation in Kommunikation — Japanisch (1995). Distelrath critiques the Parsonian school of thought for giving Japan the status of a backward “follower” of the West. Fuchs, in contrast, endorses the universalist premise of Luhmann’s concept of society and makes Japanese “dividualism” the paradigm of effective modernization. Following on from Fuchs, I argue that system theory has the potential to overcome cultural limitations and become a global sociology. Its theoretical agenda in the twenty-first century includes the refinement of its concepts of the psychical system, the revision of its notion of the public and the mass media, as well as a systematic contribution to environmental protection and ecological communication in a functionally differentiated world society.

Des attracteurs et régulateurs en pathologie mentale. Approche théorique, informatique, et clinique

We can understand the mental disorders as bifurcations in the representations generated by the psychic system, using an informational and morphological notion of energy. In this way, the clinician should use an interdisciplinary perspective that encourages studying their internal dynamics in a fine reconciliation with the informatics concepts lighting on the automatisms of the thought. To this effect, a theoretical perspective leads to evoke a set of psychic flow networks, the changes of energy into these flow, and the role of neuronal and interneuron flows that are theirs retaining. These networks will form dynamic elements evolving and multiplying themselves and forming various integrated levels. The whole form a very complex and dynamic organization. These networks are subject to tensions that will sound on the regulation of the system and contribute to create bifurcations in management of general energy leading to mental disorders. Constructivist informatics defines the attractors as controllers of the networks of relations that can become autonomous and alter the morphology and behavior of the structure of the basic elements of the system, as well as their aggregates. They contribute to form the morphological and semantic characters into the system. They are related to regulators, which are themselves coactive networks that manage and control the basic elements and structures of the system allowing the real behavior. These attractors and regulators intervene at each level of the organization and contribute to form a systemic loop that controls the energy flow in multi-scale actions on the basic elements. Their effects combine themselves, leading to the creation of zones of bifurcations of energy that break the equilibrium of the system. Without a priori pretend to put an identity between the phenomena studied in clinic and the attractors and regulators specified into informatics, one could see a very possible reconciliation. Indeed, on can found the action of attractors and regulators in various states of disease. Their actions are mentioned in the superficial dysfunctions of the system that constitute the neurosis: anguish, anxiety, somatic conversions, phobias, obsessions… It is also proposed in the deeper problems that reach the general loop regulating the psychic system and the functional structures, changing their modes of development and their integrations, forming the psychosis: Processes of excitement, of unstructured depressions, delusions, hallucinations. A confrontation of these different concepts allows to well understand the both unitary and polymorphic action of the attractors and regulators in the formation of mental disorders. The clinic shows that the limits of the pathological functional structures are not frozen and that their areas of neighborhoods are pertinent in specific topologies, somewhat fuzzy, in report with the various underlying neurological formations. Their integration since interneuron spaces with modulators neurons until their effects onto the components of psychopathological formations, finally allow to better understand the general dynamics of the disorders, their associations, their movements and their possible transformations. To draw a conclusion, we set the clinic and informatics must join themselves in the field of the automatism in the thought where we consider the concepts of attractors and regulators. These two kinds of controllers concern both the levels of organization and the general regulation of their integration, and they are responsible of all the bifurcations that lead to the mental disorders. For that, it is possible and important to increase and develop the model allowing clarifying the inner laws of the normal and pathological psychic functioning.

Reconocimiento y economía de la estima: La normatividad basal de los artefactos semánticos

In the structuring of the social moral grammar, Recognition [Anerkennung] plays a key role both as a subject's perception of the dignity of each psychic system, as well as of others as subjects worthy of decent treatment. Brennan and Pettit have rescued the value of the Economy of Esteem. It highlights that the subject's wishful structure involves not only the want of material goods and social power but also to seek esteem. That it is, economy would not only maximize the utility of goods or reputation through, for example, material goods and positional goods but also the competition by esteem. Persons, as semantic artifacts, compete and establish mechanisms for the distribution of esteem. Its possession or not, involve degrees of social inclusion or exclusion from a communicational perspective. Equal access to compete for it, would be a fundamental right. The present paper explores how far this entry to compete in equal conditions by Esteem is not conditioned by Recognition, which as Pettit and Brennan address, it is different from esteem. In that sense, it is possible to consider Recognition as the normative basal grammar and would constitute a conditioning element for fair democratic competition by esteem.