Separate Self Research Articles

"Once a Bitch, Always a Bitch": Rereading Caddy in The Sound and the Fury

"Once a Bitch, Always a Bitch":Rereading Caddy in The Sound and the Fury Susanna Hemsptead (bio) "I must begin by saying that I do not believe in Caddy Compson's silence" —Minrose C. Gwin1 "if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme." —Virginia Woolf2 Born on the threshold of modernity, Candice "Caddy" Compson in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury contends with the Southern patriarchal apparatus, upending moral and social codes embedded deep within a system of white, male-dominated hegemony. Though Caddy's character appears to the reader exclusively through the heavily mitigated narratives of four male voices, she nevertheless slips away from their control and exists as a self outside of and separate from impenetrable textual abstraction. Attempts to fix or define her character ultimately fail because, as Minrose C. Gwin states, Caddy is "the discursiveness of that space which she is but also which she speaks out of" (Gwin 35, emphasis mine). In The Willful Subject (2014), Sara Ahmed writes, "The demand for obedience is not simply a demand that the part obeys [End Page 23] the whole but is willing to become part of a whole. Willfulness would be a diagnosis of unbecoming parts" (Ahmed 97–8). For Ahmed and in Caddy, willfulness disrupts, acting as both interlocutor and dissident to will. Similarly, the idea of will—or rather, unwill is examined by Judith Butler in Giving and Account of Oneself (2005) as she explicates an argument originating in Levinas regarding the human "experience of being imposed upon from the start, against one's will" and the self's responsibility to respond to the imposing other, which is defined by Butler as "belonging to an idealized dyadic structure of social life" (Butler 99, 90). Butler's use of "unwilled" productive in thinking the stakes of defining Caddy as a character resistant to being made subject to how her brothers, and even Faulkner himself, address her against her will (85). Caddy is never permitted to give an account of herself in the novel under the same circumstances in which her brothers account for her, nor is she granted access to a self separate from the persecution inherent in and prior to her own sense of being in the world. Born a woman on the threshold of a new century at the dawn of a new American south, Caddy experiences an instantaneous violence in the expectations of her selfhood and the descriptions subsequent to her refusal of them. Nevertheless, Caddy certainly communicates, making intelligible a separate self from the iterations built by her brothers and eluding the ad hoc femininity endowed upon her. In disrupting the repressive wills with which she is expected to participate as a mere part, Caddy effectively negates her position as a viable or significant human being therein. In "A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf writes that "[w]omen have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size" explaining that men have historically written women as inferior for the sake of constructing the man as superior (Woolf 35). The woman is necessary, Caddy is necessary; for the the Compson men and Faulkner himself to explain themselves they must explain Caddy—and she must never be permitted to explain herself "[f]or if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished" (36). Modernist literature abounds with women speaking truth from within certain social sepulchres: Nella Larsen's Helga Crane, Elizabeth Bowen's Portia Quayne, Jean Rhys's Antoinette Cosway, Zora Neale Hurston's Janie Crawford to name a very few—women who appear and disappear, who both speak and who remain silent against the wills of the enclosures in which they find themselves, making room for the veracity and identities of women who will come later, despite the very real consequences of their rebellious choices. Caddy Compson is in luminous company among...

When separation is violence: History of a son of Camorra

This article intends to propose a basis for a reflection on how separation mechanisms, both intrapsychic and social, may, by a normal identification process, be comparable in traumatic situations to true forms of violence. According to the theories of Benedetti and Peciccia (1996), a symbiotic Self and a separate Self are continuously present, integrated development lines of the Self, even though they are never fully conscious. Conversely, in the structure of the psychotic Self, a deintegration is inferred between the symbiotic and the separate states of the Self, of which the patient is painstakingly conscious. In light of significant psychoanalytic theories relating to the anxiety of separation, we aim to interpret this symbiosis and separation through the history of Michele, a psychotic young man from a Camorrist family, who was currently hospitalized in a psychiatric facility. The article intends to investigate the separation imposed by the clan, and the even deeper one, inferred from the significant separations experienced within the family circle. Furthermore, we will also outline our therapeutic method and the use of progressive mirror drawing, a psychotherapeutic technique which can be used with patients suffering from different pathologies that compromise verbalization, such as psychosis.

Anthropology and the Possibility of Hope

Anthropology and the Possibility of Hope1 Dermot A Lane There is a widespread recognition that anthropology is a factor underlying much of the social, political, economic and religious malaise of modern Ireland. Anthropology is the study of what it means to be a human being, an examination of what is at the core of human identity, an analysis of what promotes human flourishing, an exploration of human nature in the light of the social sciences, history, philosophy and religion. The surest sign of a deep crisis in anthropology is our contemporary inability to talk seriously about death in the public forum. The aim of this article is to construct an anthropology that builds bridges between human beings, that paves the way for a new dialogue between secularists and believers, that facilitates the formation of a coalition of hope among people of secular and theistic convictions. The article will seek to do this in four steps. Part One will show that anthropology is in crisis in a number of different disciplines. Part Two outlines some of the elements that could contribute to a reconstruction of anthropology in the twenty-first century. Part Three shows how a renewed anthropology could build bridges for a new coalition of hope among secularists and believers. Part Four concludes with a brief introduction to the shape of a theology of hope within this coalition. Anthropology – a contested area Anthropology is a thread running through many areas of life: ecology, economics, ethics, education, philosophy and theology. In ecology, Pope Francis and the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris both agreed in 2015 with the scientific view that the ecological crisis is caused mostly by human activity and certain expressions of anthropocentrism. Pope Francis is explicit in his criticism of what he calls ‘tyrannical’, ‘distorted’, ‘excessive’ and ‘misguided’ forms of anthropocentrism. Further, he points out that there can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology.2 In economics, Jeffrey Sachs, US economist and UN adviser, gave a key-note Studies • volume 107 • number 426 167 address on ‘Economics for the Common Good’to a conference in the London School of Economics, on 12–13 December 2016 . In his opening remarks he pointed out that ‘Economics went wildly off-track by a profoundly flawed model of human nature and a flawed model of human purpose’.3 In the area of ethics the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, has sought to open a national debate on ‘Ethics for All’. He has suggested that part of the problem has been the rise of ‘extreme individualism, grounded in a hegemonic version of the market without limit’. Further, he argues that the failure to ‘question the concept of individualism and insatiable consumption’ has been a contributing factor to our recent economic crisis.4 In the field of education, there is concern about the increasing influence of technology, metrics and managerialism at all levels of education in Ireland. A new emphasis is placed on production, where outcomes are prescribed in advance of the learning experience. A major difficulty with this approach to education is the presence of an anthropological reductionism which neglects areas such as the holistic development of students, interpersonal skills, collaboration, leadership, empathetic memory and the exercise of the creative imagination. In philosophy, modern and post-modern, anthropology has been, and continues to be deeply debated. Modern philosophy has been marked by a turn to the subject, and this has resulted in the emergence of the sovereign subject of modernity. The separated self was, and is, so strong, so confident and so independent that it became the ground of its own being: self-sufficient, selfdefining , and self-sustaining without reference to any reality outside itself. By way of reaction, post-modern philosophy radically deconstructed the self-sufficient subject of modernity. This programme of deconstruction can be summed up in the words of Michael Foucault: ‘Man is an invention of recent date’and will be ‘erased like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea’.5 For some post-moderns the self is just a rhetorical flourish, a linguistic and cultural construct to facilitate the interaction of differences. Within Catholic feminist theology, there is a storm...

Wyman, Alina The Gift of Active Empathy: Scheler, Bakhtin, and Dostoevsky (review)

SEER, 96, 2, APRIL 2018 340 Academy, Dmitry Grigorovich. If Dostoevskii does not emerge as a likeable character (this much we already knew; his elder brother Mikhail by contrast comes across as a saint), then the rounded and fair-minded picture we are given at least makes him more understandable. There is no attempt to hide Dostoevskii’s frankly unpleasant traits or behaviour, but we also see the pressures he was under, the understanding of his own talent and struggles to realize it, and the tensions between uncontrollable vanity and self-doubt that are more than a little reminiscent of Mr Goliadkin and his double, on whose story Dostoevskii was also working in this period. Marullo’s selection is very revealing of Dostoevskii’s creative process and his personality. Subsequent volumes covering the rest of the author’s life will make excellent companion pieces to existing, more traditional, biographies, and are to be eagerly anticipated. UCL SSEES Sarah J. Young Wyman, Alina. The Gift of Active Empathy: Scheler, Bakhtin, and Dostoevsky. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2016. xiv + 323 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $39.95 (paperback). Bakhtin’s book on Dostoevskii was attacked as ‘idealist’ by its first Marxist reviewers in 1929. Ever since, its dazzling but not watertight case for polyphony and the dialogic word has prompted philosophically equipped critics to offer correctives. Alina Wyman is among the best. Her method is to use the younger Bakhtin to improve upon the older, with the help of the German phenomenologist Max Scheler, whose work on sympathy Bakhtin admired. Add a Schelerian supplement, Wyman suggests, and Bakhtin’s early Kantian ruminations on self-other relations — where my ‘I’ is dutybound to consummate yours — can be made compatible with his Dostoevskii study, which promotes radical incompleteness and shared being. Bakhtin on Dostoevskii is problematic. On the level of character, a constant privileging of the other in dialogue and the ‘coexistence-and-interaction’ mandate in polyphony ignore a hero’s growth over time and discourage cultivation of a private zone. On the level of novelistic construction, the leveling effects of dialogue and polyphony obscure Dostoevskii’s hierarchy of values. But balance can be restored if we revive Bakhtin’s early concept of vzhivanie or ‘live entering’: the ‘active empathy’ of the title. This is not Nietzsche’s despised pity, reactive and duplicative. ‘Active’ here means morally potent. The empathizer does not collapse into the other’s pain. Rather, my ‘I’ briefly steps in to your space (the mechanism here is unclear), our horizons momentarily coincide REVIEWS 341 and are mutually enriched, after which we return to our separate selves. Such compassionate, temporary consummation of ‘I’ and ‘other’ is never a finalization, never a fusion, always a possible way out. To be properly understood, Wyman contends, Dostoevskii’s positive heroes need both Bakhtin and Scheler. Scheler’s model permits a self to retain a private ‘surplus’, its own ‘individual ineffable’, which gives it the dignity, traction for change, and trust in the wholeness of its own embodied image that Bakhtin withholds. To presume unfinalizability or full open access in human encounters is not an unalloyed good. In pursuit of optimal mutual incarnation in Dostoevskii, Wyman organizes her study in three sections. The introduction and first two chapters lay out the fragile, fraught task of empathy, the intuiting of another’s consciousness. Chapters four to six are microreadings of actively empathetic moments in three masterworks: House of the Dead, The Idiot and Brothers Karamazov. The prison quasi-memoir is partially successful (but mostly in retrospect). The Idiot is largely a failure (Myshkin’s fusing with the sufferer makes matters worse). Alesha Karamazov is a victory. Alesha knows his own mind, acts on it, can be sorrowful when humiliated but is not insulted, and thus manages to consummate others but not finalize them, making him everyone’s favoured ‘uniquely competent friend’ (p. 215). Bridging these two sections is chapter three, a dark digression on anti-empathy in the Underground through Scheler’s concept of resentment. When, out of a misguided quest for freedom, the Underground Man refuses to incarnate himself, an impotent unfinalizable fury sets in, and forever. Sixty pages...

Dual Quantum Dot Superlattice

In this paper, we propose a structure using four layers of quantum dots on crystalline silicon. The quantum dots site-specifically self-assembled in the p-type material due to the electrostatic attraction. This quantum dot super lattice (QDSL) structure will be constructed using a mixed layer of Germanium (Ge) and Silicon (Si) dots. Atomic Force Microscopy results will show the accurate stack height formed from individual and multi stacked layers. This is the first novel characterization of 4 layers of 2 separate self assemblies. This was also applied to a quantum dot gate field effect transistor (QDG-FET).

Comparative gene expression profiles in healthy and autoimmune mice

Comparative gene expression profiles in healthy and autoimmune mice

I Listen Like Nausicaa to NPR

I Listen Like Nausicaa to NPR KATIE HARTSOCK “Kwame wants to show me the Pru River . . . Young girls and women wash clothes along the banks.” —“River Blindness Robbed Him of His Sight But Not His Independence,” Morning Edition As if we stood with no one between us, not your translator or my handmaidens. Why should a young thing like me want a man oceans older, trailing a goddess who gussies him up to take the years off. I’ll go online to read the radio story, posted with pictures of your cloudy face. “The trick,” you say, “to gardening blind is planting in straight lines.” Your hands in dirt, knowing by feel the cardinal directions, work alone. I’m rinsing the silks of my soaped-up trousseau for an abstract husband, in the river you reel your fish from, waters that breed the black fly whose parasitic bite pricked you, quick as a paper cut from a book of murder ballads, before you reached the age to marry. I could have brought cloths, those last days you could see, when you saw worms swim across your eyes, to swathe your itching, long ago, beyond all laws, before a state-mandated pill ended the disease. “I sleep and wake on my own.” But that is just what a king would say, washed up naked at my feet arion 26.3 winter 2019 and hiding histories of desire with a leaf. Our separate selves stay separate. No one suspects a thing as we walk, at a distance I decide, away from the river that rose to our thighs with its necessities, like laundry or longing, and its cataracts of other lives, disrobing. 34 i listen like nausicaa to npr ...

Comparative gene expression profiles in healthy and autoimmune mice

Comparative gene expression profiles in healthy and autoimmune mice

“Hello Central, Give Me Doctor Jazz”: Auto/Ethnographic Improvisation as Educational Event in Doctoral Supervision

Through exchanges within a doctoral supervision, the authors explore a range of dilemmas and challenges for reflexive inquiry. These include the problematic business of naming, the impossibility of objective separation of self from research, the merging of researcher subjectivities, and differences between performance and performativity. We note the educational potential in what can conventionally be considered “unprofessional” approaches to qualitative inquiry: neologisms, personal experience, stories, conversations, music, poetry, paintings, and film. We engage in reflexive interactions with each other and with such “data.” This was undertaken in the spirit of jazz improvisation—an unrehearsed performance—something that “happened,” an unplanned educational event but also an agency enabled by structure.

GENDERED EXPECTATIONS

The author of this paper, a female novelist who writes from the male perspective, has found that writing from the point of view of the opposite gender allows for a more complete imagining of the other, rendering the whole enterprise of creating a fictional character more possible. In this paper, she argues that the success of creating a thoroughly constructed fictional human being often resides in that character's otherness. By separating one's own biography and history from one's character's – and especially by creating a character whose gender differs from her own – an author frees herself to write a separate self.

Are Humans Special?

Are Humans Special?

The mucosal barrier at a glance.

Mucosal barriers separate self from non-self and are essential for life. These barriers, which are the first line of defense against external pathogens, are formed by epithelial cells and the substances they secrete. Rather than an absolute barrier, epithelia at mucosal surfaces must allow selective paracellular flux that discriminates between solutes and water while preventing the passage of bacteria and toxins. In vertebrates, tight junctions seal the paracellular space; flux across the tight junction can occur through two distinct routes that differ in selectivity, capacity, molecular composition and regulation. Dysregulation of either pathway can accompany disease. A third, tight-junction-independent route that reflects epithelial damage can also contribute to barrier loss during disease. In this Cell Science at a Glance article and accompanying poster, we present current knowledge on the molecular components and pathways that establish this selectively permeable barrier and the interactions that lead to barrier dysfunction during disease.

Respect for personhood in medical and psychiatric ethics

Summary This paper considers a number of questions concerning a central principle of modern liberal medical ethics – that of respect for patient autonomy. This principle is generally interpreted as a consequence of the more fundamental ethical requirement of respect for personhood, defined in terms of the ‘autonomy’ of a rational being. In the context of medical ethics, this is taken to imply that patients, as persons, have the right to make decisions about their own medical treatment or non-treatment. This, it is argued, involves a misuse of the essentially Kantian concept of ‘autonomy’. For Kant, to be autonomous is to be capable of making universal moral judgements, based on impersonal reason alone. In liberal medical ethics, however, autonomy means the capacity to make decisions about non-moral matters such as one's own interests, on the basis of values which one has arrived at by free and independent thought. These are clearly different conceptions, so that a definition of personhood in terms of autonomy in the Kantian sense will be different from one in terms of liberal autonomy. This casts doubt on whether respect for patient autonomy in the liberal sense is an implication of respect for personhood. It is not clear why a patient's decisions about treatment ought to be respected simply because they are based on the patient's own (non-moral) values. There is a further difficulty. ‘Autonomy’, in the liberal conception, seems to be equivalent to ‘decision-making competence’. The elements of this are said to be: 1. The capacity to understand; 2. The capacity to reason; and 3. Possession of one's own developed structure of values. Decision-making competence in this sense is not found in all human beings, or in any human being all the time. For example, small children, adults with learning difficulties, and people with brain damage seem to lack all three elements, or to have them only to a limited extent. People with a serious illness may lack all three temporarily. And people with certain kinds of mental disorder may, just because of their disorder, deviate from their own normal structure of values. It seems to follow that not all human beings are fully persons worthy of respect in the liberal sense of personhood. This has morally undesirable implications, which suggests problems in the liberal conceptions both of personhood and of respect. It is argued that a satisfactory conception of personhood can be arrived at only by considering the use of terms such as ‘person’ in everyday, non-technical, contexts. It is argued that ‘person’, in such contexts, is almost synonymous with ‘human being’, though with particular reference to the non-biological characteristics of human beings – those in virtue of which we recognize each other as fellow-humans (as ‘one of us’). A human being does not necessarily possess decision-making competence as defined above: so respect for persons cannot depend on such competence, or require us always to accept a person's own presently expressed decisions about what is best for themselves. It does, however, require us to recognize others as separate selves, with interests of their own, which may differ from ours. A doctor is therefore morally required to give the patient's interests priority over his or her own, or those of the health care system. If doctors consider the patient's expressed decision about treatment to be not in the patient's own interests, they are morally required to engage in dialogue with the patient, in an effort to arrive at a decision which will be acceptable both to the doctor and to the patient. If the patient is unable to engage in such dialogue, because of impaired decision-making competence, then other methods of establishing the patient's interests must be tried: examples would be proxy decision-making, by someone who is close enough to the patient to be aware of, and concerned for, the patient's interests; or appeal to the patient's own advance directives, where available. The most difficult case is that of patients with certain kinds of mental disorder, where the patient's own sense of his or her interests has become distorted by the very disorder which needs treatment. Only by following an appropriate course of treatment, which the patient may currently reject, is it possible to restore the patient to a condition in which he or she can genuinely engage in dialogue. This, it is argued, makes it morally justifiable in such cases simply to override the patient's expressed wishes.

Introduction to the Special Section on Relational‐Cultural Theory

20/20: A Vision for the Future of Counseling was task force of 31 member organizations sponsored by the American Counseling Association (ACA) and the American Association of State Counseling Boards designed to address the needs of the counseling profession. The task force focused on issues that would move the profession of counseling forward, including consensus around the definition of counseling (Kaplan, Tarvydas, & Gladding, 2014). Through this work, counseling was defined as a professional relationship that empowers diverse individuals, families, and groups to accomplish mental health, wellness, education, and career goals (Kaplan et al., 2014, p. 366). This definition is distinctive to professional counselors and salient in that the relationship is also empirically identified as integral to counseling success (Norcross & Wampold, 2011). In forums across the profession of counseling, counselors working in diverse settings and across all populations are encouraged to be mindful of the professional relationship and to ethically develop these relationships in their work with clients. Therefore, identifying theories that guide professional counselors in forming professional relationships is particularly significant. Relational-cultural theory (RCT), theory whose focus is on developing growth-fostering relationships, is the focus of this special section of the Journal of Counseling & Development (JCD). RCT pioneers Jean Baker Miller, Irene Stiver, Jan Surrey, and Judith Jordan created clinical study group in the 1970s in which they shared their thoughts and experiences related to how people grow. Over time, they developed RCT as model of human development and established the Stone Center at Wellesley College, where scholars continue to study, train, and practice RCT today (Jordan, 2010). Although RCT's initial and primary focus was on women and members of marginalized populations, it now includes men. Central to this theory is the premise that human growth develops in connection with others rather than through separation and individuation (Comstock et al., 2008; Duffey & Somody, 2011; Jordan, 2001, 2010). RCT (a) challenges traditional models of development with respect to the definition of growth, (b) speaks to ways that people respond to relational and cultural adversity, and (c) illustrates the impact that chronic loss and disconnection can have on people's lives and relationships (Jordan, 2010). Furthermore, RCT provides context for counselors when discussing multicultural and gender issues or when conceptualizing and humanizing challenging clinical cases. Its depathologizing perspective affords framework for the many issues that clients bring to counseling, including issues of power, privilege, marginalization, stigmatization, belonging, and acceptance. Although this introduction to the special section cannot provide an in-depth discussion on RCT, included is brief discourse on some of the approach's salient principles. Readers may consult other works (Jordan, 2010; Miller, 1976) for more nuanced and comprehensive coverage of RCT's development, evolution, and implementation. The Self: What Determines Growth Traditional models of mental health often focus on the concept of the self, or part of person that is first developed and nurtured, usually through socialization by the family of origin, and then through early social, cognitive, and emotional learning experiences (Jordan, 2010). This construct supports the primacy of self-sufficiency. From this premise, the separate self is developed and then protected until it reaches maturation and can thrive autonomously on its own (Jordan, 2010). Following this framework, person's achievements, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are all framed from the perspective of the self (Jordan, 2010). Alternatively, RCT posits that growth occurs within relationships and identifies connection as the center point for growth (Jordan, 2010). …

Longing and Belonging: Emancipation Moments and Ubuntu in Claire Robertson’s <i>The Spiral House</i>

Claire Robertson’s 2013 novel, The Spiral House , consists of two alternating South African chronotopes, one a farm in 1794, the other a mission hospital in 1961. The first narrative unfolds shortly before the abolition of slavery. Robertson critiques the ideology of slavery and the effects of Enlightenment scientific experimentation on human subjects. The consequences of social engineering, violence and sexism are shown in the suffering of the characters. The second narrative is set at the time when South Africa becomes a republic. It concerns a white nun who is breaking away from her convent life and acting as a surrogate mother to a young black boy. The novel, which concludes in 1994, requires the reader to contemplate who has been given full subjecthood within the framework of the nation, according to which ideologies. In analysing this novel I employ Leonard Praeg’s A Report on Ubuntu (2014). Ubuntu is an African concept of community through an imagined sense of belonging, both material and ethical. Praeg notes: “Ubuntu […] can only play this role of positing past realities as future possibilities through a perpetual deconstruction of two essential building blocks of Western modernity: a linear conception of time and the binary separation of self and other, being and belonging” (248). I argue that Robertson’s novel effectively and movingly exemplifies Ubuntu.

Modernist Hollywood: Place Attachment in Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister

In Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister (1949), private detective Philip Marlowe is more morose and more disillusioned with his surroundings than ever. Marlowe’s melancholia is a direct result of his relationship to his environment. His perpetual fixation on and revulsion for Los Angeles—particularly his lingering inability to separate his own identity from the city in which he lives and works—leads to internal isolation and a temporary loss of self. This self-imposed social exile makes Marlowe the modernist hero of The Little Sister . It also illustrates a particular characteristic of urban modernity in which the individual is both bound to and at odds with his surroundings. Marlowe is only able to regain his sense of self when he rights his relationship to his environment—that is, when he is able to separate self from setting. Chandler’s novel demonstrates the damaging effects of place attachment, thus undermining the basic tenets of the environmental psychology concept of place-identity. But reading Marlowe’s relationship to Los Angeles through the theoretical lens of environmental psychology also has significant implications for the new modernist studies because it suggests that the spatial and psychological—not only the temporal and cultural—boundaries of modernism are still permeable.

On the Panoptical Eye of Self-Caring in Nabokov’s The Eye: A Foucauldian Analysis

Nabokov’s protagonist’s sufferings, suicide, and final happiness in The Eye (1930) can be analyzed through Foucault’s policy of the “care of the self” based on which an individual acts in a parrhesiastic relationship with himself to panoptically watch and discover himself. Smurov’s first-person I/eye sacrifices his former self to be reborn from the surveying eyes of his separated self. This Panopticon metaphor is bifurcated into the monopticon and the synopticon, the former letting Smurov externally watch over himself and the latter reflecting back to him others’ views of him. Thus, Smurov recognizes the true nature of his identity to be the sum of his concept of himself and his reflections in others’ minds. He recognizes that he is always being panoptically watched and created. His final happiness, therefore, emphasizes that identity stands in a symbiotic relationship with the surveillance of the self, without which the individual stays in darkness.

The Power of Service

The Power of Service

The Enhancement of Spontaneity and Creativity

Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com It can never be the result of some deliberate effort or contrived act, for all such acts stem from the separate self as the one who acts, i.e., the actor. For that reason, the more effort you make to be creative, the less creativity and spontaneity can result. Creativity is not something to be pursued, but rather, it is something which comes to you when all effort-making and pursuing ends, for only then is the sense of separate self-awareness put at rest. Absence of controlled, habitual, predetermined, egocentric thinking and functioning enables new insights to arise creatively or originally, unrestrictedly, and spontaneously/effortlessly. To live creatively and spontaneous is to live without the filtering and controlling process of the ego, the seat or directing center of the separate sense of self.

This Is The Hour: A Call for Reflection and Introspection in the Field of Mindfulness

I have become aware of an odd but familiar feeling arising in me recently. A feeling I am not proud of, even though at times I experience fleeting gratification alongside it. For nearly 16 years, I have been engaged in practicing mindfulness in my own life and also teaching it to others. I have the great privilege and honor of working with some incredibly talented and deeply wise professionals in our field and to play some role in the training of many more teachers over the years, as well as simply having the pleasure of forming connections and building friendships with some amazing mindfulness and compassion professionals across the globe. It has taken me awhile to name the uneasy feeling, or even recognize it as problematic, but now that I see it more clearly I am feeling alarmed. Alarmed for the surreptitious way it crept into my passion for this work, and particularly alarmed for the field as a whole as I begin to recognize this trend wherever I go as I do this work. What is this creeping scourge of the mindfulness community? What could possibly be infecting such a wholesome and heartfelt movement toward health, compassion, and well-being? It is actually an ancient tendency that has innocent enough roots: a tribal mentality. What do I mean by a Btribal mentality^? I mean that feeling of Bus^ as a counterpoint to Bthem.^ Of course we might refer to this as the Bmyth of the separate self^ or even just Bselfing.^ In our work it arises as it does in nearly all human endeavors, as a seemingly innocuous attitude toward a colleague who appears to be doing something not quite right, or a group that seems different in some way. But it is a slippery slope when noticing difference leads to subtle or not-so-subtle exclusion, or even aggression. Let us say you are serving on a submission review committee for a mindfulness conference (as I have done on a few occasions), and although it is an anonymous submission, you recognize the work of a colleague in reading the abstract. You have found yourself doubting the Bdepth of personal practice^ of that particular colleague (a sly way we mindfulness people have of differentiating ourselves from others and appearing to be entirely above reproach in commenting negatively upon one another). You find yourself reading the submission a bit more critically or insteadmentally dismissing or discounting it regardless of the content. Might this simple act of Bjudgment^ actually be what some call a Bmicro-aggression^ with ultimately macro consequences? And these small acts and attitudes begin to leak into other professional activities such that we begin to perceive patterns among certain other people, groups, or programs that just do not sit well with us. We smile and shake hands with these perceived transgressors (the other tribe) when we run into them at retreats or workshops, but we fail to copy them on invitations to collaborate or to invite them to our professional meetings. It is only a short trip from this exclusionary behavior to the somewhat shocking feuds between professional mindfulness groups (sometimes within the same country or community) that are currently well known and consistently maintained over time. This is not to suggest that one should tolerate unskillful actions or attitudes when we encounter them in our colleagues. Instead we should be willing to Blean in^ to the discomfort of gently inquiring when we encounter these potential * Steven D. Hickman shickman@ucsd.edu