Abstract: This paper argues in favor of two related theses. First, due to a fundamental, biologically grounded world-openness, human culture is a biological imperative. As both biology and culture evolve historically, cultures rise and fall and the diversity of the human species develops. Second, in this historical process of rise and fall, abnormality plays a […]
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyze silence as a specific experience that is formed on the border between that what is psychotic and that what is creative. Trying to deepen the reflection on the area of silence in our experience I will recall two conceptions: Merleau-Ponty’s and Lacan’s. Both of these authors
Abstract: The phenomenology of trauma is a historical, epistemological, and methodic inquiry that wishes to test the validity of an already settled dynamic model of surprise as shock-rupture based on its correlated inner structures of attention (as an open awaiting) and emotion (as a perduring resonance). Thanks to an integrative approach, crossing (micro)phenomenological subjective experiences
Abstract: The term “anti-psychiatry” was coined in 1912 by Dr. Bernhard Beyer, but only popularized by Dr. David Copper (and his critics) in the midst of a widespread cultural revolt against involuntary hospitalization and in-patient psychiatry during the 1960s and 1970s. However, with the demise of the old-fashioned mental hospital, and the rise of Big
Abstract: The aim of my article is to analyze the concepts and phenomena of diagnosis and recognition, often considered to be semantically identical. While in psychiatric practice such an identity does not necessarily have adverse effects, in the anthropological and cultural domains identification of diagnosis and recognition may cause stigmatization, or other undesirable consequences. The
Abstract: Human consciousness is a phenomenon that occurs not only in the brain but also in an external network, a symbolic system. This symbolic system is defined as an exocerebrum. The exocerebrum is a system of artificial cultural prostheses that substitute functions the brain cannot carry out through exclusively biological means. The exocerebrum is a
Abstract: God’s name “Elohim,” common in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition, is always used with verbs in the singular even though it is in the plural form. It is shown here that the ungrammatical usage can be seen as the best solution to a natural problem. Namely, tradition assumes that it should be impossible
Abstract: Defending the ancient thesis, that being and the true, or being and manifestation, are necessarily inseparable, is at the heart of transcendental phenomenology. The transcendental “reduction” disengages the basic “natural” naïve doxastic belief which permits the world to appear as essentially indifferent to the agency of manifestation. The massive work of transcendental phenomenology is
Abstract: This article sets out a manifesto for the development of an international values-based practice fully engaged with the diversity of cultural values and implemented through the resources of the international movement in philosophy and psychiatry. Anticipated by mid-twentieth century ordinary language philosophy of the “Oxford School,” the last three decades have witnessed a remarkable
Preview: /Review of Daniel Burston’s, A Forgotten Freudian: The Passion of Karl Stern (London: Karnac Books 2017), 256 pages./ When the chief editor of Eidos kindly asked me to write a review of Daniel Burston’s new book devoted to Karl Stern, I kept a straight face and gritted my teeth. I did not want to reveal
