There have been renewed calls to use phenomenology in psychiatry to improve knowledge about causation, diagnostics, and treatment of mental health conditions. A phenomenological approach aims to elucidate the subjective experiences of mental health, which its advocates claim have been largely neglected by current diagnostic frameworks in psychiatry (eg, DSM-5). The consequence of neglecting rich phenomenological information is a comparatively more constrained approach to theory development, empirical research, and care programmes. Although calls for more phenomenology in psychiatry have been met (...) with enthusiasm, there is still relatively little information on how to practically facilitate this integration. In this Personal View, we argue that phenomenological approaches need a shared semantic framework to drive their innovative potential, thus enabling consistent data capture, exchange, and interoperability with current mental health data and informatics approaches (eg, the Research Domain Criteria project). We show how an applied ontology of phenomenological psychopathology offers a suitable method to address these challenges. (shrink)

In questo volume, dal forte tratto interdisciplinare, sono raccolti contributi che affrontano il tema delle abitudini estetiche sia dal punto di vista teorico che da quello pratico e applicativo. Infatti, le abitudini sono un aspetto fondamentale dell’esistenza delle persone. Spesso le diamo per scontate, ma in realtà sono dotate di una profonda dimensione sociale, culturale ed estetica. Le abitudini, che organizzano le specifiche forme di vita di un’epoca e di una cultura, assumono la dimensione di stili collettivi che ne manifestano (...) lo specifico ethos e forgiano esteticamente anche i luoghi dove le diverse pratiche umane vengono esercitate. Così, l’ambiente urbano è espressione delle abitudini che organizzano e regolano la vita di una cultura, dando forma a risorse, capacità e attitudini percettive, affettive, espressive, simboliche, cognitive ed immaginative. (shrink)

In Aristophanes' Male and Female Revolutions author Kenneth M. De Luca offers a detailed study of two of Aristophanes' plays and reveals how each illuminates the other and the question of the rule of law through the lens of democracy. De Luca uses classical thought to clarify contemporary and foundational issues in political theory.

‘Siberian hunters have never been able to get used to our insistence on pressing our God on everyone else, nor to our way of abasing ourselves before him when they see us as masters of all - conquering the bear and the elk with our rifles, using our knowledge and power to conquer the indigenous people, who have always been determined to hang on to what little they have. How crazy the shaman would be to put his penny in the (...) collection during mass without knowing whether it would be effective or not, whether the ritual would “work” this time - since only the result, here and now, matters to him. Why thank the priest and his God, why let them prosper, when in the end the famine did take hold and the sick did die?’. (shrink)