The Pathology of Man is the first comprehensive study of the psychology and epistemology of human evil, long urged by leading psychiatrists and psychologists, including Freud, Jung, Menninger, Fromm, and Peck. The book breaks new ground by offering a clear, empirically based, and theoretically sound understanding of human evil as a widespread, real, non-metaphorical pathology. With deliberate and thorough scholarship the author proposes a new framework-relative theory of disease and justifies the provocative thesis that human evil should be classified as (...) a pathology which is not a deviation from an accepted norm, but rather is a normal state. This break with tradition provides the necessary psychological foundation for the familiar concept of the banality of human evil, a foundation which in the past it has lacked. (shrink)

In his Contributions to Philosophy, Martin Heidegger introduces "acceleration" as one of the three symptoms--along with "calculation" and the "outbreak of massiveness"--of our technological way of "being-in-the-world." In this article, I unpack the relationship between these symptoms and draw a twofold conclusion. First, interpreting acceleration in terms of time pathologies, I suggest the self is becoming increasingly fragmented and emotionally overwhelmed from chronic sensory arousal and time pressure. This experience makes it difficult for us to qualitatively distinguish what matters to (...) us in our everyday lives, resulting in a pervasive cultural mood of indifference, what Heidegger calls "profound boredom." Second, by drawing on Heidegger's hermeneutic method, I argue that the practice of mainstream psychology, by adopting the reductive methodology of the empirical sciences, largely ignores our accelerated socio-historical situation, resulting in therapeutic models that have a tendency to construct and perpetuate the very pathologies the psychologist is seeking to treat. (shrink)

This chapter aims to distinguish between pathologies of agency in the strict sense and mere sources of impediments or distortion. Expanding on a recent notion of necessarily less-than-successful agency, it complements a mainstream approach to mental disorders and anomalous psychological conditions in the philosophy of mind and action. According this approach, the interest of such clinical case studies is heuristic, to differentiate between facets of agency that are functionally and conceptually separate even though they typically come together. Yet, in the (...) absence of independent criterion for a pathology of as opposed to inner obstacle to agency, this heuristic is at risk of becoming circular or uninformative, falling back on a clinical diagnosis it is meant to take as a starting point only. The chapter develops such a criterion and shows how it could work tracking agential achievement across two core dimensions of agency: planning and responsiveness to reasons. The discussion concludes with some implications on assessing decisional capacity and safeguarding agent autonomy in psychiatric settings. (shrink)

This is a penetrating reinterpretation and defense of Hegel's social theory as an alternative to reigning liberal notions of social justice. The eminent German philosopher Axel Honneth rereads Hegel's Philosophy of Right to show how it diagnoses the pathologies of the overcommitment to individual freedom that Honneth says underlies the ideas of Rawls and Habermas alike. Honneth argues that Hegel's theory contains an account of the psychological damage caused by placing too much emphasis on personal and moral freedom. Although these (...) freedoms are crucial to the achievement of justice, they are insufficient and in themselves leave people vulnerable to loneliness, emptiness, and depression. Hegel argues that people must also find their freedom or "self-realization" through shared projects. Such projects involve the three institutions of ethical life--family, civil society, and the state--and provide the arena of a crucial third kind of freedom, which Honneth calls "communicative" freedom. A society is just only if it gives all of its members sufficient and equal opportunity to realize communicative freedom as well as personal and moral freedom. (shrink)

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays published over the past five years reclaim the relevant themes of the Frankfurt School, which counted Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, Franz Neumann, and Albrecht Wellmer as members. They also engage with Kant, Freud, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Michael Walzer, whose work on morality, history, (...) democracy, and individuality intersects with the Frankfurt School's core concerns. Collected here for the first time in English, Honneth's essays pursue the unifying themes and theses that support the methodologies and thematics of critical social theory, and they address the possibilities of continuing this tradition through radically changed theoretical and social conditions. According to Honneth, there is a unity that underlies critical theory's multiple approaches: the way in which reason is both distorted and furthered in contemporary capitalist society. And while much is dead in the social and psychological doctrines of critical social theory, its central inquiries remain vitally relevant. Is social progress still possible after the horrors of the twentieth century? Does capitalism deform reason and, if so, in what respects? Can we justify the relationship between law and violence in secular terms, or is it inextricably bound to divine justice? How can we be free when we're subject to socialization in a highly complex and in many respects unfree society? For Honneth, suffering and moral struggle are departure points for a new "reconstructive" form of social criticism, one that is based solidly in the empirically grounded, interdisciplinary approach of the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

In the last 50 years, discussions of how to understand disability have been dominated by the medical and social models. Paradoxically, both models overlook the disabled person’s experience of the lived body, thus reducing the body of the disabled person to a physiological body. In this article we introduce what we call the Ecological-Enactive (EE) model of disability. The EE-model combines ideas from enactive cognitive science and ecological psychology with the aim of doing justice simultaneously to the lived experience of (...) being disabled, and the physiological dimensions of disability. More specifically, we put the EE model to work to disentangle the concepts of disability and pathology. We locate the difference between pathological and normal forms of embodiment in the person’s capacity to adapt to changes in the environment. To ensure that our discussion remains in contact with lived experience, we draw upon phenomenological interviews we have carried out with people with Cerebral Palsy. (shrink)

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays published over the past five years reclaim the relevant themes of the Frankfurt School, which counted Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, Franz Neumann, and Albrecht Wellmer as members. They also engage with Kant, Freud, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Michael Walzer, whose work on morality, history, (...) democracy, and individuality intersects with the Frankfurt School's core concerns. Collected here for the first time in English, Honneth's essays pursue the unifying themes and theses that support the methodologies and thematics of critical social theory, and they address the possibilities of continuing this tradition through radically changed theoretical and social conditions. According to Honneth, there is a unity that underlies critical theory's multiple approaches: the way in which reason is both distorted and furthered in contemporary capitalist society. And while much is dead in the social and psychological doctrines of critical social theory, its central inquiries remain vitally relevant. Is social progress still possible after the horrors of the twentieth century? Does capitalism deform reason and, if so, in what respects? Can we justify the relationship between law and violence in secular terms, or is it inextricably bound to divine justice? How can we be free when we're subject to socialization in a highly complex and in many respects unfree society? For Honneth, suffering and moral struggle are departure points for a new "reconstructive" form of social criticism, one that is based solidly in the empirically grounded, interdisciplinary approach of the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

In my work as a transplant ethicist I have always been interested in the topic of altruism. Thus, when a book appeared with the title, Pathological Altruism, I was very intrigued to read it. An exceedingly heavy book, however, arrived in my mailbox, and I admit I was taken aback. But upon reading Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, Guruprasad Madhavan, and David Sloan Wilson, I was not disappointed.

In their pursuit of adaptively biased misbelief-making systems, McKay & Dennett (M&D) describe a putative doxastic shear-pin system which enables misbeliefs to form in situations of extreme psychological stress. Rather than discussing their argument, I consider how this shear-pin system might combine with both pathological belief-making ( breakdowns caused by neuropathy) and normal belief-making to explain a spectrum of delusions.

Cognitive therapies are often biased in their assessment of clinical problems by their emphasis on the role of verbally-mediated thought in shaping our emotions, and in stressing the influence of thought upon feeling. Alternatively, a more phenomenological appraisal of psychological dysfunction suggests that emotion and thinking are complementary processes which influence each other. Cognitive psychology developed out of information-processing models, whereas phenomenological psychology is rooted in a philosophical perspective which avoids the assumptions of positivist methodology. But, despite their different origins, (...) the two disciplines overlap and complement each other. This book, originally published in 1995, illustrates how feeling states are a crucial component of mental health problems and, if adequately differentiated, can result in a greater understanding of mental health. (shrink)

The quantitative experimental scientific psychology that became prominent by the turn of the twentieth century grew from three main areas of intellectual inquiry. First and most directly, it arose out of the traditional psychology of the philosophy curriculum, as expressed in theories of mind and cognition. Second, it adopted the attitudes of the new natural philosophy of the scientific revolution, attitudes of empirically driven causal analysis and exact observation and experimentation. Third, it drew upon investigations of the senses. Natural philosophical (...) disciplines such as optics and acoustics treated the functioning of the senses. Optics, in particular, had from antiquity comprised a complete theory of vision, combining the physics, physiology, psychology, metaphysics, and epistemology of vision, using mathematical techniques where feasible. Within medicine, sensory physiology examined anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Philosophical psychology had long examined the senses as mental capacities connected with cognition and knowledge, and such discussions also heeded the new attitudes of natural philosophy. This chapter first examines the early relations of psychology to biology and characterizes various eighteenth-century loci of psychological thought. It then pursues nineteenth-century developments in Germany and Britain that culminate in the “new” psychology of the 1860s and 1870s. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pathology of the Mind: Disorder Versus DisabilityRichard G. T. Gipps (bio)Keywordsorder, disorder, ability, disability, mental illnessAlfredo Gaete (2008) describes mental disorders as impairments in intentionality, phenomenal consciousness, and intelligence that cause harm to the affected person. I found persuasive Gaete’s claim that the concept of ‘mental disorder’ is best understood as nontheoretical and nontechnical. I also find compelling his argument that a previous contribution of my own—which relied in (...) part on specifying different senses of ‘disorder’ in psychological, physiological, and social cases—was misguided. Further, his suggestion that we ought at least to attempt analysis in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions before we seek out less definitive characterizations (in terms of family resemblances) also persuades me, although I find myself less sanguine than he about the general possibility of achieving such analyses.One of Gaete’s principal claims is that mental disorder is helpfully understood in terms of an absence of a capacity—that is, as a disability. There are two related objections—or two aspects of the same objection—that I would like to offer the author with respect to this claim. These may well not be conclusive, but will I hope at least function as foils against which the author can usefully sharpen his argument. One objection suggests that there is a viable distinction between the concepts of mental disorder and mental disability, as commonly used in clinical contexts, which the account offered seems unable to respect. The second suggests that the account may not be able to theorize what is argued to be the essential contribution of the concepts of order and disorder (as opposed to ability and disability) to the everyday concept of mental disorder. Accordingly, it questions the power of a disability approach such as Gaete’s to capture the essential nature of mental disorder.In his paper, Gaete classifies mental retardation and developmental, or (what in the United Kingdom are known as) learning, disabilities (autism, etc.) as cases of mental disorder. I found this surprising because it is not common linguistic practice in the psychological circles in which I operate. It would also seem to make a nonsense of commonly accepted ideas like: “Mental disorders are more likely to occur in patients with developmental disabilities (e.g., in autism, Asperger, or Down syndrome) than in the general population.” (For an example, see Campbell and Malone [1991]). On Gaete’s classification, it would appear that people with autism eo ipso have a mental disorder, and [End Page 341] hence the commonly accepted idea would need to be interpreted as merely a statement about comorbidities of different disorders of the same general (i.e., mental) type. But that is not, I believe, how the term is commonly used, and Gaete’s suggestion must therefore be treated as revisionary rather than descriptively analytical.One way of reconstructing a rationale underlying the distinction between mental disabilities and mental disorders is as follows. A developmental disability involves a failure of (certain aspects of) the mind to grow and reach an expected level or type of organization. A mental disorder by contrast involves a disturbance or disorganization (not simply an impoverishment) within the mind at whichever level of organization it has reached. As the mind develops, and reaches new levels or types of organization, the forms which mental disorders may take accordingly change.Autism and schizophrenia provide helpful illustrations of this distinction. Autism represents a failure of (among other things) the social mind to develop in childhood. The person with moderate to severe autism may attain at best a very shaky grasp on the realities of other minds and social conventions. That is, the degree of mental structure they obtain—their social competencies or capacities—will likely remain limited. It is this fundamental deficit that marks out the disability, and not the social anxieties or other such disturbances that can beset the autistic person.Schizophrenia, by contrast, tends to occur at late adolescence, when the individual has developed higher levels of—albeit often fragile—mental structure. Yet it is not the fragility of such mental structure, but rather the disruptions that can occur within such structures as have developed, that mark them out... (shrink)

In this article, I respond to commentaries by Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg and by David Spurrett on my target article “Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness,” in which I have offered the first extended articulation of my pathological complexity thesis as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins and function of consciousness. My reply is structured by the arguments raised rather than by author and will offer a more detailed explication of some aspects of the pathological complexity thesis.

Does a diagnosis of brain dysfunction matter for ascriptions of moral responsibility? This chapter argues that, while knowledge of brain pathology can inform judgments of moral responsibility, its evidential value is currently limited for a number of practical and theoretical reasons. These include the problem of establishing causation from correlational data, drawing inferences about individuals from group data, and the reliance of the interpretation of brain findings on well-established psychological findings. Brain disorders sometimes matter for moral responsibility, however, because they (...) change an individual’s moral psychology in a way that is beyond their control. While control over psychological changes is not an excusing factor, brain disorders can mitigate moral responsibility because they confront individuals with new psychological deficits or urges for which their previous moral education and existing external and internal moral resources have not prepared them. (shrink)

Modern man's pathology of normalcy -- The concept of mental health -- Humanistic science of man -- Is man lazy by nature?.

The present study constructed a moderated mediation model to examine whether borderline pathological celebrity worship may be associated with higher levels of impulsive buying intent. The mediating role of empathy and the moderating role of gender were also examined. A total of 1,319 participants recruited from a college through the campus network. The results indicated that borderline pathological celebrity worship could positively predict individuals’ impulsive buying intent; the predictive effect of borderline pathological celebrity worship on impulsive buying intent could be (...) mediated by empathy; and gender moderated the predictive effect of borderline pathological celebrity worship on impulsive buying intent. Specifically, relatively higher levels of borderline pathological celebrity worship were found to be associated with higher impulsive buying intent among men. However, this was relatively less significant among women.ConclusionThe results contribute to previous findings by demonstrating that borderline pathological celebrity worship could affect impulsive buying intent. Moreover, the mediating role of empathy and the moderating role of gender were also revealed. (shrink)

In this paper, critique the classic psychoanalytic anthropological construal of dissociative spirit possession as a pathological phenomenon. I review some of the relevant theoretical and ethnographic literature on this subject but focus on the work of two prominent psychoanalytic anthropologists to explore divergent views of the psychological nature of pathological and religious experience. Emphasis is placed on the necessity for taking into account the culture specific factors that shape dissociative possession, particularly with regard to spiritual experiences. I also move beyond (...) this view to an embodiment approach that is useful for analyzing the experiential ground of spirit possession, and thus for providing insight into how particular individual and cultural realities are constructed through dissociation. Key words: dissociation, embodiment, possession, psychoanalytic anthropology, self"Perception is never an absolute revelation of 'what is' " ‐A.l. Hallovvell (1955: 84). (shrink)

Insofar as psychiatrists and neurologists tend to the cognitive well-being of others, their work is interwoven with philosophical concerns and theoretical assumptions about the nature of the mind, its myriad functions, and the conditions governing its multiform pathologies. That the mind figures so prominently in their ordinary language attests to the wealth of insights that stands to be gained through a dialogue with philosophy. In one of the earliest efforts to taxonomize psychiatric medicine, Allgemeine Psychopathologie, Jaspers incisively remarks that "the (...) exclusion of philosophy would be disastrous for psychiatry…if any psychopathologist thinks he can disregard philosophy and leave it aside as useless he will... (shrink)

The global signal, which was once regarded as a nuisance of functional magnetic resonance imaging, has been proven to convey valuable neural information. This raised the following question: what is a GS represented in local brain regions? In order to answer this question, the GS topography was developed to measure the correlation between global and local signals. It was observed that the GS topography has an intrinsic structure characterized by higher GS correlation in sensory cortices and lower GS correlation in (...) higher-order cortices. The GS topography could be modulated by individual factors, attention-demanding tasks, and conscious states. Furthermore, abnormal GS topography has been uncovered in patients with schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and epilepsy. These findings provide a novel insight into understanding how the GS and local brain signals coactivate to organize information in the human brain under various brain states. Future directions were further discussed, including the local-global confusion embedded in the GS correlation, the integration of spatial information conveyed by the GS, and temporal information recruited by the connection analysis. Overall, a unified psychopathological framework is needed for understanding the GS topography. (shrink)

This paper, "The Ecological Pathology of Man," is an expanded excerpt from the author's book, "The Pathology of Man: A Study of Human Evil." ¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶ When taken as a serious and dispassionate object of study from the standpoint of the science of pathology, the human species is easily recognized as a global pathogen. Incontrovertible evidence on all sides tells us this, and yet we have steadfastly avoided an honest look in the mirror. We so often choose—willfully and with strong convictions (...) sustained by homocentric prejudice—to hide the facts from ourselves, and to proceed with untroubled ignorance to overlook the worldwide human and natural devastation for which our species is responsible. (shrink)

Abstract:We examine the moral and managerial significance of some empirical studies in cognitive psychology. We suggest that these results may plausibly be interpreted as expressing deontological commitments of experimental subjects, even though psychologists who discuss the results seem to suppose that they show that people are irrational consequentialists. We argue that the plausibility of our interpretation suggests how managers who wish to take seriously entrenched social views on morality might best craft corporate policy on corporate responsibility, and we suggest that (...) the form of argument we employ may be regarded as a kind of appeal to reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

Diversos estudios internacionales indican que los pescadores sufren diferentes problemas de salud, entre los cuales son frecuentes las enfermedades cardiovasculares, accidentes laborales, heridas, ahogamientos, estrés laboral y problemas de salud mental. Objetivo: Con el estudio se pretendió identificar el nivel de bienestar sicológico y sedentarismo de pescadores artesanales de la Región de Los Lagos, Chile. Método: Se realizó un estudio cuantitativo que consistió en la aplicación de la escala de bienestar sicológico de Ryff y la versión breve del cuestionario de (...) actividad física IPAQ a 41 pescadores artesanales con una media de edad de 53,22 años. Resultados: Los resultados indican que un 68,3 % de pescadores son sedentarios, mientras que en las dimensiones del bienestar sicológico un 22 % muestra un alto nivel de crecimiento personal, seguido de un 14,7 % que presenta un alto nivel de dominio del entorno. No obstante, un alto porcentaje de los pescadores, 34,1 %, se encuentra en un nivel bajo de crecimiento personal, seguido de un 31,7 % con bajo nivel de autonomía y un 26,8 % con bajo nivel de relaciones positivas. Conclusiones: Los datos indican la necesidad de generar acciones preventivas de promoción y tratamiento oportuno de las patologías de salud mental para evitar que se conviertan en causas directas o indirectas de fallecimiento de los trabajadores. Diverse international studies show that artisanal fishermen suffer from different health issues, among which cardiovascular diseases, occupational accidents, injuries, drowning, work-related stress and mental health problems are the most frequent. Objective: the aim of the study was to identify the psychological well-being and sedentary lifestyle levels in artisanal fishermen from Los Lagos Region, Chile. Method: this was quantitative study consisting in applying Ryff's Psychological Well-being Scale and the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire to 41 artisanal fishermen, whose mean age was 53.22 years. Results: the results reveal that 68.3 % of the fishermen have a sedentary lifestyle, while in the psychological well-being dimensions 22 % of them show a high level of personal development, followed by 14.7 % who have a high level of the control of the environment. Nevertheless, there is a considerable percentage of fishermen, 34.1 %, who have a low level od personal development, followed by 31.7 % with a low level of autonomy and 26.8 % with a low level of positive relationships. Conclusions: the data reveals a need to generate preventive healthcare measures and its promotion, and ensure an opportune treatment of mental pathologies in order to avoid that those become a direct or indirect cause for the demise of workers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.4 (2002) 317-319 [Access article in PDF] Canguilhem and Social Pathology Victoria Margree Keywords: Canguilhem, organism, society, pathology. MIKE GANE'S COMMENTARY on my paper "Normal and Abnormal" engages with the important question of the possibility of a concept of social pathology. However, I would like to begin my response by conceding a couple of his points around my definitions of epistemological positions. First, I agree (...) that the critique of my original piece was indeed directed most specifically toward biological reductionism, and that this should not perhaps be conflated with all positions that might be grouped under positivism. Indeed, I found Gane's description of scientific objectivity as conceived by sociological positivism ("[as] the result of epistemological procedures, not what might be called ontological reduction to a physical level of the object") tantalizingly reminiscent of Bachelard's own conception of objectivity in the physical sciences, a conception that Canguilhem must have been in sympathy with, and that Bachelard himself explicitly opposes to the epistemology of the "positivists" in his own arena (Bachelard 1984). Second, Professor Gane is quite correct to foreground the changes that take place in Canguilhem's thinking around the pathological once his attention turns to the new discoveries of the genetic sciences. For the purposes of the original piece, my focus was on the work conducted in the thesis on the Normal and the Pathological of 1943, and the version of normativity/health elaborated there shall continue to provide the main frame of reference for my reply.However, it is the attention to the problem of social pathology that forms the major ground of Gane's response, and it is toward this issue that I will direct my remaining comments. Without reaching any final conclusions, I would like to outline what I believe would be at least one major tendency in Canguilhem's thinking on the possibility of such a concept, and then to explore some of the productive aporias or difficulties in this.Canguilhem's early theorization of health as normativity would seem to explicitly prohibit its extension to an idea of social pathology. For Canguilhem health, as Greco (1998) explains, is a meaningful concept because it is indexed to the inherent teleology of the living organism. Because a society is not alive, does not possess the intrinsic teleology of the organic body, terms such as health or disease cannot be attributed to society in anything other than an explicitly metaphorical way.In my original paper, I argued that for Canguilhem environmental features can be characterized as possessing pathological value for organisms—indeed, health for Canguilhem is always a matter of relations and not a quality inherent in isolated features. I then suggested that because the human environment is an irreducibly social one, social norms, such as impose a fixed regularity [End Page 317] upon what sorts of mental phenomena count as normal, could possess pathological value for the individual. As the previous paragraph ought to suggest, this was perhaps already to strain against the limits of Canguilhemian thinking by veering close to an idea of social pathology. Institutionalized racism and intolerance of aberrant mental experiences may not be diseases for the social body in quite the same way that cancer may be for the organic body, but because these could be argued to be detrimental to the health and normativity of those who live within that society, I argued that they could be said to have a pathological value in relation to the individual.This is a formulation that I suspect Canguilhem could not accept. As Greco again explains, for Canguilhem society is not an environment. Social norms do not possess vital value for the human organism (Greco 1998, or Canguilhem 1991 in the "New Reflections"). Social norms in fact present constraints with respect to which the individual has a choice, whereas environmental norms are determining for the health of the individual.Now, it seems to me that there are at least a couple of problems with this. First, what about societies that use violence to back up their social injunctions? Is it not the case that... (shrink)

This chapter studies the role of the will in Emil Kraepelin's writings. Kraeplin was a German neuropsychiatrist during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and his reflections on German society are used as a basis for examining various issues in this chapter. The chapter also briefly reports a survey of the place of the will and pathologies of the will in Kraepelin's psychology and reflections on political and social issues in Germany after the First World War.

Studies in the psychology and phenomenology of religious experience have long acknowledged similarities with various forms of psychopathology. Consequently, it has been important for religious practitioners and mental health professionals to establish criteria by which religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences can be differentiated from psychopathological experiences. Many previous attempts at differential diagnosis have been based on limited textual accounts of mystical experience or on outdated theoretical studies of mysticism. In contrast, this study presents qualitative data from contemporary Buddhist meditation practitioners (...) and teachers to identify salient features that can be used to guide differential diagnosis. The use of certain existing criteria is complicated by Buddhist worldviews that some difficult or distressing experiences may be expected as a part of progress on the contemplative path. This paper argues that it is important to expand the framework for assessment in both scholarly and clinical contexts to include not only criteria for determining normative fit with religious experience or with psychopathology, but also for determining need for intervention, whether religious or clinical. Qualitative data from Buddhist communities shows that there is a wider range of experiences that are evaluated as potentially warranting intervention than has previously been discussed. Decision making around these experiences often takes into account contextual factors when determining appraisals or need for intervention. This is in line with person-centered approaches in mental health care that emphasize the importance of considering the interpersonal and cultural dynamics that inevitably constitute the context in which experiences are evaluated and rendered meaningful. (shrink)

This essay analyses six case studies of theories of exhaustion-related conditions from the early eighteenth century to the present day. It explores the ways in which George Cheyne, George Beard, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sigmund Freud, Alain Ehrenberg and Jonathan Crary use medical ideas about exhaustion as a starting point for more wide-ranging cultural critiques related to specific social and technological transformations. In these accounts, physical and psychological symptoms are associated with particular external developments, which are thus not just construed as (...) pathology-generators but also pathologized. The essay challenges some of the persistently repeated claims about exhaustion and its unhappy relationship with modernity. (shrink)

Within the context of psychological measurement, realist commitments pervade methodology. Further, there are instances where particular scientific practices and decisions are explicable most plausibly against a background assumption of epistemic realism. That psychometrics is a realist enterprise provides a possible toehold for Stephen Jay Gould’s objections to psychometrics in The Mismeasure of Man and Joel Michell’s charges that psychometrics is a “pathological science.” These objections do not withstand scrutiny. There are no fewer than three activities in ongoing psychometric research which (...) presuppose a commitment to a minimal epistemic realism. Those activities include selecting between different models for representing data, estimating ability in the context of item response theory, and the move to make the individual the fundamental unit of analysis in psychometrics thereby calling for a shift in what sorts of data are evidentially relevant. In none of these activities are the commitments and disregard for evidence that Gould and Michell find objectionable or “pathological.”. (shrink)

Psychological traumatisation, as we understand it today, was—in terms of the history of ideas—anticipated by various approaches which have had a lasting impact on modern psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychosomatic medicine. On the one hand, there is the traditional concept of possession and exorcism with its impressive psychodynamics. On the other hand, there is the theory of the imagination, of an illusion in the sense of a pathogenic infection. Especially the pathological teachings of Paracelsus (sixteenth century) and Johann Baptist van Helmont (...) (seventeenth century)—the latter having advanced the former’s alchemist approach—demonstrate the extent to which demonological, parasitological, and psychological ideas were amalgamated in their ontological notion of a disease. Only the introduction of hypnotism in the middle of the nineteenth century made possible a psychological or psychodynamic understanding of psychological trauma in the modern sense. Hypnotism was striving to strictly dissociate from the magical and natural philosophical speculations of mesmerism and its theory was quite compatible with the model representations of scientific medicine. Sigmund Freud was able to tie in his ideas of hysteria and neurosis with this concept and especially to define repression of (infantile) sexuality as the cause of a culturally ineluctable psychological trauma. Finally, a brief survey of medical history is given to explore artificial trauma as a healing factor. (shrink)

One of the more striking aspects of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (1945) is his use of psychological case studies in pathology. For Merleau-Ponty, a philosophical interpretation of phenomena like aphasia and psychic blindness promises to shed light not just on the nature of pathology, but on the nature of human existence more generally. In this paper, I show that although Merleau-Ponty is surely a pioneer in this use of pathology, his work is deeply indebted to an earlier philosophical study (...) of pathology offered by the German Neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer in the third volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1929). More specifically, I argue that Merleau-Ponty, in fact, follows Cassirer in placing Kant's notion of the productive imagination at the centre of his account of pathology and the features of existence it illuminates. Recognizing the debt Merleau-Ponty's account of pathology has to the Kantian tradition not only acts as a corrective to more recent interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's views of pathology (Dreyfus, Romdenh-Romluc), but also recommends we resist the prevailing tendency to treat Merleau-Ponty's philosophy as anti-Kantian. Instead, my interpretation seeks to restore Merleau-Ponty's place within the Kantian tradition. (shrink)

Pathological gaming among adolescents has been reported to hamper the achievement of a balanced life and to threaten the development of social competencies. Despite the increasing social concerns on the adolescent users, however, the mechanism of gaming behavior of adolescents has not been sufficiently examined. This study explored the mechanism of pathological gaming among adolescents from 3-year longitudinal data of 778 Korean adolescent gamers, by analyzing the effects of negative affects on the degree of pathological gaming through the mediation variables (...) based on the stimulus-organism-response framework. Latent class analysis was used to uncover potential risk groups, and through partial least squares-structural equation modeling analysis, the mediation pathways to pathological gaming were compared between the risk group and the non-risk group. The results highlighted the key role of academic stress on the degree of pathological gaming. In the entire group, academic stress primarily increased pathological gaming through self-control. The mediation path of self-control was the most influential result in the risk group. Aggression was the key mediator between loneliness and pathological gaming in the non-risk group. The theoretical and practical implications of the results were discussed. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate possible associations between obstructive sleep apnea and fatigue. This naturally led to considering the association between OSA and excessive sleepiness, depression, and anxiety.BackgroundOSA is a highly prevalent sleep disorder, associated with a risk of hypertension, cardiovascular events, daytime sleepiness, poor cognitive function, and sudden death during sleep. Both excessive sleepiness, fatigue, and symptoms of depression are frequently reported.Method5,464 patients referred to a university hospital for obstructive sleep apnea underwent standard respiratory polygraphy. The (...) severity of OSA was defined as either mild, moderate, or severe, using the apnea–hypopnea index. Validated questionnaires were used to assess excessive sleepiness, pathological fatigue, depression, and anxiety.ResultsNearly 70% of the patients were men, and median age was 50 years. One in three had moderate-to-severe OSA. Excessive sleepiness and pathological fatigue were present in 43 and 39%, respectively. The prevalence of possible depression and anxiety was 19 and 28%, respectively. The proportion of patients with male sex, obesity, and excessive sleepiness increased with the severity of OSA. In contrast, the proportion of patients with pathological fatigue did not increase with OSA severity, and there was a decrease in depression and anxiety with increasing OSA severity.ConclusionOur study reports that pathological fatigue, as well as anxiety and depression, did not increase with OSA severity, whereas excessive sleepiness did. Knowledge concerning conditions related to OSA severity may be indicative of pretest probability of OSA and thus change the priority for polygraphy. Furthermore, the high prevalence rates of fatigue, anxiety, and depression among these patients warrant further investigations. (shrink)

Ritualized behavior, intuitively recognizable by its stereotypy, rigidity, repetition, and apparent lack of rational motivation, is found in a variety of life conditions, customs, and everyday practices: in cultural rituals, whether religious or non-religious; in many children's complicated routines; in the pathology of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD); in normal adults around certain stages of the life-cycle, birthing in particular. Combining evidence from evolutionary anthropology, neuropsychology and neuroimaging, we propose an explanation of ritualized behavior in terms of an evolved Precaution System geared (...) to the detection of and reaction to inferred threats to fitness. This system, distinct from fear-systems geared to respond to manifest danger, includes a repertoire of clues for potential danger as well as a repertoire of species-typical precautions. In OCD pathology, this system does not supply a negative feedback to the appraisal of potential threats, resulting in doubts about the proper performance of precautions, and repetition of action. Also, anxiety levels focus the attention on low-level gestural units of behavior rather than on the goal-related higher-level units normally used in parsing the action-flow. Normally automatized actions are submitted to cognitive control. This “swamps” working memory, an effect of which is a temporary relief from intrusions but also their long-term strengthening. Normal activation of this Precaution System explains intrusions and ritual behaviors in normal adults. Gradual calibration of the system occurs through childhood rituals. Cultural mimicry of this system's normal input makes cultural rituals attention-grabbing and compelling. A number of empirical predictions follow from this synthetic model. (Published Online February 8 2007) Key Words: childhood ritual; compulsion; event boundaries; evolutionary psychology; obsessive-compulsive disorder; ritual; thought intrusion. (shrink)

As is well known, Wittgenstein pointed out an asymmetry between first- and third-person psychological statements: the first, unlike the latter, involve observation or a claim to knowledge and are constitutionally open to uncertainty. In this paper, I challenge this asymmetry and Wittgenstein's own affirmation of the constitutional uncertainty of third-person psychological statements, and argue that Wittgenstein ultimately did too. I first show that, on his view, most of our third-person psychological statements are noncognitive; they stem from a subjective certainty: a (...) certainty which, though not the result of an epistemic process, is not invulnerable to error in that it is a kind of assumption. I then trace Wittgenstein's realization that some third-person psychological certainties are not merely subjective but 'objective' (which means, as he uses the word, that they are logically indubitable): in some cases, we can be as logically certain that someone else is in pain than we are about ourselves being in pain. This positively reinforces Wittgenstein's rebuttal of other mind scepticism. I conclude with a response to objections about the legitimacy of calling an assurance that is logical (i.e., that does not have uncertainty or doubt on its flipside) a 'certainty', by suggesting that the flipside is to be found in pathological cases, and most pertinently here, in cases of dyssemia: a rare disorder affecting the ability to properly express or recognize basic physical expressions of feeling. (shrink)