This paper constitutes a critical exploration of the functional features underpinning the unconscious of institutional attachment—namely an attachment which is understood in terms of the subject-infant’s love for his institutional parent-power holder, and the indefinite need for a subject to remain within its infantile condition under the parenthood of the State. We venture beyond the Paternal metaphor and move towards the neglected metaphor of the Mother, so focal in the individual process of identification, assumption of language and the permanent attachment (...) to the space of prohibition and Law. A new position in Language is defined. To understand how the psychic space of the infant is artfully subjugated in the making of the Western culture and domination of the Western system of legal interpretation, an enquiry into the legal emblematic history of representations is necessary to map the process through which the subject learns its legal self and relationship with otherness through what Pierre Legendre coined as the Occidental Mirror and the triangular logic of reflexivity. A final enquiry interrogates the way the legal institution places itself in the position of the specular image that captivates the subject-infant within a procreated legal order, a law-giving and law abiding life starting from the laws of the familial structure reinforced by the role of the parents and by analogy, by the State assuming that role in the institutional life of the ad infinitum infant. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the childhood experience that seems to be preparatory for the onset of bulimia. Three women's serial experiences of bulimia were investigated and one pattern of experiencing that led to bulimia emerged. As the interview process deepened, the data moved from symptom-related to life-related. The general structure that captured the essence of the lived experience of bulimia remained the same but the individual experiences varied as these women live out their unique lives. In understanding the totality (...) of the phenomenon of bulimia, it is important to remember that although each of the six key constituents is described separately, in the life-world all the constituents merge together as they interact with each other and with the whole of the experience. These bulimic women reported having family backgrounds in which they experienced a sense of diminished self and dissatisfaction in interactions with significant others and self. They found themselves pressured to maintain a less than integrated life, and in rapid transition from 'awareful' behaving to automatic and anonymous functioning. A psychological hunger seems to possess them and this is lived out during the anonymous phase of their existence. Their need for the mastery and control ordinarily lacking in their lives becomes a symptomatic expression that has relevance for them in respect to the deep psychological pain that is only partially expressed. The phenomenal body and self are given priority over objective reality, resulting in distorted perceptions of "fatness" and feelings of terror of "fat.". (shrink)

This article aims to develop a social theory of violence that emphasizes the role of the third party as well as the communication between the involved subjects. For this Teresa Koloma Beck’s essay ‘The Eye of the Beholder: Violence as a Social Process’ is taken as a starting point, which adopts a social-constructivist perspective. On the one hand, the basic concepts and the benefits of this approach are presented. On the other hand, social-theoretical problems of this approach are revealed. These (...) deficits are counteracted by expanding Koloma Beck’s approach with a communicative-constructivist framework. Thus, the role of communicative action and the ‘objectification of violence’ is emphasized. These aspects impact the perception, judgement and (de-)legitimation of violence phenomena and the emergence of a ‘knowledge of violence’. Communicative actions and objectifications form a key to understanding violent interactions and the link between the micro and macro levels. Finally, the methodological consequences for the research of violence and Communicative Constructivism are discussed. Furthermore, possible research fields are outlined, which open up by looking at communicative action and the objectifications within the ‘triads of violence’. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore the validity of phenomenology in the psychiatric setting. The phenomenological method - as a mode of research, a method of engagement between self and other, and a framework for approaching what it means to know - has found a legitimate home in therapeutic practice. Over the last century, phenomenology, as a philosophical endeavour and research method, has influenced a wide range of disciplines, including psychiatry. Phenomenology has enabled an enrichment of such practice through deepening the (...) way in which we can come to know the experiences of the other. This knowing-of-the-other is explored here within the context of psychiatric and clinica assessment. The question asked is: How best can we come to know those we work with? What method of engagement can be used to most completely come to understand and narrate the experiences of the individual, and how can this be applied in the context of an assessment aimed at psychiatric or psychological intervention? Elements of phenomenological praxis are presented as definitive of the most integral way of approaching the human subject. Husserlian and Heideggerian notions are explicated and related to phenomenological conceptions of intersubjectivity, in an effort to describe a phenomenology that can be used effectively within the psychiatric setting. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 1 May 2007. (shrink)

The tension between external forces for better ethics in organizations, represented by legislation such as the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), and the call for internal forces represented by increased educational coverage, has never been as apparent. This study examines business school faculty attitudes about recent corporate ethics lapses, including opinions about root causes, potential solutions, and ethics coverage in their courses. In assessing root causes, faculty point to a failure of systems such as legal/professional and management (external) and declining personal values (...) (internal). We also found that faculty recommend external forces as a remedy more often than increased ethics educational coverage; we contextualize this finding with recent ethics education literature. We conclude by proposing that neither legislation nor ethics education alone are complete when addressing widespread unethical corporate acts and offer a multi-faceted approach to ethics educational opportunities. (shrink)

In concept, an image has both verticality and horizontal dimensions. Saturated images within this space have a horizon and can exceed that horizon. Within that horizon where the image dwells something chances itself upon the observer and the observed. Into that public space between self and other, students bring an instrumental approach to how they plan to deploy their new fund of knowledge, only to discover that the setting itself has become an event where surprise and upheaval disrupt their illusion (...) of self-continuity and the façade of familiarity. Phenomenologically, upheaval shows itself when givenness both precedes and participates in the giving of phenomena such as medical students’ “before and after” images of psychoanalysis. They discover and reconfigure their erstwhile absolute positions and values into reconfigurations of self and prior commitments. The turning point from their instrumental use of knowledge to reconfigurations of how they situate themselves in the world decisively comes when teaching and learning become an event in se that disturbs their sense of order.Following Husserl, phenomenological psychological observation has required us to go from the events of history to a sense of history. Would, however, that we could stay at the level of events much longer to see images explode and exceed their horizons from the illusion of order, and patterned repetition disrupted by surprise, upheaval and indeterminacy in the spirit of Alain Badiou! (shrink)

How should we assess programs dedicated to education in virtue? One influential answer draws on quantitative research designs. By measuring the inputs and processes that produce the highest levels of virtue among participants according to some reasonable criterion, in this view, we can determine which programs engender the most desired results. Although many outcomes of character education can undoubtedly be assessed in this way, taken on its own, this approach may support favorable judgments about programs that indoctrinate rather than educate, (...) because education in character entails teleological thinking that is volitional not merely determined. I argue instead that proper assessment of virtue requires an expansive view of character education in both particular and common goods that avoids the tendency to indoctrinate and an inclusive conception of measurement that takes into account qualitative in addition to quantitative methodologies. (shrink)

From 19th century insane asylums to state sponsored eugenic programs in the 20th century, the state has been an incongruous leader and provider of mental health policy and practice. Current practices that include such treatments as confinement, restraints, forced medication and electro-convulsive therapy continue to raise issues of social justice and humane treatment. Since the 1970s a diverse group of consumers of mental health services from political and radical emancipatory movements to consumer and family initiatives have emerged to question, inform (...) and influence federal and state policies and services. Today state administrators and consumer-advocates meet in formal settings in which they exchange ideas as they work to affect and develop mental health policy and practice. However, such exchanges have raised new questions regarding the relationship between these two groups and their ability, in light of past practices to effectively work together to develop mental health policy and practice. The purpose of this study is to compare how state administrators and consumer-advocates perceive mental illness and how these perceptions impact policy and practice. Through a qualitative research study, the researcher compared and contrasted the perceptions of five consumer-advocates and five state administrators who are involved in major mental health policy in a rural state in order to consider how their perceptions of mental health affect policy and treatment. This study shows an emerging relationship between state administrators and consumer-advocates but a relationship that lacks communication and trust as their discourse attempts to span the gap between their two symbolic universes. The focus of consumer-advocates on the importance of their role in battling pervasive stigma and the need for people with lived experience to be central in the mental health system can be seen as an effort to overcome a historical pattern of coercion and abuse of mental health patients by the state. The focus of state administrators to remain relevant in a mental health system in which consumer-advocates challenge the status quo can be seen as their effort to retain legitimacy as well as their historic control over the mental health system. State administrators and consumer-advocates know that they exist in a new, shared world of mental health care and both groups agreed that the relationship between them needs to improve. (shrink)

Bu yazının temel amacı, statik fenomenoloji içerisinde kalarak, Husserl düşüncesini oluşturan bazı temel kavramları incelemek ve düşünürün özgün yaklaşımını yakalamaktır. Yazının daha dolaylı amacı, Husserl fenomenolojisinin, genellikle sunulanın aksine, bir zihin felsefesi, algı teorisi ya da tartışmalı bir idealizmden daha fazlası olduğunu ortaya çıkarmaktır. Buna ek olarak, Husserl’i kendisinden önce gelen filozoflarla kıyaslayarak okumak kadar kendisinden sonra gelen filozofların Husserl yorumlarından öğrenmenin de düşünürü anlamayı zorlaştırdığı fikri yazının arka planını oluşturmaktadır. Açık ki Husserl radikal bir dünya deneyimi ve öznellik anlayışına (...) sahiptir. Husserl bu radikal öznellik anlayışı ile deneyimi, metafizik ve insan-merkezci bir anlayışın sınırlarına hapsolmadan anlamaktadır. Yani Husserl bir taraftan ego’yu somut bir ego olarak incelemiş diğer taraftan da ontolojik bir dünya ve insan anlatısı ileri sürmekten kaçınabilmiştir. Elbette bu Husserl’in temel başarısıdır ve bu Husserl’in, bilinci, halihazırda bilim, felsefe ve diğer tüm başarılarına sevk eden kökensel anlamı ile birlikte ele almasına dayanır. Bu bağlamda, bahsettiğimiz dolaylı amacı da hatırlarsak, bu yazıda bilincin anlam verici aktivitesi, dünyayı anlamlandırma süreçleri ve bunun nasıllığı olarak okunmamaktadır. Amacımız, Husserl’in bilincin yaşantısına neden nüfuz etmeye çalıştığını ve aslında neyi ortaya çıkarmaya çalıştığını görmektir. (shrink)