Kafka's writings are frequently interpreted as representing the historical period of modernism in which he was writing. Little attention has been paid, however, to the possibility that his writings may reflect neural mechanisms in the processing of self during hypnagogic (i.e., between waking and sleep) states. Kafka suffered from dream-like, hypnagogic hallucinations during a sleep-deprived state while writing. This paper discusses reasons (phenomenological and neurobiological) why the self projects an imaginary double (autoscopy) in its spontaneous hallucinations and how Kafka's writings (...) help to elucidate the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. I further discuss how the proposed mechanisms may be relevant to understanding paranoid delusions in schizophrenia. Literature documents and records cognitive and neural processes of self with an intimacy that may be otherwise unavailable to neuroscience. To elucidate this approach, I contrast it with the apparently popularizing view that the symptoms of schizophrenia result from what has been called an operative (i.e., pre-reflective) hyper-reflexivity. The latter approach claims that pre-reflective self-awareness (diminished in schizophrenia) pervades all conscious experience (however, in a manner that remains unverifiable for both phenomenological and experimental methods). This contribution argues the opposite: the. (shrink)

Drawing on Ludwig Binswanger’s work, this paper seeks to reconstruct historically and theoretically his relationship with Freud and Psychoanalysis and to trace his ideas with regard to the Unconscious. Tied to Freud by a friendship lasting thirty years, it started mainly from his encounter with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Alexander Pfänder, Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber that Binswanger developed an original system of thinking and clinical application. The issue of the unconscious, beginning from this theoretical (...) shift, underwent a radical reformulation. First, Heideggerian thought allowed him to recognize the importance of different World-Projects, intended as existential a priori characterized by a specific internal normativity. Subsequently, the return to Husserl’s thinking lead Binswanger to rethink again the unconscious issue in light of the field of Passive Synthesis. In this paper we will examine all these issues and reconsider their importance for psychotherapeutic practice. (shrink)