Abstract
The central questions of this chapter spring from a theme already explored in the previous one: what possible new relations with the natural sciences are engendered by the ontological and methodological release of scientific psychology from the paradigm of production on which it rests? In other words, how can a phenomenological psychology and psychotherapy open up to the natural sciences by cooperating with them in a relationship of mutual enlightenment? The new alliance between phenomenological psychology and the natural sciences most certainly revolves around corporeality. Corporeality is understood as a phenomenon, and hence something that is constantly in the process of being actualized and is not limited to the mere presence of the body as a material entity that ends with the skin. Then, this chapter introduces the phenomenon of corporeality and its intertwining with existence, the relation between corporeality and the body, and the topic of pathology—of the trauma, of violence, and its healing.
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Notes
- 1.
The structure of perception, in other words, does not take shape through hyletic data which are subsequently to be assigned meaning.
- 2.
Also orientiere ich mich geographisch bei allen objektiven Datis am Himmel doch nur durch einen subjektiven Unterscheidungsgrund p 353 Immanuel Kants Werke. Band IV. Schriften von 1783–1788. Herausgegeben von Dr. Artur Buchenau und Dr. Ernst Cassirer. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer 1913.
- 3.
“And the Word became flesh and took up residence among us” (John 1:14).
- 4.
All this could easily be put to the test by demonstrating the variation of peripersonal space in relation to the emotional openness of a person.
- 5.
For a review of diagnostic problems and the DSM categorization, see Asmundson et al. (2014).
- 6.
It is from this perspective that we have understood and reinterpreted Bowlby’s studies on attachment within the framework of psychology (Arciero 1994).
- 7.
“Das Leiben des Leibes bestimmt sich aus der Weise meines Seins. Das Leiben des Leibes ist somit eine Weise des Daseins” (GA 89 n.d., p. 113).
- 8.
Ricoeur thus appropriates that intimate sense which according to de Biran corresponds to the “inner” experience of effort: to how it feels to exist within one’s own flesh.
- 9.
Being and nonbeing, rest and movement, the self and the other, the one and the many.
- 10.
This distinction clearly echoes the one which Aristotle draws between oneself and the other by defining the notion of otherness through the more particular one of difference (diaphora): “We call different (diaphora) those things which though other (heteros) are in some respect the same (to auto)” (Δ 9 1018a 12–13). On the heteros/allos distinction, see too I 3 1054 b 23–26 (Alessandrelli com. pers.).
- 11.
The alteration of our openness to the world which accompanies suffering—and which has to do with our focusing on the affected area—monopolizes our attention, motivating behaviors aimed at ending, reducing or escaping exposure to the source of the noxious stimulation. This monopolization is particularly evident in the “sorrow of the soul” which characterizes depression (Arciero and Bondolfi 2009).
- 12.
This reflexiveness of the flesh concerns all organs except the brain.
- 13.
Unlike aggression, violence cannot be conceived according to the categories of ethology (Arendt 1970; Ricoeur 1992; Tinbergen 1968; Lorenz 1966): “Neither violence nor power is a natural phenomenon, that is, a manifestation of the life process; they belong to the political realm of human affairs whose essentially human quality is guaranteed by man’s faculty of action, the ability to begin something new” (Arendt 1970, p. 82).
- 14.
Ricoeur observes: “Initiative: this is the key word on the phenomenal-anthropological level, to which there corresponds, on the political level, consent with regard to living-together” (Ricoeur 2010, p. 25).
- 15.
The same aspect is also to be found with some differences—and certainly in view of different aims—in the case of chemotherapy patients.
- 16.
The act of enduring this torment, thereby bearing witness to the fact that one is ready to forego one’s flesh, engenders martyrdom.
- 17.
Examples include concentration camp experiences, torture, disasters, prolonged exposure to life-threatening circumstances (e.g., hostage situations—prolonged captivity with an imminent possibility of being killed) and, more generally, all those conditions capable of bringing about what ICD 10 identifies as “enduring personality change after catastrophic experience” (F.62). Enduring personality change may follow the experience of catastrophic stress. The stress must be so extreme that it is unnecessary to consider personal vulnerability in order to explain its profound effect on the personality.
- 18.
The role of past traumatic experiences on the current lives of people has significantly influenced the development of contemporary psychiatry. As Von der Kolk has rightly emphasized, Charcot, Janet, and Freud all noted that fragmented memories of traumatic events dominated the mental life of many of their patients and built their theories about the nature and treatment of psychopathology on this recognition (1989).
- 19.
Once human existence is seen as bearing the spatiotemporal worldwide realm of openness as, itself, a perceptive and actively responsive openness, the problem of location takes on a wholly different aspect. It is self-evident, then, that the possibilities for relatedness belong fundamentally and immediately to the whole realm of perceptive openness.
- 20.
It is important to note, however, that the mere fact of expressing a traumatic experience in words does not resolve the dissociative symptomatology, particularly in the case of long-running pathological conditions.
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Arciero, G., Bondolfi, G., Mazzola, V. (2018). Corporeality and Ipseity. In: The Foundations of Phenomenological Psychotherapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78087-0_8
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