ℭ𝔬𝔰𝔪𝔦𝔠 𝔇𝔢𝔠𝔞𝔶 @funeral - Tumblr Blog

Cassone. late 15th century, with 19th century alterations. Credit line: Bequest of Helen Hay Whitney, 1944 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/209090

randomvintageeurope

If what we are is a "project towards the world", then the Cartesian cogito ("I think") becomes I act; my existence as a self is not that of a single continuing "consciousness", or a series of such consciousnesses, but a single "experience" in which I, as an embodied human being, engage with the world. My body is not, as objectivists might have it, an instrument loosely attached to me that I can use, but is me myself as involved with the world and as expressing myself in its movements. If I am an embodied subject, then the thoughts, feelings, intentions, wishes and so on that I have necessarily find expression in my body, not only in my actions and the objects I manipulate in them or the environment that I change by them, but even in the very characteristics of the body itself. Conversely, my body for me, or what Merleau-Ponty calls le corps propre, is not some kind of mechanistic system loosely attached to me, but is my mode of expression of my thoughts, feelings, intentions, and so on. A person's body can become what Merleau-Ponty beautifully describes as "the eloquent relic of an existence."

Eric Matthews, The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty

#eric matthews #maurice merleau ponty #philosophy #excerpts #p

Ordinarily, past and future withdraw on their own according with their nature of not being. And this is relevant because suffering loads the present with the immediate-past and immediate-future, which is contrary to their nature of not-being. The crucial fact about suffering and pain is their presentness; “pain-here-now” is so incontestably present that “having pain” or “suffering” could be thought of as an example of absolute certainty. For the individual experiencing intense pain or suffering, the pain or suffering is overwhelming and emphatically present now. Specifically, this pain-here-now produced by pain brings together no-more, yet-to-come, and now. This now is temporally disordered suffering because there is no longer an absence of no-more and yet-to-come. In severe pain and in some cases of melancholic suffering, all there is is the immediate self-negating suffering of pain-here-now. Suffering in this context is known by its intensity and in its characteristic ability to reduce both past and future to nothing. More accurately suffering presents the sufferer with an unchanging past and an unchanging future. Both future and past are no longer absent; they are now because of the nature of suffering present in terms of a recapitulation of the suffering moment. One suffering moment begins to resemble the next suffering moment and the next and so on until the suffering begins to ease and temporal movement is reestablished.

Martin Wyllie, "Lived Time and Psychopathology"

#recovery is not merely the reduction of pain #it is the restoration of temporal flow itself #philosophy #psychology #depression #excerpts #p

In today's state of hyperactivity, where boredom is not allowed to emerge, we never reach the state of deep mental relaxation. The information society is an age of heightened mental tension, because the essence of information is surprise and the stimulus it provides. The tsunami of information means that our perceptual apparatus is permanently stimulated. It can no longer enter into contemplation. The tsunami of information fragments our attention. It prevents the contemplative lingering that is essential to narrating and careful listening . . . In the process of digitalization, . . . information acquires an altogether different status. Reality itself takes on the form of information and data. For the most part, we perceive reality in terms of information or through the lens of information. Information is an idea—that is, a re-representation. When reality takes the form of information, the immediate experience of presence withers. When digitalization gives everything the form of information, reality is flattened.

Byung-Chul Han, The Crisis of Narration

#byung chul han #the crisis of narration #excerpts #p

metmuseum

Fire Bowl. 19th century. Credit line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Colman, 1893 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/47079

ortodelmondo

A cow and deities on the banks of the Hooghly River. Kolkata, India. 1987. © Raghu Rai / Magnum Photos

i just finished my phd in psychoanalysis <3 thank you for the inspiration over these six years! your blog has been a serious touchstone and inspiring place for me <3 your loyal mutual

Congratulations, that's wonderful!! Thank you so much for the message; I am touched and I admire your dedication 🩶

#ask

In melancholia, the body loses the lightness, fluidity, and mobility of a medium and turns into a heavy, solid body that puts up resistance to the subject's intentions and impulses. Its materiality, density, and weight, otherwise suspended and unnoticed in everyday performance, now come to the fore and are felt painfully. Thus, melancholia may be described as a reification or corporealization of the lived body. The melancholic patient experiences a local or general oppression, anxiety, and rigidity (e.g., a feeling of an armor vest or tire around the chest, lump in the throat, or pressure in the head). Sense perception and movement are weakened and finally walled in by this rigidity, which is visible in the patient's gaze, face, or gestures. To act, patients have to overcome their psychomotor inhibition and push themselves to even minor tasks, compensating by an effort of will what the body does not have by itself any more. With growing inhibition, their sensorimotor space is restricted to the nearest environment, culminating in depressive stupor.

Thomas Fuchs, "Corporealized and Disembodied Minds: A Phenomenological View of the Body in Melancholia and Schizophrenia"

#thomas fuchs #psychology #depression #excerpts #p

de Hann et. al, "The Phenomenology of Deep Brain Stimulation-induced Changes in OCD: An Enactive Affordance-based Model"

#diagram #depression

For it is not by describing that words acquire their power: it is by naming, by calling, by commanding, by intriguing, by seducing that they slice into the naturalness of existences, set humans on their path, separate them and unite them into communities. The word has many other things to imitate besides its meaning or its referent: the power of speech that brings it into existence, the movement of life, the gestures of an oration, the effect it anticipates, the addressee whose listening or reading it mimics beforehand.

Jacques Rancière, The Flesh of Words: The Politics of Writing

#jacques rancière #the flesh of words #philosophy #excerpts #p