#thomas fuchs

[maaarine]

Ecology of the Brain: The phenomenology and biology of the embodied mind (Thomas Fuchs, 2017)

“According to the classic cognitivist or modular view, the brain implements encapsulated mechanisms for cognizing (perceiving, planning, evaluating, decision-making, etc.).

Each module is believed to be responsible for computing an independent cognitive function, largely unaffected by the working of other modules and disconnected from bodily and environmental processes.

This conception still fuels experimental cognitive research, not least because of its suitability for isolated study designs.

However, it has now come under growing criticism as being inadequate for the distributed functioning of the central nervous system, multitasking at every level and highly dependent on contextual variables.

Therefore, the modular model is increasingly replaced by thinking in overarching functional systems and highly flexible brain connectivity patterns, where the same cortical or subcortical area may be co-opted into different functions depending on which of its interconnected networks is activated.

This also corresponds to the complexity of experience itself: all terms for special functions, such as seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, wishing, and so on, single out components of consciousness, whereas factually subjective states of experience always remain holistic.

Thus, all perceptions are not only embedded in a bodily background experience, but are also connected with feelings, memories, and linguistic concepts.

There is no “pure” pain, no “plain” seeing or hearing. (…)

Granted, partial functions of consciousness can to a certain extent be assigned to certain specialized regions, damage to which then also results in the failure of the function.

However, every theory which views consciousness as being assembled from localizable individual functions or modules incurs the problem of how these individual functions are to be integrated into a united activity—a question which is mirrored in different variations of the “binding problem.””

[funeral]

As a result, the patients are unable to draw on the experiences of the past in order to determine their own future by reflected decisions. They miss the experience of agency or authorship of their life. One could say that instead of projecting themselves into the future, they just stumble into it. Thus borderline individuals exhibit a characteristic temporal structure: they are only what they are experiencing at this moment, in an often intense and yet empty and flat present; for this present may only be experienced passively, not as the result of one’s own planning and will....but of course they do not live in simple happiness. Rather, they often describe lasting feelings of emptiness and boredom, since their transitory present has no depth. It lacks the fulfillment which only originates from the integration of past experience and anticipated future. In order to fill the void, momentary pleasures, thrills and ecstasies are sought, turning life into an unconnected series of fleeting events instead of a continuous history.

Thomas Fuchs, Fragmented Selves: Temporality and Identity in Borderline Personality Disorder

[maaarine]

Ecology of the Brain: The phenomenology and biology of the embodied mind (Thomas Fuchs, 2017)

“Rather, the illness originates in a specific perception of the situation, that is, in an individual act of meaning-ascription that is not, as an intentional relation to the environment, reducible to neuronal processes. 

Depression results from a perceived loss of meaning and social resonance, not from a lack of serotonin.

Moreover, it is not the objective features of the situation, but their subjective evaluation as insurmountable, which is decisive for the depressive reaction.

As a result, biographically acquired dispositions such as lack of self-worth or self-efficacy become highly influential factors in pathogenesis. (…)

Initially, this corresponds to the organism’s functional short-term reaction of fear and readiness (“fight-or-flight response”).

However, under the conditions of a perceived impasse and feelings of helplessness, it leads to massive dysfunctions of the organismic functional cycles. 

The activation of the corticotropin-releasing hormone– adrenocorticotropic hormone–cortisol and sympathicus system

as well as the disturbed serotonin-transmitter regulation in the limbic system places the organism in a permanent state of stress,

corresponding to the aforementioned experience of bodily depletion and constriction.

The self-perception of this altered organismic state, as a negative feedback loop, intensifies the physiological symptoms of stress.

As a result, the initially functional organismic reaction is decoupled from its integration in superordinate feedback cycles and eludes the person’s control.

Negative horizontal feedback loops connecting to the social environment then influence the further course as described earlier.

The desynchronization of biological rhythms (hormonal, sleep cycles, etc.) and the desynchronization from the social environment mutually reinforce each other.

Social desynchronization may also be a decisive cause for the incidence of depression on the macro-level.

The typical triggering situations are mostly characterized by a disruption or at least a serious endangerment of relations and bonds:

a loss of relevant others (bereavement, divorce, or marital crisis) or of important social roles (loss of a job, moving to another city),

furthermore experiences of backlog or defeat, poverty, social exclusion, or isolation resulting in a desynchronization from others.

Such situations, under the condition of an individual vulnerability, are perceived as threatening and unsolvable by the patients: they do not feel equal to the pace of changes or are unable to cope with losses.

They surrender in the face of painful processes of detachment or grief, or they refrain from necessary role changes.”

[maaarine]

The Mechanization of the Heart: Harvey and Descartes (Thomas Fuchs, 2001)

“From the beginning, air and fire were the two elements in which the medium of life had been sought.

This polarity is visible for the first time in the Ionian natural philosophers Anaximenes and Heraclitus.

In the ancient medical schools (above all the Sicilian, later the pneumatic), there emerged from the two traditions,

on the one hand, the concept of the pneúma (the later spiritus), which distributed itself in the body through the blood, as the breath-like carrier of life, sensation, even consciousness, coming from the air we breathe;

on the other, the notion of “innate heat” (émphyton thermón, later calor innatus) as the source of the vitality and self-motion of living things, mirroring within themselves, as it were, the sun as principle of all cosmic movement. (…)

According to the later Hippocratic treatise On the Heart, but also in the view of Plato and of Aristotle, the pneuma is indeed again the carrier of psychological functions;

however, it no longer derives from the air we breathe, but from the blood that swells and vaporizes through the heat of the heart—in keeping with the everyday example of milk that boils over when heated.

The heart now becomes more and more the origin of “surges” of feeling and—in Aristotle—the central organ of sensation and perception, which is mediated through the pneuma.

In contrast, respiration acquires a mere cooling and regulative function vis-à-vis the heart, which would otherwise overheat.”

[maaarine]

Ecology of the Brain: The phenomenology and biology of the embodied mind (Thomas Fuchs, 2017)

“Emotions further imply two components of bodily resonance:

1) A centripetal or affective component, that is, being affected, “moved,” or “touched” by an event through various forms of bodily sensations (e.g., the already mentioned blushing and burning of shame).

This resonance in turn influences the affective perception of the situation—for example, feeling one’s heart beat and a shortness of breath increases the frightening impression of a dangerous situation

2) A centrifugal or “emotive” component, that is, a bodily action readiness, implying specific tendencies of movement (e.g., hiding, avoiding the other’s gaze, “sinking into the floor” from shame; flight reaction in anxiety). 

In emotions, we are moved to move (emovere = to move out).

On this basis, emotions may be regarded as circular interactions or feedback cycles between affection, perception, and movement. 

Being affected by the value features or affective qualities of a situation triggers a specific bodily resonance (“affection”) which in turn influences the emotional perception of the situation and implies a corresponding action readiness (“e-motion”). (…)

As we can see, the resonance or “affectability” of the body is a crucial component of emotions.

This has been confirmed by research indicating a positive relationship between interoceptive awareness and the ability to perceive one’s own emotions,

and conversely, by impaired processing of interoceptive signals in mental disorders characterized by emotional dysregulation, such as major depression, depersonalization, alexithymia, or borderline personality disorder.

If this bodily resonance is modified in specific ways, it will also change the person’s affective perception accordingly.

Thus, a lack of resonance will impede perceiving affective affordances in the environment.

In Parkinson’s disease as well as in severe depression, the rigidity and freezing of facial and other bodily expressions results in a reduced intensity of emotions, to the point of being no longer moved and affected by situations or other persons at all.”

[maaarine]

Ecology of the Brain: The phenomenology and biology of the embodied mind (Thomas Fuchs, 2017)

“This regulation is the source of a basic bodily self: an elementary vital feeling of wellbeing or discomfort, energy or fatigue, of basic drives such as hunger or thirst, and of mood states indicating the overall state of the organism with regard to its vital needs.

More specifically, the emotions form an arc of tension that spans the time lapse between need and satisfaction.

The instinctive dynamics of lack, drive, longing, anticipation, fulfillment, and satisfaction—in short: conation —is the experienced motivation fueling the functional cycles by which an animal lives.

Last not least, emotions and moods lend vital meanings to objects in the environment, making them appear desirable, comforting, threatening, and so forth.

The valences already given on lower stages are now turned into values.

We can see here that the dichotomy between cognition and affection still common in cognitive science and psychology is no longer tenable.

The living system enacts its Umwelt, a world of significance, and this is the basic “mark of the cognitive.”

However, this kind of cognition at the same time implies affectivity, in the sense that the living being is a subject of concern and thus never indifferent to its existence and environment.

The process of sense-making implies both cognizing relevant aspects of the environment and evaluating or “feeling” them with regard to the organism’s needs and concerns.

Hence, experiencing drives and emotions is also the means by which a living being evaluates and selects its possible actions. (…)

The actual opposition of subject and object is, admittedly, only attained at the stage of “eccentric positionality”.

Here, human beings step out of merely being integrated within the functional cycle.

Now perceptual and motor processes can also be simulated by “trial action” in imagination, anticipation, or fantasy.

This also inhibits emotional impulses, using the hiatus between perceptual and motor ability in a new way, namely in an “as-if ” mode—including the option to reflect on the situation and the individual’s place within it.

This distancing of the subject from its present situation changes the merely subjective Umwelt of the animal into the shared, intersubjective, and therefore objective world of human beings: gaining distance from oneself also means being able to place oneself in another’s position.

Man’s eccentricity is thus equiprimordial to his sociality.”

[maaarine]

MBTI & Ideas

Fragmented selves: Temporality and identity in borderline personality disorder

“Narrative identity implies a meaningful coherence of the personal past, present and future that is similar to the unity of a story that we are telling. 

‘We live immersed in narrative, recounting and reassessing the meaning of our past actions, anticipating the outcome of our future projects, situating ourselves at the intersection of several stories not yet completed’. (…)

Here we have to take into account that narrative identity is essentially based on the capacity of the individual to integrate contradictory aspects and tendencies into a coherent, overarching sense and view of his or her self.

Divergent tendencies and strivings have to be ruled out more or less permanently; otherwise the story would splinter into incoherent fragments.”

(…)

“Giving a general characterization, we may say that patients with BPD [borderline personality disorder] lack the strength to establish a coherent self-concept.

Instead, they adopt what could be called a post-modernist stance towards their life, switching from one present to the next and being totally identified with their momentary state of affect.

This results in a temporal splitting of the self that tends to exclude past and future as dimensions of object constancy, commitment, responsibility and identity.

Thus, borderline individuals exhibit what may be called a fragmentation of the narrative self.”

(…)

“They miss the experience of agency or authorship of their life. One could say that instead of projecting themselves into the future, they just stumble into it.

Thus borderline individuals exhibit a characteristic temporal structure: they are only what they are experiencing at this moment, in an often intense and yet empty and flat present;

for this present may only be experienced passively, not as the result of one’s own planning and will.”

(…)

“Narrative identity, as we have seen, requires the constant labour of temporal integration.

One has to remember and to adhere to one’s obligations and responsibilities, even if this may only be possible by means of repression and rationalization.

One has to accept what has happened as a meaningful part of one’s biography, even at the price of painful feelings of guilt and remorse.

And instead of being open to what would be possible, one is bound by one’s values, convictions and decisions.

On the contrary, splitting and self-fragmentation create a present that is disconnected from past and future, an isolated now.

The more I plunge into this present, the more I can identify with my momentary impulses and get rid of the burden of the past, of moral scruples.”

Source:  Fuchs, Thomas. "Fragmented selves: Temporality and identity in borderline personality disorder." Psychopathology 40.6 (2007): 379-387.

[coo1day]

Auch das reflexive Bewusstsein, die Fähigkeit zur Distanznahme und Überlegung, die den Menschen auszeichnet, hebt die Unmittelbarkeit seiner leiblichen Weltbeziehung auf. Doch damit versetzt es ihn in die Lage, seine primären, impliziten Erfahrungen zu explizieren, sie sprachlich zu artikulieren und so dem intersubjektiven Diskurs verfügbar zu machen, aus dem sich neue Sichtweisen und Möglichkeiten ergeben können. Die Explikation und Artikulation des Impliziten steigert also die Freiheitsgrade, über die der Mensch verfügt (Jung 2009). Zugleich erlaubt es das reflexive Bewusstsein, Alternativen in der Imagination durchzuspielen, sie also in virtuellen Probehandlungen vorwegzunehmen, bis sie in geeigneter Form wieder in den Handlungsbogen des verkörperten Subjekts integriert werden können. So dient das Bewusstsein auch dazu, in den impliziten Vermittlungen des Leibes entstandene Lücken durch neue Verknüpfungen wieder zu schließen – gleichsam die Brüche zu reparieren, die sich in der Leiblichkeit aufgetan haben. Bewusste Aufmerksamkeit kann neue Wege des Umgangs mit der Welt etablieren und leiten, bis sie sich wieder in Gewohnheiten verwandelt haben, uns ›in Fleisch und Blut übergegangen sind‹. Durch Übung und Gewöhnung inkorporiert der Leib neue Vermögen. Charakteristisch für den Erfolg ist ein sich häufig plötzlich einstellendes Erlebnis des ›Von-selbst‹, das es erlaubt, sich dem leiblichen Vollzug hinzugeben, sich gleichsam in die eigene Leiblichkeit fallen zu lassen. Der Tänzer hat eine neue Figur erlernt und kann sich ihr ganz hingeben. Der Pianist hat einen Lauf eingeübt, den er nun frei modulieren, ja dem er nun gleichsam selbst zuhören kann. Selbstvergessenheit ist das Kennzeichen des gelungenen leiblichen Vollzugs. Der Leib ist für ein neues Vermögen transparent geworden, so dass sich das fokale Bewusstsein bis zu einem gewissen Grad aus der Handlung zurückziehen und auf die Weise ihrer Ausführung oder auf das distale Ziel richten kann. »Es ist ein allgemeines Prinzip in der Psychologie«, so schreibt William James, »dass das Bewusstsein alle Prozesse verlässt, in denen es nicht mehr von Nutzen ist« (1890/1950, 496; eig. Übers.)... - Thomas Fuchs. Randzonen der Erfahrung. Beiträge zur phänomenologischen Psychopathologie