Memories and Monsters by Eric R. Severson David M. Goodman
Author:Eric R. Severson,David M. Goodman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351660372
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Therapeutic witnessing
In discussing these literary works, it is tempting to resort to psychological themes and concepts such as trauma, the unconscious, repression, denial, and dissociation to explain the effect of haunting and how the characters respond to it. This can be a fruitful endeavor, and has led to some convincing interpretations (Osborne, 2013, pp. 127â157; Krumholz, 1992). It is also an intriguing approach in general to make sense of historical haunting by way of psychological phenomena. Yet, one must be careful not to treat the psychological concepts employed here as a static explanatory framework. Haunting is not simply equatable with the classical concept of the unconscious, for instance. After all, a concept such as this is itself being reassessed in light of philosophical impasses like the memory crisis. It is just as fruitful, then, to wonder how psychoanalysis, broadly construed, can perform its own conceptual reassessment by way of engaging the phenomenon of haunting, and how it might accomplish this in a way that meets the ethical obligation of remembering well.
A major theme pervading the response to these questions is the recognition that historicity in general, and haunting in particular, is an embedded aspect of the world. Along these lines, we might begin by recalling that Austerlitz and Beloved do more than metaphorically portray haunting; in making it into a concrete experience for their protagonists, they capture an essential aspect of all memory, namely that it exists âout there, in the world.â To cash this out psychoanalytically, it might help to return to the philosophical point, already noted above, that memory is not solely individual and mental; it is distributed and culturally sedimented, and it lurks in present practices, places, and relationships. It is more akin to a decentralized network than an internal, localized possession.
Transposing Gadamerâs notion of horizons to the therapeutic setting, Philip Cushman (2009, pp. 134â135) notes that being situated together with another brings everything of their world along with them. To adopt the therapeutic stance is therefore not to engage in empathy, an interiorization that brackets the outside world and attempts to enter the clientâs mental space by remaining apolitical, ahistorical, and acultural. Rather, therapy always involvesâat least implicitlyâacknowledging our cultural and historical encumbrances. Cushman (2009) insists that â[w]hat hermeneutics supplies is exactly what empathy cannot: a good beginning, a purposefully historical, contextual, relational self in a non-Cartesian worldâ (p. 135).
Taking this stance in therapy is a way to make a âgood beginningââthat is, a hermeneutically appropriate oneâbecause instead of assuming a fully self-possessed initiation from either person, it attends to what is already there in both the clientâs and the therapistâs ongoing historicities (and linguisticalities), while also recognizing that much of what is there is not possessed in full awareness. For something to be part of the clientâs world, it need not be explicitly formulated or named. To use Gadamerâs terms, the opacity of inner infinity is intrinsically part of the encounter; it is present in the form of cultural inheritances, unreflected assumptions, faded memories, and the like.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Administration & Medicine Economics | Allied Health Professions |
Basic Sciences | Dentistry |
History | Medical Informatics |
Medicine | Nursing |
Pharmacology | Psychology |
Research | Veterinary Medicine |
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi(7235)
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker(5615)
Paper Towns by Green John(4154)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot(3808)
The Sports Rules Book by Human Kinetics(3570)
Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery by Eric Franklin(3471)
ACSM's Complete Guide to Fitness & Health by ACSM(3452)
Kaplan MCAT Organic Chemistry Review: Created for MCAT 2015 (Kaplan Test Prep) by Kaplan(3412)
Introduction to Kinesiology by Shirl J. Hoffman(3289)
Livewired by David Eagleman(3097)
The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks(2980)
Alchemy and Alchemists by C. J. S. Thompson(2896)
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen(2884)
Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio(2718)
Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre(2712)
Kaplan MCAT Behavioral Sciences Review: Created for MCAT 2015 (Kaplan Test Prep) by Kaplan(2478)
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee(2473)
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (The Princeton History of the Ancient World) by Kyle Harper(2419)
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee(2413)