File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9806, message 124


Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 17:30:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: Mind & Body, One More Time


On Sun, 28 Jun 1998, Mike Staples wrote:

> TMB wrote:
> 
> > Part of the work of good
> > therapeutics seems to me to entail *deconstructing* the entity-status
> > of
> > the ailment and getting back into a certain "everything else" that
> > causes
> > the problem.
> 
> I'm not sure I agree with this characterization of "good" therapeutics
> in psychotherapy. But neither am I sure you are really siding with the
> cause-effect schema I generally dissagree with.

Insofar as the goal is "effective relationships and good functioning",
these primarily occur out of specific matters of relationships, emotions,
concerns, etc., rather than out of a generalized mood. The generalized
mood is showing up as such due to across-the-board dysfunction. But like a
country with a depressed economy, treating the "depression" means more
"non-depression" stuff and shaking out of the doldrums: putting people to
work, fueling the economy, etc. So in a way "deconstructing" the
mood(lessness) of depression is part of the process of "good
therapeutics". By seeing what is not working and working to make it work
better, this can and seems to usually entail "diving down into" the world
of the depressed person's conerns, relationships, job, life plans, etc.,
to get at the "cause" of the depression, despondency, sexualy dysfunction,
sleeplessness, etc. If the depression is seens as a *causal entity in
itself* as opped to an effect, this is like putting out an oil-fed fire on
the top without shutting off the source of the oil. So it seems to me.


> 
> > This is tricky. Obviously, there is a problem.But when the
> 
> > problem is allowed to presence as a distinct phenomenon, a unity, with
> >
> > some "form", independent nature, it leads to, well, a strangely
> > *depressing* situation in which one may work to ameliorate an entity
> > which, taken as such, *systematically diverts* from the various modes
> > of
> > care, living, relationships (Hiedegger, I'll have to maintain, is
> > little
> > help in this regard), style, tendencies, issues, etc. This may well
> > have a
> > lot to do with the especially syndromic nature of depression and some
> > other ailments.
> 
> I'm not sure what you are saying here, TMB.
>

Maybe it's clearer, maybe not.
 
> > What Heidegger offers is the opportunity to think emotions
> > in relation to the *world*: to re-world emotions.
> 
> Perhaps you could say more about this. I don't quite follow it. How does
> Heidegger specifically offer such an opportunity?

Clearly, as you probably already realize, Heidegger rethinkins emotions as
world-constitued and world-constituted, rather than "internal events".
> 
> > He uses fear as his
> > example, and one must be very cautions not to assume that the *form*
> > of
> > all emotions is the same as fear, against Heidegger's assumption.
> 
> You mean that Heidegger assumed that all emotions have the same "form"
> as fear? Doesn't he go to great lengths to establish the difference
> between fear and anxiety?

Yes, quite true. He developes the broader opening that is a correlate to
fear, anxiety. The two form a double: fear/anxiety. I hold that there are
other parallels, that have a "smaller" version and a likewise "broader",
more ontoligical (?)  correlate, such as some kind of more immediate love
and a broader opening of love, likewise the "cute, pretty or attractive"
on the one hand, and the beautiful. I think these can't be modeled on the
fear/anxiety doublet as a basis as I think their basic forms and
tendencies are different, but fear/anxiety is the most easily accessed
within a certain frame of vision. One should neither take such a parellel
too far, if one even buys it in the first place, nor expect that the form
of the emotion of loving (the lover, the loved, the lovely, etc.) is about
these same as fear/anxiet.

> 
> > For Heidegger, moods are understood as something to be *mastered*:
> > "One
> > doesn't know" the whence and whither of moods, and I think this is a
> > bit
> > of a mistake.
> 
> Where does this conclusion come from, TMB? Are you refering to the
> emphasis on the "Resolute"?

Partly, but he simply says this outright this in SZ. 

Regards,

TMB



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