File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9806, message 125


Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 17:56:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: Mind & Body, One More Time 



<sorry, wanted to correct this for typos, it's probably still riddled with
them -- TMB>


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 concerns, relationships, job, life plans, etc.,
to get at the "cause" of the depression, despondency, sexual dysfunction,
sleeplessness, etc. If the depression is seen as a *causal entity in
itself* as opposed 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 rethinks emotions as
world-constituted and world-constitutive, 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 develops the broader opening that is a correlate to
fear: anxiety. The two form a doublet: fear/anxiety. I hold that there are
other, parallel doublets, that have a "smaller" version and a likewise
"broader", more ontological (?) 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, etc. 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 parallel 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 the same as fear/anxiety.

> 
> > 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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