Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 13:54:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re:  Mind & Body, One More Time 



Mike Staples wrote:

> 
> What I mean by "goals" involves the same kinds of assumption implied by
> terms like "effective relationships and good functioning". A "goal" of
> making an relationship effective includes a perspective on what counts
> as an effective relationship, or what counts as functioning. If we can
> agree on that, then I will go one step further by suggesting that in
> general, definitions for either of these will be at best arbitrary.

Not quite arbitrary, I think. But without getting into that, I'm just
talking standard therapeutic assumptions. I'm not saying that these aren't
questionable. I'm just letting some of those things be stable in the most
minimally acceptable (not to you, perhaps) forms, in order then to explore
one particular aspect. To be sure, such exploration can in turn entail
rethinking everything else, variously, just as Heidegger demonstrates in
addressing innumerable conditions. But this is a very difficult path, I
would say. Thie particuler "method" I was using for this seems to me to be
pruduent and well grounded. If one simply goes into the problematics of
therapeutics, which have the special nature of a kind of urgency and
adaptation in the *thick* of lived concerns, needs, dialogue between
therapists and those receiving therapy, this unchecked or improperly
managed philosophical questioning can be rather destructive. We are not,
obviously, *in therapy* or even talking with any direct linkage to any
therapeutic setting. Neverthelss, I think the form/method/approach I was
using is adequate.


> 
> > The generalized
> > mood is showing up as such due to across-the-board dysfunction.
> 
> An assumption based on knowing what the term "dysfunction" means.

No question there is such an assumption. This assumption is already
involved in the use of the term "depression", I would imagine.

> > 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.
> 
> But the mood of depression involving Dasein is not like a country with a
> depressed economy any more than it is like a brain with a chemical
> imbalance, or a leg that is broken.

Ahh, but that is precisely where poetry comes in. It *can be* like either,
and more.  Imagine a therapist sitting with a patient, saying, "well,
imagine you are a country. How would you describe yourself?" The patient
may respond, "There is smoke, the air is polluted, the workers work to
hard, people trudge in lonely groups, and you can't see the color of the
grass. People are going hungry everywhere. It is like things just aren't
working". Such imagines could show up in a patient's poetry, for example.
Innumerable such metaphors, parallels, etc,, could be drawn, and each
would be illuminating, provided that is not overworked or put to the task
of being some sort of exact model. It remains a very open question to me
whether Heidegger's sense of poetry either *open* this kind of disclosure
or, in fact, close them off. 


> 
> > 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.
> 
> Still see many assumptions here. First, there are a series of assumption
> revolving around what you mean by "working" and "not working" that you
> have to buy into before you can talking about making "it" (not what what
> 'it' refers to) "work better". And it is an assumption that if you knew
> what "working" ment, that "diving down into..." would "cause" this to
> happen.

A patient could very well present in therapy in just such a vague
condition: "Well, what appears to be the problem?" "Nothing is working. 
<silence> I mean, well, *I'm* not working. My relationship with my wife
isn't working. Or soething. I mean, well, I don't know. Things are really
bad. I think of suicide a lot. I don't know what is wrong." Etc. On the
one hand, by all means, such assumptions *can* be questioned, but, I would
caution, not willy nilly, either. Of course, perhaps in a theoretical
setting, one is in a way free to do that. But I would suggest, rather,
that thinking concerning things like depression in conjunction with
therapeutics would have, more or less, to keep at least some contact with
actual exigencies, how people present, the way assumptions can, do and
inevitablly will come into play in *any* realistic scenario. To be sure,
the theoretical space can make posslbe enormous shifts, questions of
assumptions become possible which could never be pursued in most practical
settings. On the other hand, it is naive, without wanting to be rude, to
assume that one can, in fact, do without any number of minimal
assumptions, even if they are on part simply with the therapists version
of a Hippocratic oath. In any event, if you accept some of thse
assumptions as *highly minimal*, then you can perhaps let them be while
examing the points I was making about depression, should they have merit. 
Otherwise, it would make proceeding in this territory extremely difficult,
and peraps unnecessarily so.

I should also say that questioning assumptions *can* be part of an
approach that really can help alleviate "depression": If the patient
starts saying this or that, questioning the assumpions involved can be a
releive, bring a puff of laugher, "heh, I never even thought about it". Is
it possible, indeed, that *assumption* is one of the hallmarkes of
depression? This would go hand in hand with the idea of deconstructing
depression. But when we question assumptions, this is not to say that that
takes us into a kind of no-man's land of there being no bases for
anything. Heidegger attemps some kind of topography of that basis, which
he calls Dasein, which is, through and through, that of a concerned being. 
I'm very critical of his topography or topology. In any event, when we
question assumptions, we must and in fact *do* always also have
innumerable assumptions already in play: people want to be happy, there is
love, there are states of mind, people in general work for a living,
people have relationships, sexual needs, 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.
> 
> I don't know what you mean here.

One might say they "have depression" in the way one has a virus, which
people could then try to treat simply in terms, say, of its feeling
aspects and as an entity in and of itself: you feel badly, we reinforce
reports of good feelings, or give pills to heighten good feelings, etc.
This might not get at the roots, just as treating a fire without
considering the source could lead to a hopeless enterprise, a bandaid
operation. Good analogy or bad, it is a fairly simple logic. Running
around treating "bad feelings" as though they didn't connect with major
aspects of people's lives could lead to a very truncated view of things
that more and more may close off access to the broader conditions.


> > Clearly, as you probably already realize, Heidegger rethinkins
> > emotions as
> > world-constitued and world-constituted, rather than "internal events".
> 
> Ok, I think I see what you mean. If you start off thinking that emotions
> are something "internally" constructed, then Heidegger would offer an
> alternative to this. I'm still a bit hazy on the point, though (I don't
> mean to be difficult).

How are you hazy on it?

> > > > "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.
> 
> Where does he say this?!?

Div. 1, 5: A: 29 (paragraphs 2 and 7), pps 134-136 (later pagination in
margins of Maquarrie and Robinson). 

TMB






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