File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9806, message 137


Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 14:23:18 -0700
From: Mike Staples <mstaples-AT-argusqa.com>
Subject: Re: Mind & Body, One More Time


TMB. Thank for the reply. I want to ponder it for a bit. I especially
appreciate your quoting chapter and verse from the King James version of
SZ on this "Mastering Moods" business. In looking up the appropriate
passage, I see that I had highlighted the very sentence you, I'm sure,
had in mind (p. 7, page 175). I would like to think about this a bit.
I'm feeling at this point that something is going wrong with either your
interpretation or my interpretation of your interpretation, or my
interpretation, or Heidegger's interpretation, or interpretation in
general...or something. I know that in SZ Heidegger tends to focus
attention on this sort of resolute "willfullness" that he dropped later
on in favor of something that he felt better expressed what he had in
mind (some say, perhaps correctly, that he just changed his mind
altogether...others don't think this was quite the case). I don't quite
know what he means by, "...Dasein can, should, and must, through
knowledge and will, become master of its moods..." It seems pretty
black-and-white at first blush, but I can't quite buy this first-blush,
surface interpretation.

Michael Staples

TMB wrote:

> 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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