PSYC18 - Psychology of Emotion Lecture 11

PSYC18 - Psychology of Emotion Lecture 11 Professor: Gerald Cupchik cupchik@utsc.utoronto.ca S-634 Office Hours: Thurs. 10-11, 2-3 T.A.: Michelle Hilscher hilscher@utsc.utoronto.ca S-150 Office Hours: Thurs. 10-11, 2-3 Course Website: www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik

To understand is to situate! The human environment is always first of all “a situation” - an organized hierarchy of wholes. Isolated and meaningless data are always the results of analytical abstraction from an original and organized whole. For Husserl, we experience phenomena as a whole because the act of experiencing is holistic. Don’t confuse the part or mechanism of experience with the experience itself. Phenomenology maintains that sensing and judging occur simultaneously.

What is experienced is as much mental as it is sensory and is always a single experience and not a sensory datum of external origin followed by an introspective experience of the internal process of synthesizing and identifying data. The object as experienced is always a meaning-being or a phenomenon. The object is always an immediate fusion of the “real” and the “ideal”.

Phenomenologists agree with Dewey’s comment about R - S - R... Stimulus and response must always be situated in a context… the “act” is the actual molar unit of behaviour. The emotional stimulus is a stimulus only because it is immediately perceived as a meaning by and for a being who is acting to reach a goal in an environment. * Consider act in a unified environment. * Consider environment in relation to a purposive agent. * The agent is always acting-in-the-world.

The Existential Movement in Psychology Existence - Latin root - “ex-sistere”… to stand out, to emerge. We portray a human being not as a collection of static substances or mechanisms or patterns, but rather as emerging and becoming… as existing. Soren Kierkegaard: “Truth exists only as the individual himself produces it in action.” Feuerbach: “Do not wish to be a philosopher in contrast to being a man... do not think as a thinker... think as a living, real being. Thinking is Existence.” Kierkegaard

The Existential Movement in Psychology Existentialism is concerned with ontology, “the science of being.” Existentialists are concerned with rediscovering the living person amid the compartmentalization and dehumanization of modern culture. According to Eric Fromm, during profound convulsions of a transitional period, individuals in society get caught up in spiritual and emotional upheaval… they tend to sink into dogmatism and conformism, giving up awareness. The only way to overcome this is to strive for heightened self consciousness by which to become aware of their existence with new conviction and on a new basis. Existentialism accepts people as always becoming and therefore potentially in crisis....but it is not despairing...

The Existential Movement in Psychology Thrownness concept and Pascal in his Pensées... “When I discover the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which know not me, I am afraid, and wonder to see myself here rather than there, now rather than then...” Pascal So, existentialism arises directly out of Western man’s anxiety, estrangement, and conflicts indigenous to our culture.

The Existential Movement in Psychology Kierkegaard wrote, before Freud, about the depression and anxiety that results from self-estrangement. Both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche understood man as the being who represses, the being who surrenders self awareness as a protection against reality and then suffers the neurotic consequences. But the person can never be separated from the object being observed. We must avoid the doctrine that the less we are involved in a given situation, the more clearly we can observe the truth. Truth is always relative. Truth becomes reality only as the individual produces it in action, including in his or her consciousness.

Ludwig Binswanger He introduced the terms: (1) Umwelt: world of people in biological environment (2) Mitwelt: our personal relations with others (3) Eigenwelt: the sphere of our relations with ourselves Existential Psychotherapy is concerned with dasein, our being-in-the-world. The significant tense here is the future. Self-consciousness enables us to grasp our existence. The sense of “being” is my capacity to see myself as a being-in-the-world, to know myself as a being who can do things (this relates to ego development). The capacity to confront non-being is illustrated in the ability to accept anxiety, hostility, and aggression (i.e., to tolerate without repression).

Kurt Goldstein Anxiety and Guilt are ontological (pertains to the science of being). ANXIETY: The experience of the threat of immanent non-being. It strikes at the central core of self-esteem and self-value. Anxiety overwhelms awareness of existence, blots out the sense of time, dulls the memory of the past and erases the future. Fear is a threat to the periphery on one’s existence - it can be objectified. Anxiety is ontological; it is a threat to dasein… fear is not.

Kurt Goldstein GUILT: When a person denies potentialities or fails to fulfill them, the condition is guilt. Guilt is a potent source of humility and produces unsentimental attitude of forgiveness. Ontological Guilt: Everyone participates in it. In relation to the: Mitwelt - everyone at some time distorts the realities of other Eigenwelt - no one completely fulfills his or her potential Umwelt - in relation to as a whole

Ontological guilt does not lead to symptom formation but has constructive effects on the personality. It should lead to: (1) humility (2) sharpened sensitivity toward others (3) increased creative use of one’s own potential Neurotic guilt comes from unfaced normal ontological guilt. MESSAGE So we must learn to transcend our immediate situation and understand that the world is the structure of meaningful relationships in which a person exists and in the design of which he or she participates. It is reciprocal and pertains to the future.

Categorical Phenomenology How does the person experience time, space, causality and materiality? TIME: Contrast objective time of the clock with the subjective experience of time. We ask the questions: (1) Is the experience of time disoriented or not? (2) Are mental operations accelerated or slowed down? Flowing time is automatically structured: (1) Present - “the constantly now” (2) Past is “what leaves us” (3) Future is open to previewing or planning

Distortions of the feeling of time necessarily result in distortions of the meaning of life. Mania - time speeds up Anxiety, boredom or grief - Time flows more slowly Depression - time flows desperately slowly, stagnating or even arrested. Certain schizophrenics - time fixed at the present moment (delusion of immortality)

Spaciality: (Distorted or not?) Oriented Space is equivalent to objective space and relates to ideas of verticality, elevation, and direction. It is essentially mathematical or Euclidean space....3 dimensional. It is the space of the Action Model....defined, organized, utilized, delineated and measured. Touch involves near space. Audition or vision involves remote space.

Attuned Space has a physiognomic or expressive tone. This spatial experience is determined by and reflects one’s mood. Inside Oriented Space: fullness or emptiness, expanding or contracting. * Happiness expands attuned space * Sorrow constricts attuned space * Despair makes it empty In schizophrenic experience - attuned space loses its consistency Outside Oriented Space: love is “space-binding” - close to beloved in spite of distance transcends distance Dance space - ebb & flow - distance is a quality and not a quantity

Clear, Dark Luminous Attuned Space Clear - space of the horizon, perspective and distinctiveness, it is emotionally neutral Dark - obscurity or fog; black, thick, gloomy, substratum of delusion of persecution Luminous - blinded by intense light...mystical In sum, hallucination and delusion cannot be understood without knowledge of spatial experience. The healthy mind involves not just reality testing but the structure of space.

Causality: (determinism, chance, intentionality) (1) determinism and melancholia - crushed under the weight of the past, cannot change anything, nothing left to chance or free will (2) chance and mania - world of irresponsibility bound neither to past nor future, everything is by chance (3) intentionality - paranoiacs see intentions everywhere… everything has meaning related to them.

Materiality and Substance - physical qualities (1) consistency (fluid, soft, viscous) (2) tension, shock, heaviness and lightness (3) hot and cold (4) light and colour Each person has his or her own way of constructing meaning in their inner worlds. This involves unique interactions and distortions in the experience of temporality, spatiality, causality, and materiality. This provides for the form of experience rather than its subject matter.

The Differences Between Phenomenology & Existential Analysis (1) Existential analysis does not restrict itself to the investigation of states of consciousness but takes into account the entire existence of the individual. (2) Phenomenology emphasizes unity of the inner world of experience, whereas existential analysis maintains that one individual may live in two or more conflicting worlds. (3) Phenomenology takes into account only the immediate subjective worlds of experience. Existential analysis strives to reconstruct the development and transformation of an individual’s world or conflicting worlds. In short, existential analysis operates within a larger frame of reference.

THE BIG SYNTHESIS! PHILOSOPHY PSYCHOLOGY

THE BIG SYNTHESIS! ACTION MODEL EXPERIENCE MODEL

THE BIG SYNTHESIS! AESTHETICS (ART) KNOWLEDGE

PSYC18 - Psychology of Emotion Lecture 11