340 likes | 538 Views
Introduction. ED(s), Embodiment , and Identity. Outlook . Disorder of eating behaviour. Disorder of embodiment. Disorder of identity. Hypothesis.
E N D
Introduction ED(s), Embodiment, and Identity
Outlook Disorder of eating behaviour Disorder of embodiment Disorder of identity
Hypothesis • Persons with EDs experience their own body first and foremost as an object being looked at by another, rather than coenesthetically or from a first-person perspective.
Clinicalimpressions(supporting the hypothesis) • Alienation from one’s own body and from one’s own emotions, • disgust for it, • shame, • and an exaggerated concern to take responsibility for the way one appears to the others; • as well as the capacity to feel oneself only through the look of the others, • through objective measures • and through self-starvation
Phenomenologicalframework • Many of the features of persons with EDs can be illuminated by looking at it in the light of the Sartrean concept of feeling a lived-body-for-others.
Three bodies • Living/Lived body (Leib) • Object body (Körper) • Lived body for others
Living/lived body (Leib) • The body experienced from within, my own directexperience of my body in the first-person perspective, myself as a spatiotemporal embodied agent in the world. • This is the coenesthetic apprehension of one’s own body, the primitive experience of oneself, the basic form of self-awareness, or direct, unmediated experience ofone’s own body. • Chaire(Merleau-Ponty)
LEIB (in statu detrahendi) Living body,ratherthan Lived body,ratherthan Perceived body Objectualized body Externalized body Explicit Body Pornographic body • Dead body • Devitalized body • Deanimated body • An-emotional body • An-intentional body • Mechanical body
Object-body (Körper) • The body explicitly perceived and/or thematically investigated from without, as for example by natural sciences as anatomy and physiology, from a third person perspective. • The body that can be manipulated.
LivedObject • The lived-body turns into a physical, objective body whenever webecome aware of it in a disturbing way. Implicit=> Explicit • Whenever our movement is somehow impeded or disrupted, then the lived-body is thrown back on itself, materialized or ’corporealized’. • It becomes an object for me.
Lived body forothers • One can apprehend one’s own body as something when it is looked at by another person. • When I become aware that I - or better that my own body - is looked at by another person, I realize that my body can be an object for that person. • Sartre: the ‘lived-body-for-others’. “With the appearance of the Other’s look I experience the revelation of my being-as-object”. • The upshot of this is a feeling of “having my being outside (…) [is the feeling] of being an object”. • Thus, one’s identity becomes reified by the gaze of the other, and reduced to the external appearance of one’s own body.
Shame • Shame reveals to myself my selfhood as an object for another (Sartre 1943). • Shame means to be utterly exposed to the present, to the painful presence of their devaluating gazes, to annihilating disdain and contempt (Fuchs 2002). • Shame lowers the person’s self-respect, and may entail either the person’s wish to hide or disappear or, more positively, attempts to reconstruct or improve oneself (Williams 1933).
Shame • Shame is an affect that awakens and focuses my attention. • When I feel ashamed, I am aware of being seen by another person whose gaze uncovers a part of who I am, usually a part that makes me feel embarrassed, inadequate, dishonored and humiliated. • The effect of shame is that it reduces the complexity of the person that I am to one single aspect of it: when I feel ashamed I know that for the other I am nothing but that specific feature of the complexities of who I am.
Body asOtherness • One’s body as the most intimate formofOtherness • Involuntaryaspects in humanexistence: body,world, others, history • The body asfacticity and contingency • Dialecticsbetweenoneself and one’s own body
Body asfacticity • ‘Facticity’, including oneself as ‘this’ body, its form, height, weight, colour, as well as one’s past and what is actually happening. • Havingbeen a living bodily being before, I now realize that I have a material (impeding, clumsy, vulnerable, finite, etc.) body.
Body as a task • The material body is transcendental to me. • It is an attribute that I can/must modify. => Techno-body • The culture of late modernity promises that one can modify one’s own material body at one’s own will.
Part Two Phenomenologyof ED(s)
Experimentalphenomenology • Factor 1: “Feeling oneself only through the gaze of the other and defining oneself only through the evaluation of the other” (GEO) • Factor 2: “Feeling oneself only through objective measures” (OM) • Factor 3: “Feeling extraneous from one’s own body” (EB) • Factor 4: “Feeling oneself through starvation” (S).
Factor 1: “Feeling oneself only through the gaze of the other and defining oneself only through the evaluation of the other” (GEO) • Knowing what the others think of me calms me down (15) 0.79 • I can’t stand not to know what the others think of me (18) 0.89 • For me it’s very important to see myself through the eyes of the others (1) 0.80 • When I meet someone I can’t stay without knowing what he thinks of me (23) 0.78 • I am dependent on the evaluation of the others (13) 0.91 • Even if I think that the way the others evaluate me is wrong, I can’t do without it (16) 0.86 • The way I feel depends on the way I feel looked at by the others (11) 0.82 • Sometimes I focalize myself through the gaze of the others (7) 0.70 • Seeing myself from their point of view me makes me feel very anxious (8) 0.72
Factor 2: “Feeling oneself only through objective measures” (OM) • Having control on my weight means having control on the possible changes that happen in my body (21) 0.89 • Only if I have my weight under control being looked at by the others makes me fell allright (10) 0.85 • Having my weight under control makes me feel in control of my emotional states (22) 0.91 • In all this confusion knowing that my weight is under control reassures me a little bit (9) 0.77 • If my measures remain the same over time I feel that I am myself, if not I feel I am getting lost (5) 0.77
Factor 3: “Feeling extraneous from one’s own body” (EB) • Sometimes, the emotions I feel are extraneous to me and scare me (4) 0.80 • I see myself out of focus, I don’t feel myself (14) 0.86 • I see myself fuzzy/hazy, as if I had no boundaries (6) 0.79 • The fear of change is an emotion that I can’t tolerate (20) 0.80 • The flesh is unimportant; it doesn’t let me feel my bones (12) 0.71
Factor 4: “Feeling oneself through starvation” (S). • Eating according to my own rules is the only way to feel myself (2) 0.84 • If I could not eat the way I want I would not be myself anymore (3) 0.86 • If I follow your dietary prescriptions I cannot recognize myself when I look at myself in the mirror; this does not happen if I • do things in my own way (17) 0.73 • Changing my own eating habits scares me to death, as any other change in my life (19) 0.71
A tentativemodel Feeling oneself through the gaze of the other Feeling oneself through objective measures Feeling extraneous from oneself Feeling oneself through starvation
ED(s): Esthetic body ratherthancenesthetic • No cenesthetic (pathic) basis for identity • Hyper-identification with one’s own body One’s own body as: • An object looked at by the others • An object to be manipulated • The Buildung of one’s body is a way to build one’s identity
Part Three The dialecticsof the body
The dialecticsof the body • I am this body, but also I am not just this body • I am this body, but also I have that body
The paradoxical body in melancholia • Strcture of hyper-identification (with one’s own body) • Object-body-that-I-am • Paradoxical Lived Körper • This-ness • Living dead
ABE(s) in Schizophrenia • That-ness • Dynamization of bodily boundaries: 16 patients • Dynamization of body construction: 13 patients • Externalization: 11 patients • Morbid Objectivization or Devitalization: 14 patients • Pain-like experiences: 6 patients • Dysmorphic-like experiences: 9 patients
Hypochondria: hyper-esthesic body • One’s body lived hyper-esthesically => becomes an object for bio-medicine • Bio-medicine is collusive to this