Psychology

Phenomenology - 1

Phenomenology - 1

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Embodiment and Phenomenology

The Body in Psychology

Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage – he is called Self. He lives in your body, he is your body.

(Nietzsche, 1961 [1883], p. 62)

The body has generally been treated as a biological object in psychology

Our body is the vehicle for communicating with others & carrying out everyday lives.

At all levels – individual, relational & cultural – apparently 'personal' and 'natural' as the body is but also intensely 'social.'

What is Embodiment?

'Embodiment' - of or related to the human body.

We are always located somewhere & at some time - awareness profoundly influenced by the body.

Relevant to many fields, including religion, science, and philosophy.

Recognising that the body is our way of experiencing and understanding the world.

Dualism

In the Western world individuals have grown accustomed to a way of understanding themselves which divides their existence between the mind and the body.

The classic statement of this dualism was made by Descartes in the seventeenth century

- People experience & understand themselves in two diverse ways:

1) as bodies occupying a specific location in space & time

2) as persons or selves associated with the processes of thinking

We cannot associate ourselves with any aspect of our own bodies - if many of the attributes of our physical presence disappeared we would continue to exist as a self.

People in the seventeenth century becoming increasingly more aware - existed as persons or minds which were somehow distinct from their bodies

Alternatives to Dualism

Whilst Descartes admits that we are 'united with' our bodies, he did not examine this unison in any way

Descartes did not question the notion that the sense of self can only emerge from thinking

Being embodied and located in the extended world of time & space is not only a necessary precondition for thought it is its basis.

All we have is an intelligent body: body and mind are the same, not simply biology; we are our body and, through this, perform selfhood.

This bodily experience is often pre-reflective

Reintroducing the Body to Psychology

Much of the last fifty years of psychology has been taken up with questions of the 'mind' - body has often been entirely ignored.

Where the body has appeared, psychological & social complexity lost

Biologically-orientated psychologists have tended to reduce psychology to biology (esp. brain).

A monist positions

See Joseph Schwartz (1997) on 'genetic fundamentalism'.

The Psychosocial Body