Two Essays on the Philosophy of Mental Health
Cód:
491_9780994091000
In this book the authors propose a novel understanding of the meaning and treatment of psychopathology. They consider contemporary explanations of mental health problems such as cognitive distortion, impeded self-actualisation or unconscious conflict, and make the argument that these explanations are incomplete. Instead, they view psychological symptoms as expressing a mixed reality. By mixed reality they intend to emphasise that troubled thoughts, feelings and behaviour not only reflect disorder, but also contain a normalising or healing tendency - analogous to the healing tendency that is activated in any living organism which finds itself in a wounded state. In the interest of providing a context or framework for understanding this healing tendency, they investigate the philosophical underpinnings of the notions of normality and abnormality. They define normality in terms of the complementarity between the uniqueness of personal existence and the linking force of relationship, and see abnormality in terms of the breach of this complementarity. In view of this emphasis on being and relationship they consider various philosophical approaches to the question of how things are in themselves and how they relate to one another. In exploring these issues they examine, with particular attention, the works of three contemporary thinkers: Graham Harman, Kenneth Gergen and Kenneth Schmitz. This examination leads the authors to propose a personalist vision in which they understand the accord of to be and to relate as ontologically grounded. Moreover, they propose that the intelligibility of epistemological, moral/ethical and psychological dimensions of human experience depends on this ontological grounding. The complementarity or trusted connection, which they consider to be at the basis of all human experience, becomes a key feature of their interpretive approach. They speak, therefore, of the priority of the hermeneutics of belief over the herm
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