I propose in this paper to explore Heidegger's thought of selfhood in Contributions to Philosophy through a close reading of key paragraphs. It is often assumed that after the "turning" in his thinking, when Heidegger engages in a thought of Ereignis no longer centered on human Dasein as the locus of the meaning of being, the reference to selfhood would fade away. However, a close reading of the Contributions reveals that a renewed thinking of selfhood, of what (...) Heidegger calls "self-being" , is enacted precisely at the same time that the subjectivistic understanding of the self is more radically abandoned. I attempt to delineate how Heidegger undertakes to rethink selfhood no longer from the paradigm of the ego, but from the event of Ereignis , or enowning. (shrink)

Beginning with a wide-ranging discussion of liberal philosophers, Fairfield proposes that liberalism requires a complete reconception of moral selfhood, one that accommodates elements of the contemporary critiques without abandoning liberal individualism.

Selfhood and Sacrifice is an original exploration of the ideas of two major contemporary thinkers.

This chapter examines Soren Kierkegaard's thoughts about selfhood and spirit. It analyses Kierkegaard's conceptions of self, passion, and will in his psychological works The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death, suggesting that these works offer more direct or dialectical analyses of different conscious states. The chapter also considers Kierkegaard's view about existentialism and personalism, and his belief that selfhood is the goal rather than the presupposition of existence.

Plotinus’s theory of dual selfhood has ethical norms built into it, all of which derive from the ontological superiority of the higher (or undescended) soul in us overthe body-soul compound. The moral life, as it is presented in the Enneads, is a life of self-perfection, devoted to the care of the higher self. Such a conception of morality is prone to strike modern readers as either ‘egoistic’ or unduly austere. If there is no doubt that Plotinus’s ethics is exceptionally (...) austere, it will be argued below that it is not ‘egoistic.’ To that effect, the following questions will be addressed: Are the virtues, civic as well as purificatory, mere means to Plotinus’s metaphysically conceived ethical goal? To what extent must the lower self abnegate itself so as to enable the higher self to ascend to Intellect and beyond? And if self-perfection lies at the centre of the Plotinian moral life, is there any conceptual room left in it for other-regarding norms of conduct? A close reading of selected passages from Plotinus’s tractate I.2[19] On Virtues and tractate VI.8[39] On Free Will and the Will of the One will, it is claimed, bring elements of answer to these questions. (shrink)

When we compare Henry and Levinas, we stumble upon a difficulty. Henry tries to reduce transcendence to immanence; Levinas, on the contrary, strives to call immance into question and to lend a new dignity to transcendence. Hence, the two thinkers seem to be diametrically opposed to one another. Yet, if one does not limit oneself to such an overall view, one finds some similarities between them. There is an affinity between the two approaches which results from the fact that both (...) thinkers establish a narrow relationship between originally passive affectivity and the selfhood of the self. Henry and Levinas are, despite all their differences, united in their efforts to ground selfhood on passivity and affectivity. Assuredly, it remains a question whether or not an originally passive affectivity is really capable of founding selfhood. Some doubt arises here from the observation that affectivity tends to anonymity. However, the observation that affectivity is marked by a tendency to anonymity has not only a negative and critical significance; it also characterizes affective states and arousals in a positive way, since one can maintain that the self could not be a ?self? unless it were constantly confronted with a tendency to anonymity. (shrink)

_Selfhood and Appearing_ explores how, as embodied subjects, we are in the very world that we consciously internalize. Employing the insights of Merleau-Ponty and Patočka, this volume examines how the intertwining of both senses of “being-in” constitutes our reality.

Selfhood and the Soul is a collection of new and original essays in honour of Christopher Gill, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter. Although they all share the same concern - the experience of being a person and the question of how best to live - as in the work of the honorand himself they are distinguished by a diversity of approach and subject matter, taking the reader on a journey from ancient philosophy to medical (...) writing via discussions of topics as varied as money, love, free will, and cookery. (shrink)

Explores the notion of selfhood in the wake of the post-structuralist debates.

Upshot: Self and Other takes on an ambitious task of articulating an account of selfhood that would do justice both to the experiential and the intersubjectively constructed aspect of the self. We claim that Zahavi argues convincingly against the possibility of reducing the former to the latter, but that he needs to develop his position further in order to offer a convincing account of their interconnectedness.

This book presents engaging and informative analysis of three interrelated notions, namely: selfhood, the first person pronoun ‘I’ and the first person perspective. Philosophers have long debated about these notions on non-empirical grounds often focusing on the question of whether the first person pronoun ‘I’, beyond its role as a grammatical term, has an underlying implication for the ontology of selfhood. Philosophers continuously grapple with whether the first person pronoun ‘I’ is a referring expression and if it is, (...) what its referent is or could be. To give an adequate treatment of such questions, philosophers have begun working across the relevant disciplines. This book highlights some excellent examples of the complex nature of the first person thoughts as they figure in linguistics, autism, thought insertion in schizophrenia and the phenomenon of mental autonomy. In Selfhood, Autism and Thought Insertion, many of the leading philosophers working on this issue, as well as a few emerging scholars, have written 12 new essays addressing questions besetting the ontology of selfhood. The essays address topics as diverse as reflections on E. J. Lowe’s non-Cartesian substance dualism, physical determinism, the metaphysics and anti-metaphysics of the self, animalism, neo-Lockean persons, rationality and the first-person, whether the first person is essentially a linguistic concept, first-person and third-person perspectives and autism, consciousness, first person perspective and neuroimaging, thought insertion and mental autonomy. The contributors to this volume do not agree in all of the details associated with the notion of selfhood, yet they all have a common conviction that the central questions besetting it must be taken seriously. (shrink)

Some scholars have identified a puzzle in the writings of Mary Astell (1666–1731), a deeply religious feminist thinker of the early modern period. On the one hand, Astell strongly urges her fellow women to preserve their independence of judgement from men; yet, on the other, she insists upon those same women maintaining a submissive deference to the Anglican church. These two positions appear to be incompatible. In this paper, I propose a historical-contextualist solution to the puzzle: I argue that the (...) seeming inconsistency can be dispelled through a close examination of (i) the concepts of selfhood and self-government in Anglican women’s devotional texts of the period, and of (ii) the role that these concepts play in Astell’s feminist arguments. (shrink)

Recently, a three-dimensional construct model for complex experiential Selfhood has been proposed (Fingelkurts et al., 2016b,c). According to this model, three specific subnets (or modules) of the brain self-referential network (SRN) are responsible for the manifestation of three aspects/features of the subjective sense of Selfhood. Follow up multiple studies established a tight relation between alterations in the functional integrity of the triad of SRN modules and related to them three aspects/features of the sense of self; however, the causality (...) of this relation is yet to be shown. In this article we approached the question of causality by exploring functional integrity within the three SRN modules that are thought to underlie the three phenomenal components of Selfhood while these components were manipulated mentally by experienced meditators in a controlled and independent manner. Participants were requested, in a block-randomised manner, to mentally induce states representing either increased (up-regulation) or decreased (down-regulation) sense of (a) witnessing agency (“Self”), or (b) body representational-emotional agency (“Me”), or (c) reflective/narrative agency (“I”), while their brain activity was recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG). This EEG-data was complemented by first-person phenomenological reports and standardised questionnaires which focused on subjective contents of three aspects of Selfhood. The results of the study strengthen the case for a direct causative relationship between three phenomenological aspects of Selfhood and related to them three modules of the brain SRN. Furthermore, the putative integrative model of the dynamic interrelations among three modules of the SRN has been proposed. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an increase in bear sightings in Latvia, causing a change of tone in the country’s media outlets, regarding the return of “wild” animals. The unease around bear reappearance leads me to investigate the affective side of relations with beings that show strength and resilience in more-than-human encounters in human-inhabited spaces. These relations are characterized by the contrasting human feelings of alienation vis-à-vis their environments today and a false sense of security, resulting in disbelief to encounter beings (...) capable of challenging human exceptionalism. In a broader sense, the unease connects to human self-constitution and the fragility of the self, fueled by the domination of substance ontologies. This article considers bears as beings “in exile,” as potential threats to human self-pronounced exceptionality, and thus, examples of experienced abject regarding human subjectivity. The article aims to analyze the way the constitution of human selfhood is tied to the alienation of wildlife and its genealogical and biopolitical context and to question if a reconceptualization of the human/nonhuman relations via process, instead of substance ontology, is needed. (shrink)

The health benefits of practising mindfulness are well documented, yet the phenomenological mechanisms of such practice remain under-theorised from both ontogenetic and social perspectives. By leveraging an enactive perspective on selfhood, these lacunae can be addressed: firstly, it is argued that proper understanding of mindfulness – and the health benefits that mindfulness practices seek – relies on recognising the socio-embodied nature of the self; consequently, occasions in which the therapeutic need for mindfulness are most pressing will be shown to (...) be inextricably tied to socio-embodied fluctuations across different stages of life. What emerges is a phenomenological understanding of mindfulness as allowing one to dwell in the sensuous density of the present and, through this, remain connected to the social world of open possibilities. (shrink)

Kohut’s lasting and most important contribution to psychoanalytic clinical theory was his recognition that the experiencing of selfhood is always constituted, both developmentally and in psychoanalytic treatment, in a context of emotional interrelatedness. The experiencing of selfhood, he realized, or of its collapse, is context-embedded through and through. The theoretical language of self psychology with its noun, “the self,” reifies the experiencing of selfhood and transforms it into a metaphysical entity with thing-like properties, in effect undoing Kohut’s (...) hard-won clinical contextualizations. The language of such decontextualizing objectifications bewitches intelligence in order to evade the tragic dimension of finite human existing. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for people to suffer identity crises. Yet, faced with similarly disruptive circumstances, some people plunge into an identity crisis while others do not. How must selfhood be construed given that people are vulnerable to identity crises? And how must agency be construed given that some people skirt potential identity crises and renegotiate the terms of their personal identity without losing their equilibrium -- their sense of self? If an adequate theory of the self and agency (...) must be able to account for this capacity to avert identity crises, I argue that it must include an account of agentic corporeity. After explaining what an identity crisis is, I examine Charles Taylor’s and David Velleman’s accounts of identity and agency and argue that their omission of agentic corporeity makes it impossible for them to convincingly account for the ability to avert an identity crisis. In the spirit of Merleau-Ponty’s account of the intentional arc and J. J. Gibson’s account of the relation between corporeity and affordances, I sketch an account of psychocorporeal practical intelligence that includes three main components – psychocorporeal insight, psychocorporeal values, and psychocorporeal versatility. I conclude by connecting my position to Aristotle’s views about practical understanding and by arguing that both Taylor and Velleman have reason to embrace my position. (shrink)

Based on previous studies implicating increased functional connectivity within the self-referential brain network in major depressive disorder (MDD), and considering the functional roles of three distinct modules of such brain net (responsible for three-dimensional components of Selfhood) together with the documented abnormalities of self-related processing in MDD, we tested the hypothesis that patients with depression would exhibit increased connectivity within each module of the self-referential brain network and that the strength of these connections would correlate positively with depression severity. (...) Applying the electroencephalogram (EEG) operational synchrony analysis to extract three modules of the self-referential brain network in 12 medication-free depressive outpatients and 10 control subjects we have found an increase in the strength of EEG synchrony within all three modules in depressive patients (though non-significant for the right module). Furthermore, multiple regression analysis that used 3 factors (values of synchrony strength for all three modules) as input indicated that combined increase in the strength of synchrony in all three modules was positively associated with severity of depression. Taken together the findings of this study suggest that depression is primarily associated with hypersynchrony in all three modules of the brain self-referential network (the anterior module been responsible for “witnessing observation and first–person perspective”, the left posterior module been responsible for “reflective agency and narration” and the right posterior module been responsible for “bodily representational-emotional agency”), thus contributing to excessive self-focus, rumination, and body tension. (shrink)

Although effectively the idea of selfhood receives scant attention in much current educational policy, it is an idea that is central to understanding education in the Western tradition. This paper evaluates the implications of a growing movement in educational philosophy and theory to see the self as relational to the extent that it possesses little or no internally maintained steady identity and is constantly reconstituted by external agencies in a variety of ways. A well-worked-through view that draws on the (...) work of Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas amongst others and that is taken to be representative of this wider movement is examined. It is argued that while important issues concerning the relationship between education and individual subjectivities are raised in ways that invite productive discussion, ultimately the decentred and de-nucleated conception of the self to which its argument leads is both phenomenologically untenable and educationally stultifying. (shrink)

This essay examines three works by three women writers whose strategies for rewriting the past include a revisionary engagement with the cultural legacies of Ancient Greece and Rome: The Emperor’s Babe: A Novel, Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, and Voyage of the Sable Venus. It argues that each embodies a mode of resistance that both protests the historic oppression of women of colour and asserts a black female agency, insisting on an empowered present and future. In achieving this, (...) all three transgress or subvert conventional generic distinctions between verse and prose, and, in Lewis’s case, between the cultural forms and academic disciplines of art, art history and literature. Each work insists on a transnational conception of black identity, implicitly tracing black diasporic experience through Africa, Europe and the Americas, and asserting the continued interconnections between these three. And, in their confrontations with the histories of colonialism, empire and slavery, each invokes not just the history of the seventeenth to twenty-first centuries ce but also the cultures of Ancient Greece and Rome, the legacies of which underpinned these modern European processes of domination. Of the three works discussed here, those by Evaristo and Lewis ultimately constitute works of greater subversive power than does that of Philip. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 9, Issue 2, pp 177 - 204 This article presents a synoptic account of the faculties of rational soul in the philosophy of Proclus and an interpretation of the unity which this soul constitutes despite the plurality of its faculties and objects of its attentions. It seeks to demonstrate that Proclus, through his conceptual construction of a rational soul grounded in an objective and cosmic framework, accounts for at least some of the subjective aspects of selfhood (...) which many contemporary philosophical theories take to be necessary for a concept of self, but that he does so on his own terms. This means, among other things, that Proclus posits each rational soul as a subjective entity with its own perspective on the world, but a perspective which is always grounded, more or less, in an objective knowledge of the world which belongs to it essentially and eternally. Despite grounding the subjective in the objective, Proclus is able to account for the individuality and uniqueness of souls within the limits of his objective framework. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 315-339.

This paper examines the unique structures of identity formation within the craftsperson/maker mindset and their relation to Western views of work and labor. The contemporary Maker Movement has its origins not only in the internet revolution, but also in the revival of handicraft during the last several economic recessions. Economic uncertainty drives people toward the ideals and practices of craft as a way to regain a sense of agency and control. One learns how to become an active participant in our (...) material lives by making and maintaining the objects that surround us. This orientation toward craft has the potential to alter the practitioner's sense of self going forward. I will argue that the work-based nature of craft leads to a unique and positive sense of self that the assumed freedom of ‘art’ and intellectualized labor unwittingly discourages. Tacit mechanisms shape the craft mindset through emphasis on skill, mastery of materials, polymathic problem solving, and quality. Hannah Arendt’s notion of the vita activa and Martin Heidegger’s arguments on modern technology reveal the dynamics between physical and intellectual labor and how many have greatly misunderstood the ‘essence’ of the craftsperson’s work. Peter Dormer and Glenn Adamson’s analysis of the nature of craft demonstrate how these two lines of thought can be unified into one system of selfhood granting the greater sense of agency many seek without relying on an individualized sense of self. The Richard Sennett shows how this sense of self challenges the desire to liberate ourselves from labor via technology and poetic autonomy as seen in Franco Berardi’s Manifesto of Post-Futurism. Malcolm Gladwell's work on intuition examines the impact of this tacit craft mindset and the psychological mechanisms that drive it. This will allow Peter Korn’s first-hand account of his own craft practice to demonstrate this structure and its inherent points of resistance against today’s hyper-individualized and resultingly selfish ways of life. Throughout this paper, a clear emphasis on materiality as a profound source of embodied knowledge will be maintained to reveal craftspersonhood as a source of deep existential fulfillment and practical philosophy. Acknowledging and embracing our intrinsic materiality and all that it has to teach us is imperative in the face of a consumption-centric culture of excess and exploitation that looms over much of the West. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Kyselo argues that an enactive approach to selfhood can overcome ‘the body-social problem’: “the question for philosophy of cognitive science about how bodily and social aspects figure in the individuation of the human individual self” ). Kyselo’s claim is that we should conceive of the human self as a socially enacted phenomenon that is bodily mediated. Whilst there is much to be praised about this claim, I will demonstrate in this paper that such a conception (...) of self ultimately leads to a strained interpretation of how bodily and social processes are related. To this end, I will begin the paper by elucidating the body-social problem as it appears in modern cognitive science and then expounding Kyselo’s solution, which relies on a novel interpretation of Jonas’s concept of needful freedom. In response to this solution, I will highlight two problems which Kyselo’s account cannot overcome in its current state. I will argue that a more satisfactory solution to the body-social problem involves a re-conception of the human body as irrevocably socially constituted and the human social world as irrevocably bodily constituted. On this view, even the most minimal sense of selfhood cannot privilege either bodily or social processes; instead, the two are ontologically entwined such that humans are biosocial selves. (shrink)

This paper provides an interpretation of the existential conception of selfhood that follows from Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception. On this view, people relate to themselves not by “looking within” in acts of introspection but, first, by “looking without” at the field of solicitations in which they are immersed and, eventually, in Merleau-Ponty’s words, by “making explicit” the “melodic unity” or “immanent sense” of their behavior. To make sense of this, I draw out a distinction latent in Merleau-Ponty’s view between (...) a pre-reflective sense of self and a reflective self-interpretation. The former is a suite of abilities and dispositions in light of which a person is aware of and drawn to act in a situation. This sense of self undergoes transitions over time, is constitutively susceptible to moments of disorientation, and tends toward but never achieves full coherence. Reflective self-interpretation is an activity whereby someone—provisionally and defeasibly—clarifies, articulates, and gets a better “grip” on how they are prereflectively drawn to act. I ground this interpretation in a detailed reading of Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of romantic love and I corroborate it by examining his account of the emergence of class-consciousness in the self-interpretation of a worker. (shrink)

What separates living things or more specifically Human beings from other things is the ability to do certain activities with an intention and to be conscious of what they do. This is why these other things are called dead or non living. This distinction between the living and the dead is of great philosophical interest. Humans are sentient, i.e. they are aware of what they do and what happens around them. By around I mean the surroundings and observance of nature (...) which Humans as a spectator do. And this includes all the natural things as well as living things including plants, animals, insects etc. What separates Humans from others, for there do seems a difference between objects such as a rock table etc, organisms which includes animals, plants etc and Human beings on the one hand and my self. The point here is to understand and explore this distinction between the living and the dead. Or if I be more specific, the special feature or quality in Humans that separates them from every other thing in this nature, so what it is to be self and to be alive and how it is different from another thing which may not be alive? How are they different from each other? For if we fail to give an answer or reason for why we think like this, then though despite of noticing this distinction, we will fail to take it as a knowledge claim, and perhaps might just end up taking it to be like a folk psychological view. In the hope of describing such confused matters carefully and clearly, an attempt is bestowed in the form of conversation between two persons in order to deal with the philosophy of simplicity, where the first mind or character Q, due to his curiosity and desire to know is unaware and the other person P, whose basis of knowledge is his simple is a disciple of life as proposed by the other self. Here the oblivious person due to his unknowingness is inquisitive and thus he can only find solutions of his doubts by either asking these queries to himself or to any other being. On the other hand, the other person, who is also desperate knowledge seeker, plays a role of learned for the time being, yet they may change their roles at times and this is agreed by the acceptance of both the persons. A major thing pertains from the nature of both these fictitious characters, and that is the importance of questioning in our lives. Questioning is normally a verbal act which is probably used to collect an amount of data to clear your doubts. Questions are addressed in two ways, firstly to the self and secondly, by to people other than you. Both Q and P follow both the ways, however, generally, it is considered that a person involved into self-questioning is deeper by nature. But this is only true and such a situation arises only, when one really accepts or knows that he is aware of something. Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 B.C.) always questioned others in order to reach understanding. This was because he firmly felt that he knows nothing so how can he obtain his answers by questioning himself. However, in my opinion for the refinement and to increase the range of mind, one has to contemplate and hence has to reason, which is the cause of questioning. Therefore, in addition to the contemplation, both the characters follow that a query shall be put-forwarded to both, i.e., to themselves as well as to others. (shrink)

I. The "Moral Universal" from the Perspectives of East Asian Thought jl\ defining characteristic of East Asian thought is the widely accepted proposition ...

This essay In this essay develops and defends the view that a “self “ is nothing but a creature that bears the property of selfhood, where bearing selfhood is, in turn, nothing but having the capacity to deploy self-representations. Self-representations, it is argued, are very special things. They are distinguished from other sorts of representations,not by what they represent – mysterious inner entities called selves, say -- but by how they represent what they represent. A self-representation represents nothing (...) but a living human animal but it does do in a special way. It follows that a "self" is not a thing that a living human animals has or contains within, but something a living human animal is. The view defended represents a principled middle ground between Cartesianism and Factionalism or Eliminativism about the self. (shrink)

At the intersection of law, feminism and philosophy, this book analyses the ways in which certain bodies and 'selves' continue to be treated as monstrous aberrations from the 'ideal' figure or norm. Employing contemporary feminist philosophy to rethink accepted legal ideas, the book is divided into three sections. The first focuses on the different relational ontologies of philosophers Adriana Cavarero and Christine Battersby - also considering their work via a third term: Spinoza. The second turns to diverse feminist engagements with (...) the social contract theorists. The third section employs insights from throughout the book to focus more explicitly on law - and, in particular privacy law and the so-called 'wrongful birth' cases. Bringing together more than twenty years of sustained reflection, this book offers an insightful account of how contemporary feminist philosophy can contribute to a richer understanding of law. It will be of enormous interest to scholars and students working in the areas of legal theory, feminist thought and philosophy. (shrink)

Drawing on insights from Søren Kierkegaard, Art and Selfhood: A Kierkegaardian Account defends the idea that art matters in our society today because it can play a pivotal role in helping us become better and more authentic versions of ourselves.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Threat to Selfhood: Moral Distress and the Psychiatric Training CultureEsther NathansonWhile many medical specialties offer to heal, or even cure, psychiatry—uniquely—places the doctor–patient relationship at the center of the therapeutic effort. Psychiatrists must possess a complex and challenging combination of broad medical knowledge, finely honed interpersonal and analytic skills and confidence in their abilities, despite limited understanding of the workings of the brain. Inpatient psychiatry in particular (...) demands a degree of strength to withstand emotional, and sometimes physical, assault from patients who may be suicidal, desperate, paranoid, aggressive or delusional. Beyond these abilities, a good psychiatrist must have robust but ‘therapeutically porous’ emotional boundaries that allow genuine empathy for the patient but, at the same time, limit internalization of the patient’s anguish as the practitioner’s own: the exquisite balance of ‘self–versus–other’ in the therapeutic encounter.Unfortunately, during my psychiatry residency in the UK, development of these intangible but essential boundaries was entirely absent from the curriculum. Early in training I struggled with my tendency to become an emotional chameleon with feelings and energies buffeted around by the prevailing emotions of each patient that walked through the door. I felt that patients expected me to offer tidy explanations for their suffering and provide answers to profound questions of meaning; to make the world a safe and understandable place. Given the complexity of mental illness and its interplay with social circumstances this was naïve and, I now realize, often unnecessary, but the weight of responsibility was unbearable. I was also completely unprepared for the intensity of human suffering I saw, and wholly unready to provide the level of interpersonal engagement required for genuine healing. My own emotional integrity felt threatened by the depth of patients’ needs, and my response—both physical and emotional—was intense and frightening.Much of my distress resulted from the profound and inevitable tension between the empathy necessary to comprehend patients’ experiences, which were often extreme and bewildering, and the need for resilience and self–protection at a time when my grasp of psychological theories and treatment practices was still rudimentary. I felt guilty that patients bore the brunt of my inexperience, and duplicitous purporting to help while burdening them with intolerable drug side–effects and stigmatizing, albeit effective, treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Time constraints and guidance from senior faculty encouraged expediency over treatment efficacy or durability; psychopharmacology was prioritized over the psychotherapeutic techniques and psychosocial interventions I found more effective for many patients. During the phase of our training that took place in a rambling, now defunct, asylum in the U.K, visits to the locked ward, which was reserved for patients considered a danger to others, were usually prompted by nurses’ requests for chemical restraint, the ‘pharmaceutical strait–jacket’. I was deeply uncomfortable with the role of ‘restrainer’ but had insufficient experience or seniority to propose other methods. It was only when, years later, I investigated re–training in the U.S that the senior psychiatry resident at a well–known program told me gently, ‘Oh, we assume that students will have a breakdown in their first year, so we have systems in place to help’. I’ll never forget those words; they are, to this day, the only validation of the emotional toll of my early training years.Adding to my discomfort were various ethically dubious administrative practices, the most troubling being the clinic’s unwillingness to disclose to patients that we were trainees, with little clinical experience. Senior faculty were dismissive when I asked whether my first psychotherapy patient had been told I was a trainee, indeed that I had never conducted psychotherapy before. My question was greeted with amusement and an assurance that, although she had not been told, I (not the patient, interestingly) would do fine.Due to the large number of no–shows in psychiatric outpatient clinics it was also standard practice to triple–book appointment times on the [End Page 115] assumption that one or more patients would fail to attend. Not uncommonly, more than one patient would arrive for the same appointment, leaving others to suffer agonizing waits that were often intensified by the deep discomfort... (shrink)

Identifying Selfhood organizes many of the features of Ricoeur’s philosophical views around the major theme of selfhood, Ricoeur’s hermeneutical quest for a “non-idealistic interpretation of the self.” In a quasi-developmental account, the author, Henry Isaac Venema, provides the reader with numerous details of Ricoeur’s relation to phenomenology and hermeneutics, as well as the complexities of Ricoeur’s views of self-constitution and self-understanding, involving the use of symbolism, metaphor, and narrative.