Emotions and Personhood: Exploring Fragility – Making Sense of Vulnerability

353 Pages·2013·2.803 MB·English

by  Giovanni Stanghellini and Rene Rosfort

Emotions and Personhood
International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry
Series editors: Bill (K.W.M.) Fulford, Katherine Morris, John Z. Sadler, and
Giovanni Stanghellini
Volumes in the series:
Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man: Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self
Th e Early Writing and Work of R.D. Laing, Lysaker and Lysaker
1927–1960 Responsibility and Psychopathy
Beveridge Malatesti and McMillan
Mind, Meaning, and Mental Disorder 2e Body-Subjects and Disordered Minds
Bolton and Hill Matthews
What is Mental Disorder? Rationality and Compulsion: Applying action
Bolton theory to psychiatry
Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs Nordenfelt
Bortolotti Philosophical Perspectives on Technology and
Postpsychiatry Psychiatry
Bracken and Th omas Phillips (ed.)
Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and the A-Rational Th e Metaphor of Mental Illness
Mind Pickering
Brakel Mapping the Edges and the In-between
Unconscious Knowing and Other Essays in Potter
Psycho-Philosophical Analysis Trauma, Truth, and Reconciliation: Healing
Brakel Damaged Relationships
Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience Potter (ed.)
Broome and Bortolotti (eds.) Th e Philosophy of Psychiatry: A Companion
Free Will and Responsibility: A Guide for Radden
Practitioners Th e Virtuous Psychiatrist
Callender Radden and Sadler
Reconceiving Schizophrenia Autonomy and Mental Disorder
Chung, Fulford, and Graham (eds.) Radoilska (ed.)
Darwin and Psychiatry Feelings of Being
De Block and Adriaens (eds.) Ratcliff e
Nature and Narrative: An Introduction to the Values and Psychiatric Diagnosis
New Philosophy of Psychiatry Sadler
Fulford, Morris, Sadler, and Stanghellini (eds.)
Disembodied Spirits and Deanimated Bodies:
Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry Th e Psychopathology of Common Sense
Fulford, Th ornton, and Graham Stanghellini
Th e Mind and its Discontents Emotions and Personhood
Gillett Stanghellini and Rosfort
Th inking Th rough Dementia Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry
Hughes Th ornton
Dementia: Mind, Meaning, and the Person Empirical Ethics in Psychiatry
Hughes, Louw, and Sabat (eds.) Widdershoven, McMillan, Hope, and Van der
Talking Cures and Placebo Eff ects Scheer (eds.)
Jopling Th e Sublime Object of Psychiatry: Schizophrenia
Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry II: Nosology in Clinical and Cultural Th eory
Kendler and Parnas Woods
Discursive Perspectives in Th erapeutic Practice
Lock and Strong (eds.)
Emotions
and Personhood
Exploring Fragility—
Making Sense
of Vulnerability
By
G iovanni S tanghellini
and
R ené R osfort
1
1
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© Oxford University Press 2013
© Dylan Th omas, Th e Poems of Dylan Th omas, Copyright ©1939 by New Directions
Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. p. 263
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To our parents
Ketty e Umberto—Hanne og Birger
Th e primordial source of our emotions
Th e inspiration for our becoming the persons that we are
Acknowledgements
Th is book would not have been possible without the constant encouragement, compe-
tent assistance, and fi nancial support of a number of people and institutions.
G iovanni wants to thank all the colleagues and students who generously commented
on his lessons and conferences on emotions, vulnerability, and personhood during
the years. Th ey have off ered an inestimable opportunity for in-depth examination and
clarifi cation of these phenomena; allowing these concepts to be communicated and
developed .
Among his colleagues, a special thank you goes to Bill Fulford for being an example
of profundity conjugated to precision, simplicity, and intelligibility.
Giovanni is also grateful to Arnaldo Ballerini, Massimo Ballerini, Matthew Broome,
John Cutting, Th omas Fuchs, Paolo Fusar Poli, Silvio Lenzi, Paul Lysaker, Josef Parnas,
John Sadler, Louis Sass, and to the teaching body of the S cuola di Psicoterapia e Fenom-
enologia of Florence. He is especially grateful to Gilberto Di Petta and Mario Rossi
Monti , for inspiring conversations.
In writing this book Giovanni remembers his teacher Paolo Rossi, who enlightened
his way to philosophy. Paolo was an unforgettable mentor, teaching him the virtue of
reason and the value of tolerance.
René would like to thank, fi rst and foremost, the two teachers and friends who initi-
ated, and still nourish, his thinking about philosophy: Jacob Z. Simonsen and Arne
Grøn. Without their unfl agging support, patience, and keen intellects he would still
be roaming around within the narrow limits of his own thoughts. He also wants to
express his gratitude to the three institutions that have been involved in the writing of
this book: the Faculty of Th eology, University of Copenhagen, in particular the Depart-
ment for Systematic Th eology and the Centre for Naturalism and Christian Semantics;
the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen; the Department of
Philosophy, University of Florence.
René’s work has enjoyed essential assistance from the Carlsberg Foundation. With-
out their generous three-year research grant, this book could not have been realised. He
is grateful for their fi nancial support.
Inspiring academic settings and fi nancial support are necessary, but not suffi cient
conditions for writing about emotions and personhood. René therefore wants to
thank the kind and intelligent persons with whom he has discussed some or all of the
ideas in this book: Iben Damgaard, Mads Peter Karlsen, Claudia Welz, Lars Sandbeck,
Johanne Stubbe Teglbjærg, Carsten Pallesen, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Niels Henrik
Gregersen, Andrea Raballo, Dan Zahavi, Roberta Lanfredini, Borut Škodlar, and
K. Brian Söderquist.
Giovanni and René both want to thank our editors at OUP Martin Baum, Charlotte
Green, and Sarah Stephenson for their patient and competent assistance in preparing
the book.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
And last but not least, we express our immense respect and warm gratitude to Fritz
Saaby Pedersen, who has read and commented on the whole manuscript. Without his
eff orts to clarify and amend our English, this book would have been a much more
bumpy reading experience.
Finally, Giovanni and René want to express their loving gratitude to their wives for
their patient support and indispensable advice during the work on this book. Grazie ,
Paola! Tak for alt , Louise!
Copyright Acknowledgements
Th e authors and publisher are grateful for permission to reproduce extracts from the
following material:
‘Th e Dry Salvages’ from Four Quartets, copyright © 1941 by T.S. Eliot and renewed
1969 by Esme Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of Houghton Miffl in Harcourt
Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
‘East Coker’ from F our Quartets, copyright © 1940 by T.S. Eliot and renewed 1968 by
Esme Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of Houghton Miffl in Harcourt Publishing
Company. All rights reserved.
4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane, copyright © 2000 by Methuen Drama, an imprint of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Th e Poems of Dylan Th omas , by Dylan Th omas, copyright ©1939 by New Directions
Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Contents
Introduction 1
How Do You Feel? 3
Emotions, Human Beings, and Persons 4
Th e Embodied Nature of Emotions 9
Emotions and Psychopathological Vulnerability 11
Overview of the Chapters 1 2
Part I Troubled Selfhood
1 Subjectivity and Naturalism 1 9
Philosophy and Psychopathology in View of Naturalism 19
Relaxed Naturalism 23
A Phenomenological Alternative 2 7
Hermeneutical Phenomenology 2 9
Why Ricoeur’s Th eory? 3 2
Reason and Sensibility 4 0
Wounded Th inking 4 6
2 A Hermeneutics of ‘I Am’ 53
Th e Aff ective Generation of Values 5 4
Fragility of the Heart 5 7
Interpretative Recovery of Selfh ood 63
Narratives of Time 6 6
3 Body and Personhood 7 1
Bodily Ambivalence 72
Personhood and the Narrating Self 7 9
Rules and Practices 86
Th e Good Life 88
An Ontology of Care 9 2
Becoming a Person through Otherness 9 3
Part II Fragile Personhood
4 Conceptual Clarity Amidst an Abundance of Feelings 9 9
To Name or Not to Name a Feeling 1 00
Feeling Th eories 1 04