Illustration by Nevit Dilmen. Psychoneurointracrinology Defined Psychoneurointracrinology is the study of psychological, neurological, and intracrinological processes forming a mind-brain continuum within the person (Gordon, 2007, 2013, 2015, in press). Psycho (psychological) refers to constructs variously referred to as psyche, self, soul, mind, and consciousness. Neuro (neurological) refers to the composition and reactions within the nervous… Read more »
EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to the APA Annual Conference in Washington, DC, there will be no post on Friday, August 8, 2014. The New Existentialists will resume its regular posting schedule on Monday, August 11, 2014. Thank you for your understanding. This week in hubristic neuroscience: * Researchers at the University College, London, say that they… Read more »
Photo by NASA. What is the relationship between the mind (subjectivity), the brain (neurochemistry), and the transcognitive (myth)? In other words, when do unconscious, autopoietic biochemical functions enter the subjective world of intentional meaning and become interpreted at the symbolic or mythic level of conscious experience? Where autopoiesis approaches myth at the moment of conception,… Read more »
Herakles fighting the Hydra. (Walters Museum) The word myth has various definitions and meanings. Henry Murray’s (1960) Myth and Mythmaking began with a definition that I particularly like from the work of Mark Schorer in “The Necessity of Myth” from his writings on William Blake: Myths are the instruments by which we continually struggle to… Read more »
Photo by Jessie Eastland. What is Embodiment? Embodiment refers to the bodily aspect of human subjectivity, the kinesthetic awareness of our body as the vehicle through which we experience the lived-world. It is not a cognitive understanding of self in the world, but a proprioceptive, tacit, prereflective, intersubjective awareness connecting the mind, brain, and physical… Read more »
Ludwig Devrient as King Lear, circa 1769. The answer seems obvious to most of us—but some neuroscientists tell us that we’re just not reading them right: the brain is sweeter and more temperate. Richard Friedman, a clinical psychiatrist, wrote a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times that is the latest iteration of this… Read more »
This is your therapist … without a therapist Computers have never passed the Turing Test, but plucky start-ups say software is ready to replace therapists anyway. That’s according to a recent article in The Atlantic highlighting “The Digital Future of Mental Health” – which doesn’t sound like an overhyped tech-trends piece by a documentarian pushing… Read more »
E. O. Wilson The motto of western science may be: to freedom and back again. In his magisterial examination of Western culture, historian Jacques Barzun suggests that what makes the West “the West” is that for 500 years (from approximately the Renaissance to the present) a group of related cultures came together on a joint… Read more »
