Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality

Ratcliffe, M.

Abstract

Feelings of Being is a philosophical study of the nature, role and variety of existential feelings in psychiatric illness and in everyday life. There has been a great deal of recent interdisciplinary discussion of emotional feelings. However, many of the feelings that people express do not appear on standard inventories of emotions. For example, people sometimes talk of feelings of unreality, heightened existence, surreality, familiarity, unfamiliarity, estrangement, strangeness, isolation, emptiness, belonging, being at home in the world, being at one with things, significance, insignificance, and the list goes on. Ratcliffe proposes that such feelings form a distinctive group in virtue of three characteristics: they are bodily feelings, they constitute ways of relating to the world as a whole, and they are responsible for our sense of reality. He refers to them as ‘existential’ because they comprise a changeable sense of being part of a world. Existential feelings have not been systematically explored until now, despite the important role that they play in our lives and the devastating effects that disturbances of existential feeling can have in psychiatric illness. Hence Feelings of Being, in offering a detailed phenomenological analysis of existential feelings, is the first book of its kind. The book explains how something can be a bodily feeling and, at the same time, a sense of reality and belonging. It then explores the role of anomalous feeling in psychiatric illness, showing how a phenomenological account of existential feeling can help us to understand experiential changes that occur in a range of conditions, including depression, circumscribed delusions, depersonalisation and schizophrenia. It also addresses the contribution made by existential feelings to religious experience and to philosophical thought.

Citation

Ratcliffe, M. (2008). Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality. Oxford University Press

• Book Type: Authored Book
• Publication Date: 2008
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Series Title: International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1126870
• Publisher URL: http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780199206469
• Additional Information: FEELINGS OF BEING PHENOMENOLOGY, PSYCHIATRY AND THE SENSE OF REALITY Matthew Ratcliffe CONTENTS Introduction The Neglect of Existential Feeling Phenomenology and the Sense of Reality Summary of the Argument Part I. The Structure of Existential Feeling Chapter 1. Emotions and Bodily Feelings The Dismissal of ‘Mere Affect’ Solomon on Emotion and the Meaning of Life Uniting Cognition and Affect Emotions as Embodied Appraisals Emotions as Bodily Judgements Bodily Feelings and Feelings Towards Feeling is not ‘Mere Affect’ Chapter 2. Existential Feelings Heidegger on Practical Understanding Heidegger on Mood Existential Feeling as a Phenomenological Category The Nonsense Charge Existential Feelings in Autobiographical Accounts of Psychiatric Illness Existential Feelings in Literature and Everyday Life Propositional Attitudes and the Sense of Reality Chapter 3. The Phenomenology of Touch Vision and Touch Touch and Proprioception Aspects Shifts Boundaries Being in Touch with the World Part II. Varieties of Existential Feeling in Psychiatric Illness Chapter 4. Body and World The Feeling Body The Conspicuous Body The Phenomenology of Sickness Existential Feelings, Bodily Dispositions and Possibilities Horizons Chapter 5. Feeling and Belief in the Capgras Delusion Interpersonal Relations The Capgras Delusion The Feeling of Unfamiliarity Relatedness and Recognition Perceiving the Possible Experiencing People Experience and Belief Chapter 6. Feelings of Deadness and Depersonalisation The Cotard Delusion Against Two-Factor Accounts Nothingness Depersonalisation and Double-Counting Chapter 7. Existential Feeling in Schizophrenia Early Descriptions of Schizophrenia Phenomenological Accounts of Schizophrenia Inconsistency Thought Insertion Diagnoses and Existential Feelings Kinds of Existential Feeling Part III. Existential Feeling and Philosophical Thought Chapter 8. What William James Really Said Philosophy and Physiology The Role of Emotion in Experience and Thought Pragmatism Radical Empiricism Chapter 9. Stance, Feeling and Belief Feelings and Philosophical Positions Philosophical Stances Stance, Commitment and Critique Feeling and Epistemic Disposition Authentic and Inauthentic Philosophies Conviction and Doubt Chapter 10. Pathologies of Existential Feeling The Nature of Religious Experience Medical and Existential Perspectives Medical, Epistemic and Pragmatic Pathologies Existential Pathology The Poverty of the Mechanistic World References