Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality (International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry)

There is a great deal of current philosophical and scientific interest in emotional feelings. However, many of the feelings that people struggle to express in their everyday lives do not appear on standard lists of emotions. For example, there are 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. Such feelings might be referred to 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.__Feelings of Being__is the first ever philosophical account of the nature, role and variety of existential feelings in psychiatric illness and in everyday life. In this book, Matthew Ratcliffe proposes that existential feelings form a distinctive group by 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. 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 changed feeling in psychiatric illness, showing how an 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. The book also addresses the contribution made by existential feelings to religious experience and to philosophical thought.Written in a clear, non-technical style throughout, it will be valuable for philosophers, clinicians, students, and researchers working in a wide range of disciplines. Dedication 1 Acknowledgements 2 Introduction 4 The neglect of existential feeling 4 Phenomenology and the sense of reality 7 Summary of the argument 13 Emotions and bodily feelings 17 Solomon on emotion and the meaning of life 22 Uniting cognition and affect 26 Emotions as embodied appraisals 28 Emotions as bodily judgements 31 Bodily feelings and feelings towards 33 Existential feelings 42 Heidegger on practical understanding 43 Heidegger on mood 48 Existential feeling as a phenomenological category 52 The nonsense charge 57 Existential feelings in autobiographical accounts of psychiatric illness 60 Existential feelings in literature and everyday life 64 Propositional attitudes and the sense of reality 68 The phenomenology of touch 77 Vision and touch 78 Touch and proprioception 79 Aspect shifts 84 Boundaries 90 Being in touch with the world 92 Body and world 102 The feeling body 103 The conspicuous body 109 The phenomenology of sickness 113 Existential feelings, bodily dispositions and possibilities 117 Horizons 126 Feeling and belief in the Capgras delusion 135 Interpersonal relations 136 The Capgras delusion 139 The feeling of unfamiliarity 142 Relatedness and recognition 144 Perceiving the possible 147 Experiencing people 150 Experience and belief 154 Feelings of deadness and depersonalization 159 The Cotard delusion 160 Against two-factor accounts 164 Nothingness 171 Depersonalization and double-counting 174 Existential feeling in schizophrenia 181 Early descriptions of schizophrenia 182 Phenomenological accounts of schizophrenia 185 Inconsistency 189 Thought insertion 192 Diagnoses and existential feelings 198 Kinds of existential feeling 203 What William James really said 210 Physiology and philosophy 211 The role of emotion in experience and thought 214 Pragmatism 220 Radical empiricism 223 Stance, feeling and belief 230 Feelings and philosophical positions 231 Philosophical stances 238 Stance, commitment and critique 242 Feeling and epistemic disposition 245 Authentic and inauthentic philosophies 247 Conviction and doubt 250 Pathologies of existential feeling 257 The nature of religious experience 258 Medical and existential perspectives 263 Medical, epistemic and pragmatic pathologies 266 Existential pathology 271 The poverty of the mechanistic world 275 References 281 Index 298 Feelings of Being: Phenomenology,psychiatry and the sense of reality There is a great deal of current philosophical and scientific interest in emotional feelings. However, many of the feelings that people struggle to express in their everyday lives do not appear on standard lists of emotions. For example, there are 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. Such feelings might be referred to 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. Feelings of Being is the first ever philosophical account of the nature, role and variety of existential feelings in psychiatric illness and in everyday life. In this book, Matthew Ratcliffe proposes that existential feelings form a distinctive group by 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. 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 changed feeling in psychiatric illness, showing how an 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. The book also addresses the contribution made by existential feelings to religious experience and to philosophical thought. Written in a clear, non-technical style throughout, it will be valuable for philosophers, clinicians, students, and researchers working in a wide range of disciplines. Feelings of Being is the first ever account of the nature, role and variety of 'existential feelings' in psychiatric illness and in everyday life. There is a great deal of current philosophical and scientific interest in emotional feelings. However, many of the feelings that people struggle to express in their everyday lives do not appear on standard lists of emotions. For example, there are feelings of unreality, surreality, unfamiliarity, estrangement, heightened existence, isolation, emptiness, belonging, significance, insignificance, and the list goes on. Ratcliffe refers to such feelings as 'existential' because they comprise a changeable sense of being part of a world Emotions And Bodily Feelings -- Existential Feelings -- The Phenomenology Of Touch -- Body And World -- Feeling And Belief In The Capgras Delusion -- Feelings Of Deadness And Depersonalization -- Existential Feeling In Schizophrenia -- What William James Really Said -- Stance, Feeling, And Belief -- Pathologies Of Existential Feeling. Matthew Ratcliffe. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [293]-304) And Index. Feelings of Being is the first philosophical account of the nature, role and variety of existential feelings in psychiatric illness and in everyday life. These include feelings of familiarity, unfamiliarity, estrangement, isolation, emptiness, belonging, etc. It will be valuable for all philosophers and psychiatrists interested in emotion