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#NEITHER OF THESE STATES OF BEING ARE INTRINSIC TO HAVING A PERSONALITY DISORDER

soloorganaas · 1 year

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i always love to see your thoughts on the black family + mental illness! you have such interesting insight and it's clear you've thought about it a lot. as a bipolar girl myself i spend a lot of time thinking about how i'm like 40g of an unspecified antipsychotic away from becoming walburga lol. for me i think the part that sticks out the most is the anger/lack of mood regulation -- that just SCREAMS untreated bipolar to me, but i think it's a relatively common trait to a couple of mental illnesses. i've always (or at least since i got diagnosed) considered the black family madness to be "just bipolar" because it seems so similar to my own experience and my family's experiences. but i'll be really interested to hear what you have to say on bpd and the black family, because that's not one i know as much about.

thank you for sharing your thoughts! i really do always get excited when i see them pop up on my feed :)

the mood regulation really is it and I think is such a crucial part of the house of black being the way they are bc it exacerbates so many dif issues

the way I understand bpd as opposed to bipolar disorder is that it’s a permanent state of disregulation, bc it’s a personality disorder rather than a mood disorder. so if you’re struggling with that disregulation every day it’s gonna look like anger issues, self esteem issues, problems with stable relationships etc. bipolar disorder is a mood disorder, meaning you have weeks/months long phases of depression or mania (or a neutral-ish in between). which still causes a general feeling of instability but with more built up, often catastrophic effects than bpd

i have bipolar disorder not bpd so I can’t speak to bpd as accurately or authentically, but I think there are a lot of aspects to at least some of the house of black’s members that speak to those disorders. and to be really fucking clear: neither of them inherently make you a bad person or do bad things (like inciting antisemitic violence and preaching conspiracy theories, for instance). if unstable relationships, anger, impulsivity or recklessness, delusional thinking or similar lead you to harmful behaviours or ideas to start with, then mental health problems can obviously exacerbate them. if your recklessness looks like climbing dangerous mountains by yourself (🙋🏻‍♀️) then mania is gonna exacerbate that

so with walburga, she was clearly devoted to her sons and her family. kreacher talks about how sirius leaving broke her heart. she also then lost her second son a few years later. that kind of trauma and grief could trigger truly awful manic/depressive episodes, which could lead to serious instability long term. it could also tear away any control she had over anger management or emotional regulation in her relationships. i think it’s important to remember that the portrait of her isn’t an accurate/entire representation (@narcissa-black-supermacy has said some great stuff about this), but that also capturing her at the absolute lowest point in her life also isn’t representative of her overall

I think if you also grow up suffocated by the world you’re in and knowing nothing else but those crushing expectations, that sort of pressure is going to make it very hard to form a stable solid sense of self and emotional foundation. I am fully extrapolating here, as we know little to nothing about walburga, but as she was presumably arranged into a marriage with her cousin, her life isn’t painted as a picture of freedom. the intensity of mood/personality disorders would exacerbate the worst aspects of that. if you’re only ever surrounded by other manic/depressive or unstable people, that’s what you’re going to intrinsically absorb as normal, and your mind is going to keep proving that bias right

so I think it’s really the story of a woman under a combination of horrific pressure and expectation and control, living in an era of dangerous fascism to which her family was intrinsically connected, raised knowing nothing else but them and their ideas, with the responsibility of raising two boys as the continuation of their line who are both, in different ways, racing as fast as possible towards their own destruction

none if this is to justify child abuse either physically or emotionally. there’s a lot of dif interpretations of this from canon but it’s fair to say sirius had a toxic relationship with his mother and was subject to at least some form of abuse as part of it. what I’m arguing is that simply passing a character off as “mad and evil” is just such a bigoted simplistic way of discussing mental illness and its interactions with morality, power and in this case family. and I think examining how mental illness interacts with the members of the house of black in v different ways reveals an enormous amount about them and adds a lot of meaningful layers to the story

#the amount of them who commit death defying or actually fatal acts for the people they love #no thoughts just vibes #the amount of them who straight up just abandon their family #two out of five cousins in one generation #it’s about the extremes #house of black #hp #hp meta

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cuiplagalis · 5 years

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Why So Anxious?: Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Lacan on Anxiety

“That anxiety makes its appearance is the pivot upon which everything turns.” — Søren Kierkegaard | The Concept of Anxiety

Why has the number of anxiety disorders skyrocketed within the last 50 to 60 years? A good question. Based on prescription drug sales the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA) estimates that more than 40 million people suffer from anxiety disorders in this country. But what is the cause of our anxiety? Human beings have long been acquainted with this affect, but at no other point in history has it had such a strong hold on humanity at large. It seems as though there’s a systemic problem here. Could it be that late capitalism itself has a intrinsic element that provokes anxiety in us? There certainly seems to be a correlation between the two, since this era of capitalism began around 1945. Let us see if we can gain an idea of the cause of the social ubiquity of this phenomenon.

In pursuing the cause of anxiety and of its increase, we should look to the insights of the great thinkers of anxiety: Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan. In my opinion, Lacan is the greatest thinker of anxiety since Heidegger. Lacan’s brilliance in relation to this affect is largely due to the fact that he was able to formulate a psychoanalytic mechanism for the assault of anxiety, that is, of the anxiety attack. Lacan’s most concentrated inquiry on this subject is found in his 1962–1963 seminar entitled Anxiety and it is this work that will be one of our main guides on the journey to the why of our anxiety. But first we must place ourselves in the proper context.

Kierkegaard on Anxiety

“Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.” — Søren Kierkegaard | The Concept of Anxiety

Kierkegaard was the first philosopher to examine anxiety in great depth. The Concept of Anxiety was, to my knowledge, the first book to ever focus exclusively on this phenomenon. In it Kierkegaard (writing under the pseudonym, Vigilius Haufniensis), formulated a concept of anxiety that would influence all of the thinkers who came after him that wrestled with existentialist motifs. For Kierkegaard, anxiety is without a determinate object, that is, it’s unintentional or unfocused. Of anxiety he wrote, “it is altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite” (The Concept of Anxiety, 42). He went on to say, “anxiety is freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility” (The Concept of Anxiety, 42). What anxiety is about is human freedom, but this is certainly no object, that is, it is no-thing. Anxiety turns out to be the condition of freedom and this is precisely why Kierkegaard claimed that ambiguity resides at the core of this affect; as he put, “Anxiety is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy” (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 42). In other words, anxiety is paradoxically something unpleasant from which we derive enjoyment and pleasure as well as something enjoyable that causes us pain and discomfort.

Heidegger would also claim that there’s something pleasurable in this discomforting mood: “Along with the sober anxiety which brings us face to face with our individualized potentiality-for-Being, there goes an unshakable joy in this possibility” (Being and Time, p. 358). Anxiety’s strange tension, i.e., pleasure in pain, also brings to mind the Lacanian concept of jouissance. But why is it that anxiety creates this tension? We find it enjoyable because it reveals to us our freedom, at the same time, we also find it unenjoyable precisely because it reveals to us our freedom. On the one hand, we love freedom for freedom’s sake, and on the other hand, the thought of being completely responsible for our actions and their unforeseen consequences is terrifying. Kierkegaard famously expressed this tension or “dizziness” in the following way:

“Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself.” (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 61)

The image of a person standing at the edge of a skyscraper or a cliff really captures the temptation of anxiety. In this moment a person can surely be struck by the fear of falling, which is determinate and intentional in structure, but one can simultaneously be assailed by anxiety. In that moment of staring over the edge and down into the abyss, a frightful impulse suddenly rises up in the individual — the impulse to purposely throw oneself into the abyss. This experience provokes anxiety because we are confronted with the radical freedom we possess. Thus, for Kierkegaard, the point at which the individual becomes anxious (what Lacan referred to as the “anxiety-point”, that is, the mechanism through which the subject becomes anxious at a specific moment in time) is when he or she is confronted by the possibility of freedom. However, normally and usually, we simply make choices without having any anxiety, which is why Kierkegaard went on to qualify the relation between anxiety and freedom: “Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself” (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 49).

Kierkegaard centered his investigation of anxiety around what he believed to be the very first instance of the affect in human history, that is, the anxiety Adam experienced when God forbade him to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Kierkegaard argued that Adam, in his state of innocence, couldn’t have truly understood what “good”, “evil” or “die” actually meant. But what Adam was able to understand was that he had been forbidden to eat of the tree’s fruit, i.e., that he was free and that his freedom had just been restricted. But as any parent knows, prohibiting a child from doing x only creates the desire for x in the child. Lacan wrote, “But what does experience teach us here about anxiety in its relation to the object of desire, if not simply that prohibition is temptation?” (Anxiety, p. 54). According to Kierkegaard, it was anxiety that led Adam to sin.

“What passed by innocence as the nothing of anxiety has now entered into Adam, and here again it is a nothing — the anxious possibility of being able. He has no conception of what he is able to do; otherwise — and this is what usually happens — that which comes late, the difference between good and evil, would have to be presupposed. Only the possibility of being able is present as a higher form of ignorance, as a higher expression of anxiety, because in a higher sense it both is and is not, because in a higher sense he both loves it and flees from it. After the word of prohibition follows the word of judgment: “You shall certainly die.” Naturally, Adam does not know what it means to die. On the other hand, there is nothing to prevent him from having acquired a notion of the terrifying, for even animals can understand the mimic expression and movement in the voice of a speaker without understanding the word. If the prohibition is regarded as awakening the desire, the punishment must also be regarded as awakening the notion of the deterrent. This, however, will only confuse things. In this case, the terror is simply anxiety. Because Adam has not understood what was spoken, there is nothing but the ambiguity of anxiety. The infinite possibility of being able that was awakened by the prohibition now draws closer, because this possibility points to a possibility as its sequence. In this way, innocence is brought to its uttermost. In anxiety it is related to the forbidden and to the punishment. Innocence is not guilty, yet there is anxiety as though it were lost.” (The Concept of Anxiety, pp. 44–45)

However, it’s only fitting, given the Janus-faced nature of anxiety, Kierkegaard also believed that this affect, while being capable of bringing about our downfall into sin, can also lead us to salvation. This is why he held that “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate” (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 155). Anxiety awakens us to the responsibility we have for our actions, which, in turn, can awaken us to our guilt and sin before God. Anxiety, thus, precedes self-consciousness and self-examination. It is the condition for the pursuit of authentic selfhood and true identity, which, for Kierkegaard, always involves having a passionate faith in God through Christ. The words of Hölderlin resound: “But where danger is, grows the saving power also.”

Early Heidegger on Anxiety

“Anxiety is anxious about naked Dasein as something that has been thrown into uncanniness.” — Martin Heidegger | Being and Time

As we have seen, it was Kierkegaard who first argued that anxiety is objectless. This concept of anxiety obviously had a big influence on Heidegger’s own thinking in Being and Time. For Kierkegaard, the mechanism of anxiety or the “anxiety-point” is the presencing of one’s own radical freedom and possibility, or, in the specific case of Adam, the moment of the prohibition — this recognition is the trigger of anxiety. In what follows, I’ll discuss Heidegger’s relation to the anxiety-point. But, first, we need to understand the early Heidegger’s phenomenological description of anxiety.

“That in the face of which one has anxiety is Being-in-the-world as such. What is the difference phenomenally between that in the face of which anxiety is anxious and that in the face of which fear is afraid? That in the face of which one has anxiety is not an entity within-the-world. Thus it is essentially incapable of having an involvement. This threatening does not have the character of a definite detrimentality which reaches what is threatened, and which reaches it with definite regard to a special factical potentiality-for-Being. That in the face of which one is anxious is completely indefinite. Not only does this indefiniteness leave factically undecided which entity within-the-world is threatening us, but it also tells us that entities within-the-world are not ‘relevant’ at all. Nothing which is ready-to-hand or present-at-hand within the world functions as that in the face of which anxiety is anxious. Here the totality of involvements of the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand discovered within-the-world, is, as such, of no consequence; it collapses into itself; the world has the character of completely lacking significance. In anxiety one does not encounter this thing or that thing which, as something threatening, must have an involvement.” (Being and Time, pp. 230–231)

So the “object” of anxiety, for the early Heidegger, is no object or entity at all, rather it is Being-in-the-world or existence (Existenz), i.e., Dasein’s mode of Being, and, remember, “The Being of entities ‘is’ not itself an entity” (Being and Time, p. 26). So, for Heidegger, anxiety is objectless, but, yet, it still has some-”thing” positive about it, which to say the world itself. Heidegger put it like this:

“Accordingly, when something threatening brings itself close, anxiety does not ‘see’ any definite ‘here’ or ‘yonder’ from which it comes. That in the face of which one has anxiety is characterized by the fact that what threatens is nowhere. Anxiety ‘does not know’ what that in the face of which it is anxious is. ‘Nowhere’, however, does not signify nothing: this is where any region lies, and there too lies any disclosedness of the world for essentially spatial Being-in. Therefore that which threatens cannot bring itself close from a definite direction within what is close by; it is already ‘there’, and yet nowhere; it is so close that it is oppressive and stifles one’s breath, and yet it is nowhere. In that in the face of which one has anxiety, the ‘It is nothing and nowhere’ becomes manifest. The obstinacy of the “nothing and nowhere within-the-world” means as a phenomenon that the world as such is that in the face of which one has anxiety. The utter insignificance which makes itself known in the “nothing and nowhere”, does not signify that the world is absent, but tells us that entities within-the-world are of so little importance in themselves that on the basis of this insignificance of what is within-the-world, the world in its worldhood is all that still obtrudes itself.” (Being and Time, p. 231)

“Being-in-the-world itself is that in the face of which anxiety is anxious.” (Being and Time, p. 232)

“That about which anxiety is anxious reveals itself as that in the face of which it is anxious — namely, Being-in-the-world.” (Being and Time, p. 233)

This amounts to saying that Dasein cares about nothing while overcome with anxiety. Nothing whatsoever matters to it because the world has momentarily ceased to be meaningful, i.e., ceased to signify. We must remember here the crucial distinction Heidegger made between the world and the ‘world’. The former being the totality of all referential totalities (systems of meanings, assignments, involvements, in-order-tos, toward-whichs and for-the-sake-of-whichs), whereas the latter would simply be the universe or the totality of objects (objects in the standard sense). Let’s filter this phenomenon of anxiety through Lacanian terms. This would mean that in anxiety the subject ceases to desire for a period of time, since the Symbolic order (reality) as such has ceased to have anything worth desiring in it. Of course, this would have to relate in some way to the subject’s relation to the objet a (the object-cause of desire). In anxiety something cuts off the desirability of the object at the core of the fundamental fantasy. If the formula of fantasy is $◊a, then in anxiety the lozenge itself gets barred. Desire presupposes a lack, but when desire itself is “castrated” we are faced with the uncanny lack of a lack. When meaning and significance are drained from the world all that is left for the senses is the full-on buzzing of beings in their alienating positivity (perhaps this is a glimpse of the Real?). It would seem as if desire itself gets castrated through the objet a vanishing momentarily from reality. Perhaps this is why anxiety can be such an ambivalent mood.

So, for the early Heidegger, we are anxious about Being-in-the-world (Symbolic order) as such, but what he has to say about anxiety isn’t exhausted in this one statement alone. He goes on to say that in anxiety Dasein essentially comes to see that it has a whole range of possibilities that das Man (the One, the They, or, in Lacanese, “the big Other”) conceals from it, and this realization enables Dasein to establish an authentic relation to itself. “The “They” does not permit us the courage for the anxiety in the face of death” (Being and Time, p. 298). So Heidegger says that anxiety is about both the world and death, but we can easily synthesize the two and say that anxiety is about Being-in-the-world-as-a-finitude. Authenticity (a relation to oneself and the world) always involves a resolute confrontation with death (Being-toward-death). One’s death is one’s “ownmost possibility” in Heidegger’s eyes, since one must face death absolutely alone, that is, no one can die your death for you or with you. In facing this possibility, Dasein begins to realize that it is finite, that its possibility of having possibilities has a indefinite expiration date, which means that it must stop wasting its time in gossip, inauthentic curiosity, superficiality, mindless consumerism, etc., and start existing for itself.

“Anxiety individualizes Dasein for its ownmost Being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities.” (Being and Time, p. 232)

“Anxiety liberates him from possibilities which ‘count for nothing’, and lets him become free for those which are authentic.” (Being and Time, p. 395)

“Anxiety makes manifest in Dasein its Being towards its ownmost potentiality-for-Being — that is, its Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself.” (Being and Time, p. 232)

Here we can see Kierkegaard’s influence on Heidegger’s description of anxiety. For Heidegger, it “individualizes Dasein” and enables it to “become free” for its possibilities “which are authentic”. His concept of authenticity is basically an atheistic reconceptualization of Kierkegaard’s concept of Christian salvation (individualization via a faithful relation to God). Heidegger was also following in Kierkegaard’s footsteps in claiming anxiety reveals an individual’s freedom to his or her self, that is, the individual’s “Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself”.

The early Heidegger also perceived that anxiety has an essential connection to uncanniness, in fact, he seemed to identify the two, or, at the very least, seemed to make each one a side of the same coin. Whenever anxiety occurs we find that the world is suddenly alienated and unfamiliar. We’re abruptly no longer at home in the world — our tacit familiarity completely breaks down.

“Again everyday discourse and the everyday interpretation of Dasein furnish our most unbiased evidence that anxiety as a basic state-of-mind is disclosive in the manner we have shown. As we have said earlier, a state-of-mind makes manifest ‘how one is’. In anxiety one feels ‘uncanny’. Here the peculiar indefiniteness of that which Dasein finds itself alongside in anxiety, comes proximally to expression: the “nothing and nowhere”. But here “uncanniness” also means “not-being-at-home”. In our first indication of the phenomenal character of Dasein’s basic state and in our clarification of the existential meaning of “Being-in” as distinguished from the categorial signification of ‘insideness’, Being-in was defined as “residing alongside . . .”, “Being-familiar with . . .” This character of Being-in was then brought to view more concretely through the everyday publicness of the “they”, which brings tranquillized self-assurance — ‘Being-at-home’, with all its obviousness — into the average everydayness of Dasein. On the other hand, as Dasein falls, anxiety brings it back from its absorption in the ‘world’. Everyday familiarity collapses. Dasein has been individualized, but individualized as Being-in-the-world. Being-in enters into the existential ‘mode’ of the “not-at-home”. Nothing else is meant by our talk about ‘uncanniness’. (Being and Time, p. 233)

The last factor we must understand in Heidegger’s description of anxiety, which is of the utmost importance to grasp, is its relation to Dasein’s Being-towards-death. Heidegger wrote, “Anxiety arises out of Being-in-the-world as thrown Being-towards-death” (Being and Time, p. 395). Being-towards-death is an existential structure of Dasein’s existence, i.e., Being-in-the-world: “The ‘end’ of Being-in-the-world is death” (Being and Time, pp. 276–277). What is meant by “death” here isn’t the actual demise or physical death of a biological organism, but, rather, the existential death, or the possible death of Dasein. Existential death is something one “has” only as long as one is alive in the biological sense, so oddly enough, actual death is the negation of existential death — this latter form of death is a possibility, and a very special one at that. “Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein” (Being and Time, p. 294). Death, then, turns out to be “Dasein’s ownmost possibility” (Being and Time, p. 307).

“The full existential-ontological conception of death may now be defined as follows: death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein’s ownmost possibility — non-relational, certain and as such indefinite, not to be outstripped. Death is, as Dasein’s end, in the Being of this entity towards its end.” (Being and Time, p. 303)

“We may now summarize our characterization of authentic Being-towards-death as we have projected it existentially: anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the they-self, and brings it face to face with the possibility of being itself, primarily unsupported by concernful solicitude, but of being itself, rather, in an impassioned freedom towards death — a freedom which has been released from the Illusions of the “they”, and which is factical, certain of itself, and anxious.” (Being and Time, p. 311)

Heidegger went on to say, “No one can take the Other’s dying away from him” (Being and Time, p. 284), i.e., only I can die my death and no one can die my death for me. What he was attempting to reveal was that no one can cease to project his or her self onto the possibilities established and opened up by my facticity (the individuality of thrownness) except for me. If existence is essentially projection, and if projection is grounded by individual facticity, then the possibility of the complete cessation of taking a stand on my existence is a possibility that is mine alone — it is a possibility only I have, thus making it my ownmost possibility. This must be viewed from the perspective of facticity-as-a-whole and not merely aspects of facticity. People may have in common the factical conditions necessary for both of them to do or be x, for example, many people have aspects of their facticity which allow them to become professional basketball players. This possibility is not something most Daseins’ facticities allow them to be. However, while Daseins may have certain aspects of their facticities in common, no two Daseins have their facticities-as-a-whole in common. The unity of a facticity always belongs to one Dasein and only one Dasein. Facticity-as-a-whole is the key to understanding Heidegger’s statements regarding death. The possibility of taking a stand on my facticity-as-a-whole is a possibility only I have, therefore, the possibility of the impossibility of the possibility of taking a stand on my factiticity-as-a-whole is a possibility which belongs only to me. This statement could be modified for the sake of clarity in the following way: The possibility of taking a stand on my facticity-as-a-whole is a possibility only I have, therefore, the possibility of losing this possibility is a possibility which belongs only to me.

Death (the possibility of the impossibility of having anymore possibilities) can be said to individuate Dasein in the sense that the confrontation with it leads Dasein to choose for itself. A situation can be responded to in many ways but most of the time Dasein responds to it as One does, that is, as das Man does. Take, for example, the lives of Jesus, Buddha, etc. They disclosed and established new worlds by responding to situations in ways that broke with the One. Living in total submission to das Man can make life easier and very comfortable, but it’s also unfulfilling in the long run. Dasein usually lives in quiet desperation, always desiring to own itself and take control of its destiny. But the banality of everydayness and the pressure to conform put on it by das Man tends to suppress the desire for authenticity. An experience or event is needed to give Dasein a push in the right direction. Facing the possibility and inevitability of death head on can cause a massive disruption in the dictatorship of das Man, and it is anxiety that serves as the condition of this resolute confrontation with death. “Anxiety brings Dasein face to face with its ownmost Being-thrown and reveals the uncanniness of everyday familiar Being-in-the-world” (Being and Time, p. 393).

When Dasein, through the disclosure of anxiety, realizes that the annihilation of the possibility of being its self could fall upon it at any moment, and that it has not truly been exploring all of the possibilities it has, then it can take control of itself in a vibrantly authentic way. When Dasein realizes that its death is just that — its death, it realizes that it is not absolutely identical with the One, since the One will continue to exist after Dasein’s death. Anxiety’s unconcealment and presencing of the possibility of death has the unique power to disclose to Dasein that it has possibilities open to it that were not given to it by the One. And seeing how Dasein is its possibilities, it has come into a fuller relation with itself and its existence. It can then resolutely make decisions for itself, which is a way of being individuated and unchained from the generalities of the They-self.

We can come at this function of anxiety in another way. In this mood the world suddenly becomes meaningless. Dasein momentarily ceases to skillfully cope in the world, that is, abruptly experiences the equipment it uses to take a stand on its existence to be utterly insignificant, which means that anxiety brings about a breakdown of selfhood, since Dasein is what it does with equipment. But the good thing about this is that it can serve as an existentiell reboot so to speak. Dasein is forced to face itself in its ontological nakedness, and this can allow it to see just how inauthentically it has been living. Anxiety is the path to authentic selfhood.

Now let’s discuss if Heidegger posited an anxiety-point. It’s true that authentically facing death can make one anxious, but people are anxious all the time without standing in the shadow of death. It seems to me that while death is certainly a sufficient condition for the emergence of anxiety, it isn’t a necessary one. Heidegger (both early and later), never really posited an absolute anxiety-point. His descriptions of the phenomenon of anxiety are brilliant, but it’s true that they leave us wanting more, namely, the cause of the onset of anxiety in all cases. There’s something arbitrary about holding that we simply become anxious at certain times. However, he most likely avoided pursuing the anxiety-point due to his phenomenological description of moods or attunements (Stimmungs) in general. He said, “A mood assails us” (Being and Time, p. 176). By this he means moods arbitrarily fall upon us or take us over, which, from a purely phenomenological perspective, appears completely accurate. In some sense, we’re at the complete disposal of moods. Of course, we can attempt to put ourselves in new situations that change our moods, but nothing can absolutely guarantee that this will in fact change them. Sometimes it can actually intensify the mood. Anxiety overtakes us at moments that seem to have nothing in common. Just for clarification, the early Heidegger believed that anxiety is without an object while still being about some-”thing”, which turned out to be Dasein’s Being-in-the-world-towards-death as such. This means that, for the early Heidegger, anxiety is about a mode of Being, but not about Being itself. At this point, we are ready to consider what the later Heidegger thought of anxiety.

Later Heidegger on Anxiety

“Being held out into the nothing — as Dasein is — on the ground of concealed anxiety is its surpassing of beings as a whole. It is transcendence.” — Martin Heidegger | What Is Metaphysics?

Heidegger reexamined the phenomenon of anxiety in ‘What is Metaphysics?’. “Anxiety reveals the nothing” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 101). Simply put, the later Heidegger believed that anxiety is about the nothing: “Does such an attunement, in which man is brought before the nothing itself, occur in human existence? This can and does occur, although rarely enough and only for a moment, in the fundamental mood of anxiety” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 100). He goes on to say:

“That anxiety reveals the nothing man himself immediately demonstrates when anxiety has dissolved. In the lucid vision sustained by fresh remembrance we must say that that in the face of which and for which we were anxious was “properly” — nothing. Indeed: the nothing itself — as such — was there. With the fundamental mood of anxiety we have arrived at that occurrence in human existence is which the nothing is revealed and from which it must be interrogated.” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 101)

The nothing actually turns out to be Being — more accurately an aspect, function or activity that belongs to Being. He said, “The nothing does not remain the indeterminate opposite of beings but reveals itself as belonging to the Being of beings” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 108). It’s important to note that this “nothing” isn’t the nothing of Dasein’s existence that Heidegger discussed in Being and Time — this nothing is not the nothing at the core of Dasein, but, rather, something unto itself. The nothing is the nihiliation or the slipping away of beings into meaninglessness within the clearing, which persists in its presence as the nihilation of beings occurs. But when all that stands before Dasein is the clearing itself, then all that is present is the nothing of Being insofar as the presencing or there-ing of what is normally present and there (beings) is not a thing at all. This is the ontological difference: “The Being of entities ‘is’ not itself an entity” (Being and Time, p. 26). The two most important concepts for Heidegger throughout the entirety of his career were Being (Sein) and truth (aletheia/ἀλήϑεα). Being and truth are really the two essential structures of presencing as such, and the nothing of Being turns out to have an essential relation to truth:

“In the clear night of the nothing of anxiety the original openness of beings as such arises: that they are beings — and not nothing. But this “and not nothing” we add in our talk is not some kind of appended clarification. Rather, it makes possible in advance the revelation of beings in general. The essence of the originally nihilating nothing lies in this, that it brings Da-sein for the first time before beings as such.” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 103)

With this in mind, the later Heidegger reemphasized that the “object” of anxiety is indeterminate, i.e., not a being, and that meaninglessness or indifference always accompanies anxiety:

“The nothing reveals itself in anxiety — but not as a being. Just as little is it given as an object. Anxiety is no kind of grasping of the nothing. All the same, the nothing reveals itself in and through anxiety, although, to repeat, not in such a way that the nothing becomes manifest in our malaise quite apart from beings as a whole. Rather, we said that in anxiety the nothing is encountered at one with beings as a whole.” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 102)

“By this anxiety we do not mean the quite common anxiousness, ultimately reducible to fearfulness, which all too readily comes over us. Anxiety is basically different from fear. We become afraid in the face of this or that particular being that threatens us in this or that particular respect. Fear in the face of something is also in each case a fear for something in particular. Because fear possesses this trait of being “fear in the face of” and “fear for,” he who fears and is afraid is captive to the mood in which he finds himself. Striving to rescue himself from this particular thing, he becomes unsure of everything else and completely “loses his head.” Anxiety does not let such confusion arise. Much to the contrary, a peculiar calm pervades it. Anxiety is indeed anxiety in the face of . . ., but not in the face of this or that thing. Anxiety in the face of . . . is always anxiety for . . ., but not for this or that. The indeterminateness of that in the face of which and for which we become anxious is no mere lack of determination but rather the essential impossibility of determining it. In a familiar phrase this indeterminateness comes to the fore. In anxiety, we say, “one feels ill at ease.” What is “it” that makes “one” feel ill at ease? We cannot say what it is before which one feels ill at ease. As a whole it is so for one. All things and we ourselves sink into indifference. This, however, not in the sense of mere disappearance. Rather, in this very receding things turn toward us. The receding of beings as a whole that closes in on us in anxiety oppresses us. We can get no hold on things. In the slipping away of beings only this “no hold on things” comes over us and remains.” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, pp. 100–101)

“In anxiety beings as a whole become superfluous. In what sense does this happen? Beings are not annihilated by anxiety, so that nothing is left. How could they be, when anxiety finds itself precisely in utter impotence with regard to beings as a whole? Rather, the nothing makes itself known with beings and in beings expressly as a slipping away of the whole.” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 102)

Heidegger goes on to give us a strikingly powerful description of the moment of anxiety and the breakdown of selfhood it causes; on other words, we lose the concrete content of ourselves — anxiety strips Dasein naked. Here Heidegger is basically saying that anxiety alienates us from our everyday identities that are grounded in the social positions or roles the world offers us to exist in. We, therefore, become uncanny to ourselves. In Lacanian terms, this would be both a breakdown in the ego with its secondary identifications in the Imaginary and in the chains of signifiers within the Symbolic the subject uses to represent itself.

We “hover” in anxiety. More precisely, anxiety leaves us hanging because it induces the slipping away of beings as a whole. This implies that we ourselves — we humans who are in being — in the midst of beings slip away from ourselves. At bottom therefore it is not as though “you” or “I” feel ill at ease; rather it is this way for some “one”. In the altogether unsettling experience of this hovering where there is nothing to hold onto, pure Da-sein is all that is still there. (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 101)

Another strange feature of anxiety is that it lurks around us with a “repressed” or latent ubiquity: “The original anxiety in existence is usually repressed. Anxiety is there. It is only sleeping” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 106). The later Heidegger thought that Dasein is always in a perpetual state of anxiety, but on random occasions it explicitly makes itself known.

Original anxiety can awaken in existence at any moment. It needs no unusual event to rouse it. Its sway is as thoroughgoing as its possible occasionings are trivial. It is always ready, though it only seldom springs, and we are snatched away and left hanging. (Basic Writings, What Is Metaphysics?, p. 106)

To summarize, for the later Heidegger, anxiety is about the nothing, which is essentially Being itself (the difference between Being and beings). Now that we’ve clarified both Kierkegaard’s and Heidegger’s concepts of anxiety, we are ready to move on to a discussion of Lacan’s radically different concept of the affect.

Lacan on Anxiety

“The most striking manifestation of this object a, the signal that it is intervening, is anxiety.” — Jacques Lacan | Anxiety

Unlike Kierkegaard and Heidegger, Lacan believed anxiety has an object, or, as he put it “it is not without an object” (Anxiety, p. 89). But this object isn’t an ordinary kind of object — it’s the objet petit a (also referred to as “objet a”, “the Lacanian object”, “the lost object”, “the remainder” and simply “a”. This object is closely related to three of Lacan’s other concepts: 1. fantasy, 2. jouissance, 3. the Real. The concept of this object is arguably the most difficult to understand out of all of the Lacanian concepts, but it’s absolutely necessary to get at least a preliminary understanding of it in order to follow Lacan’s thinking on anxiety, since the two (objet a and anxiety) are essentially connected: “This year, the object a is taking centre stage in our topic. It has been set into the framework of a Seminar that I’ve titled Anxiety because it is essentially from this angle that it’s possible to speak about it, which means moreover that anxiety is the sole subjective translation of this object” (Anxiety, p. 100).

Lacan also said of the objet a that “it only steps in, it only functions, in correlation with anxiety” (Anxiety, p. 86). Throughout the course of this seminar, Lacan gives us different definitions of anxiety and it’s not immediately apparent that these are all compatible with each other. This seminar was given at the point in Lacan’s career when he was rethinking many of his essential concepts, so it has a very exploratory feel to it. One gets the impression that Lacan was thinking out loud while giving this series of lectures. But before we consider the different definitions, we must answer, to some degree, the question what is the Lacanian object? Žižek offers us a helpful analogy in the pursuit of this answer.

To mention the final example: the famous MacGuffin, the Hitchcockian object, the pure pretext whose sole role is to set the story in motion but which is in itself ‘nothing at all’ — the only significance of the MacGuffin lies in the fact that it has some significance for the characters — that it must seem to be of vital importance to them. The original anecdote is well known: two men are sitting in a train; one of them asks: ‘What’s that package up there in the luggage rack?’ ‘Oh, that’s a MacGuffin.’ ‘What’s a MacGuffin?’ ‘Well, it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ ‘Well, then, that’s not a MacGuffin.’ There is another version which is much more to the point: it is the same as the other, with the exception of the last answer: ‘Well, you see how efficient it is!’ — that’s a MacGuffin, a pure nothing which is none the less efficient. Needless to add, the MacGuffin is the purest case of what Lacan calls objet petit a: a pure void which functions as the object-cause of desire. (The Sublime Object of Ideology, pp. 183–184)

What we must first understand about the Lacanian object is that it’s not an object in the standard sense of the word. Put another way, this object is not the object of the metaphysical tradition — paradoxically, it is a “substantial” lack. This “object” is not a present-at-hand entity. It does not consist of atoms and it cannot be weighed, or measured, or experimented on, i.e., by its very nature it is beyond the reach of science. This virtual object also eludes the traditional phenomenologist, since one can only catch a glimpse of it at work while being situated within the psychoanalytic horizon. In other word’s, this object only makes itself known in the clinical setting, and this is precisely why it’s of the utmost importance to always connect Lacan’s concepts back to actual analysis. It was only because of the symbolic position Lacan occupied as an analyst that he was able to sense such an evasive “phenomenon” as the objet a.

Simply put, the objet petit a is the “object” that causes desire: “To set our target, I shall say that the object a — which is not to be situated in anything analogous to the intentionality of a noesis, which is not the intentionality of desire — is to be conceived as the cause of desire. To take up an earlier metaphor, the object lies behind desire” (Anxiety, p. 101). The objet a is the “object” we lost upon entering the Symbolic order, that is, the register of language, custom, social necessities, the Law, etc. Lacan says, “The objet a is something from which the subject, in order to constitute itself, has separated itself off as organ. This serves as a symbol of lack, that is to say, of the phallus, not as such, but in so far as it is lacking. It must, therefore, be an object that is, firstly, separable and, secondly, that has some relation to the lack” (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, p. 101).

For Lacan, “symbolic castration” or “alienation” — basically socialization — involves the traumatic and liberatory loss of the maternal body, i.e., preoedipal jouissance. This blissful tension is the child’s whole world prior to the onset of the Oedipus complex. But this process eventually leads to the signifier (the Name-of-the-Father) “cutting” the child away from the full presence of its own jouissance and goading it to repress the signifier of the mother’s desire (the imaginary phallus), which brings about the inscription of the subject of the unconscious — of course, this is only how the Oedipus complex unfolds for “healthy” and “normal” neurotics. In the simplest terms, for most people what life is all about, unbeknownst to them, is their relation to objet a: “Effectively, everything turns around the subject’s relation to a” (Anxiety, p. 112). Yet it should be said that this object is not like an ordinary lost object. Sean Homer clarified this for us:

The objet a is not, therefore, an object we have lost, because then we would be able to find it and satisfy our desire. It is rather the constant sense we have, as subjects, that something is lacking or missing from our lives. We are always searching for fulfilment, for knowledge, for possessions, for love, and whenever we achieve these goals there is always something more we desire; we cannot quite pinpoint it but we know that it is there. This is one sense in which we can understand the Lacanian real as the void or abyss at the core of our being that we constantly try to fill out. The objet a is both the void, the gap, and whatever object momentarily comes to fill that gap in our symbolic reality. What is important to keep in mind here is that the objet a is not the object itself but the function of masking the lack. (Jacques Lacan, pp. 87–88)

What, at bottom, we desire, without consciously knowing it, is a sense of wholeness and completion that we once had with our mothers (or primary caregivers). The loss of the mother establishes a fundamental fantasy within the subject of the unconscious, and this fantasy will go on to shape all of the ego’s conscious pursuits. Of course, the ego isn’t aware that what it desires isn’t the cause of desire in and of itself. The structure of fantasy, at least for the average person, is $◊a, which means the barred (lacking) subject of the unconscious ($) desires (◊) the objet petit a (a). Bruce Fink explains all this well:

[M]an’s desire to be desired by the Other, exposes the Other’s desire as object a. The child would like to be the sole object of its mother’s affections, but her desire almost always goes beyond the child: there is something about her desire which escapes the child, which is beyond its control. A strict identity between the child’s desire and hers cannot be maintained; her desire’s independence from her child’s creates a rift between them, a gap in which her desire, unfathomable to the child, functions in a unique way. This approximate gloss on separation posits that a rift is induced in the hypothetical mother-child unity due to the very nature of desire and that this rift leads to the advent of object a. Object a can be understood here as the remainder produced when that hypothetical unity breaks down, as a last trace of that unity, a last reminder thereof. By cleaving to that rem(a)inder, the split subject, though expulsed from the Other, can sustain the illusion of wholeness; by clinging to object a, the subject is able to ignore his or her division. That is precisely what Lacan means by fantasy, and he formalizes it with the matheme $◊a, which is to be read: the divided subject in relation to object a. It is in the subject’s complex relation to object a (Lacan describes this relation as one of “envelopment-development-conjunction-disjunction” [Écrits, p. 280]) that he or she achieves a phantasmatic sense of wholeness, completeness, fulfillment, and well-being. When analysands recount fantasies to their analyst, they are informing the analyst about the way in which they want to be related to object a, in other words, the way they would like to be positioned with respect to the Other’s desire. Object a, as it enters into their fantasies, is an instrument or plaything with which subjects do as they like, manipulating it as it pleases them, orchestrating things in the fantasy scenario in such a way as to derive a maximum of excitement therefrom. (The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, pp. 59–60)

Fantasy isn’t merely a falsification of realty — it is our window or portal to reality. Žižek wrote,”With regard to the basic opposition between reality and imagination, fantasy is not simply on the side of imagination; fantasy is, rather, the little piece of imagination by which we gain access to reality — the frame that guarantees our access to reality, our ‘sense of reality’ (when our fundamental fantasy is shattered, we experience the ‘loss of reality’)” (The Žižek Reader, p. 122). To put this in Heideggerian terms, for Žižek, fantasy is the individual aspect of the clearing, fantasy is the mineness of disclosure as such. What makes the shared and social clearing mine is the fantasy through which I comport myself towards it. For Heidegger, authentic-Being-towards-death is that on the basis of which Dasein could be truly individuated, but Žižek thinks we’re always already individuated in relation to das Man (the big Other, the Symbolic Order) before we ever have a resolute confrontation with death, since fantasy is the individualizing existentiale of Dasein’s existence. Fantasy is thus the pre-authentic individuality of Dasein. With fantasy (individuality) and das Man (generality) as both existentialia, Dasein is ontologically a paradoxical being. However, and here’s the problem, our social identities, as we experience them everyday, are conditioned by the signifier (the differential nature of language), which means that to get what we want would be to lose it, since it would be the destruction of our selves. Thus, the “lost” object, this excess, this left-over of the Real, is a surplus of enjoyment (jouissance) we must remain separated from, even though it is us in strange sense. But what does it mean to speak of the objet petit a as a “surplus jouissance”? Once again we turn to Bruce Fink for clarification:

In Seminar XVI, Lacan equates object (a) with Marx’s concept of surplus value. As that which is most highly prized or valued by the subject, object (a) is related to the former gold standard, the value against which all other values (e.g., currencies, precious metals, gems, etc.) were measured. For the subject, it is that value he or she is seeking in all of his or her activities and relations. Surplus value corresponds in quantity to what, in capitalism, is called “interest” or “profit”: it is that which the capitalist skims off the top for him or herself, instead of paying it to the employees. (It also goes by the name of “reinvestment capital,” and by many other euphemisms as well.) It is, loosely speaking, the fruit of the employees’ labor. When, in legal documents written in American English, someone is said to have the right to the fruit or “usufruct” of a particular piece of property or sum of money held in trust, it means that that person has a right to the profit generated by it, though not necessarily to the property or money itself. In other words, it is a right, not of ownership, but rather of “enjoyment.” In everyday French, you could say that that person has la jouissance of said property or money. In the more precise terms of French finance, that would mean that he or she enjoys, not the land, buildings, or capital itself (la nue-pmpriété; literally, “naked property”), but merely its excess fruits, its product above and beyond that required to reimburse its upkeep, cultivation, and so on — in a word, its operating expenses. (Note that in French legal jargon, jouissance is more closely related to possession.) The employee never enjoys that surplus product: he or she “loses” it. The work process produces him or her as an “alienated” subject (S), simultaneously producing a loss, (a). The capitalist, as Other, enjoys that excess product, and thus the subject finds him or herself in the unenviable situation of working for the Other’s enjoyment, sacrificing him or herself for the Other’s jouissance — precisely what the neurotic most abhors! Like surplus value, this surplus jouissance may be viewed as circulating “outside” of the subject in the Other, It is a part of the libido that circulates hors corps.” (The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, p. 96)

But what is the essential relation between objet a and anxiety? Considering that Anxiety is about 340 pages long, Lacan obviously said a great many things about the affect that we cannot discuss here, but there are three essential aspects of anxiety Lacan pointed out that we must understand. First, anxiety is about the lack of a lack. Second, anxiety is a signal from the Real. Third, anxiety is about not knowing what the Other wants from you. We’ll discuss each one and, then, see if we can form a unified concept of the three of them.

Anxiety is about the lack of a lack — a presence of something that was and/or is supposed to be absent. Anxiety is about some overbearing presence that threatens to consume the subject. Lacan, controversially I might add, argues that the concept of separation anxiety is misguided to some degree. It’s not the absence of the mother that brings forth anxiety in the child, but, rather, her presence:

Don’t you know that it’s not longing for the maternal breast that provokes anxiety, but its imminence? What provokes anxiety is everything that announces to us, that lets us glimpse, that we’re going to be taken back up onto the lap. It is not, contrary to what is said, the rhythm of the mother’s alternating presence and absence. The proof of this is that the infant revels in repeating this game of presence and absence. The security of presence is the possibility of absence. The most anguishing thing for the infant is precisely the moment when the relationship upon which he’s established himself, of the lack that turns him into desire, is disrupted, and this relationship is most disrupted when there’s no possibility of any lack, when the mother is on his back all the while, and especially when she’s wiping his backside. (Anxiety, pp. 53–54)

To truly understand this passage, we must state that for Lacan there really isn’t one objet a, that is, we shouldn’t always speak of the Lacanian object. Strictly speaking, there are four types of objet a — there’s an objet a that corresponds to each of the drives, or, more accurately, around which each drive circles. Thus, in relation to the oral drive there is breast-as-objet-a; the anal drive circles around feces-as-objet-a; to the scopic drive corresponds gaze-as-objet-a; and to the invocatory drive there is voice-as-objet-a. Of course, these drive-objects are always susceptible to the substitutive (metaphoric/metonymic) function of desire and drive, e.g., money can take on and fulfill the function that shit had as the anal object. Lacan said in the above passage that “it’s not longing for the maternal breast that provokes anxiety, but its imminence”. What he’s getting at here is that it’s the presence of objet a, in this case breast-as-objet-a, that causes anxiety. But why should this be so? The reason why is because the presence and proximity of objet a is the presence of the desiring subject’s potential satisfaction and completion, which, in turn, is the annihilation of the subject ($) qua lack-of-being. This is precisely why Lacan held that “desire is a defense, a defense against going beyond a limit in jouissance” (Écrits, “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire”, p. 699).

The subject only exists as a desiring lack, so the presence of objet a, the Real of jouissance, is the presence of imaginary-symbolic death. For fantasy to function, objet a must remain off its stage or out of its frame — that is, it must remain something absent that we’re unconsciously searching for (◊) in order to work. In Heideggerian terms, for the objet a to enter the scene of fantasy is for it to become unready-to-hand (remember that Heidegger argued in Being and Time that usually equipment only becomes present to us when it cease to work). For fantasy to function, objet a must withdraw like equipment: “The a, desire’s support in the fantasy, isn’t visible in what constitutes for man the image of his desire” (Anxiety, p. 35). On this theme, Lacan also wrote: “The base of the function of desire is, in a style and in a form that have to be specified each and every time, the pivotal object a insomuch as it stands, not only separated, but always eluded, somewhere other than where it sustains desire, and yet in a profound relation to it” (Anxiety, p. 252). Of course, it goes without saying that the objet a is not a piece of standard equipment, but that doesn’t negate the fact that it is like equipment in some respects.

So when Lacan claims that anxiety is a signal from the Real, we can now understand that what anxiety is warning us of is our imminent demise (Symbolic death). Here “signal” basically means what Peirce meant by “index”. An index or an indexical sign is a sign that “points” to its referent, e.g., smoke points to fire, a scab points to a past injury, and, for Lacan, anxiety points to objet a. Anxiety qua signal, then, turns out to be an ontological warning mechanism; it alerts us to the proximity of the lack of a lack that can shatter our identities.

Now that we see how the first two aspects of anxiety relate to each other, let’s consider the third one: anxiety is about not knowing what the Other wants from you. To illustrate this Lacan presented a very memorable image, though one that isn’t immediately clear.

For those who weren’t there, I’ll recall the fable, the apologue, the amusing image I briefly set out before you. Myself donning the animal mask with which the sorcerer in the Cave of the Three Brothers is covered, I pictured myself faced with another animal, a real one this time, taken to be gigantic for the sake of the story, a praying mantis. Since I didn’t which mask I was wearing, you can easily imagine that I had some reason not to feel reassured in the event that, by chance, this mask might have been just what it took to lead my partner into some error as to my identity. The whole thing was well underscored by the fact that, as I confessed, I couldn’t see my own image in the enigmatic mirror of the insect’s ocular globe. (Anxiety, p. 6)

What Lacan has in mind is the hypothetical experience of standing before a giant praying mantis while wearing a mantis mask without knowing what type it is. In other words, you don’t know if the mask you’re wearing is the mask of a female mantis, a male mantis or even a baby mantis. In this moment, you would be completely anxious about what the giant insect desires of you, since you have no way to unconceal the specific nature of its desire. Lacan said that this image of being present in the presence of the giant praying mantis “bore a relation to the desire of the Other” (Anxiety, p. 22). What, then, makes us anxious is not knowing what the Other wants from us (Che vuoi?). But why should this be? It most certainly can be a frightening thing to find yourself as the object of the Other’s desire, or to be connected in some way to one of the Other’s objet a(s) as the organ of surplus jouissance. “The nightmare’s anxiety is felt, properly speaking, as that of the Other’s jouissance” (Anxiety, p. 61). But how can we reconcile this aspect of anxiety with the other two? Desire (◊) is one of three structures of fantasy, therefore, no desire = no fantasy. Desire arises from the cut of the signifier — the “scalpel” of the big Other. Lacan said, “Desire is always what is inscribed as a repercussion of the articulation of language at the level of the Other” (My Teaching, p.38).

But as Lacan loved to emphasize, “Man’s desire is the desire of the Other” (Anxiety, p. 22). This can be understand in three different ways: 1. desire is the desire for what the Other desires (I want what the Other wants), 2. desire desires the Other’s desire (as Cheap Trick put it, “I want you to want me”), 3. desire itself emerges out of the Other’s desire (for example, the reason why parents have children, i.e., babies that will become desiring subjects, is because they themselves desire to be happy). However, owing to the fact that desire is always related to the Other’s desire, the Other’s desire can actually block us from the object of our desire. The melodies of desire are far from harmonious. Thus, the Other’s desire can actually break apart our fantasies — the desire of the Other is always potentially a threat. Now, insofar as desire always has a metaphoric and metonymic relation to its object, desire itself can always “slide” away, therefore, making it beyond epistemological mastery. Yet in getting to know a person, you come to have a relative familiarity with his or her desire, and this brings about a sense of security in connection to your own desire, since the radical Otherness of his or her desire has diminished. Nevertheless, the Other’s desire can always, to put it bluntly, fuck up our own desire. While Lacan focused on how the proximity or nearness of the presence of objet a is what provokes anxiety, we must also remember that a entity can become conspicuous by its very remoteness. Just as equipment can become present to us as unready-to-hand (nonfunctional or inoperative) in its proximity, so, too, can it become unready-to-hand by missing.

Similarly, when something ready-to-hand is found missing, though its everyday presence has been so obvious that we have never taken any notice of it, this makes a break in those referential contexts which circumspection discovers. Our circumspection comes up against emptiness, and now sees for the first time what the missing article was ready-to-hand with, and what it was ready-to-hand for. The environment announces itself afresh. (Being and Time, p. 105)

Whenever a person is faced with the possibility of her fantasy never coming true, she is suddenly overwhelmed with anxiety. And seeing how the Other has it’s own fantasy that often is in conflict with her own, it’s no wonder why not knowing what the Other desires from her can also make her anxious. To find oneself connected to the Other’s objet a is to have your own fantasy threatened, since, in your fantasy you are not the objet a, but, rather, the barred subject in pursuit of it (unless you happen to be a pervert and not an obsessive). So here’s the final formulation of the Lacanian concept of anxiety: anxiety is the affect that functions as a signal from the Real that alerts us to the lack of a lack, the presencing of the proximity of the objet a on the stage of fantasy, which is always a stage on which the Other’s desire is positioned as a threat to the subject’s desire, that is, positioned to drive away the subject’s objet a into remoteness. For objet a to be operative it must not be too close or too far away. It can’t be on stage nor can it be in the lobby — it must be in the audience.

We have arrived at the end of our summaries of the concepts of anxiety formulated by Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Lacan. We can now see the precise similarities and differences between them. From a Heideggerian perspective, we can say that Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety is ontico-ontological (more specifically existentiell-existential), i.e., it’s “object” is the Being of Dasein, i.e., freedom or transcendence. Freedom isn’t an object in the present-at-hand sense, but it is related to the Being of a being. For Kierkegaard, anxiety is about human freedom which is the possibility of having possibilities, thus, anxiety is anxious about a possibility. The early Heidegger’s concept of anxiety is also ontico-ontological (existentiell-existential), since it pertains to the totality of Dasein’s existential structures (existentialia). What anxiety is anxious about is Dasein’s Being-in-the-world — especially Being-toward-death, which is a possibility, and in recognizing the “object” of anxiety as a possibility, the early Heidegger was once again thinking along similar lines as Kierkegaard. The later Heidegger’s concept of anxiety is ontological insofar as the “object” of anxiety is the nothing (Being), which is to say anxiety has absolutely no object at all, since, unlike Kierkegaard and the early Heidegger, it’s “object” isn’t even a possibility belonging to a being. Lacan’s concept is ontic, since anxiety is about an object (though a virtual one) — the object is the objet petit a.

Oedipus in Eden

Since Lacan’s concept of anxiety is arguably the most difficult to understand, let us take a moment and see how it applies to the “first” instance of anxiety — that of Adam’s. Let’s read the story of the Fall from a Lacanian perspective. As we saw, Adam couldn’t understand the prohibition of the tree. But why? Because the Garden of Eden as a whole was Adam for Adam: Eden was the Mother without any Otherness (Mother-as-I). From his perspective, there was no mediation between himself and Eden-as-Mother. The prohibition of the signifier didn’t function because there was no Other for Adam. The “Other” is here the fundamental Heim (home), thus, not the Other at all. Prohibition and the signifier presuppose the Other. God’s prohibition of Eden as such was the instance of the function of the Name-of-the-Father.

God’s first prohibition is actually the first flicker of Otherness — Adam can neither assimilate it nor reject it. It means that, strictly speaking, signification presupposes Otherness, but the signifier itself is the Other in a larval form. The signifier has not yet cut the child away from the Mother, making the Mother the (m)Other. After God issued the prohibition of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam started to experience lack for the first time. This prohibition (Name-of-the-Father) set the process of Adam’s symbolic castration or alienation in motion, thus, transforming him as a proto-subject into a proto-barred subject. I say that he was a “proto-barred” subject here because he couldn’t have fully repressed the phallus (the signifier of the mother’s desire) under the Name-of-the-Father at this point and thereby become a “healthy” neurotic. But why is this so? The paternal metaphor couldn’t fully function here insofar as Adam didn’t really understand the prohibition. While Adam had a relation with the real father, that is, God, at this point, he still didn’t have a full relation to the symbolic father. Of course, here the real father will be the instance of the symbolic father or the Law.

Now, it’s only with this first prohibition that the preoedipal triangle (Adam-Eden-phallus) begins to take shape. The first prohibition disrupted Adam’s “preoedipal” unity or jouissance with his Mother (Eden); it drove a wedge between him and his enjoyment of the “breast” (the fruits of Eden’s trees), which, in turn, transforms the Mother into the (m)Other. This separation led him to desire the blissful unity he once knew and initiated his desire. It also initiated his first hypothesis: the phallus. Eden would be the symbolic mother and God would be the real mother (as well as the real father). On some level the two had to have coincided. Eden fulfilled the function of the mother, i.e., it met all of Adam’s physical needs — it was his caretaker. Yet Eden had no desire of its own — but God did. And contained within the first prohibition is the desire of the (m)Other. And just like the giant praying mantis, God’s (the Other’s) unknown desire threw Adam into anxiety, thus, giving rise to Adam’s own freedom. Freedom is born from anxiety before the Other’s desire (God’s desire in the case of Adam).

There is no freedom outside the traumatic encounter with the opacity of the Other’s desire: freedom does not mean that I simply get rid of the Other’s desire — I am, as it were, thrown into my freedom when I confront this opacity as such, deprived of the fantasmatic cover that tells me what the Other wants from me. In this difficult predicament, full of anxiety, when I know that the Other wants something from me, without knowing what this desire is, I am thrown back into myself, compelled to assume the risk of freely determining the coordinates of my desire. (The Puppet and the Dwarf, p. 129)

Thanks to Žižek, we can see how to connect Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety to Lacan’s. Now, insofar as the prohibition cut Adam away from a part of himself, his jouissance, it will come as no surprise what role Eve plays in this reading. Obviously, she’s Adam’s objet a, the lost object of jouissance. Eve was made out of Adam’s rib, i.e., a lost part of him, and remember that the objet a is the remainder of the subject — the subject Otherized and externalized. Adam’s anatomical incompleteness fittingly symbolizes his ontological incompleteness. So just as the objet a functions as the substitute for the phallus and the mother, Eve was the substitute for the maternal body of Eden. But how are we to think about Adam’s choice to eat of the fruit? How are we to conceive of his passage to the act (passage à l’acte), his exit from the Symbolic Order?

We must look to Lacan’s interpretation of one of Freud’s patients: the young homosexual girl. The young women, Freud reported, was spotted by her father while walking on the street with the woman she loved. At this moment he cast an angry and disapproving look at his daughter. After receiving this glance, she immediately hurried off and threw herself over a bridge, yet she didn’t die, since it was actually the side of a cutting onto a railway line, that is, she landed on some kind of platform. We must understand that her father’s gaze was the objet a; it was the cause of her desire for her beloved and determined everything she was doing at the time. Lacan argues in Anxiety that this suicide attempt was the young woman’s passage to the act; it was not an instance of acting out, since it was not a message addressed to anyone. Symbolization had become impossible for the young woman in this situation. Confronted with her father’s desire (desire like that of the giant praying mantis), she was suddenly consumed with an uncontrollable anxiety and reacted in an impulsive way by totally identifying herself with her father’s gaze (gaze-as-objet-a). Thus she “fell down” like the objet a, the leftover of the signifier.

God’s prohibition was what caused Adam’s desire to come into existence and led to Adam’s lack-of-being. The objet a has been lost, yet is embodied in Eve. When Eve tempts Adam with the fruit, it is the temptation of ontological wholeness. Adam had been fantasizing about this ever since the prohibition. In eating the fruit he sought to break free from the Symbolic identity bestowed on him by the Name-of-the-Father by merging with both Eden and Eve. Here Adam is made anxious by the presence of Eve’s voice-as-objet-a and gaze-as-objet-a while also being made anxious by not knowing what the Other (God) desires of him. Adam eats so as to escape into the Real of jouissance, thus, negating the possibility of his own freedom. We can easily connect this to Kierkegaard’s Adam. The fruit and Eve are both objet a/jouissance, thereby, both are self-destruction. Here Adam is faced with the possibility of Lacanian self-destruction (passage to the act/return to the Real) and with the possibility of Christian self-destruction (sin). The point is that Lacanian anxiety and Kierkegaardian anxiety are both about freedom to some degree. Well, Adam ate the fruit and the rest is “history”. We can now ask ourselves the question concerning why our era is so anxious.

Enframing and Capital

For Heidegger, the real problem our epoch is facing isn’t an ontic one, for example, the problems concerning new advancements in technology, revitalizing the middle class, terrorism, income inequality, or how people will live in society with the decline in the quality and quantity of job opportunities. Of course, these are serious problems, but the biggest problem of all that we’re facing is ontological, which also happens to be the most invisible and subtle one. This problem is our epochal understanding of Being: enframing (Gestell). We’re in a very dangerous place in the history of Beyng, since it is Beyng itself that is the danger. Heidegger wrote, “Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological” (Basic Writings, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 325). This basically means that our technological understanding of Beyng or background familiarity “teaches” us that to be a being is to be usable-then-disposable. By “standing-reserve”, Heidegger means waiting to be used up. Enframing most fundamentally means extracting more out of x than is directly given by x and, then, storing up this “more” while discarding x itself. This is precisely the structure and movement of capital, i.e., surplus value. Capitalism is, then, the economization of enframing. The Event of enframing was and is ground of the capitalist world. And just as Christianity was a marginal practice operating in the background of the Roman world, so, too, was usury a marginal practice in the Christian world. Usury (M→M’) was capital in its larval form.

For Heidegger, we don’t fundamentally relate to entities as the Greeks did. For the Greeks, to be was to be phusis: a wondrous rising up and presencing for a little while before falling back into unconcealment.

In the age of the first and definitive unfolding of Western philosophy among the Greeks, when questioning about beings as such and as a whole received its true inception, beings were called phusis. This fundamental Greek word for beings is usually translated “nature.” We use the Latin translation natura which really means “to be born,” “birth.” But with this Latin translation, the originary content of the Greek word phusis is already thrust aside, the authentic philosophical naming force of the Greek word is destroyed . . . Now, what does the word phusis say? It says what emerges from itself (for example, the emergence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearance in such unfolding and holding itself and persisting in appearance — in short, the emerging-abiding sway . . . phuein means to grow, to make grow. (Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 14–15)

In both of this books, Richard Capobianco does a masterful job of explaining what Heidegger is getting whenever he talks of phusis or the “Ur-phenomenon” of the Greek world:

The Ur-phenomenon that he always had in view, that he understood ancient Greek thinking to have originarily brought into view, albeit glancingly, with the word eon, Being, is the temporal-spatial, finite and negatived, appearing of beings in their beingness, which calls forth and even compels from the human being (Dasein) a cor-respondence in language that allows both what appears — and appearing itself — to be made manifest meaningfully. (Engaging Heidegger, p. 4)

Yet it was, after all, the proper character of Nature-physis, as well as the proper relation of Dasein to Nature-physis, that most concerned him. With respect to this core matter, his view was perfectly clear . . . Nature-physis is the temporal manifestation of beings in their beingness, and Dasein dwells in the midst of this manifestness. The “Greek experience” is the counter, the foil, to our modern philosophical and psychological preoccupation with grounding everything in the “subject” — and it is the remedy as well. To recover the “Greek experience” is for us to recover the joyful wonder and astonishment at the inexhaustible giving-showing-shining-forth of all things and to accept with humility the limit of all our saying, language, meaning concerning what is. To the contrary of certain recent readings of Heidegger, the core matter of his thinking is not our meaning-making, as important as this is, but rather what calls for and calls forth meaning, namely, Nature-physis-Being. No matter the breadth and depth of our words and meanings, we do not — we cannot — exhaust the manifestation of Nature. (Heidegger’s Way of Being, p. 47)

Phusis is like a blossoming, so, to the Greeks, to be meant to “blossom”. The Christian understanding of Being was different. For them, Being was ens creatum: to be is to be a creation of God. Both phusis and ens creatum instill in a person a certain reverence for beings. They lead us to value beings just the way they are, qualitatively speaking. By contrast, enframing does not. It leads us to ignore the natural qualities of beings and find ways to quantitatively exploit and transform them for our own purposes. The technological understanding of Being has us existing as if all of reality (the totality of entities) is there simply to meet human needs, i.e., it’s nothing more than a means to an end — our end (perhaps in more ways than one). In enframing, it’s as if Beyng, instead of God, said to us, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28). This is incredibly dangerous! It’s obviously the main reason why we are now living in what John David Ebert calls “the Age of Catastrophe” (the age of living with one climate change related disaster after another).

There seems to be no escaping it. With record tornados and floods in the Midwest; a massive drought from California to Florida; a gigantic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in Japan; anomalous floods in Vermont and New Jersey unleashed by Hurricane Irene; more flooding in Australia; an earthquake in New Zealand; devastating fires in Texas; and another earthquake in Turkey, the year 2011 has gone down as the most expensive for “natural” disasters ever. Catastrophe, it seems, is becoming something of a way of life for us. Indeed, it has become the new norm of civilization. But, of course, the word “catastrophe” means a “reversal of what is expected.” It is a Greek word, a compound of “kata,” meaning “down,” and “strophe,” meaning “turn” or “reversal,” as in “a reversal of fortune.” Catastrophes, then, are supposed to be exceptions to the normal run of things. They are disruptions of the banal world of seriality and repetition, of days carbon copied from one another, in which the hell of the same unfolds with single-minded and relentless monotony. Catastrophes are singularities which irrupt into such sequences with bizarre and atrocious anomalies of human suffering. But on a planet in which catastrophes are becoming a daily occurrence, the classical understanding of the world no longer seems to fit. It has to be revised — along with everything else — and modified to fit the changed circumstances of an upside down world in which catastrophes are now the norm and banality is increasingly becoming the exception. Catastrophe has become our new environment, a total surround, inside which we exist, but without noticing the strangeness of it, precisely because of its very ubiquity. (The Age of Catastrophe, p. 1)

What humankind needs now more than anything is an Ereignis (an Event, an ap-propriation, or a coming-into-view) that sends to us a new understanding of Being. A fundamental change in our basic comportment toward beings must happen if we are to survive on this planet.

Elsewhere Heidegger wrote, “The world now appears as an object open to the attacks of calculative thought, attacks that nothing is believed able any longer to resist. Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry” (Discourse on Thinking, “Memorial Address”, p. 50). Part of our problem is reducing the qualitative to the quantitative, which is exactly what techno-science and techno-capitalism both have a tendency to do. As Guy Debord wrote, “The loss of quality so obvious at every level of the language of the spectacle, from the objects it lauds to the behavior it regulates, merely echoes the basic traits of a real production process that shuns reality. The commodity form is characterized exclusively by self-equivalence — it is exclusively quantitative in nature: the quantitative is what it develops, and it can only develop within the quantitative” (The Society of the Spectacle, pp. 26–7). Enframing and hyperquantification go hand in hand. The problems with capitalism we’re seeing are rooted in Beyng. Capital is the worldly “incarnation” of enframing. Think about the two different circulation processes Marx described in Capital: Volume One: M-C-M’ (money to commodity to money + profit) as opposed to C-M-C (commodity to money to commodity). Profit contains the seeds of hyperquantification, social unrest and division. Besides, this form of circulation is unnatural. Marx put it better than I can:

The path C-M-C proceeds from the extreme constituted by one commodity, and ends with the extreme constituted by another, which falls out of circulation and into consumption. Consumption, the satisfaction of needs, in short use-value, is therefore its final goal. The path M-C-M, however, proceeds from the extreme of money and finally returns to that same extreme. Its driving and motivating force, its determining purpose, is therefore exchange-value . . . The simple circulation of commodities — selling in order to buy — is a means to a final goal which lies outside circulation, namely the appropriation of use-values, the satisfaction of needs. As against this, the circulation of money as capital is an end in itself, for the valorization of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The movement of capital is therefore limitless. (Capital: Volume One, Chapter 4, pp. 250–253)

This limitless movement of capital is the true greed of capitalism. Capitalism (M-C-M’) deworlds human beings by failing to take account of their qualitative facticity (capitalism has always presupposed some version of the leveled, atomistic, Cartesian self). It, then, builds its concept of freedom on this concept of the self. But if freedom means either starving or selling the only commodity I have (labour power) to a capitalist, then freedom, factically speaking, is merely post-feudal serfdom. M-C-M’ is ultimately a destructive and deworlding force due to the fact that it only sees through the neutral lens of the quantitative. It is blind to nature, suffering, inequality, beauty, love, facticity, etc. And, again, M-C-M’ is rooted in the technological understanding of Beyng, which unconceals beings as nothing more than resources to be consumed or stored up. So, indeed, our problem is primarily ontological rather than economic (ontic).

One of Žižek’s most famous refrains is: “It’s much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.” A Heideggerian could restate it like this: It’s easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more radical event in our technological understanding of Beyng. There is certainly a pessimistic bent to all this. Despite Heidegger’s negative comments on both pessimism and optimism, his work on enframing seems to be much more intrinsically pessimistic than even Žižek’s thinking on our epochal situation is, since the former believed we can’t just up and radically change Beyng, which by extension, means that we really can’t do it with capitalism either. We can’t unthink Beyng-as-enframing, since it wasn’t thought out in the first place. Beyng is our background familiarity in the world that is pre-linguistic, pre-conceptual, pre-theoretical, etc. We didn’t learn it in any cognitive sense. We appropriated it in our social practices and in simply existing in the world with others. We can’t fundamentally reorient ourselves in our primordial dealings with reality. Something must change us! Yes, we can become aware of the problem, but what that entails is really just being open to the possible Ereignis of a new understanding of Being.

The Circuit of Anxiety

Now, let’s bring Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Lacan into discussion with each other on the topic of anxiety. If all human beings ceased to exist, then so would human freedom, worldhood, Being-toward-death as well as the objet a. In saying that anxiety is without an object, Kierkegaard and Heidegger meant that it is without a substance or a present-at-hand entity, and Lacan would have to agree with them in this regard. What these thinkers have in common is that anxiety is about some x dependent on humans, or Daseins, or subjects. All of their nonobjective “objects” (freedom, the world, death, object petit a) are unintentional, i.e., we can’t directly fix their position in the phenomenological field or pinpoint their location in physical space — this is their commonality.

However, all of them, while not being substances, are in fact real in some sense of the word. To use Locke’s old distinction, none of them can be said to be the bearers of primary and secondary qualities, but, as Heidegger showed, substances do not exclusively comprise the economy of Being. In Being and Time, for example, he established three different modes of Being: 1.existence, 2. readiness-to-hand, 3. presence-at-hand. And he went on in ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ to show that artworks also have their very own mode of Being. Now, freedom (transcendence or projection) and Being-towards-death are structures of Dasein’s Being, so we can understand them through their relation to the other existentialia. We understand Being as the clearing, presencing or unconcealment of beings as such. To ask about the Being of Beyng is obviously far too difficult a question to consider here; suffice it to say that Beyng is Ereignis, or the epochal presencing that holds sway while differentiating itself from what it brings to presence.

But what is the Being of objet a? Where does it fit into Heidegger’s taxonomy of modes of Being? Well, there’s a number of beings that don’t seem to fit into any of these modes, e.g., mathematical entities, abstracts concepts and the images of the imagination. But as far as I can see, the objet a is not merely some ontic relation or a projection of the imagination. An example of the former is the image I just projected onto my kitchen table of a dancing leprechaun — whatever objet a is, it is not like this image. It seems to me that it is, far from being a mere psychological, psychoanalytic or existentiell “property”, an ontological structure, i.e., one of Dasein’s existentialia, which means that it ek-sists (here we need to work out the relation between care and desire, or Dasein and the subject of the unconscious, but this is far too complicated to sort through at the moment). Once the subject undergoes symbolic castration in the Oedipus complex and the imaginary phallus (the signifier of desire) is repressed under the Name-of-the-Father, the objet a, as the symbolic substitute of the phallus, is lodged in the space between the clearing and the beings cleared within it. This is why the objet a is never directly perceivable — it occupies the rift where in Beyng is cut away from beings, i.e., the in-between of the ontological difference.

Here we must recognize the fundamental role Beyng plays in our lives. Desires, fundamental fantasies, signifiers, specular images, the Names-of-the-Father, etc., all rest on the foundation of Beyng. These functions must all be there in some sense in order to be operative — even in the case of an operative lack like the objet petit a, there must first be the presencing of what is present in order for there to be a lack somewhere. The objet petit a can only stand out in the clearing as an “object” or “being” against the backdrop of Beyng. To be anxious of the objet a presupposes the ontological difference. However, the Lacanian object isn’t just another being among beings. Proximally and for the most part, objet a is in the background of the background — it’s withdrawn to the second power.

Lacan said that anxiety, following Freud, is a signal. But where does this signal come from if considered from a Heideggerian perspective? It’s a signal from Beyng itself that serves to warn us of itself. Beyng, in the virtual sense, is a multiplicity, meaning that there is a plenitude of singularities of Beyng in the background during anyone one epoch of Beyng. Beyng is never fully drained of singularities — not even in the in-between. What Heidegger failed to emphasize is the ontic’s role in the relation to a new destining of Beyng. Can we really imagine that Beyng would send itself to Dasein as ens creatum without the actuality of the Gospels, Paul’s epistles, Paul’s evangelism, the Church fathers, the vision of Constantine, the Counsel of Nicaea, etc.? Can we imagine the Christian understanding of Beyng coming to hold sway in the clearing without these ontic factors along with many more of them? Of course not! What we must recognize is that the Christian ontic-constellation, it’s onticonstellation, was not sufficient in and of itself to cause the Ereignis of ens creatum — however, it was still necessary. (What’s radically strange and mystifying about the Event is that it’s essentially causeless — it would even be a mistake to consider it as being “overdetermined”. While an Event obviously has ontic-necessary conditions, we could never actually formulate its sufficient condition(s), since it simply just happens. On some level this inability to formulate a mechanism of the Event is unsatisfying, but, on the other hand, it also can generate wonder in the primordial Greek sense and that’s an achievement in and of itself.)

While there is no dialectical determinism or necessity between the various epochal sendings of Beyng, i.e, a new destining of Beyng isn’t the synthetic child of historico-dialectical antagonisms, and while no onticonstellation necessarily “transmits” itself to Beyng, Beyng nevertheless requires an ontic support in its Ereignis. Beyng never pivots in an ontic void. The Event of Beyng events-forth from out of the background. Early on, Christianity was a mere marginal practice in the background of the Roman world and there was nothing that insured that the Christianizing of Beyng would ever happen — it simply happened. But just as ens creatum had its own onticonstellation, so, too, did enframing. But what ontic factors comprised it? While the organization of this specific onticonstellation was extremely overdetermined, it’s fair to reduce this formation to three main ontic-factors: 1. the emergence of capitalism, 2. the technologico-scientific revolution, 3. subject-oriented philosophy. Why would Beyng send out the signal of anxiety into the clearing? What is Beyng itself anxious of? Beyng is anxious about itself. But why? Because it is set to collapse itself in on itself — it is set to kill itself. This isn’t just the abandonment by Beyng of Dasein we’re talking about. This is something far more dangerous — the absolute threat is the implosion of the clearing itself. It turns out that capitalism in particular is the manifestation of Beyng’s own death drive.

The objet a is the object of our fantasy even if not the conscious object of our desire. Nothing means more to a person than his or her fundamental fantasy. This is what structures a person’s entire life and gives it meaning and purpose. Whatever the object of someone’s desire turns out to be it is always something particular to that person. Even if x is the object of more than one person’s desire, each person’s fantasy will be unique in a number of ways, thus, given the individuality of the fantasy x will turn out to be different in some sense as well. Now, Lacan has shown that anxiety is always about the objet a (the fantasmatic object), but the signal of anxiety actually runs according to a circuit. This triangular circuit is comprised of objet a, the self (ego/subject/Dasein) and Beyng. This circuit has taken form in the clearing due to Beyng’s status as enframing — Beyng threatens fantasy. Beyond the objet petit a looms the danger. Enframing is not just a danger — it is the danger. As of right now it’s positioned to be the demise of human civilization, which means that our fantasies are on the line, which in turn means objet a is on the line. This is where we must recognize the paradox at the heart of our type of anxiety, namely, that anxiety both has and has not an object.

Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Lacan were all correct, or at least half correct. What is essentially meant by my term the circuit of anxiety is the structure of anxiety, which, like Being-in-the-world, is a “unitary phenomenon”. Just has Heidegger focused in on specific structures (existentialia) throughout the course of his analytic of Dasein in Being and Time, it, too, is possible to turn one’s attention to a specific structure of anxiety for the sake of analysis and this is precisely what Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Lacan have done in their respective investigations on the affect. However, thanks to our indebtedness to their investigations, we are now able to stand back far enough to see anxiety’s circuit as a whole. The signal of anxiety runs according to the circuit to signify to us that objet a and our fundamental fantasies are in danger to Beyng itself and to our own freedom. The threat to our fundamental fantasy is no longer simply the Real or the actual attainment of objet a and our lost jouissance, which must always be off stage or in the background to be operative in the functioning of fantasy, now the ground of our Symbolic matrix itself, that is, the “principle” upon which our particular world was established, is the danger — anxiety is now a signal from the Real and the Symbolic. Prior to the destining of enframing, anxiety was a type of signifying relation between a human being and itself (its freedom, its death, its objet a, its not knowing what it is for the desire of the Other), but now there’s a third element to this phenomenon — Beyng.

When we put all this in the context of capitalism, it becomes easy to see why people are so anxious nowadays. On a tacit level or in relation to the background, we know that the way the world currently operates will not endure and cannot sustain itself forever, but, oddly enough, what provokes anxiety from out of the background is the background itself. Yet our background familiarity is constantly trying to inform us of this. Capitalism is certainly resilient, and I remember Žižek predicted that it would bounce back from the economic crisis of 2008, but nevertheless there are certain things that capital itself cannot defeat and Nature is one of them. Capital cannot master the Real. So the reason why those of us living in the era of late capitalism are so anxious, and the reason why anxiety is on the rise, is because Beyng itself is anxious. This no doubt sounds strange, but it’s as if Beyng desires to be saved from itself and is afraid of its own death coming by way of its own hand. One is reminded here of the sequence from Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn in which Ash William’s (Bruce Campbell’s) right hand becomes possessed by an evil force. After battling his own hand for a while, Ash is finally driven with a crazed fortitude to sever his own hand with a chainsaw — unfortunately, for Beyng, enframing isn’t a hand.

Let’s now get a clearer picture of the circuit of anxiety. Our freedom can make us anxious insofar as we can choose to do something that might unintentionally bring us too close or too far to the realization of our fundamental fantasy as well as inadvertently actualize our ownmost possibility as Being-towards-death. Our free actions, proximally and for the most, also reinforce enframing, that is, how things appear and function. An authentic confrontation with Being-towards-death can provoke anxiety, since it discloses the possibility of the fundamental fantasy never coming true; it also reveals that we’ve been misusing our freedom insofar as we really haven’t attempted to save the earth and the world from enframing for future Daseins. The proximity of the objet a makes us anxious because it threatens to undermine our position in the world, and send us back to the Real of jouissance, which would be the collapse of the ontological difference, thus, the annihilation of Dasein and Beyng as such. Standing before enframing, the nothing of Beyng (Beyng-as-Other), sends us into anxiety as the result of not knowing what it wants from us (not knowing how to use our entangled freedom to save ourselves from enframing), and that this not knowing and the status of Beyng itself threatens the fundamental fantasy. We have now arrived at a preliminary idea of how all of the different aspects of anxiety, all of the various anxiety-points, form a circuit, that is, a rhizomatic circuit. One can become anxious simply by finding oneself located at a specific nodal-point in the rhizome of anxiety. This ends our discussion of why we are now so anxious. Much more could have been said and there’s most certainly much more that needs to be clarified about the circuit of anxiety, but we’ll have to return to this subject at another time.

Works Cited

Capobianco, Richard, Engaging Heidegger. Canada: University of Toronto Press. 2010.

Capobianco, Richard, Heidegger’s Way of Being. Canada: University of Toronto Press. 2014.

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books. 2006

Ebert, John David, The Age of Catastrophe: Disaster and Humanity in Modern Times. McFarland. 2012.

Fink, Bruce, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1995.

Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. 1962.

Heidegger, Martin, Basic Writings. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. 1993.

Heidegger, Martin, Discourse on Thinking. San Francisco: Harper Torchbooks. 1966.

Heidegger, Martin, Introduction to Metaphysics. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2000.

Homer, Sean, Jacques Lacan (Routledge Critical Thinkers). Routledge. 2005

Kierkegaard, Søren, The Concept of Anxiety. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1980.

Lacan, Jacques, Anxiety. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2014.

Lacan, Jacques, Écrits. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2006.

Lacan, Jacques, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 1998.

Lacan, Jacques, My Teaching. London: Verso. 2009.

Marx, Karl, Capital: Volume One. New York: Vintage Books. 1976.

Žižek, Slavoj, The Puppet and the Dwarf. The MIT Press. 2003.

Žižek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. 2009.

Žižek, Slavoj, The Žižek Reader. Wiley-Blackwell. 1999.

The Dangerous Maybe

#Jacques Lacan #Søren Kierkegaard #Martin Heidegger

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4o-0z · 3 years

Text

While there are countless ways that we sabotage ourselves, sometimes our problems are not generated by us, but by the people who surround us.

“A single joyless person is enough to create constant discouragement and cloudy skies for a whole household, and it is a miracle if there is not one person like that. Happiness is not nearly so contagious a disease.”

There is an emotional osmosis that exists between human beings, and as Nietzsche points out, this osmosis is particularly strong in terms of negative states of mind. But the dangers of a poor social environment are not limited to the catching of a bit of anxiety, pessimism, or anger, rather our social environment can affect us in more perverse ways and one of which is in acting as a barrier to self-realization. The reason for this is simple: if everyone around us is living below their potential, if our family members, friends, and peers are passive, apathetic, overly anxious, or chronically worried, it will be very difficult in the presence of such people to muster up the belief that we can be any different. For this reason cutting the chains of an unhealthy social world can be a necessary first step to the unfolding of our inner potentials and to becoming more a self-realized, or in Carl Jung’s terminology, a more individuated man or woman:

“Here one may ask. . .why it is so desirable that a man should be individuated. Not only is it desirable, it is absolutely indispensable because, through his contamination with others, he falls into situations and commits actions which bring him into disharmony with himself . . .[and] acts in a way contrary to [his] own nature. Accordingly a man can neither be at one with himself nor accept responsibility for himself. He feels himself to be in a degrading, unfree, unethical condition. But the disharmony with himself is precisely the neurotic and intolerable condition from which he seeks to be delivered, and deliverance from this condition will come only when he can be and act as he feels is conformable with his true self.”

Acting in conformity with our true self is already the task of a lifetime. But to do so when surrounded by corrupting influences turns this task into one of Herculean proportions. If we feel that the social world we occupy is thwarting us in this regard what can we do about it? The ideal solution is to find a new social world to transition into, one that is composed of people who uplift us and who possess the traits that we wish to cultivate. Spending more time around people who are walking their own path of self-realization can be a great way to encourage us to do the same. But sometimes this ideal solution is not possible. For with so many people in a state of disharmony in the modern day, finding a healthy social world to embed ourselves in can prove quite difficult.

If we can’t find a better social world to transition into then another option is to diminish the time we spend with other people and to spend more time alone. This may seem like a prescription for mental illness as a life void of interpersonal relationships is usually looked at as a sure path to mental deterioration. But a retreat into a more solitary existence, if used constructively, is an excellent way to promote personal growth and to manifest a more meaningful life.

“The capacity to be alone is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required. After major alterations in circumstances, fundamental reappraisal of the significance and meaning of existence may be needed. In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.”

Solitude promotes self-change as it frees us from the needs and expectations of other people and so allows for the inward reflection that is necessary to better learn who we are. But solitude is also the ideal state for the use of our imaginative faculties and it is our imagination that introduces us to the possible and that shows us what we could become.

“Suppose that I become dissatisfied with my habitual self, or feel that there are areas of experience or self-understanding which I cannot reach. One way of exploring these is to remove myself from present surroundings and see what emerges. This is not without its dangers. Any form of new organization or integration within the mind has to be preceded by some degree of disorganization. No one can tell, until he has experienced it, whether or not this necessary disruption of former patterns will be succeeded by something better.”

One way we may decide to re-organize the patterns of our life is to take a more permanent step away from the social relations that defined our past, and to focus our energy on cultivating a vocation and a purpose to our life. For while many in the modern world see interpersonal relationships as the primary source of life’s meaning, our culture may have swung too far in this regard and in the process neglected another important hub around which a meaningful life can be built, or as Storr explains:

“I am less convinced that intimate personal relationships are the only source of health and happiness. In the present climate, there is a danger that love is being idealized as the only path to salvation. When Freud was asked what constituted psychological health, he gave as his answer the ability to love and work. We have over-emphasized the former, and paid too little attention to the latter. . .exclusive concentration upon interpersonal relationships has led to failure to consider other ways of finding personal fulfilment . . .”

In his book Solitude: A Return to the Self, Storr details the lives of many famous individuals who took this path of orienting their life around the hub of their work and who in the process created meaningful lives. Writers such as Beatrice Potter and Anton Chekhov grew up in horrible social conditions but before they fell into an absolute pit of despair, they discovered meaning through their work and learned that creativity, and the inner order it promotes, can be an effective antidote to the outer disorder of a sick social world. But as Storr points out there are also countless individuals who do not suffer from a particularly harsh social environment, but who still choose to make their interests and their work the primary hub of meaning in their life. Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, two men who devoted their lives to studying the factors that promote human flourishing, are two individuals who chose this very path.

“It is surely remarkable that, when they came to write their autobiographies, the two most original analysts of the 20th century devoted scarcely any space to their wives and families, or indeed anything save the development of their respective ideas. Both Freud’s An Autobiographical Study and Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections are exceptionally uninformative about their authors’ relations with others. We may applaud their discretion, and sympathize with their desire for privacy; but we may also justly conclude that their own accounts of themselves demonstrate where their hearts were centred.”

If we choose to take this path and to use a retreat into solitude to re-orient our life around the hub of a vocation, this process can also be the means to a more fulfilling social life. For in finding an intrinsically rewarding form of work and then spending the necessary time to become good at what we do, we will become more sure of ourselves and less in need of the validation of others. We will, in other words, become a higher functioning man or woman and in the social world, at least in terms of mental health, it is like that attracts like. The more we move in the direction of self-realization, the more we will gravitate towards others who are doing the same. Furthermore, as we become more self-reliant and less demanding of other people, as occurs with those who find meaning through their work, our existing relationships may also improve as a direct result, or as Storr explains:

“Our expectation that satisfying intimate relationships should, ideally, provide happiness and that, if they do not, there must be something wrong with those relationships, seems to be exaggerated. . . It may be our idealization of interpersonal relationships in the West that causes marriage, supposedly the most intimate tie, to be so unstable. If we did not look to marriage as the principal source of happiness, fewer marriages would end in tears.”

This retreat into solitude is but one of several techniques we have explored over the past several videos that can be used to promote our mental health and to improve our life. Many people after hearing of such things, may experience a momentary feeling of optimism and a shot of encouragement, but then quickly return to doing what has always been done. No change is made and life goes on as before. In the final video of this series, in an attempt to counteract this passivity, we are going to provide a way to frame our life that may encourage us to be bolder in our choices and more courageous in our actions. For the mistake many of us tend to make is to overlook the fact that sometimes it is not change that presents the gravest dangers, but rather the choice to remain the same.

#academy of ideas

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sleepyspoonie · 7 years

Text

d&d disability mechanics

so im disabled, and i have a disabled d&d character. i didnt like not having an in-game mechanic to express my character’s disability in more than words, so i decided to make some and then ended up making others.

a lot of these were made while consulting someone who has the disability or from my own firsthand experience, but some aren’t. if you want to critique some of my choices, message me! i’ll be able to either edit the ruleset or explain my reasoning, and i want it to be the best it can be.

note: a lot of the save DCs are left vague in this so you and your DM can determine how difficult they are to meet.

this is under a cut because it’s really long and so i can update it. if you want to see something added, message me!

(#dungeons and dragons, #long post, #death cw, #limb trauma)

A note about how this resource should be used: These rules are not meant to wholly represent every aspect of a disability or illness. Rather, they are meant to augment roleplaying efforts and add more weight to the portrayal of a disability. This means that certain elements of different disabilities have been left off so the player can create those elements at the table so that their character’s disability is unique to them and more than just rules on a page.

On a related note: After mulling over it for some time, I have decided to not include personality disorders on this list. Again, these rules are meant to supplement roleplaying, not replace it. I feel that personality disorders will have most of their representation centered in roleplay, and mechanizing these in any way when they vary so widely from person to person will intrinsically fail to depict the disorders from the very beginning.

adhd (with personal experience and input from @corvidad):

the hero must make an intelligence saving throw to perform any sustained/monotonous task. consult the following chart to determine the outcome of the roll:

natural 1: the hero is completely unable to focus and may not attempt the task again until after taking a long rest.

1–9: the hero is unable to focus and cannot attempt the task again until after a short rest.

10–19: the hero is able to perform the task. the outcome of the roll determines how quickly they’re able to make progress on it.

20+: the hero is considered hyperfocused until the task is complete or they succeed a wisdom saving throw against being hyperfocused (DC 10 or 15 at DM discretion). If the hero is hyperfocused on a task during a short rest, they do not gain the benefits of taking the rest. hyperfocused individuals can perform a task faster than normal and have advantage on checks related to the relevant task.

natural 20: the hero hyperfocuses on the task without any of the penalties typically invoked by hyperfocus and are able to come to a stopping point without making a save.

adhd heroes also have a +1 bonus to passive perception.

albinism (with input from @dragynfox):

when spending prolonged time in direct sunlight, make a constitution saving throw against sunburn. on a fail, the character takes 1 point of nonlethal damage for each hour in the sun. heroes who dress appropriately to cover their skin do not have to make the save.

Heroes with albinism also have a -1 penalty to passive perception and suffer disadvantage on perception checks made in bright light or saving throws against spells and abilities that utilize bright light (ex: sunbeam) without the use of protective eyegear. Albino heroes have at least low-light vision regardless of race and have advantage on perception checks made at night.

anxiety – generalized (with personal experience):

in high pressure situations (as determined by the dm), make a wisdom saving throw with a situation-dependent DC. on a fail, the character has disadvantage on ability checks. The severity of the character’s anxiety should be rated on a scale of 1–5 during character creation, and that number is added to the DC of all anxiety-based wisdom saving throws. (optional: critical fail causes the hero to be incapacitated until the end of your next turn or until a save ends (you/your dm’s choice).)

anxiety – social (with personal experience):

the hero has disadvantage on all charisma checks. (joke/optional: ... except on charisma checks in the stead of another character with anxiety, at which point the disadvantage cancels out.)

arthritis (with input from @crowfeathertail and @caliginous-confused):

penalties are dependent on affected joints and severity of the arthritis (for more severe symptoms, include the optional penalties): . choose from the following penalties to affected joints:

wrists: the first use of an object in a round costs one use an object action in lieu of a free action. further use an object actions cost a bonus action. (optional: disadvantage on slight of hand checks)

knees: -5 foot penalty to move speed in initiative. (optional: disadvantage on athletics checks)

ankles: takes full movement to stand from being prone and the hero has disadvantage on dexterity saving throws to keep from being knocked prone. (optional: disadvantage on acrobatics checks)

(optional: the hero is extra stiff and slow in the mornings. after completing a long rest, the hero has disadvantage on all dexterity and dexterity-based checks until the end of a short rest.)

asthma (with input from @bilurk):

at character creation, choose at least one trigger for your hero’s asthma:

physical exertion/exercise: the hero must make a constitution saving throw in order to dash in or outside of combat. If not, the hero has disadvantage on all attack rolls and ability checks. medication gives the hero advantage on the constitution saving throw to prevent or end the effect.

allergens/irritants: the hero has disadvantage on saving throws against gaseous effects. the hero also must make a constitution saving throw in dusty, smoky, moldy, or otherwise heavily irritant-filled rooms/locations, otherwise they have disadvantage on all ability checks until they succeed on a save. medication gives the hero advantage on the constitution saving throw to prevent or end the effect.

night asthma: roll a constitution saving throw at the beginning of a long rest. on a fail, the hero does not get a good night’s sleep and takes one level of exhaustion. medication gives the hero advantage on the constitution saving throw to prevent the effect. (optional: at character creation, roll a d%. on a 60% or higher, the hero deals with night asthma effects as a part of their condition.)

should the hero go five rounds without saving from the effect, it ends, and the hero is given one level of exhaustion.

auditory processing disorder (with personal experience and input from @lesleydrakken-blog):

the hero has a -1 penalty to all perception checks and a -2 penalty to perception checks related to hearing.

autism (with input from @quaxorascal and @transcoranic):

Utilize the stress mechanic as a basis for the disorder with penalties that apply in the same way. At 5 points of stress, the hero has a meltdown and can only stim and make wisdom saves. stimming will give the hero advantage on their next save.

at the start of each long rest, make a wisdom saving throw. on a success, stress is reduced by 1 point. on a fail, stress is maintained they failed by a number of points less than or equal to their proficiency modifier. Any less than that, and they gain another point of stress. stress can also be reduced by spending a short rest stimming or doing other self-care techniques, which will prompt a wisdom-saving throw that can only either maintain or reduce stress, not increase it. a natural 20 removes two stress points. a natural 1 adds two. stimming or other self-care activities done before the long-rest wisdom-saving throw will give the hero advantage.

additionally, choose two items from the following traits as suits your character (other traits can be invented and added at dm discretion):

difficulty with tonal/volume/facial expression modulation: disadvantage on charisma checks with characters you haven’t interacted with before.

sensory processing disorder: the hero may utilize advantage on perception checks but must make a wisdom saving throw to keep from taking one point of stress. the hero must also make wisdom saving throws against overwhelming sensory stimulation (DM discretion) or add another stress point.

special interest: choose a subject (subject to DM approval). your hero has advantage on all knowledge checks related to that subject.

difficulty reading people: the hero has disadvantage on insight checks against other sentient beings.

alexithymia: the hero has disadvantage on charisma saving throws whenever they have 1+ points of stress.

bipolar disorder (with input from @1geekygingergirl):

Roll a d% and a d10 and consult the following chart (these numbers may need to be adjusted):

1%–40%: the hero is considered to be in a depressive episode. consult the mechanics for depression to determine penalties involved.

41%-60%: the hero is fairly balanced and neither manic nor depressive. no penalties are incurred.

61%–100%: the hero is considered manic. manic heroes cannot be surprised and have advantage on initiative rolls. manic heroes must make a wisdom save at the end of every long rest. on a fail, the following occurs: heroes have disadvantage on wisdom saving throws, intelligence saving throws, and concentration checks.

At the end of a long rest, make a wisdom saving throw. When manic or depressive, a failed save results in the hero staying manic or depressive. When stable, a successful save results in them staying stable. Should the hero succeed their wisdom saving throw while manic or depressive or fail their wisdom saving throw while stable, they must again reroll the d% die to determine their new state.

blindness/vision loss (with input from @harperkyle):

the hero has disadvantage on all perception checks that relate to vision. at the discretion of the dm, they may have advantage on checks that relate primarily to other senses. Characters who start the game blind may take braille as a free language.

alternate ruling: the hero has a penalty to perception that increases with the level of impairment, from a penalty of -1 to -5. the hero does not have disadvantage on any rolls as a result of their blindness.

(optional: heroes born blind may take the Alert feat at the beginning of the campaign. heroes blinded later in life must still take it via feat purchase.)

burn scarring (with input from @quirky-chowder):

consult the following chart to determine the penalty based on where most of the scarring is:

legs: the hero has a -1 penalty to move speed while in initiative and has disadvantage on dexterity saving throws.

arms/hands: the hero has disadvantage on all ability checks made with tools.

chest: character has disadvantage on constitution saving throws to save against gaseous effects and on endurance checks. they must make a constitution check in order to dash.

chronic fatigue (with experience):

roll a d20 at the end of a long rest. on a roll of 2 or lower, take one level of fatigue. this number can be adjusted for the severity of the chronic fatigue to increase or decrease the odds of being penalized. (optional: critical failure adds two levels of fatigue. alternative optional rule: you take twice as long to remove fatigue as other players.)

chronic pain:

each day, roll 1d10 to determine the hero’s pain level for the day, then make a constitution saving throw. The DC should be determined based on the severity of the pain the hero is trying to manage.

1–3: the hero has mild pain, causing stiffness and discomfort. They have disadvantage on dexterity and dexterity-based checks. heroes also have disadvantage on initiative rolls.

4–6: the hero is dealing with moderate pain, making it difficult to perform most physical activity. in addition to the above, they have disadvantage on all strength and strength-based checks.

7–9: the hero is in severe pain and is having trouble focusing on anything other than their pain. in addition to the above, heroes have disadvantage on all intelligence and intelligence-based checks, as well as disadvantage on all saving throws.

10: the hero is in so much pain that they are unable to function. all ability checks and saving throws should be made at disadvantage, and the hero’s speed is halved.

(optional: the hero has advantage on concentration checks because they’re used to managing pain.)

The inhibitions put in place by the hero’s level of pain can be mitigated with healing, which will trigger a second constitution saving throw.

crohn’s disease (with input from @samusthedude):

during character creation, roll a d% twice and take either number (or average them), then subtract your total constitution score from the result. this is your sickness score. at the beginning of a long rest, roll a d%. if the result is lower than the sickness score, the food you ate during the day prior has upset your chron’s, and you need to make a constitution saving throw. on a fail, the hero has disadvantage on constitution and dexterity saving throws, including the save against being sick the following evening. medication/potions to ease the effects of this disease grant advantage on the saving throw against being sick.

colorblindness (with input from @demented-hysteria and @thekiwislayer):

the hero has advantage on perception checks that relate to finding a hidden or obscured object, as well as on perception checks that relate to finding stealthed individuals. additionally, the hero has disadvantage on all perception checks in low light or darker.

deafness/hearing loss (with personal experience and input from @deliciouskrempuff):

the hero has disadvantage on all perception checks that primarily relate to hearing. they have disadvantage on all perception checks in light levels lower than what they can see clearly in, even with campfire or torchlight. if the character doesn’t speak common, they have disadvantage on charisma checks with someone who can’t sign (negated if they have an interpreter).

deaf characters may choose either common or sign language as their starting language and may take the other as one of their additional languages. Being able to speak common includes the ability to read lips at any visible distance without the use of a feat and negates the aforementioned penalty to charisma checks. not being able to see an individual’s lips while speaking negates the ability to understand them without an interpreter or other means.

depression (with personal experience):

at the end of each long rest, make a wisdom saving throw. on a fail, the hero has disadvantage on initiative rolls and saving throws, and they may not take opportunity attacks. the disadvantage on saving throws includes the wisdom saving throw to determine their ability to perform well the following day. (death cw/optional: on a critical failure, the hero has disadvantage on death saving throws until they complete their next long rest.)

dyscalculia (with input from @gravitationaltragedy):

the hero must make an intelligence saving throw or has disadvantage on persuasion checks to haggle and barter with currency and on checks related to numbers in any way (ex: numeric puzzles).

dyslexia (with input from @lila8080):

the hero makes an intelligence saving throw to read any written text. on a fail, it takes twice as long to read. (optional: on a critical failure the hero ends up with a migraine.) These should only be done when time is of the essence.

when writing a letter, the hero must make a charisma saving throw. on a fail, the letter’s ability to perform its function is diminished (ex: a persuasive letter no longer being able to convince the reader, an apology letter not impressing the addressee, etc.)

for dyslexic characters affected by auditory processing disorder, add the ruleset for APD above.

epilepsy (with input from @tomahawkbunny):

whenever the hero encounters spells, abilities, or other effects that cause bright or flashing lights (prismatic spray, sunbeam, fireball, lightning, etc.), the hero must make a constitution saving throw or be knocked prone. The hero is prone until they are able to save from the condition and may not take other actions until a success.

fibromyalgia (with input from @beeee-sweet):

Utilize the chronic pain rules listed above to depict the pain & pain management aspects of fibromyalgia.

Additionally, you can either use the chronic fatigue rule listed above, or use this variant fatigue rule listed here: If your pain level increases by more than one category in a single night, you gain a point of exhaustion. The optional rules for chronic fatigue can also be applied.

hemophilia:

when the hero is bloodied, they suffer an additional 1d6 bleed damage per round until they are no longer bloodied.

insomnia:

before a long rest, make a constitution or wisdom saving throw. on a failed save, the user gains one point of fatigue. on a critical failure, the user gains one point of fatigue and does not regain the use of their powers for the next day.

missing limbs/amputation (with input from @banette-dolls):

the hero takes a permanent -2 penalty to their total dexterity score (characters born with a missing limb will calculate their scores without factoring in the missing limb and then subtract 2. this is to avoid minmaxing). characters who have had a limb amputated have disadvantage on dexterity-related checks and saving throws as they pertain to the missing limb. heroes born with missing limbs do not suffer disadvantage on ability checks or saving throws. any character who take the time to acquire and familiarize themselves with the use of a prosthetic may either negate the imposed disadvantage or the -2 to dexterity. characters may design, invent, or commission unique adaptive devices that grant specific skill bonuses at the discretion of their dm.

mutism – selective (with input from anonymous):

whenever the hero must make a charisma or charisma-based check, they must first make a wisdom saving throw. if they fail, they must make the check at disadvantage. a critical failure means the hero is completely nonverbal.

multiplicity – did, osdd, ddnos, etc. (with personal experience and input from @goblinofthesun):

at character creation, determine the body’s physical stats (str., con., and dex.). These stats are concrete and cannot be changed. for each headmate in the system, the remaining three statistics (int., wis., and cha.) may all vary. in the case of point buy, the numbers may be rearranged but not exceed the total point allocation value, in the case of rolled stats, roll them per the requirements of your dm. this may be done for every headmate, including those who emerge later.

the host’s class determines the starting class of the body, and the classes of any headmates can be obtained by multiclassing. headmates may take any class that can be learned and doesn’t require the hero to be born with that ability (ex: sorcerers), and the player can select which headmate takes a level in their chosen class upon leveling up.

the player must call who is fronting to the dm whenever there’s a switch. players should not exploit the presence of multiple headmates to switch in and out and perform skill and ability checks based on which headmate has the best relevant score. use discretion and consult with the dm with regards to where the limits are. it costs an entire standard action to willingly switch who is fronting within the system.

(optional rule: whenever a new headmate appears, allocate the strength/frequency that they front to a percentage. after completing a long or short rest, roll a d%, and the result determines who is fronting going forward.)

narcolepsy (with input from @tanalilt and @organicfreshhell):

At the end of a long rest, make a constitution saving throw. on a failed save, the hero has disadvantage on initiative checks and cannot make opportunity attacks until the end of their next long rest due to daytime drowsiness. on a critical failure, the hero gains no meaningful rest over the course of the night and was struck by sleep paralysis. take one level of exhaustion.

During a short rest, narcoleptic heroes may spend the short rest napping in an attempt to combat their daytime drowsiness. At the end of the short rest, they may make another constitution saving throw against their drowsiness.

at character creation, roll a d%. if the roll is 70% or lower, the character has cataplexy as a symptom of their narcolepsy. when surprised or put under a fear effect, cataplexic heroes must make a constitution saving throw or be knocked prone.

ptsd/trauma (with personal experience):

make a list of things related to your hero’s trauma or trauma triggers. when they come up in game, have the hero make a wisdom saving throw every round until the trigger is gone or has subsided. Add one point of stress for each failed saving throw.

On a count of 3 stress points, the character is considered to be under a fear effect related to whatever caused the trauma trigger to surface. continue to make wisdom saving throws until the number of stress points falls below 3. on a score of 5 stress points or more, the hero is incapacitated and can only save from the effect.

a natural 20 causes the hero to automatically lose all stress points and makes them immune to the ptsd effect until the end of the encounter, whereas a natural one automatically brings them to 5 stress points. stress points are reset after a long rest. (optional: make a wisdom saving throw at the end of a long rest to determine if/how many stress points are removed.)

schizophrenia (with input from @schizospecadrien and gunnar (anonymous by request)):

at creation, the hero can select which elements and symptoms of schizophrenia affect their hero.

visual hallucinations: at the end of each long rest, the hero must make a wisdom saving throw. consult the following chart to determine the results:

natural 1: the hero takes a -5 penalty to perception checks and must make another wisdom saving throw at the start of each combat or else has disadvantage on all attack rolls.

1-5: the hero takes a -4 penalty to perception checks.

6-10: the hero takes a -3 penalty to perception checks.

11-15: the hero takes a -2 penalty to perception checks.

16-19: the hero takes a -1 penalty to perception checks.

20+: the hero incurs no penalty to perception for the day.

auditory hallucinations with intrusive thoughts: at the end of each long rest, the hero must make a wisdom saving throw. on a fail, the hero must make a charisma saving throw at the start of each short rest. on a fail, the hero spends the entirety of the short rest working through the episode and does not gain any of the benefits of the short rest.

paranoia: at the end of each short rest, make a wisdom saving throw. on a fail, the hero must behave in accordance with being paranoid and suspicious. the hero cannot be surprised and has disadvantage on wisdom and charisma saving throws.

stress (with input from @officialrobertsmall):

stress is a function that applies to multiple disabilities above and many others not included on this list, particularly mental illnesses that are heavily roleplay-based, such as personality disorders. stress is incurred at dm discretion based on story events. if a character has been negatively impacted by plot developments or character interactions, the hero must roll a wisdom saving throw or else be penalized with one point of stress.

(optional: at the beginning of every long rest during a difficult mission, each hero must roll a wisdom saving throw to determine how well they’re coping with the event.)

consult the following table to determine penalties for various stress levels.

1 point: the hero incurs no penalties, but following stress checks have a higher dc.

2 points: the hero must roll a d4 at each short rest to determine a penalty that will affect them until their next short rest. see below for possible effects.

3 points: the hero has disadvantage on all charisma-based checks as well as all above penalties. when surprised, this hero is affected for two rounds instead of one.

4 points: this hero has disadvantage on all ability checks as well as all above penalties. this hero must make a wisdom save each night or else not benefit from a full night’s rest.

5 points: this hero is completely unable to function due to stress. they cannot perform any activities not as a reaction to stress until steps have been taken to reduce their stress score.

d4 effect rules will cause the hero to dissociate, derealize, or depersonalize as follows:

1: the hero has dissociated. they have disadvantage on all acrobatics and stealth checks.

2: the hero has depersonalized. they have disadvantage on all persuasion and deception checks.

3: the hero has derealized. they have disadvantage on all investigation and perception checks.

4: no effect.

heroes may reduce their stress levels by partaking in stress-relief or self-care activities that allow them to make a second wisdom-saving throw to attempt to lower their stress levels. these rolls can be done without risk of incurring further stress. high rolls on stress wisdom saving throws can also reduce stress levels. a nat1 will add two points of stress, where a nat20 will clear all stress away.

that’s everything thus far! should you like to offer suggestions for one of the currently listed mechanics or request a new disability to be added, message me, and i’ll be happy to do so!

#shaynanigans #dungeons and dragons #d&d #dnd #dndisabilities #d&d 5e #dnd 5e #i wanna be a tumblrnaire

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bluewatsons · 7 years

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Henrik Anckarsäter et al., Mental disorder is a cause of crime: The cornerstone of forensic psychiatry, 32 Intl J Law & Psychiatry 342 (2009)

Abstract

The assumption that mental disorder is a cause of crime is the foundation of forensic psychiatry, but conceptual, epistemological, and empirical analyses show that neither mental nor crime, or the causation implied, are clear-cut concepts. “Mental” denotes heterogeneous aspects of a person such as inner experiences, cognitive abilities, and behaviour patterns described in a non-physical vocabulary. In psychology and psychiatry, mental describes law-bound, caused aspects of human functioning that are predictable and generalizable. Problems defined as mental disorders are end-points of dimensional inter-individual differences rather than natural categories. Deficits in cognitive faculties, such as attention, verbal understanding, impulse control, and reality assessment, may be susceptibility factors that relate to behaviours (such as crimes) by increasing the probability (risk) for a negative behaviour or constitute causes in the sense of INUS conditions (Insufficient but Non-redundant parts of Unnecessary but Sufficient conditions). Attributing causes to complex behaviours such as crimes is not an unbiased process, and mental disorders will attract disproportionate attention when it comes to explanations of behaviours that we wish to distance ourselves from. Only by rigorous interpretation of what psychiatry actually can inform us about, using empirical analyses of quantified aggressive antisocial behaviours and their possible explanatory factors, can we gain a clearer notion of the relationship between mental disorder and crime.

1. Introduction

Forensic psychiatry and psychology (here jointly referred to as forensic psychiatry) form a clinical and theoretical speciality probing into the areas of criminality, penal justice, and treatment of criminal offenders. This application is based on the assumption that mental factors, at least in some sufferers, lead to a propensity to commit crimes. Unless this is the case, psychiatry has no explanatory value to criminal courts, crime preventive effects cannot be expected from psychiatric treatment, and predictors of crime must be sought outside psychiatry. This also means that it is crucial to examine this assumption in detail in order to specify its conceptual preconditions and to evaluate the information actually provided by the empirical literature.

Psychiatry was developed with the core ambition to describe, explain, and treat states of insanity by applying the modern medical model. Inherent in its praxis is a medical terminology, naming conditions and syndromes and postulating aetiological mechanisms (which have varied from brain pathology to infectious agents, from childhood sexual fantasies and instincts to genes and “chemical imbalances” but always conformed to the models of causation and predictability essential to the modern medical paradigm). From the beginning, psychiatry did not restrict itself to insanity but strived to explain human behaviour more generally, extrapolating knowledge from the “mad” persons confined to asylums into everyday life phenomena, such as anxiety or shyness, sexuality, and schooling, norm transgressions in general, and criminal law in particular. Thus, psychiatry was a central player in the expansion of the “triumphalistic” medical paradigm (Le Fanu, 1999), which saw modern medicine as the royal road to the understanding and alleviation of man's ailments and sufferings.

The area of crime and punishment has always attracted human curiosity and imagination. Psychiatrists, being no exception, have contributed their expertise, often with a humanistic stance against harsh punishments and penal law retributivism. The psychiatric approach was long opposed by hard-line moralists and conservatives (Qvarsell, 1993, p. 162). Eventually, as the task of exerting societal control over undesired behaviours to an increasing extent was assigned to psychiatry, confrontations flared up on a new frontier, namely with radicals opposed to control structures (Szasz, 1961).

Psychiatrists’ perspective on mental disorder as the cause of crime has thus been one of a “scientific” approach to crime and punishment as opposed to the legalistic or retributionistic models that were charac- terized as “moralistic” or even “transcendental” by early psychiatrists (Kinberg, 1935, chap. III). However, as experimental settings for testing a causal connection between mental disorder and crime are virtually impossible to design, there has never been much of an empirical basis to back the stance of psychiatry. A long time was to elapse before the question of causation was actually examined beyond the mere identification of mental problem constellations among subjects who had committed criminal acts. Today, the notion of a causative role for mental disorders behind crimes rests mainly on probabilistic inferences from epidemiological studies.

From the legislator's point of view, the assumption of a causal connection between mental disorder and crime has major conse- quences. Most countries consider accountability a requisite for punishment, and mental disorders are generally the only legally acceptable factors giving reduced accountability. In Sweden, there is a presumption for sanctions other than imprisonment for crimes committed “under the influence of a severe mental disorder”. The role attributed to mental disorders ultimately depends on the guiding aims of penal law. Justice may be understood as the establishment of guilt or as some form of equalling out wrongs, whereas modern penal systems have to serve several, partly conflicting, goals. If retribution is the goal, reduced accountability due to mental disorder must be considered as humans have unequal chances of refraining from crime (Rhee & Waldman, 2002). If the goal instead is crime prevention (through treatment, incapacitation, deterrence, or combinations thereof), sanc- tions have to be devised in relation to the risk of criminal recidivism and their scientifically documented preventive effect. Factors that would be considered mitigating in the context of retribution (such as youth, poor social integration, impulsivity, and deficits in other mental faculties) may instead call for harsher preventive measures, such as long-term incarceration or intensive societal surveillance. Every attempt at implementing a purposeful societal approach to criminal offenders would thus require a clear definition of the aim of the penal law. If the legislator wants the system to fulfil several aims, it should be clearly stated what these aims are and what their relative priorities should be when conflicts ensue. No system could fully serve each and every aim.

The lawyer's perspective is focused on the procedures of the judicial process. In the individual case, the causal role of a mental disorder behind a crime has to be determined, and the normal requirements of justice, such as equality, predictability, and transparency, have to be upheld. Lawyers must know what expertise to ask for and exactly what type of knowledge the different experts can provide. They must also be familiar with the grounds for questioning expert opinions and seek a second view, or with how to challenge a testimony presented in the courtroom. At the end of the day, it is also the lawyers who will have to evaluate the causal relation between the psychiatric problems diagnosed and the crime committed. “Beyond any reasonable doubt”, the normal standard of certainty in law, has to be accommodated to the lesser precision of the clinical judgment of psychiatrists.

The offender and victim perspectives on the assumed connection should also be considered. By assuming that mental disorders lead to crime, the role of the acting subject and his individual responsibility is left suspended. Though this may come as a relief to some perpetrators or those affected by the crime, it may also be seen as a betrayal. Ascribing a crime to the influence of a mental disorder is intrinsically linked to a reduction of responsibility. Furthermore, as forensic psychiatric care is often of unlimited duration and renders the patient dependent on professional expertise, it reduces autonomy to a far greater extent than the praxis in conventional corrective institutions. Also everyman's perspective on crime and criminals is belittled and silenced in the presence of expert opinion. Public opinion is often mocked as uninformed and revengeful but may contain a commonsensical understanding that is not always apparent in subcultures of experts.

With these different perspectives in mind, we will analyze the assumption that mental disorders lead to crime, aiming to establish useful definitions, identify knowledge standing on firm scientific ground, and be frank about what we don't know, which may be the “not-yet-known” or aspects that are theoretically inconsistent with a psychiatric or psychological approach.

2. Mental disorder is a cause of crime

Numerous definitions of mental have been attempted over the years, but consensus remains to be established (for a comprehensive overview, see Brülde & Radovic, 2006). Let us be content with some examples of what mental can, and cannot, be. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, American Psychiatric Association (APA) describes mental as: a) inner experiences, relating to mood, thought content, or sensory experiences, b) behavioural patterns, and c) cognitive functions such as learning, social under- standing and reality assessment (APA, 2000).

As these descriptions refer to different ways of conceiving the human, let us refer to them as aspects of the mental. The first aspect, inner (subjective) experiences, denotes the inner life that a subject can be aware of. Mental representations are not limited to sequences of language but may be “iconic” or non-symbolic, merging sensory input with memories and emotions. Subjective experiences are made the object of science by methods that are basically hermeneutic in a wide sense and dependent on the clinical encounter. The requirement that scientific knowledge should be generalizable to persons other than those under direct observation is as important for assessments of inner experiences as behaviour observations or tests of abilities. As a somewhat different aspect, cognitive processes represent knowledge of the world and the self and are thus intrinsically linked to learning and structured by language. Learning, and the ability to learn, are more accessible for quantification than inner experiences, and may, in part, be evaluated by tests. The behavioural manifestations of the mental were once proclaimed by behaviourist philosophers and psychologists to be the only aspect accessible for scientific explora- tion. Behaviours do indeed lend themselves to quantification by various forms of assessments based on their observability (self-rate, collateral, or clinician-rated), but it may seem misleading to refer to mental aspects if behavioural manifestations are all that have been studied.

Generally, these descriptions of mental aspects complement each other, and together they form an ideal for clinical work. In the forensic context, however, test–retest reliability, transparency, and objectivity become more important than comprehensiveness. Behaviour assess- ments and cognitive tests may therefore be more acceptable and useful than hermeneutic assessments of inner experiences. In forensic psychiatry, the concept of mental may thus be limited to include only such law-bound patterns of behaviours and faculties that are possible to describe by replicable methods.

Let us now turn to what is not mental in this respect. Throughout the history of human thought, few other distinctions have evoked so much controversy as the one between the mind and the body. In the DSM-IV-TR, it is regretted that the term “mental disorder” emphasizes mental as something distinct from physical, which is regarded as an “anachronism of mind/body dualism” (APA, 2000, p. xxx). This conflict partly stems from epistemological problems. The mental (or the mind) is considered in terms of “experience”, “knowledge”, and “being” that are distinct from how the brain and its physiological processes are conceived of. This does not per se exclude that different descriptions refer to the same underlying phenomenon. Just as a notion of beauty may be applied to the same body that is scientifically examined as an organism, and perhaps to some extent even be causally determined by it (correlations between notions of beauty and physiological processes may be assumed), it is obvious that notions of beauty and of physiology operate according to different epistemolog- ical premises. The means by which we decide upon aesthetical matters are not the same as those we use in the natural sciences, nor are the concepts used in the different contexts inter-translatable in a straight-forward sense. The use of a plurality of concepts and methods does not in itself imply a plurality of real world items.

Being aware of the preconditions and rules governing scientific approaches to problems and what these can actually inform us about is part of the acquisition of knowledge. Sets of corresponding methods form a perspective that will eventually illuminate a specific aspect of the phenomenon under study. Such a “cut” towards knowledge may be referred to as an epistemological framework. In order for us to interpret and communicate knowledge, the epistemological frame- work has to be understood and shared. Sloppy extrapolation of knowledge from one illuminated aspect to others is as much an error of reason as are breaches of methods within one approach. This point is not intended to open up for a relativistic approach to knowledge — it is, on the contrary, a call for rigour in the search and interpretation of knowledge about the human being (for a commentary on this approach see, for instance, Flanagan, 1992).

Distinctions about what is not mental are especially important in the forensic applications of psychiatry and psychology. Here, physical processes are not measured in order to form an opinion on mental issues (as in the notorious attempt by Lombroso (1896) to explain criminal behaviours with physical properties). Nor do they in any respect clarify or address moral aspects of mental phenomena. The epistemological framework of psychology and psychiatry does not produce the concepts or the methods that can give an answer to what is morally good and bad or about human intentions that can be so classified. As psychiatry and psychology study regularities, and acts of free will are unpredictable, notions that presuppose freedom (such as evil) escape scientific explanations. Needless to say, this does not prevent the consequences of mental processes, e.g. behaviours, to be good or bad.

3. Mental disorder is a cause of crime

The DSM-IV-TR states that “each of the mental disorders is conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioural or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual” (APA, 2000, p. xxxi). Numerous other terms, more or less synonymous with “mental disorder”, have been suggested, e.g. “illness” or “condition”. Mainstream psychiatric texts use the term “mental disorder” as a compromise. The stated advantages are that the term is unspecific about non-physical entities, such as the soul, and about the aetiology of problems, such as in illness. “Disorder” is a broadly defined term. It indicates a lack of some sort of order but does not specify what that order is. Is a mentally disordered person someone who in some mental aspect lies outside the variation contained in the central standard deviations of the normal curve? Or does he fail to live up to an ideal, ordered, state of mind? Or does he present symptoms that are qualitatively different from what is experienced by healthy persons (such as hallucinations, delusions, tics, or compulsions)?

All three definitions are open to justified criticism. Symptoms such as hallucinations are not limited to persons exhibiting other features of mental disorder (van Os, Hansson, Bijl, & Ravelli, 2000). Dysfunction and suffering depend to a considerable degree on the environmental demands made on an individual, and deviance from the average may be both advantageous and disadvantageous (Baron-Cohen, 2000). The statistical approaches invariably include measurement problems.

None of the commonly used mental disorder categories has yet been identified as a taxon that is clearly delineated from the normal variation or from other disorders (Cloninger, 1999). Mental disorders have generally not been found to have a specific aetiology in a substantial proportion of cases or to be diagnosable by methods other than clinical interviews and assessment of behaviours and/or self-reported symptoms over the lifetime. Exceptions are rare neurological disorders with prominent mental symptoms, such as bilateral limbic brain damage giving rise to various forms of amnestic syndromes, or Huntington's disease and other dementias. “Markers” for validity of diagnostic categories have been sought in a host of laboratory methods, from psychometric testing to brain imaging and molecular genetics, without any findings that are either clearly delineated from the normal variation or specific for a diagnostic category. Correlations between neuroscientific findings and psychiatric features have sometimes been stronger for specific behaviour patterns than for diagnostic denominations (e.g. Soderstrom, Blennow, Sjodin, & Forsman, 2003). The effects of

psychotropic drugs are not confined to diagnostic categories; their targets are symptoms or behaviours that cut across today's definitions. Psychiatric diagnoses have been critically described as “reifications” of inter-individual differences. This argument has often been swept away by references to “anti-psychiatry”. Instead, it should be carefully considered, not least because the notion of categories of disordered subjects is in conflict with empirical research from mainstream psy- chiatry (Anckarsäter, in press).

Indeed, definitions of dimensions of inter-individual mental differences, defined as specifically as possible and including behaviour patterns, seem a better fit to the scientific literature. When associated with shortcomings in intra- and interpersonal functioning, it may even be justified to talk of “deficits” or “problems” among those less advantaged. The decision whether to define such terms so narrowly that they just capture one aspect of mental phenomena at the time, or to lump them into domains of covarying dimensions, has to depend on the purpose of diagnostics and be guided by statistical analyses of empirical data. Given the preliminary status of today's scientific knowledge and the great heterogeneity and non-specificity of, for example, molecular genetic findings, the first step to take is to be clear about what is meant by the diagnostic definitions and what remains to be clarified about them. Separating behaviour patterns from interpretations of inner experiences or assessments of cognitive faculties would permit the scientific study of correlations between definitional levels (e.g. which cognitive deficits accompany which behaviour patterns), something that is now hampered by the heterogeneous and ambiguous definitions applied in psychiatric research. Finally, it has to be emphasized that interpersonal differences in no way may be assumed to be interval data associated with other dimensions and with causes in linear ways. Instead, non-linear methods treating a multitude of ordered rather than measured data are required to account for complexity.

4. Mental disorder is a cause of crime

What then does the assumption that mental disorder is a cause of crime actually mean? As we have seen, psychiatry considers behaviour as a part of the mental. The easiest way to deal with the relationship between mental disorder and crime would therefore be just to consider criminal acts to be a form of mental disorder. This stance has never been met with much enthusiasm, however. Thought of as two distinct phenomena, the connection has been postulated as leading from mental disorder to crime and to be, at least in some respect, causal. At the same time, it is evident that causation in this context cannot mean that mental disorder is a necessary or sufficient cause of crimes.

Modern medicine has increasingly come to work with probabilistic models. Probabilistic theory defines the relation between “risk” factors and effects as an increased probability of the effect in the presence of the risk factor (cf. Cartwright, 1979; Reichenbach, 1956). In our context, probabilism would mean that particular forms of mental disorders are likely to be associated with particular forms of criminal acts. The risk factor may be assumed to be a (full or partial, see below) cause of the event (meaning that causation is “attributed” to the factor) if there is a temporal relation so that the risk factor can be shown to generally precede the effect, if covariation with other factors (referred to as “confounders”) can be accounted for by logistic or other multivariate statistical models, and if reasonable models are at hand for understanding how the causation operates. In other cases, risk factors can be judged to be coincidental to or reflections of common causes. By using probabilism in this way, scientific exploration has been made possible beyond experimental models testing causation. The terms “risk” and “risk factors”, assigned to the cardiologist Dawber (Kannel, Dawber, Kagan, Revotskie, & Stokes, 1961) as models to identify background factors, such as elevated blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking, behind coronary heart disease. They have become central to medical research and have even come to represent a paradigmatic feature of society today (Beck, 1992). The concept of risk is therefore a means of avoiding statements of causation, and “explanatory value” in this context will mean “proportion of the variation statistically related to the variation in the risk factor”, which does not necessarily “explain” it in the common, causal meaning of the word.

Statistical covariation does not, however, provide grounds for exemptions in the penal law in connection with mental disorders. According to the Swedish penal law, an unaccountable person who has committed a crime under the influence of a severe mental disorder cannot be sentenced to prison (but to other forms of sanctions), and it is stated in the preliminary works to the legislation that this link should be “unproblematic” if the defendant suffered from a severe mental disorder at the time of the crime (The Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Administration of Justice, 1990/91). However, as mental disorders in the vast majority of those afflicted do not lead to crime, a possible definition of causation in this context may be that a mental factor is a cause of a crime if the mental factor is an insufficient but necessary part of a set of conditions that together are unnecessary but sufficient for the crime (a so-called INUS condition, Mackie, 1965, 1974). Suppose, for example, that a lit match causes a forest fire. The lighting of the match is not by itself sufficient; many matches are lit without bringing about forest fires. But the lit match is in this case a part of a constellation of conditions that together are sufficient for the fire. The match was dropped on a pile of dry leaves, and a gust of wind contributed to the lighting of the fire. Each of the components, the match, the pile of leaves, and the wind, is an INUS condition, each was insufficient, each was necessary, and all together were sufficient for the forest fire, even if other sets of conditions also could have led up to the same effect.

Counter-factuality is thus a prerequisite for a factor to be an INUS condition under the given set of conditions (it should be possible to conclude that “if the mental factor had not occurred or been present, then the crime would not have occurred”, cf. Lewis, 1973; Mackie, 1965, 1974). From this follows manipulability, that it is possible to change the effect or the probability of the effect by changing the cause.

Mackie's model provides a useful framework to deal with causation behind complex human behaviours such as violent crime. The way we attribute causation even in the sense of INUS conditions in complex chains of events has to be considered. Singling out one of the INUS conditions as the cause of a certain event is often a matter of choice and not based on rigorous scientific investigations. Since each factor, by definition, forms a necessary part of the overall condition, we do not really have any grounds for pinpointing one of them as contributing to the effect to a higher degree than the others.1 Human minds, however, strive to attribute causes in order to be able to predict what will happen in the future. Only in very rare instances are such attributions of causation based on experiments or strict, logical deductions. As the factors that may be shown to cause human actions in the INUS sense are invariably numerous and interact in complex constellations, the way we identify causes and assign importance to them is in itself the object of psychological research (Cheng, 1997).

As for crime and punishment, there is every reason to believe that mental disorders attract undue attention among possible explanatory factors. Generally, we have a strong tendency to assign causation of undesired events to factors that are strange or exotic in relation to ourselves, classically to other ethnic groups or to people with features that in one way or the other make them different from us. This powerful force directs our attention towards mental disorders among all the possible INUS conditions that may be discerned in the background to a crime. In forensic psychiatric research and expert opinion, the attribution of causation has no doubt been influenced by ideas developed within the professional psychiatric paradigm. And for the causation that is to be judged by the lawyer, counter-faction will be non-informative. How could any mental condition, taken as inner experiences, cognitions, and/or behaviour patterns, be ruled out as a contributing factor in the very complex sets of factors influencing human action?

5. Mental disorder is a cause of crime

The term “crime” is no less in need of a precise definition than “mental”, “disorder”, or “cause”. Leaving aside the legal definition, we may consider how crimes, generally in the form of violent, sexual or aggressive behaviours against others, are approached from the perspective of being caused by mental disorders. The focus on mental disorder will also direct the searchlight of forensic psychiatry towards individual criminal acts or towards patterns of criminal behaviours occurring in individuals rather than to crime as a societal or group phenomenon. This may be too narrow a perspective.

A crime takes place in a situation, between people, and the vast majority of crimes are clearly influenced by the situations in which they arise. Only rarely is a crime planned and determined by a single mind. A major shortcoming of the psychiatric approach is the emphasis on the individual and the relative down-tuning of the role of the interaction between people, including co-perpetrators and victims. The capacity to empathize and act compassionately shows not only a constitutional inter-individual variation but also an intra- individual variation in state-dependent actual functioning (cf. Con- stantino & Todd, 2003; Gabbard, 2004). Each and every one of us may stop forming meta-representations of the other's mind, the ordinary household quarrel being just as good an example as more dramatic scenes of conflict. A person who commits a heinous crime on his own is more likely to differ from the normal variation on at least some mental features than someone taking part in a similar crime as part of a group of offenders. Even small groups may release dynamics that deprive their members of inhibitory forces. A mathematical hypoth- esis to predict an individual's actual capacity for empathy (E) would assume that his or her natural capacity for empathy (e) should be divided by the square root of the number of people (n) involved and interacting in the actual act.

Another situational factor that plays a major role in the background to many violent crimes is the influence of drugs. These effects are not easily defined in relation to other mental factors or to situations. Alcohol, for example, may trigger aggression and reduce inhibitory faculties but can also diminish reactivity and reduce anxiety, thus acting as a susceptibility factor or as a protective factor depending on the situation, the degree of influence, and the subject's other psychological and psychiatric problems. When faced with the task of explaining the background to a particular criminal act, aspects of reduced or changed mental abilities have to be considered in the context of situational, social factors, each of which may constitute an INUS condition.

Perhaps due to this empirical dilemma, psychiatric research has instead attempted a shortcut to explain crimes by diagnosing patterns of crimes as mental disorders. Here, the lack of definitional clarity has become abysmal. Diagnoses such as kleptomania, intermittent explosive disorder, paedophilia, or psychopathy, have been defined on the basis of criminal behaviour patterns and mainly researched among convicted offenders. In order to have them constitute mental disorders, heterogeneous aspects of inner phenomena or cognitions have been assembled into diagnostic designations. By their circular reasoning and limited empirical support from studies in the general population, these diagnoses have continued to fuel heated contro- versies about which aspects should be counted as “belonging” to the respective syndromes. It came as no surprise when a recent large- scale meta-analysis of the predictive value of the different “facets” of psychopathy for crimes showed that the strongest predictor was — criminal behaviours (Walters, 2008).

A more constructive approach is to talk of behaviour patterns as what they are. The DSM-IV criteria for conduct disorder, or most criteria for antisocial personality disorder, describe aggressive antisocial behaviours and are thereby useful as dependent variables in research on causative factors behind an increased propensity to commit crimes (even if specificity for subtypes of behaviours, such as the proposed “overt” vs. “covert”, “predatory” vs. “reactive” criminality, has to be examined). The majority of violent crimes are committed by a comparatively small number of subjects, and consistencies in beha- viours are more easily identified when behaviours are regarded as such, without the admixture of other aspects of the mental.

Patterns of aggressive antisocial behaviours are described in the major psychiatric diagnostic schemes (as “conduct disorder” in the DSM-IV, showing a high overlap with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), or as “hyperkinetic conduct disorder” in the ICD- 10, WHO, 1990). Hyperactivity in AD/HD or hyperkinetic disorder is in itself defined as a difficulty in adjusting behaviours to specific requirements and borderline aggressive behaviours, such as inter- rupting others in conversations or inability to wait for one's turn in queues. A number of longitudinal studies have shown that hyperac- tive children are at increased risk of developing oppositional attitudes, norm-breaking conduct, and out-right criminality — and that children with such aggressive antisocial behaviour patterns are at increased risk of developing just about any type of mental disorders in adulthood (Kim-Cohen et al., 2003). From what we know about the stability of behaviour patterns, it may thus be assumed that aggressive children are at increased risk of growing into adults with criminal records and a mental health dossier. We also know that both aggression and mental disorders are over-represented among the socio-economically disadvantaged, that they aggregate in families, and that the causes behind these misfortunes are complex, involving both genetic and environmental factors that play different roles across individuals and social contexts.

As suggested, aggressive behaviour patterns could thus be studied as dependent variables in studies using other inter-individual mental differences, such as general learning, special cognitive dysfunctions (both verbal learning deficits and specific spatial or integrative problems), and inattention together with other possible explanatory factors, such as socio-economic disadvantages, in common empirical models. To the extent that aggressive antisocial behaviour patterns may be ascribed to causes other than a free choice, they may be presumed to express reduced ability to conform behaviour to societal norms, to long-term constructive goals, and to an empathic understanding of others, meaning that the behaviours per se reflect the complicated psychiatric concept of personality disorder.

Neither has the lifetime progression of stable patterns of aggressive behaviours preceding mental disorders been adequately taken into account in studies of unique criminal events in the mentally ill. Several much-cited register-based studies have shown that a history of inpatient treatment for psychosis and mental retardation carries an increased risk of violent offending, of the magnitude of five times the risk in the general male population (Fazel, Gulati, Linsell, Geddes & Grann, submitted for publication; Hodgins, 1992). The total number of crimes ascribable to persons with these disorders is in the order of a few percents (Wessley, 1997), and rarely are individuals with psychotic disorders ever sentenced for violent crimes. There was one violent crime – simple assault – in 450 patient years for schizophrenia in one of the studies showing the highest relative risks (Lindqvist & Allebeck, 1990). In contrast, the overlap between schizophrenia and other adult mental disorders with childhood-onset aggressive antisocial behaviour dis- orders is in the range of 25–60% (Hodgins, Cree, Alderton, & Mak, 2007; Kim-Cohen et al, 2003). As various forms of substance abuse complicate this picture of “comorbidity” even further, it may be asked whether mental disorders cause the criminal acts noted among sufferers or if the causation is reversed, so that crime is the cause of mental disorder, or whether mental disorders, substance abuse, and criminal behaviour patterns are caused by other genetic or developmental factors.

It is also instructive to look at the types of crimes encountered among persons with psychotic disorders. There are crimes for which a manifest psychosis is an uncontroversial INUS condition. There are also violent behaviours (both against oneself and others) that precede the clinical onset of schizophrenia or come very unexpectedly during maintenance phases (Saarinen, Lehtonen, & Lönnqvist, 1999). Other studies indicate that patients often had discontinued their treatment before committing an act of violence (Arango, Bombin, Gonzalez-Salvador, Garcia-Cabeza & Bobes, 2006), but we still do not know whether there is a causative link between the two or whether they are both related to something else. It also remains a fact that treatment for schizophrenia has not been shown to affect the risk of violent crimes in randomized controlled trials. Even a controlled study of intensive case management could not document any positive effects on violent crime (Walsh et al., 2001). This does not have to mean that treatment is of no use, but the scientific question remains open and needs investigation.

6. Summary and proposition

Having critically examined the assumption that mental disorder is a cause of crime, we have arrived at the point where conclusions and propositions for future research may be attempted. It appears that the conjunction of mental disorder and crime should not be taken as self-evident. We may have to be satisfied with stating that quantifiable consistencies in aggressive antisocial behaviours may be discerned over the lifetime, and that cognitive deficits and other mental problems are found in the background as probabilistic covariates that may be interpreted as INUS conditions alongside numerous other factors, such as genes, neurobiological aberrations or social, cultural, and economic situations. The empirical research identifying factors that explain parts of the variation in human behaviour actually maps factors that reduce our freedom of choice, but as long as the whole variation has not been explained, or sufficient causes of behaviours have not been identified, science has not disproved that free will influences human behaviour.

Empirical research on probabilistic covariation and general princi- ples for assigning causation in the INUS sense, such as time-sequence, mechanistic explanations, experiments and counter-faction, applies first to inter-individual variation in patterns of aggressive behaviours and has to be further interpreted in relation to unique criminal events. It should also be kept in mind that the attribution of causation may itself be influenced by less than rational thought patterns. But by being clear about the specificity of behaviour patterns, several considerable societal advantages are achieved. We avoid implicating the vast majority of those who suffer from mental health problems and never display aggressive behaviours in the context of crime, and the legislators and lawyers, just as everyman in society, will be empowered to understand the results of psychiatric assessments and research. Laws concern behaviours and may therefore directly relate to definitions of behaviour patterns without depending on hermeneutic expert evidence.

In addition, science concerned with the causes of crime may be advanced beyond theoretical rivalry. Cognitive science, neuroscience, and the social sciences may all serve to identify explanatory factors to the inter-individual variation in aggressive antisocial behaviours. Possible treatment strategies (pharmacological, educative, behavioural, or others) may be identified on the basis of such covariation, and their efficacy may be tested against the defined behaviour. Assessments of behavioural patterns may also be used to assess the risk for future aggressive acts alongside all other possible predictors.

By insisting on involving mental phenomena in the explanation of crime above and beyond the empirical support for doing so, psychiatry has held back research on the interplay between, on the one hand, contexts and other environmental susceptibility factors, and, on the other, individual mental phenomena, as a background to criminal behaviours. Our understanding of mental processes has to be based on the individual in interaction with a context. Unfortunately, psychiatry's narrow focus on individuals and disorders has been paralleled by sociology's macro-social perspective, in which individual vulnerabilities have been largely disregarded. Instead of separating the scientific approach to background factors to crime into two or several conflicting traditions, where one is focused on the context only and the other on the individual only, new mathematical models treating complex interactions should be developed.

By attempting to propose a sufficient model for the causation of crimes, psychiatry has also obscured its true task. The role of psychiatry is clearly to treat and alleviate mental health problems. As a group, persons with aggressive antisocial behaviours have complex psychological, social, cultural, and mental problems in addition to their behavioural aberrations. Diagnosing and treating mental health problems in the forensic setting is therefore important regardless of the assumption of a causal relationship between mental disorder and crime. Treating health problems is the goal of medicine, and it seems a reasonable idea that general efforts to change the life premises and health of offenders might reduce their propensity to commit new crimes. The option to study treatments in relation to aggressive antisocial behaviours is open and calls for scientific efforts. Honesty demands, however, that we declare that we do not yet have empirical support for the notion that treating psychiatric disorders prevents crime, and that involuntary treatment with this goal is not evidence-based.

While general psychiatry has been circumscribed from the vast influence it once had, forensic psychiatry has instead been entrusted with more and more authority during latter decades. In several countries, e.g. the U.K. and Sweden, new or revised laws are opening up for psychiatry to use more coercive measures and to play a prominent role in crime prevention on the assumption of a causal relationship between mental disorder and crime. Hopefully, the analyses presented here have served to reveal the lack of scientific and philosophical support for such legislative changes.

Notes

There may be other reasons though. If we want to attribute blame, we must pick out a factor that can fulfil this role. A person may be blameworthy, not a pile of leaves, in any proper sense of the word.

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#forensic psychiatry #crime #causality #risk #INUS condition #law and psychiatry #controversy #violence #behavior

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forevrdreamingofbetterthings · 7 years

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I've been on your blog for like 3 posts and already I love you? And the way you discussed your friends Paul & Ryan, with language that I know means so much to people with DID (I do not have it myself, but people so am close too are part of a system) !! So good, so nice to see stigma being stamped out of our language. Basically just thanks for being you because the world needs more people like you.

Awww thank you so much for this lovely and super kind message. I’m honestly very touched that you were moved to message me like this. I do try hard to learn more each day about the diverse reality that is human existence, but it’s super duper duper hard sometimes haha. On the other hand, it’s also incredibly rewarding and fills my life with all kinds of hope, love, and goodness - things I personally need to survive given my long history of bullying and abuse.

I mean, as a singlet (the extremely adorable word for non-Multiple systems, btw!! @transduotacklinglife) I knew nearly nothing about multiplicity and knew of it only as “DID” and “MPD”.

However, Ryan taught me how harmful these labels are when applied to multiple systems; whose experiences are neither “disordered” nor causing them harm. For example, Ryan also showed me a website that was very helpful, explaining that:

MPD is short for "multiple personality disorder". DID is short for "dissociative identity disorder". Both of these not only rely on the word disorder, but DID also implies that there is only one person who has a delusion that there are others. Interestingly enough, DID is a diagnosis used only in the United States.

So what exactly is “Multiplicity”? The same website says:

Multiplicity is a state in which many people share one physical body. Being multiple means that one exists as part of a group of people, with all the benefits and drawbacks and chances for talents or interesting natures that any other group of people would have.

It is not automatically a disorder, and it is not automatically something which must be changed in order to promote mental or physical health. It is not automatic godhood, proof of genius status, or even proof of severe sexual trauma.

So if, as a singlet, I’m understanding this right: Multiplicity is just another state of being, that doesn’t necessarily or intrinsically cause people any harm. People in multiple systems are just as complex and unique as any other individuals and they deserve to be treated as such.

This means it’s important to smash the harmful stereotypes around multiplicity that associate it with mental health disorders like schizophrenia & DID.

Anyway, thank you again @snootchdog for this lovely message and for giving me this convenient opportunity to discuss and share what I’ve learned in the last year about multiplicity, thanks to the kindness and patience of the @transduotacklinglife; you both rock my socks!

Also, to all of my multiple followers, please know that you are very welcome here and also feel free to correct me if I make mistakes!

#blog love #multiplicity #multiple symptoms #i'm a singlet #god i love that word so damn much lol #did #mpd #ableism #snootchdog #questions

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korben600 · 7 years

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Why dystopian DC books with Batman Vs Superman inevitably have Superman/Wonder Woman

About an hour ago, I was watching a video by Comics-Explains on Youtube, where the host, Rob, did an Injustice Year One video, and where he brought up a point that I found very interesting, stating that in most of the worlds where Superman goes rogue and tries to take over the world (or is fallen into moral ambiguity) there are two main things characteristic of each of them. 1. Batman opposes him. (This is fairly obvious, it’s the old “Batman vs Superman” argument, it’s a surefire way to make an awesome fight scene.) And 2. Wonder Woman and Superman get together (romantically/morally etc.). This is really weird, not every story where Superman and Wonder Woman get together ends tragically, but almost every good dystopian comic with Superman as the antagonist has this ship. (see, The Dark Knight Rises, Superman: Red Son, Kingdom Come, Injustice)

I wanted to analyze why this is true, and why it’s so prevalent in these comics.

The biggest, and most obvious reason for this is the moral systems of the characters, Bruce Wayne has one of the most stubborn moral codes in all of fiction, and second to him is Superman. Bruce’s is extremely well defined (no guns, no killing), but leaves a lot of flexibility. Superman’s is less defined but just as stringent, he has to do what is right, that’s it. What’s odd is that Diana’s moral system doesn’t actually exist as far as comics go. She is, intrinsically, a good person. She’s a hero, she has to be, that’s part of her character. But the thing is, nobody has ever had to define her code to the point of Superman’s and Batman’s, because she just doesn’t have as simplified of an origin story as they do, and that’s where her flexibility lies. The thing is, she should be more certain of her moral code than anyone, because of her lasso, it allows her to have safety in the fact that she knows that what she is doing is right. This compensates for the fact that she doesn’t have as defined of a characterization, because while batman and superman are strong in their convictions because of 70 years of lore and fame, she has a plot point hanging from her hip that allows her to be as sure of something as Batman and Superman are. Unfortunately, her entire moral code is tied into her lasso, and her “truth”, and the truth is that when someone relies on something too much, they can twist it in any way they choose.

This is most evident in the single biggest difference beyond genitalia between her and the rest of the Trinity. She will kill. That is what splits her from her friends. Batman, and Superman to an extent, hate killing, and will do everything in their power to find a solution that doesn’t involve killing, but Diana is very willing to put down someone who she believes needs to be killed for the greater good, and the thing is, she can justify that belief as fact because of her lasso. That lasso allows her to be absolutely sure of her actions, even when they involve an execution. But the thing is, even pure truth can be warped and twisted into something awful if you don’t temper it with a code, which leads to her being correctly characterized as usually following Superman’s lead in these dystopian settings. Batman and Superman have to question everything they do, because they have extraordinary advantages and problems that others don’t (Batman is a part of the 1%, and probably has multiple psychological disorders, Superman is a literal god). For both to keep from hurting people unintentionally, they have to constantly analyze their actions to make sure they are on the straight and narrow (this analysis ties into both of them being associated with mythology). Diana on the other hand is a woman of faith. Faith is the reason she has powers, and the reason she keeps powers, in fact, you could correctly characterize Batman as an atheist and Superman as something similar (look he grew up in Kansas, if he doesn’t say prayer at every meal his parents are going to give him a licking, but he’s very scientifically based because of his biological parent’s culture), but Diana would be a hard-core theist (if you want to get technical, polytheist but the point is she believes in higher powers).

This allows her to trust in her lasso, and her gods (even though 90% of the time they seriously do not deserve it). However, a lot of these elseworlds stories also show the problem with complete faith in others. When Diana doesn’t question what somebody does, it does not go well, as she will try to enact their will, whether or not they want it, which unfortunately, can have spectacular consequences. With Superman, this is a particularly interesting example. Superman is not a god, but he is the closest equivalent we can get without crossing the threshold into omnipotence, and that is a slippery line to have. What’s important about this is that in these specific stories, Diana doesn’t really question what he is doing, she puts her faith in him, and forgets that he is not a god, and that he is not above her. He is above all else, a man, and she is just as powerful as him (I’ll get to that in a second). neither of them are subordinate to the other, she’s his peer, and he listens to her. In the best stories, Diana doesn’t believe that she is his friend, she sees him as above her, in Injustice, there is this great point where Mirror Master kidnaps Superman’s parents, and Diana gives a speech to a wary Justice League to convince them to help. They were concerned about Superman’s actions recently, and Diana tells all of them that they should be on their side because them kidnapping Superman’s family is wrong, and she’s right, but the wording is so important. She ends her rousing speech with something chilling, the phrase “I know my place”. In the story, it means that she knows she’s going to be at superman’s side, but out of context, that’s the feminist icon of the world saying the most misogynistic line that can be uttered in polite conversation. She is putting herself at the whims of a man, and this is where the story starts to really descend into suffering.

Because in these stories she is putting herself under Superman, euphemistically, and metaphorically, she now tries to act as Superman does, intervening in global conflicts and fighting for him, but she doesn’t realize that she is influencing Superman. She perceives it as a god and subject relationship, which in the comics generally works fine because she knows better than anyone how flawed and petty her gods are are, but with Superman, she believes him to be better than her, and it causes her not to question him, but instead try to encourage his actions despite not actually questioning him, which unfortunately is really bad for both of them (and consequently the world). It’s like a bad relationship. Diana thinks that she is under Superman, so she doesn’t question him, not realizing that he relies on her, and he values her opinion. He also views her moral code as just as strong as his and Batman’s, so he trusts her. This means that as Diana condones, or even encourages more and more destructive tendencies, it feeds into a cycle. Diana tries to follow what she thinks that Clark wants, and Clark, since Diana acts like it’s okay, goes farther and farther into the abyss. Their faith in each other, without being tempered by an outside source, compounds on themselves. The only way that they get out of this is if their faith in the other was broken, as seen in Superman: Red Son. In it, the point where Diana snaps out of it is when her lasso is broken. She has to save Clark from being imprisoned indefinitely by Batman, but to do that she has to destroy the lasso that was holding her. Not only does she lose her eternal youth, but the thing that represented her faith in Clark was destroyed. Of course, that’s symbolism. Her faith was broken, but it wasn’t because of the lasso, the real reason she lost her faith was that she realized that Superman didn’t really care for her, she had given up everything for him, her youth, her looks, and her body, and he didn’t care for her any more than he did for anyone else, she was just a friend (yes, it’s kind of misogynistic that the reason she turned against him was because he scorned her, I’ll get to the awesome Wonder Woman stuff now).

Now, rolling back to the original point, this symbolism is good and all, but why is this repeating so often in the stories? This addresses the most common, and interesting “how”, but not the “why”. Sure, Wonder Woman’s faith is important, but couldn’t she also go through those same problems with Batman? Well...no. The reason, as always in comics, boils down to politics and power levels. In politics, there’s these principles about alliances, that have flaws but are good for a metaphor. In politics, if you have two countries, your country, and another country (Country A and Country B), and you are hostile, you want your country to be more powerful. However, if there’s a third country that is less powerful than A and B, Country C, that third country doesn’t have to be as powerful as the other two to be in an advantageous position. Country C just has to be powerful enough so that if A and B go to war, C can guarantee that whichever side it supports will win (or at least have a significant advantage). The thing is, in a Batman vs Superman matchup, it isn’t a matter of who’s stronger, it’s a philosophy arguement. Brains Vs Brawn. Does a genius with prep-time beat a powerhouse without? They’re basically equivalent, because they’re ideologies, but Diana is the wildcard in any match-up. Country A and Country B are in a stalemate because both could conceivably win, but Diana is Country C, and she brings two things to the table that make her a valuable asset to both.

First, is raw strength. To cite the comic “Sacrifice”, Diana had to fight a mind controlled Superman, who has been brainwashed by Max Lord. Now, Max does something very interesting, instead of just controlling Superman, and attacking Wonder Woman, he makes Superman think that he’s fighting various villains, and that they killed Lois Lane. This allows Max all of Superman’s fighting experience, with the bonus that he is fighting to kill, he isn’t holding back. This is horrifyingly powerful, as demonstrated by the fact that he nearly beats Batman to death earlier in the run, and this shows in the fight. It’s brutal, and Diana takes a lot of damage, but here’s the important bit. She holds her own. In a fight with an enraged and unhinged Superman, she manages to hold her own, and minimize casualties, until she can kill Max Lord to end the battle (this is another example I wanted to use from earlier, as the reason that she kills him is that Max says, while under the lasso, that the only way to stop him is to kill him, which lends credence to the idea of Wonder Woman’s code being based around her lasso, FYI, Batman and Superman both had heavy objections to this which are explored in later comics). No plan, no backup, no kryptonite, and she holds her own against the most powerful being in existence. That alone would be a very good reason for her not to be on Batman’s team. Batman is often the embodiment of brains in Batman vs Superman duels, and whatever side of the philosophy/comic debate you are on, the simple matter is that brains and brawn combined are far more powerful than they are alone. Even though she is less powerful than Superman, her capabilities mixed with Batman’s tactics would curbstomp the Man of Steel if he had the Amazon at his disposal. This makes her a far less valuable ally to Superman than Batman, he already has strength, more strength is kind of superfluous, but if she could justifiably shift the war to Batman’s favor as soon as she joined (Take Batman Vs Superman, the movie. Diana was strong enough to take on Doomsday, chopping off one of his arms, if she were working with Bruce to take down Clark (particularly with that kryptonite gas), the Man of Steel would be dead), she should be on Superman’s team just because a two page comic of Diana bashing him with a kryptonite baseball bat with a Batsymbol on it would be boring (though perhaps a bit cathartic), to say the least.

Now, there’s also a second reason that she is consistently on the Superman side of things, and it’s alluded too often in her series, which is that she is an ambassador from Themyscira. Diana is a diplomat, which are incredibly important in all wars, and especially in battles involving the superhero community. She is a member of the Trinity, a feminist icon, she lends credence to whatever she is involved in, which is why she is on Superman’s side so often. When I said that there are two things that happen in dystopian DC stories with Superman on the wrong side, I was lying...well sort of. There are three things that occur, but two are interconnected. Wonder Woman is with supes, Batman is opposed to Superman, and Batman is right. This is just a facet of the character, Batman is intrinsically less powerful than Superman and most of the caped community, which allows him to have a more grounded view of reality. Unfortunately, it also makes him more morally suspect to the rest of the caped community, as he has to use cheap tactics, and dirty tricks to stay relevant, which doesn’t endear him to his peers. When there is a war, Batman is always on the right side, because with his tactics, he has to be, or nobody would follow him. But this is where Wonder Woman comes in. Often, when Superman is falling from grace, he has a cushion of credibility built over saving the world multiple times, and when Batman is opposing him, he has to work against his persona as the most sketchy person in the room, though he has the boost in being on the right side of the argument (FYI, he may not be at that exact moment in the comic, but history will always vindicate Batman). They are not necessarily equal by any means, one can have more influence than the other, but this is where Wonder Woman comes in. Again, she’s Country C, she has credibility of being an outsider, having enough power to speak her mind freely, and she’s a part of the trinity. Now this is where it gets dicey. Both Batman and Superman often have similar amounts of credibility, but the difference is who is right? Batman is always right (or the comic is presented so that he is correct), so his credibility will rise as time goes on, Superman’s credibility, despite being initially higher than Batman’s, will fall because he is just on the wrong side of history. And Wonder Woman drags out this dilemma of who to follow. If she were to add her support to Batman, the conflict would be over, there would be enough heroes around that would listen to two members of the Trinity saying the third, a near all-powerful god, has gone rogue, and side with them, especially as time goes on, and Superman is proven to become worse and worse. The civil war may not end quickly, or in favor of Bat’s and Wonder Woman, but it will be heavily skewed in their direction. However, when she lends her credibility to superman, he still eats away at that credibility, but it’s going to take longer for people to reach their points of no return. This delay allows for Superman and Wonder Woman to do more, such as try to rebuild from the hits their reputations are taking, and more specifically, for more plot to happen. This is why writers use this so often, with wonder woman on superman’s side, it’s not just a straight Batman vs Superman fight, it can be drawn out into a political mess, dragging in more and more characters, and encompass multiple worlds if necessary, which gives writers more room to work with, and allows for elseworlds that are powerful enough to become Superman: Red Son, Kingdom Come, and Injustice.

Also, disclaimer: This article may make it seem like I am opposed to Superman/Wonder Woman. I am not (though I will admit to shipping Bruce and the Amazon). I am merely pointing out how in multiple comics, Superman goes off of the deep end because Wonder Woman isn’t asserting herself to either tell him he’s going off of the deep end, or work with Batman to take him down. Writers just tend to turn Wonder Woman into a lovesick woman to accomplish this. Superman/Wonder Woman can be written really well, and end well, but Diana needs to be an equal participant or bad things will happen.

TL;DR: The reason that Superman/Wonder Woman is so popular in bad futures in DC is because Wonder Woman would curbstomp Superman if she were on Bat’s side. Also, I don’t hate Superman/Wonder Woman, I just think that some writers use it to make the plot of Batman Vs Superman stories longer (which isn’t a bad thing).

#Superman/Wonder Woman #Batman Vs Superman #analysis #this took way too long to write #I don't hate Superman/Wonder Woman

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yamatokasukawaca · 4 years

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Yamato Kasukawa | A Letter to Science About the Remedy for Cancer cells

The 1937 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Szent-Gyorgyi was the founder of the American National Structure for Cancer Study. His 'Letter to Science' in 1974 specified that the approved requirements for requesting crucial government cancer cells study funding was disadvantageous. From his political-medical science point of view, the funding for a treatment for cancer cells was avoided due to the fact that the accepted criteria for considerable research study was itself cancer causing in nature.

As a Hungarian person during World war II he stayed clear of capture by the Gestapo for holding government theories offending to the Fascist government. After the battle he decreased the political theories of Russian communism to seek his cancer research in America. His letter to scientific research used political ideas belonging to the ancient pagan Greek atomic Science for Moral Ends. The pagan idea of the 28 day moon activity reverberating emotion-forming mathematical details to the atomic metabolic process associated with the female cycle, had actually been shown at the Epicurean College in ancient Athens.

These suggestions however, exceed the limitations belonging to modern day science residing within the lawful systems of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. We hope that science can settle the trouble which this might be of useful future worth to all three by giving a remedy for cancer and presenting upon them an extra humane worldwide scientific society.

Yamato Kasukawa

Szent-Gyorgyi saw the old Greek suitable to develop a government to guide ennobling federal government for the wellness of deep space, in order to avoid the extinction of people, as a medical concern. It is the extremely opposite of the prevailing global scientific thermodynamic culture, which as a matter of fact demands the termination of all life in the universe. This death cult principle of reality clearly comes from a carcinogenic scientific state of mind.

The suggestion of American Democracy contains elements of the old Greek honest government. In 2017 this concept of democracy was clearly revealed to be a plutocracy: government by the affluent. We can say that within a culture driven by thermodynamic disorder this present plutocracy may well be a common sense requirement for immediate financial tribal survival, influenced by ethical autonomous values. However, its intrinsic clinical, cancer causing nature has to sooner or later produce a repeat of its well tape-recorded cyclic damage of tribal societies. Cancer causing scientific research is currently helping to increase this procedure toward a terminal state, in obedience to the dominating thermodynamic extinction regulation.

All that is required to evolve past that situation is simply to place the plutocratic know-how together with pertinent survival antidote reasoning within a computer established to create human survival blueprint simulations. Such simulations will certainly lay out brand-new technological standards to accumulate unbelievable riches, along with the administration guidelines to profit individuals. This model remains in contrast to the illusory anticipations existing within a culture based upon the present worldwide inflow of inefficient information.

This essential research methodology had already been passed this century, yet the obvious cancer cells treatment understanding was, as Szent-Gyorgyi predicted, totally disregarded. In 1979 China's best granted physicist, Kun Huang, gave Australian Science-Art researchers with the technique to gauge the presence of the life force. He recommended that by utilizing Szent-Gyorgyi's understanding of ancient Greek mathematical geometry, it ought to be possible to develop a scientific program to generate simulations demonstrating the development of seashell development as well as advancement with space-time.

If the simulations matched flawlessly with seashells tape-recorded within the fossil record then the physics legislations governing the evolution of life would certainly have been discovered. During the 1980s, this experiment was effectively carried out in Australia. In 1990 the world's biggest technical study institute, IEEE in Washington, reprinted the exploration from published papers by Italy's leading clinical journal, Il Nuovo Cimento. IEEE well-known it to be one of the 20th Century's wonderful optical mathematical explorations, putting it alongside such names as Louis Pasteur as well as Francis Crick.

In 1995 this mathematical exploration was shifted into a physics format by the Head of state of the Institute of Basic Research Study in America, to uncover new physics laws governing the advancement of life forms. The dominating thermodynamic mathematical logic was shown to generate futuristic altered carcinogenic life-form simulations. Szent-Gyorgyi's cancer research observation about dysfunctional thermodynamic information was activated to entirely negate the Australian job to obtain a human survival blueprint. Scientists around the world had no choice however to concur that seashells did without a doubt bring essential transformative survival details due to the fact that it was clearly written down on mechanistic seashell fossil objects. None of them realized the simple fact, that living life-forms within the seashells had transferred that details to the expanding shell development. Szent-Gyorgyi, who had predicted such a ridiculous scenario had created a book concerning it, qualified 'The Crazy Ape'. The scientists declined to permit the living procedure to utilize infinite mathematical logic because their outdated non-sensible thermodynamic society had currently sentenced all life in deep space to termination.

The Nobel Laureate's description of a crazy ape way of thinking, however, had actually specified an entirely natural state of mathematical schizophrenia existing at the dawn of world. This reality just highlights the extraordinary technological capacity of humankind if an excellent politician bothers to motivate the generation of the human survival plans stated above. From such layouts totally new modern technologies can be rapidly created to profit the human problem.

Ancient Sumerian astrological mathematical instincts developed from holy movement wonderment, a fact suitable with the scientific study process acclaimed by Szent-Gyorgyi. From these old research instincts we inherited a 7 day week of 24 hr a day, with each hour of 60 mins. Their orientation gave us a circle of 360 levels. Both their time and directional assistance systems are now made use of to discover the nature of outer space universal truth. Nonetheless, while of the Sumerian human being, their intuitions about the nature of limitless fact was neither mathematical nor scientific. It was based upon spiritual principles coming from argumentative gods and sirens, one particularly was Inanna the siren of sex and also battle.

The religious non-mathematical persuasions of the Sumerians to wage war was a natural expression of a selection instinct to defend against their dropping target to a few other tribe intent of dedicating physical violence against them. The Sumerian astrological mathematical knowledge and also the prayer of aggressive deities was later on absorbed by the Babylonian Kingdom. Ancient clay tablet computers videotape the Sumerian gods from a dark void proclaiming 'Let there be light' before the development of hybrid people from clay. Their gods said about the bestowing of eternal life to caretakers of the Ark during the Great Flood. Math after that came to be an underhanded Babylonian tool to terrorize the people to fight. The Babylonian clergymans developed the mathematics to be able to predict eclipses, Inanna the siren of sex as well as war ended up being Ishtar the Babylonian siren of hooking and battle as well as the bestowing of eternal life to the caretakers of the Ark rose into terrible chaos.

This underhanded use of mathematics is explained by the exploration of a baked clay tablet composed by a Babylonian clergyman to his king. The message reviews to the effect that the gods required that the 673 BC lunar eclipse be made use of by the king to terrorize the population to make certain that they became sexually anxious to advance the art of waging war to raise the power of the Babylonian Kingdom.

The 19th Century champ of American Freedom, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about the slavery of the American people by a plutocracy that had actually acquired elements of the dishonest Babylonian lawful system. He did not realize that such a state of federal government back then was a biological requirement for American survival amidst a global culture of warring tribes seeking to control each various other. Nonetheless, his mathematical service entailed brand-new modern technologies mentioned within ancient Sanskrit maths, which were based on a similar scientific reasoning that Szent-Gyiogyi used later to derive his cancer-free scientific research coming from ancient Greek political maths.

The cancer causing cycle of the devastation of future civilizations dealing with to the fatality over which divine being, or collection of mathematical legislations, supplied individual accessibility to infinity followed from the Babylonian social system. Szent-Gyorgyi's summary of the clinical crazy ape with a carcinogenic frame of mind can now be viewed as belonging to a kind of mathematical schizophrenia being an important aspect of a primitive tribal transformative procedure. The process of inefficient psychological information controling contemporary plutocracy has currently been categorized by government designated epidemiologists as an international 3D epidemic. The mass manufacture of inefficient details as well as communication tools is now comprehended to be triggering severe damages to worldwide culture.

To better recognize the nature of this worldwide dysfunctional info epidemic it can be attended resemble using mathematics configured within a poker maker, employing audio as well as colour resonances to cause a heroin-like dependency. This obsession is made to bring about a state of ethical and economic bankruptcy. The unethical use of mathematical adjustment entailing illusory psychological anticipation, mirrors the international stock-market excitement. That game is predestined eventually to cause financial collapses for the advantage of the players running global plutocratic fights of wits. Nonstop imaginative colour advertising and marketing infuses an insignificant feeling of enjoyment to the masses referred to in regards to market self-confidence.

This global economic presence is at some point spent for by massive casualties on battlefields, with people fighting for the right of some deity or honour viewpoint to provide both victims and also survivors some valuable access to infinite realty. The mathematician, Plato, categorized the associated imaginative unsupported claims, pomp and also event involved in such a kind of federal government, as dishonest art, doing not have a considerable spiritual function.

The philosopher, Immanuel Kant, looked into the difference between Plato's definition of unethical art as well as well as human survival artistic knowledge to establish the ethical basis of the electromagnetic Golden Age of Danish Scientific Research. The thinker of science, Emmanuel Levinas, agreed with Kant's final thought that the missing out on artistic spiritual component within Plato's condemnation of art, was an asymmetrical electro-magnetic inner-vision existing within the creative artistic mind. The pertinent unbalanced electro-magnetic possible innovation coming from that concept was anticipated by the developer of the alternating electric commercial motor, Charles Proteus Steinmetz. He in fact wrote, particularly mentioning, that such a spiritual electromagnetic electric motor innovation would be much greater that the technology related to today physical electromagnetic one.

In 2010 the Australian seashell life force exploration theories were integrated with quantum biology by the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the Italian College of Pavia. In organization with Quantum Art International based in Italy they jointly interacted to research for a remedy to the international inefficient epidemic. They were aware that Isaac Newton within his lengthy failed to remember, yet however released, 28th Question Discussions, urged that ancient Greek science thought about that gravity was not caused by the functioning of a mechanistic cosmos. Newton created that the mass of items precede was not the initial reason of gravitational force as contemporary quantum technicians had incorrectly pretended otherwise.

Although the formerly pointed out living transformative seashell maths had actually been recorded on mechanical seashell items, modern quantum mechanical scientific research was incapable to factor concerning the crucial living information being sent to the shell by the living creature within it. The Italian-Australian team, free to reason or else, began to look into how quantum auto mechanics needed to be completed by connecting it with living info. In 2016 they accomplished their objective. Their Science-Art remedy discovery was granted a global First Reward at the XX International Exhibit & Competition of Contemporary Art, Central House of Artists, Moscow. The Globe Fund for Arts, Government of Moscow, Artist Union of Russia and also the European Art Union funded this competition.

Recent DNA discoveries have allowed us to take into consideration that people now belong to one varieties. In that instance, the prevailing cancer causing thermodynamic scientific culture, which requires human extinction, depicts the human species as dealing with some kind of scientific carcinogenic neurological disorder. That echoes the final thought that the greatest mathematician in background, Georg Cantor, whose work upholds most of modern scientific research made. He wrote that the contemporary clinical mind was suffering from a short-sighted concern of infinity, as mentioned by Waldo Emerson as well as Szent Gyorgyi.

The writer of 'The Crazy Ape' held that there is a web link between molecular electromagnetic processes and also essential facets of cancer growth as well as development. The researcher, David Hilbert, working with Albert Einstein on mathematical research embracing that field of understanding, totally supported Cantor's observation that an ignorance of boundless mathematical reality regulated the modern-day scientific mind. With the aid of several other great philosophers of science, it was not difficult to uncover the antidote to bring clinical research into a much greater perspective than one consumed with human termination. Extremely eminent scientists around the globe hailed the antidote exploration as being a significant historical success of the 21st Century.

During 2016 the Australian Head Of State, the Guv General, the Priest for Art as well as Communications, the Leader of the Resistance as well as several senators obtained duplicates of the champion remedy paperwork. On November 15, 2016, the Department of the Priest for the Arts and Communication suggested that the Australian Federal government's concept arts funding body chooses on grant applications at arm's size from Federal government, with a process of peer evaluation.

It is not sensible to make use of peer analysis concerning a worldwide accepted one-of-a-kind essential exploration of vital federal government value. The cancer remedy paper was rejected in a way that Szent-Gyorgyi had actually very plainly described as belonging to a counterproductive cancer cells research study methodology. Not one senior Australian politician chose to allow any kind of chance for important examination of this research for the betterment of the global human condition.

To compound this senseless way of believing the Macquarie University in Sydney, acting on behalf of the Republic Ceramics Board, arranged for a phone interview which would have been about the remedy situation. The College sent by mail large protocol directions to assist the conversation, which were inevitably disadvantageous to the remedy thesis. For that reason, the non-sensible proposition related to the Australian Aesthetic Arts Board was disregarded out of control.

The hoggish underhanded plutocratic nature of Australian politics ended up being noticeable throughout the writing of this letter to science. The resignation of the Priest for Health concerning the abuse of pubic cash for personal gratification made front page newspaper headings. This was complied with by more front page headlines, in which similar 'misuses of funds' rumors were related to other elderly Australian political leaders. The plutocracy; government by the wealthy, can be considered scientifically unfit to respect the wellness as well as wellness of autonomous government as well as explains why its designated epidemiologists are not able to find an antidote to the prevailing 3D inefficient details epidemic.

In conclusion, the pharmaceutical realm in the hands of powerful multinationals, continues to carry out dazzling research resulting in incredible discoveries, easing the spread of cancer cells. Nevertheless, it is definitely called for that the remedy exploration be seriously taken a look at as soon as is possible.

#Yamato Kasukawa

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weightlossfitnesssinfo · 4 years

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The Pros and Cons of Intuitive Eating and Body Composition

Many who start a eating regimen accomplish that with the need to enhance their physique composition. Unfortunately, the out there knowledge on dietary success is relatively daunting, and with failure charges estimated from roughly 85-95% it’s obvious that widespread dietary interventions are incomplete.1

This article will discover the related matters that have to be thought of when starting a dietary intervention and the professionals and cons of intuitive consuming.

The Goals of Dieting

The major purpose for weight-reduction plan is to lower physique fats ranges. This is very useful since being obese or overweight is strongly related to elevated danger of all-cause mortality.2 Weight loss happens as a direct results of sustaining a hypocaloric eating regimen—consuming fewer energy than your physique burns all through the day.Three

This is the primary regulation of thermodynamics which states that the overall power of an remoted system is fixed; power could be remodeled from one kind to a different however could be neither created nor destroyed.four

By realizing this it’s simpler to grasp why all diets produce nearly an identical outcomes with regard to weight reduction no matter their composition. All diets work as a result of their construction creates a hypocaloric state. So we are able to take away a stage of stress usually concerned with inflexible weight-reduction plan and choose the eating regimen that will probably be most pleasant and enhance adherence.Three

One level that must be addressed is that weight reduction doesn't all the time equate to fats loss. Depending in your eating regimen and the severity of the caloric deficit it's possible you'll be extra liable to dropping lean tissue than fats mass. A easy technique to mitigate muscle loss when weight-reduction plan is to make the most of a reasonable to excessive protein consumption along with resistance coaching.5

With regard to physique composition enhancements, sustaining lean mass ought to be prioritized and consuming 2.Three-Three.1 g/kg of lean physique mass per day of protein and resistance coaching not less than 3 times per week ought to be enough.5,6

Structure Your Approach

We’ve established that when energy and protein are equated nearly all diets produce an identical outcomes, so now let's shift our consideration on how you can construction our method.

All diets have some type of measurement instrument, ketogenic diets have you ever consuming lower than 20g of carbs each day, paleo restricts a number of meals teams, low-fat diets prohibit your fats consumption, and many others. But all approaches both immediately or not directly scale back your general caloric load.

One of my favourite quotes generally attributed to Peter Drucker is “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” This is very related inside the context of weight-reduction plan. If we've no efficient technique to guage progress, how will we, actually, know that we're making any progress in any respect?

By monitoring our journey, we are able to set up some measurement to chart our progress and supply suggestions to course appropriate. This might be within the type of monitoring energy by means of an app, monitoring your physique weight, taking images, measurements, and many others. But together with this is available in a brand new stage of complexity.

There is rising proof that associates consuming issues with inflexible dietary management.7 Anyone who’s dieted for an prolonged time period can attest to the have an effect on dietary restriction and fixed monitoring can have on exacerbating your individual neuroticism. In some instances, this will potentiate disordered consuming conduct.

In distinction, versatile dietary management is a powerful predictor of dietary success.eight But even on this extra versatile method, there's issue in defining what constitutes versatile management and inflexible management on a person foundation. From one particular person to the subsequent the notion of issue and affect could also be markedly totally different.

The Role of Intuitive Eating

One method to weight-reduction plan that has gained numerous traction has been intuitive consuming. The concept is that it promotes a wholesome angle towards consuming and physique picture. The primary premise is that you just be taught to grasp your physique and starvation signaling so you may start to eat while you're hungry (and never merely craving meals) and cease while you’re full.

This is a good course of in principle however in software there are vital limitations. The most evident of which is that an obese or overweight particular person doesn't have this stage of consciousness, and since this method locations no restrictions on meals consumption it leaves the dieter with little or no steering.

For obese people following their very own starvation signaling, weight reduction is unpredictable as a result of starvation signaling defaults to properly past their each day power requirement. In truth, a 2017 systematic assessment discovered that “having a body mass index ?30 is associated with significant under-reporting of food intake”.9

This is one facet of the intuitive consuming method that's sadly not mentioned sufficient. In many instances, I'm a proponent of intuitive consuming, however its efficacy is basically as a result of steering of a professional skilled10 and/or the expertise of the dieter in query.

So, below what circumstances is intuitive consuming truly useful? Experienced dieters which have demonstrated a profitable observe file of weight administration are good candidates for this method. An instance can be a bodybuilder or physique athlete throughout the low season. In truth, this method could have vital advantages as a result of as one examine discovered “Low levels of dichotomous thinking mediated the relationship between intuitive eating and disordered eating”.7

This discount in monitoring is usually a essential reprieve for athletes trying to distance themselves from the meticulous nature of contest prep diets. Intuitive consuming has additionally been proven to be useful for people identified with consuming issues and physique picture distortions.7

This is as a result of intuitive consuming takes the main focus from attaining a selected physique picture and develops a health-centric focus. This happens along with correct schooling on wholesome consuming habits and creating an understanding of their very own starvation signaling.

This method has a number of advantages. However, with out correct steering and schooling, the effectiveness of intuitive consuming as a weight reduction protocol for obese and overweight people is questionable.

But the truth is that people with disordered consuming are estimated to be roughly eight.7% of the American inhabitants.11 So what must you do for those who wouldn't have an consuming dysfunction and aspire to enhance your physique composition however are comparatively new to weight-reduction plan?

Since speedy preliminary weight reduction along with way of life changes is strongly related to profitable long run upkeep, one potential technique is to take an iterative method to weight-reduction plan.12

To start, you may implement a dietary intervention that provides construction with a measure of flexibility. One alternative is perhaps the versatile weight-reduction plan method the place you purpose to hit predetermined macronutrient targets by consuming 80% clear meals 20% enjoyable meals. This or every other intervention that provides an inexpensive diploma of construction and adaptability could be very efficient beginning factors.

As you start to drop some pounds as a result of preliminary construction your intrinsic motivation will increase as does your stage of adherence. As you achieve extra expertise weight-reduction plan and honing your skill to precisely estimate your caloric consumption, you may steadily shift to a extra intuitive method to consuming.

Practical Takeaways For Body Composition Improvement

Overweight and overweight people wrestle to precisely estimate their power consumption. This presents a big impediment to using intuitive consuming as an efficient physique composition protocol since there are few sensible tips.

Intuitive consuming could be extra useful than typical diets for people identified with consuming issues or physique picture distortions. A major facet of its success could be attributed to buying skilled steering throughout the intervention.

Intuitive consuming could be very efficient for skilled dieters and low season bodybuilders who've a superb intuitive sense of their power consumption however don’t need the extra burden of monitoring energy and macros.

Intuitive consuming could be an efficient technique for weight and physique composition administration when transitioning from a hypocaloric eating regimen to a deliberate upkeep block.

Intuitive consuming is probably going not an efficient protocol for newbie dieters trying to lose a considerable quantity of physique fats as a result of lack of steering and accuracy of estimating their power consumption.

I hope this text sheds some mild on the advantages and limitations of intuitive consuming. Lift huge.

References:

1. Ayyad, C., and T. Andersen. “Long-Term Efficacy of Dietary Treatment of Obesity: a Systematic Review of Studies Published between 1931 and 1999.” Obesity Reviews, vol. 1, no. 2, 2000, pp. 113–119., doi:10.1046/j.1467-789x.2000.00019.x.

2. “Association of All-Cause Mortality with Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index Categories. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” British Dental Journal, vol. 214, no. Three, 2013, pp. 113–113., doi:10.1038/sj.bdj.2013.131.

Three. Gardner, Christopher D., et al. “Effect of Low-Fat vs Low-Carbohydrate Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults and the Association With Genotype Pattern or Insulin Secretion.” Jama, vol. 319, no. 7, 2018, p. 667., doi:10.1001/jama.2018.0245.

four. Laws of Thermodynamics

5. Calbet, Jose A. L., et al. “Exercise Preserves Lean Mass and Performance during Severe Energy Deficit: The Role of Exercise Volume and Dietary Protein Content.” Frontiers in Physiology, vol. eight, 2017, doi:10.3389/fphys.2017.00483.

6. Helms, Eric R, et al. “Evidence-Based Recommendations for Natural Bodybuilding Contest Preparation: Nutrition and Supplementation.” Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, vol. 11, no. 1, Dec. 2014, doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-20.

7. Linardon, Jake, and Sarah Mitchell. “Rigid Dietary Control, Flexible Dietary Control, and Intuitive Eating: Evidence for Their Differential Relationship to Disordered Eating and Body Image Concerns.” Eating Behaviors, vol. 26, 2017, pp. 16–22., doi:10.1016/j.eatbeh.2017.01.008.

eight. Meule, Adrian, et al. “Food Cravings Mediate the Relationship between Rigid, but Not Flexible Control of Eating Behavior and Dieting Success.” Appetite, vol. 57, no. Three, 2011, pp. 582–584., doi:10.1016/j.appet.2011.07.013.

9. Wehling, Helena, and Joanne Lusher. “People with a Body Mass Index ?30 under-Report Their Dietary Intake: A Systematic Review.” Journal of Health Psychology, 2017, p. 135910531771431., doi:10.1177/1359105317714318.

10. Cole, Renee E., and Tanya Horacek. “Effectiveness of the My Body Knows When Intuitive-Eating Pilot Program.” American Journal of Health Behavior, vol. 34, no. Three, Jan. 2010, pp. 286–297., doi:10.5993/ajhb.34.Three.four.

11. “Erratum to: The Prevalence and Correlates of Eating Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication.” Biological Psychiatry, vol. 72, no. 2, 2012, p. 164., doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.05.016.

12. Nackers, Lisa M., et al. “The Association Between Rate of Initial Weight Loss and Long-Term Success in Obesity Treatment: Does Slow and Steady Win the Race?” International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, vol. 17, no. Three, May 2010, pp. 161–167., doi:10.1007/s12529-Zero10-9092-y.

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pussymagicuniverse · 5 years

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the fairy tale of fecundity

almost every single person with a uterus is told at one point or another to mind their biological clock. questioned if they’re worried about it told that they should be. some even state that their ticking is so loud neighbors can hear it.

while fertility and pregnancy certainly changes as ones age does, the focus on the health of the person carrying the pregnancy follows a long history of ascribed responsibility. ‘maternal impression’ was once used to explain birth defects and genetic disorders, attributing the actions or even the thoughts undertaken by the pregnant person to be ultimately responsible for the state of the baby. a notable example is joseph merrick, whose elephantitis was attributed to his mother having had an accident with an elephant while pregnant. despite having long been debunked, the notion of the pregnant person’s responsibility as an ideal incubator has not subsided, with strangers frequently feeling the need to give unsolicited advice.

as a result, there’s often the pressure of having a child before 35—the magic number of fertility—because after that you are a ‘high risk pregnancy’ by default. other choice descriptions are ‘geriatric pregnancy’ or ‘advanced maternal age’, despite the fact that most people will have menopause around the age of 50, generally suggesting fifteen more years of fecundity. people over 40 also have the second highest rates of unintended pregnancies, after teenagers aged 15-19, so why the mania about impending infertility?

pregnant people over 35 “are often treated as if they are in need of the level of care necessary for any high-risk pregnancy; and they are treated differently even if there is no scientific basis for different treatment and there are no medical problems evident”. there are multiple studies and articles detailing potential threats and problems that might arise for 35+ pregnancies and while no pregnancy is without its concerns, age is often treated as a blanket issue. doctors might ask for additional tests and label them as high risk despite any other consideration for their overall health. some claim that hypertension and anxiety genuinely increase for pregnant people over the age of 35, but some studies show that simply being treated as ‘at risk’ tends itself to increase anxiety.

35 is claimed to be the age in which there is a steep drop off in fertility and as a result people are encouraged to get pregnant sooner rather than later. a frequently cited statistic is that less than 30% of people aged 35-39 have a chance of conceiving. “Rarely mentioned is the source of the data: French birth records from 1670 to 1830”.

none of this is to say that as one gets older complications may not arise and that there aren't any difficulties in getting pregnant. a study done in the more contemporary 2004 showed that in people aged 27-34, the chance of conception in the first year is 86%, while among people aged 35-39 the number drops to 82%.

it is only recently that the health impacts of older sperm are being discussed, and lo and behold, "our research suggests that men, too, have a biological time clock," said Brenda Eskenazi.

of course they also have a biological clock. they’re also made of biology.

the temporal viability of eggs is rarely set against that of sperm. a person is born with a set number of eggs that gradually decrease as they drip out month by month. but sperms are not set. they regenerate and copy themselves, and as more and more copies are made throughout a lifetime more and more changes will arise in the copies. “after puberty men continuously produce new sperm. mutations can occur and accumulate in the DNA of sperm-forming cells, and environmental exposures can change the genes in sperm themselves”. such mutations may be neither intrinsically good nor bad but their influence exists.

often there are also claims about the increased likelihood of spontaneous abortions (also known as miscarriages) in cases of pregnancies over 35. the chance of a spontaneous abortion is typically attributed to the pregnant person, despite the fact that the age of the impregnating person has been shown to increase the risk of spontaneous abortion, independent of other factors including the age of the pregnant person.

this is neither to advocate nor disparage pregnancy at any age but to underline the arbitrary locations of where we believe fertility and viability lie. a pregnant person over 35 is repeatedly made aware of the risks, but plenty of people impregnate others well into their 60s and no one asks them if they’re worried about their geriatric state and the impact it might have on the child. despite having first been described in 1912 the paternal age effect rarely finds a mention in parenting magazines or websites.

often, having a child later in life leads to generally positive outcomes. a 2016 study from denmark finds that being an older parent is “associated with less frequent use of verbal and physical sanctions towards children”, while a study from sweden in the same years found that “fertility postponement even up to maternal ages above 40 is associated with positive long‐term outcomes for children”. not to mention that a person who bears a their last child later in life (past the age of 33) has two times the odds of living up to the top 5th percentile than those who bear a child before the age of 29.

[[funnily enough, while giving birth can increase telomere length (which is one of the factors associated with aging) leading to longevity, castration has also been shown to lead to a longer life expectancy/life span]]

on the other side of this, while people should have children at whatever age they wish, people should also be able to disregard the act of being pregnant altogether. in scotland, a 22 year old is currently petitioning the NHS to change their guidelines in order to have a hysterectomy due to her debilitating pain, persistent bleeding, and needing to take iron supplements as a result. her initial request was denied primarily due to the fact that she doesn’t yet have children as well as her ‘young age’, as NHS stipulations say that a person must be at least 35.

that magic 18th century number of fertility.

“The depiction of women as prepregnant might seem at least unduly one-sided when an ethic of anticipatory motherhood is at work in reproductive policy strategies without a concurrent ethic of anticipatory fatherhood, especially given the fact that most men also become fathers”. examples of the lop-sided obsession with fertility are innumerable. in United Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls, Inc. the company sought to exclude fertile people with uteruses because of the risk of lead toxicity, a seemingly noble endeavour, while fertile people without uteruses were happily welcomed onto the payroll. the CDC has put out guidelines for those who might be pre-pregnant ranging from not owning cats to taking folic acid because “you may not be ready to have a baby, but your body’s been preparing for years…”.

the notion of a biological clock implies a debt owed to biology that we can’t ignore for the sake of our own desires. that the well-being of future generations should always be prioritized and it is the responsibility of all fertile parties to protect and fortify their fertility.

but if this imperative is truly a biological imperative than every fertile person should be equally subjected to its scrutiny.

and they’re not. because it’s not.

and as always, such advocates of biological imperatives freely pick and choose what biology they wish to impose, participating in their own form of shitty kleptogenesis.

marina manoukian is a reader and writer and collage artist. she currently resides in berlin while she studies and works. she likes honey and she loves bees. you can find more of her words and images at marinamanoukian.com or twitter/instagram at @crimeiscommon.

#fertility #medical sexism #womanhood #motherhood #biology

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live4thelord-blog1 · 5 years

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Some Basics of Christian Anthropology and How They Speak to Moral Issues of our Day (Part 2)

Msgr. Charles Pope • January 9, 2019 • 0 Comments

Note: This is the second of a two-part series. Part one is available here.

At its root, anthropology considers what human beings are and how they have interacted with one another and the world around them over time. While many think of anthropology as a secular study of cultures from ancient to modern day, I propose that there is also a Christian anthropology, one that considers who and what the human person is based on God’s revelation in His word and through our bodies. Indeed, our body is a revelation from God, and by and through it He teaches us.

This essay (consisting of both today’s and yesterday’s posts) is not a complete discourse on the topic. Rather, I selected certain teachings rooted in Scripture and the nature of our bodies that apply particularly well to moral issues of our day. In yesterday’s post we considered a few basic points; today we conclude with a few more.

Each human being exists because of a sovereign, loving act of God.

It is a biological fact that a unique human being comes into existence at the moment of conception. The DNA in that single-cell embryo contains all the instructions needed for it to develop, over the next twenty years or so, into an adult.

However, Scripture indicates that although we come to exist at a specific moment in time, God has always known and loved us: The word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you’ (Jer 1:4-5). Scripture also praises God saying, For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13-14). Hence, each of us is specifically intended by God.

This makes every human life sacred. No form of unjust killing can be justified under any circumstances. Each of us is the result not merely of biological processes or human decisions but a sovereign, loving act of God. Our lives come from God and belong to Him. Therefore, abortion, murder, and suicide (including physician-assisted) are grave evils that we must combat. Even capital punishment must be opposed except in rare cases.

Our body is not our own.

A common assertion today is we can do whatever we like with “our own body.” However, Scripture reminds us, You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, glorify God with your body (1 Cor 6:19-20). Yes, Jesus redeemed us; He purchased our salvation at the price of His own blood and His own life!

Hence, our bodies are not tools to simply use as we please. Neither are they canvases on which to display tattoos, cuttings, piercings, and the like. We are not to degrade them by using them for excessive or illicit pleasures or to lure others into sin. I do not wish to divert this post into a debate about tattooing and piercing. While such things are not wholly excluded by Church law or Scripture, anything that deliberately, dramatically alters the appearance of the body we received from God is surely problematic. (The nearly permanent quality of such alterations is also concerning.) Such excesses are far too common today, at least in the U.S.

Because our bodies belong to God, we should ask ourselves, “Is God pleased with the way I regard, treat, and make use of the body He has given me?”

There is a nuptial meaning to the body.

We do not exist by ourselves nor only for ourselves. We are contingent beings and, as such, depend on our parents for our existence. Although we exist for our own sake and thus have intrinsic worth, we also exist for others. Our very body speaks to the most fundamental relationships of marriage and family. Simply put, there is a part of our body that is for another. The male and female reproductive organs are designed for each other. This is biologically evident, though sadly some have lost their way and refuse to acknowledge it.

The denial of the purpose of our body’s reproductive organs is manifest in the approval of homosexual practices that “close the sexual act to the gift of life [and] do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity” (CCC # 2357). It is also manifest in certain heterosexual practices that close the sexual act to the fruit of life and/or use the sexual organs in disordered ways, ways in which they were not intended to be used.

To restate, there is a nuptial meaning to the body. Our body says to us, “I am for another.” Most of humanity realizes this truth through monogamous marriage. A man leaves his father and mother, seeks a wife, clings to her, and the two become one flesh (cf Gen 2:24). Thus, through the husband and wife, completing and complementing each other, a new member of the human family is created. This is the most common realization of the nuptial meaning of the body.

For priests and for religious brothers and sisters who live celibate lives, the nuptial meaning of the body is realized in a spiritual but real way. Religious sisters are espoused to the Lord, the bridegroom of their souls. Priests and religious brothers take up a spousal relationship with the Church, the bride of their souls. Priests and brothers are not bachelors nor are sisters “single women.” No, each lives in a spousal relationship.

What about members of the laity who never marry? Here, I would argue, a distinction must be made. Because there is a nuptial meaning to the body, there is no vocation to the single life per se. However, those who are currently single (including those who may remain that way permanently), may by that state be available to serve the Lord and the Church or community in a more substantial way. For such individuals, the nuptial meaning of the body is expressed through that vocational service.

Marriage has its structure because children both need and deserve the stable presence of their father and mother in their lives.

God did not design marriage arbitrarily. He set it forth as one man for one woman till death do them part, bearing fruit in their children (see Genesis 2:24-25). He did this because that is what is necessary and best for children. Marriage by its nature is oriented to having children. The Lord’s first command to Adam and Eve was, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it (Gen 1:28).

Obviously, there must be a father and a mother for a child to exist at all, but beyond the conception of children there is the necessary work of raising them. Children need to have their parents reliably present in their everyday lives so that they can depend on them and trust them. Further, a child needs a father to learn the masculine genius of being human and a mother to learn the feminine genius of being human. This is necessary for the proper and best human formation—psychologically, spiritually, and emotionally. Even an unbeliever should be able to see this. The structure of marriage is not an arbitrary arrangement by God for us to toy with at will.

Sadly, we have done just that. We casually separate what God has joined. God intends for children to be conceived in the sexual union of a husband and wife pledged to each other for life. Having sex and having children are inextricably linked to Holy Matrimony, yet today we have largely separated them. As a result of minimizing the relationship between sex and marriage, there are many marriages without children (by choice) and many children without parents married to each other. We do this through sins and misbehavior such as fornication, adultery, divorce and “remarriage.” The current practice of refusing to favor a married heterosexual couple over a single mother, a single father, or a same-sex couple when placing a child for adoption also severs what God has joined. As a result of all these things, fewer than half of children today grow up in a traditional family.

While children might lose their mother or father through death, to intentionally subject them to anything other than being raised by their own parents is a grave injustice.

The common objection to this teaching is this: “Are you saying that a single mother, a single father, or a homosexual couple cannot raise a child just as well as a married (heterosexual) couple?” The answer is, “Yes, that is exactly what we are saying,” for all the reasons stated above. Some will respond with horror stories that occurred with this or that traditional couple, but atypical occurrences do not alter general norms, and “hard cases make bad law.”

God intends sex, marriage, and children to go together. Having sex naturally leads to having children; this is biologically demonstrable.

Sex, intimacy, and procreation belong together and should not be separated.

Contraception, the artificial prevention of conception that naturally results from human sexual intercourse, is an attempt to sever the connection between sexual relations and having children. Even if not every act of sexual intercourse can result in a child, the bodily truth is that sexual intercourse is directed toward having children. That sex is also pleasurable and may be a sign of love and intimacy does not set aside this point. God joins pleasures to the things that are most necessary for us so that we do not neglect them. For example, the purpose of eating food is to nourish the body. It is also true that eating is pleasurable and sharing meals promotes camaraderie. This does not, however, mean that the primary purpose of food is something other than bodily nourishment. God joins pleasure to food because eating is necessary for our survival, thus they are to be together, not separated.

As an analogy, consider a person who was not particularly interested in the nutritional aspect of food, but rather just liked the pleasure of eating and/or keeping company at feasts. As a result, he would eat and drink to excess, vomit it all up, and then return for more. We all wince at such a horror. This is because eating has a purpose that is being trampled upon in favor of lesser aspects. The proper end, bodily nourishment, is subverted when a person eats to excess and merely for pleasure.

This is precisely what contraception does when it severs the relationship between sex, intimacy, and procreation. We would be similarly aghast at a couple who had sex without any love between them, merely for the purpose of making babies for profit (e.g. selling them for adoption or for use as laborers). This makes the same point: sex, intimacy, and procreation belong together and should not be divided as separate pursuits. Every child deserves to be the fruit of the intimacy and shared love of a stably married father and mother.

Contraception facilitates the violation of the norm Let no one separate what God his joined (see Matt 19:6). The legalization of contraception in the U.S. has led to the explosion of promiscuity and all of the accompanying woes, including sexually transmitted diseases, teenage parents, children raised in single-parent households, and the horror of abortion, which has become the “contraception of last resort.” All of this has gravely harmed or even killed millions of children. Some argue that it is perfectly fine to separate the procreative dimension of sex from its pleasure or its promotion of intimacy, but in separating what God has joined we have reaped a harvest of misery and death. Contraception promotes the exaltation of the pleasure and intimacy of sexual intercourse unmoored from its purpose: the serious business of having and then raising children within a stable marriage. The worship of pleasure and intimacy unmoored from their purpose has led to the unbridled lust we see today.

There will always be more to say about Christian anthropology, but allow the points made in today’s and yesterday’s posts to paint the bigger picture: God has set forth an understanding of the human person both in Scripture and through our very body and soul. We do well to take heed of what He teaches.

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douglasacogan · 6 years

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Vera Institute of Justice urges "Reimagining Prison"

The Vera Institute of Justice has recently produced this big new report as part a big new project under the label "Reimagining Prison." Here is how the report's executive summary gets started:

The United States holds approximately 1.5 million people in its state and federal prisons. Although this number has declined since its peak in 2009, mass incarceration is hardly a thing of the past. Even if the nation returned to the incarceration rates it experienced before 1970, more than 300,000 people — approximately one per 1,000 residents— would still be held in U.S. prisons. And the conditions of that confinement are dismal. Prison in America is a place of severe hardship — a degree of hardship that is largely inconceivable to people who have not seen or experienced it themselves or through a loved one. It is an institution that causes individual, community, and generational pain and deprivation. For those behind the walls, prison is characterized by social and physical isolation, including severe restriction of personal movement, enforced idleness, insufficient basic care, a loss of meaningful personal contact and the deterioration of family relationships, and the denial of constitutional rights and avenues to justice. Those who work in prisons suffer too, with alarming rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide compared to the general population.

Beyond the walls of prison, incarceration’s impact is broad: mass imprisonment disrupts social networks, distorts social norms, and hollows out citizenship. Over this country’s long history of using prisons, American values of fairness and justice have been sacrificed to these institutions in the name of securing the common good of public safety. But the harsh conditions within prisons have been demonstrated neither to ensure safety behind the walls nor to prevent crime and victimization in the community.

The story of American prisons is also a story of racism. We as a nation have not yet fully grappled with the ways in which prisons — how they have been used, the purposes they serve, who gets sent to them, and people’s experiences inside them — are intimately entwined with the legacy of slavery and generations of racial and social injustice. Built on a system of racist policies and practices that has disproportionately impacted people of color, mass incarceration has decimated the communities and families from which they come. It is time to acknowledge that this country has long used state punishment generally — and incarceration specifically — to subordinate racial and ethnic minorities.

The recent prison incident in South Carolina that left seven dead, as well as prison strikes across the country in 2016 and 2018 protesting inhumane treatment, serve as tragic wake-up calls that something is fundamentally wrong inside America’s prisons. With a few limited exceptions, correctional practice today remains underpinned by retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation. These realities beg the question: isn’t there another way? We have failed to ask this question with sufficient seriousness and thoroughness. The time for us to do so is now. And so, to take a truly decisive step away from the past, America needs a new set of normative values on which to ground prison policy and practice — values that simultaneously recognize, interrogate, and unravel the persistent connections between racism and this country’s system of punishment.

In this report, the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) reimagines the how, what, and why of incarceration. And in so doing, we assert a new governing principle: human dignity. This principle dictates that “[e]very human being possesses an intrinsic worth, merely by being human.” It applies to people living in prison as well as the corrections staff who work there.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247011 http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2018/10/vera-institute-urges-reimagining-prison.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

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benrleeusa · 6 years

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Vera Institute of Justice urges "Reimagining Prison"

The Vera Institute of Justice has recently produced this big new report as part a big new project under the label "Reimagining Prison." Here is how the report's executive summary gets started:

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fitnesswomenshealth-blog · 6 years

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Ayushman Bharat's Declared Measures Seem Neither Adequate Nor Practical

New Post has been published on https://cialiscom.org/ayushman-bharats-declared-measures-seem-neither-adequate-nor-practical.html

Ayushman Bharat's Declared Measures Seem Neither Adequate Nor Practical

“Humans are individuals simply because of their particular person. The loaded have a entire body and so do I. Why, then, need to I have to endure without having treatment method when they get pleasure from all achievable facilities? Why really should our healthcare expenditure be only Rs 30,000?” requested Manju, a person of the members in a examine I performed for my master’s thesis at the Department of International Health and fitness and Social Medicine, Harvard Professional medical College.

The analyze was on the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), a health coverage scheme for the lousy introduced by the authorities of India in 2008. It entitled ‘targeted’ families to hospitalised treatment up to Rs 30,000 yearly in an institution of their selection, to be chosen from a record of accredited hospitals and health and fitness centers – personal and public.

As a member of a underneath poverty line (BPL) family, Manju was entitled to the “benefits” of RSBY. That the scheme did not get the job done well is a general public knowledge. Certainly, informed organizations have constantly been asserting that the Indian health method needs a thorough overhauling – no cosmetic transform can make improvements to its condition of affairs. Yet, the classes of RSBY and other ornamental wellness strategies has not experienced any effects on community coverage. The RSBY is again, in an albeit amplified variation and with a new identify: the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) underneath the Ayushman Bharat National Health Safety Scheme (ABNPHS).

The ABNPHS and the PMJAY look really bold. They claim to ‘build a new India by 2022’ with “two much-reaching initiatives beneath Ayushman Bharat”. It will be carried out at an “unprecedented scale”, and will support India capitalise its demographic dividend, guarantee increased productivity, properly-becoming and avert wage reduction and impoverishment, the federal government statements.

The to start with of the two initiatives pertains to creation of 150,000 health and wellness centres, which will convey wellness treatment “closer to the households of the people”. The 2nd is the PMJAY, which gives overall health defense protect to poor and susceptible family members.

The federal government statements that the Ayushman Bharat plan will be executed at an unparalleled tempo. Credit rating: Reuters

Has the authorities discovered a treasure of assets?

How does one particular understand this miraculous declare? In India, the distance in between the proclamation of policies and their implementation is vast and pervasive. The claim of reversing the seven many years of wellbeing failure in fewer than 50 percent a decade, therefore, ‘dictates’ us to think that the Union govt has found out a treasure home of methods to carry about this transform and will make India free of charge of inadequate and unwell well being, halt impoverishment owing to wellness expenses and enrich efficiency manifold with enhanced wellness capacity.

Even though it is claimed that the wellness centres “will present Extensive Main Health Treatment (CPHC), covering both equally maternal and youngster wellbeing products and services and non-communicable disorders, together with absolutely free vital medication and diagnostic services”, no details has been built available as to how this intention will be satisfied.

Initially, no roadmap has been given regarding the creation of 150,000 wellness facilities for most important care. Will they be freshly produced or will the current most important treatment procedure (sub-centers), Most important Wellness Centers (PHCs) and Group Wellbeing Centers (CHCs) be transformed to serve the purpose? If it is the 1st, what necessitated the creation of a new entity and how will this be various from the existing centers?

Initial, no roadmap has been specified relating to the creation of 150,000 wellness centers for major care.

If it is the next, how does the authorities strategy to accommodate the current technique with enough personnel, services and room? The hole amongst demanded and existing figures of SCs, PHCs, and CHCs are 19%, 22% and 30% respectively. There are big vacancies for grassroots-level workers and physicians at PHCs: 8% of the PHCs are operating devoid of physicians. The shortage was specially acute at the CHC degree: 82% of the posts of medical professionals (surgeon, obstetrician gynecologists, pediatricians, and medical professionals) at the CHC stage are vacant.

The ABNHPS promises that “the governing administration of India is committed to making sure that its populace has universal accessibility to good quality health and fitness treatment companies with no any person getting to confront economic hardship as a consequence”. The evaluate taken is the PMJAY, a well being insurance policy plan which, “will supply economic safety (Swasthya Suraksha) to 10.74 crore very poor, deprived rural people and recognized occupational types of urban workers’ people as for every the latest Socio–Economic Caste Census (SECC) facts (approx. 50 crore beneficiaries). It will give a benefit go over of Rs. 500,000 for each loved ones for each yr (on a loved ones floater basis).”

Declared measures are neither simple nor satisfactory

However, the declared actions appear to be rarely functional or sufficient. Even though it identifies that 62.58% of the inhabitants “are not protected through any sort of wellness protection”, the population protected less than PMJAY is only 38% (50 crore of the present complete inhabitants, i.e, 132.42 crore). There still remains 32.87 crore of the population (or 25%) uncovered by any wellness defense scheme.

Health and fitness, finance minister Arun Jaitley in his spending plan speech asks us to consider, is an issue of financial expansion and poverty alleviation. Tellingly, the speech did not dedicate a separate paragraph on health instead, it appeared less than the sub-head ‘poverty alleviation’. Even if we pressure ourselves into tandem with the prevailing trend and preserve the intrinsic price of health aside, fitting it into the narrow box of instrumental priorities of wellness and very well-remaining, we can’t escape the question of what occurs to these whose annual catastrophic wellness expenditure (PMJAY addresses only hospitalised treatment) exceed Rs 5 lakh, the higher cap of the health and fitness insurance policies to be furnished to the lousy and susceptible?

There however stays 32.87 crore of the population (or 25%) uncovered by any health and fitness defense scheme.

In September 2018, I returned to Manju and reported, “You should be delighted now. The authorities has lifted the cure price tag coverage to Rs 5 lakh. It’s no far more a paltry Rs 30,000.” She wasn’t content. She was indignant. “We will be satisfied only when we die. You say, extra dollars, that suggests much more loot by the [private] hospitals. Go away, and give this information to the hospitals,” she said. Just about all scientific studies on RSBY, which include the RSBY’s very own evaluation, have pointed out the gross healthcare abuse, plunder by personal hospitals and people’s exclusion from the scheme owing to non-availability of any wellbeing facility in their vicinity.

Apart from corruption, the RSBY experience showed that the utilisation of wellness insurance policy is contingent to the robustness of publicly delivered health facilities. For instance, although the ordinary variety of hospitalisations less than RSBY in Kerala is .15 for each domestic, the corresponding determine for Jharkhand is a meager .03 per residence. Interestingly, the regular worth per hospitalisation (expense understood less than RSBY) is substantially higher in Jharkhand (Rs 5,919) than in Kerala (Rs 3,731).

In Jharkhand, a substantial number of public amenities, which include the PHCs with out indoor facilities have been accredited under RSBY. Men and women in these locations, so, have no facility to vacation resort to, no matter whether general public or private. The constrained variety of private nursing houses are likely to delight in monopoly of remedy. Conversely, in Kerala, community delivery of health care and a regulatory system do the job in tandem to act as a examine for the personal health and fitness market place.

Practically all studies on RSBY have pointed out the gross health care abuse, plunder by private hospitals and people’s exclusion from the scheme. Agent picture. Credit: Reuters

Chance of wellbeing coverage abuse

Economist Kenneth Arrow warned in his popular paper ‘Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Healthcare Care’ that the pretty expression ‘profit’ denies belief relations and “…hospitalization and surgical treatment [which only are covered under PM-JAY, as also in its earlier incarnation RSBY] are additional below the informal inspection of other”. This implies that the probability of wellbeing insurance policies abuse through plundering of the community exchequer and also by encouraging a lot of other unethical techniques, is a great deal larger in states with poorer well being shipping mechanisms, which direct to an unregulated health and fitness sector.

The probable fertile floor for revenue earning by way of coverage techniques, feeble – if not not possible – public supervision of the precise professional medical treatment [given especially in the private hospitals] and denial of have confidence in romantic relationship created Arrow argue for redistribution by govt of direct health and fitness providers, as a substitute of redistribution of purchasing ability by the authorities. This probability is significantly significant in states with fragile publicly delivered wellness care system.

In contrast, states with much better general public shipping of healthcare and other social providers are greater equipped to provide the professional medical practices beneath public inspection. This also generates a check for the personal marketplace in two methods: (1) by supplying the populace a sizeable aggressive decision and (2) through a powerful social support community that improves the capacity of the individuals to pick.

Since men and women are already socialised to entry health and fitness companies in these states, the elevated socio-economic status of the population might direct to their utilisation of the private current market as very well, as has been the situation in Kerala.

Alas, the governing administration of India is stubbornly resistant to discovering from working experience, both from household or from away.

Kumar Rana works with the Pratichi Institute of the Pratichi India Belief, launched by Amartya Sen. He lives in Kolkata.

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p-timmins-blog · 6 years

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Have Young People Grown More Anxious? (Part A)

Sixteen years ago, as a pimple faced teen, I had finished window shopping for Xbox games and sat at a bus stop enjoying a Cookie Time cookie, delicious chunky chocolate chip. A grey, happy looking woman, wrapped against the wind and moving slow but determined, approached me with a slight look of concern. ‘Now I’m not being rude you know’, she said, ‘but those cookies aren’t good for your skin. You really shouldn’t eat them’. You all know perfectly well that the Cookie Monster has wonderful skin so, frankly, I doubted the woman’s dermatological credentials. Unperturbed by my scepticism, she ventured ‘I spent my youth in London during the Blitz but I think today’s world is more difficult for teenagers.’ This took me by surprise, given the bombs and cream shortages and all that, but ‘Oh yes!’ she said ‘You have so much choice, it’s so complicated, and it all goes so fast. Take it from an old woman, make sure you enjoy yourself! Well…not too much. What with all the diseases and all that these days. Now I’m not being rude you know, but be careful where you dip your wick if you know what I mean?’

I did think she was being rude, implying that I had bad skin and should stop eating cookies. Still, as an entitled millennial I’m inclined to latch on to her notion that the modern world isn’t all so straight forward for young people. With my confirmation bias in overdrive I’ll pick and choose from this woman’s insights thank you very much. After all it seems to me that a woman who lived through a world war might be well placed to know a thing or two about hard and not so hard times. It really struck me, and surprised me, that she would suggest that young people in the modern world might have it in any way difficult in comparison.

I’m not sure that we have any grounds to mutter in terms of economic, physical and material prosperity (setting aside the topic of inequality for another day). But I do believe the world has become more complex and more rapid. Providing new challenges for both the young and old that grapple with it. One reaction to this complexity could be anxiety, and it now seems a commonly held notion that young people are more anxious than they used to be. Can we, with any objectivity, say that young people are experiencing more anxiety than previous generations?

This is the issue I sought to get to the bottom of with my friend Vic when we met for coffee. We sat down and Vic gave me a forced smile. A relaxed morning starting with a yoga class had quickly turned frustrating as Vic had spent 40 minutes in Sunday morning traffic to get to ‘the cool hip café’ that I knew. Our coffees arrived, the barista had drawn a nice little heart on Vic’s perfectly frothed milk, while mine had a classic middle finger, a joke, I think. We sipped our double strength coffees and wondered what the go is with all this anxiety.

The culprits were obvious. Increased screen-time, a culture of instant gratification, carefully curated social media and the glamorisation of unattainable ideals of beauty. Not to mention individualism and suburban isolation, consumerism, less sleep and less exercise, the decline of religion replaced by…what?, and the rise of world ending phenomena like nuclear war, climate change and the return of vehemently vengeful dinosaurs.

Jean Twenge, a research psychologist, might have similar discussions over her coffees in the café of San Diego State University. Twenge, probably has a slightly more robust approach than Vic and I, having done actual research with actual data. Terms like positivism, empiricism, and Renaissance Man are bandied about by anyone with a calculator these days but Twenge has been crunching some serious numbers. After all her math-craft Twenge reckons that college and school kids in the US have indeed become more anxious. And she’s got impressive figures to back up her claim.

According to Twenge the average US college student in the 1990s was reporting greater levels of anxiety than 71% of students in the 1970s and 85% of students in the 1950s. For US children the change was so large that “normal” 80s kids reported higher levels of anxiety than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s.

Twenge was able to get this data because it turns out they’ve been asking young people in the USA about their anxiety for a while. This has been done using standardised scales such as the Taylor Manifest Anxiety scale and the Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale. These scales ask people to identify with statements like “I am usually calm and not easily upset” and “I have very few headaches” to measure generalised anxiety. Twenge looked at five such scales using data covering 1952 to 1993 and found a consistent trend of rising anxiety in each of them. It was this data that produced the startling figures just mentioned.

Twenge and some esteemed researcher mates from across the USA followed this up with a similar exercise using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), this time responses went up to 2007. Fair to say the results don’t make for an overall great picture unless you’re a pharmaceutical executive. For example, recent students were seven times more likely than those tough buggers of 1938 to score at problematic levels on depression and hypomania. Hypomania by the way is characterized by unrealistically positive self-appraisal, overactivity, and low self-control. One synonym for the term is “Current President of the United States”. Believe me, I know the best presidents. General symptoms of anxiety assessed by the MMPI were also on the rise, expressed through worry, sadness, dissatisfaction, and sometimes physical symptoms.

I relayed this research to Vic as she considered whether to order another coffee or to go for a pastry. Her response was the one that I generally get to this data. Could it reflect an increased openness to discussing mental health issues, rather than a genuine increase in anxiety?

Twenge and her colleagues have struggled to address this. It’s one reason, I think, behind why they picked the MMPI for their later research. The MMPI includes a measure of response bias, a respondent’s tendency to appear virtuous and to obscure any mental health issues they might possess. In a sense it’s a measure of whether changing scores on the MMPI scale might reflect a greater willingness to discuss and report mental health issues. The scores on the response bias scales did suggest that more recent generations are less defensive in their responses and somewhat less concerned with making a good impression. But the changes in response bias weren’t large enough, statistically speaking, to explain the overall shifts in scores across the MMPI. So the declining picture of mental health couldn’t be explained through greater willingness to discuss mental health issues alone. Not by the stats anyway.

Interestingly, Twenge’s statistical analysis also suggested that declining mental health scores in the MMPI were independent of economic cycles in the USA. Economic insecurity wasn’t the issue, rather the changes correlated with a shift from intrinsic to extrinsic values. A move in emphasis from internal to external validation (please like this post).

How seriously you take these results might depend a little bit on how much validity you give to the statistical quantification of a subjective qualitative issue. Well I’m a cricket fan and statistics make up 80% of the most important things in my life so for me the evidence was conclusive enough. I was ready to ring my bell (carry it with me everywhere) and make my pronouncement that, quite indisputably, young people today are more anxious than they used to be.

Vic though was not satisfied, neither by Twenge’s statistics or by her creamy cronut. She wanted to know if Twenge’s research had been replicated and whether similar research exists in New Zealand. Well Vic, here things are a little less clear cut. In 2015 a global analysis of anxiety scores suggested that anxiety had been increasing overall globally but variably in different countries. In the USA and Canada anxiety appeared to have risen, albeit only among students, while anxiety appeared to have decreased in the UK and remained stable in Australia. This would suggest that we shouldn’t assume that Twenge’s research coming out of the United States necessarily translates to the New Zealand context.

In New Zealand, as far as I’ve seen, the statistics are limited to diagnosed medical anxiety rather than generalised anxiety. In this context the argument that trends may reflect changes in reporting and diagnostic practices rather than lived experience seems even more pertinent. Nonetheless, the Ministry of Health statistics do show a continuously increasing prevalence of anxiety disorder in New Zealand. Anxiety among adults was diagnosed in 10.3% of the population in 2017, up from 4% in 2006. In children the prevalence had risen from 0.4% in 2007 to 3.0% in 2017. It’s risky business extrapolating from trends in medically diagnosed anxiety to anxiety in the general population but it does suggest to me that it’s at least plausible that general anxiety may have risen here.

Vic wouldn’t have a bar of that kind of thinking and I must admit she’d successfully shown that there are gaps in the statistics that I’ve seen. Maybe so much so that we shouldn’t yet draw any conclusions. Especially here in New Zealand. Personally, I have doubt whether population anxiety can be reliably measured over time because of the ever shifting social context, terminologies and ways of thinking that are tied in with the concept of anxiety. How can we know that we are consistently measuring the same thing.

One of the benefits of an empirical approach is that it provides data to support evidence based public policy. A clear rising trend of anxiety would suggest that it may be worthwhile to put resources into reversing that trend. But what should we do if evidence supporting a conclusion one way or another does not appear achievable?

In such ambiguous spaces our values can inform how we act. What do we want? We could look forwards and create interventions designed to reduce general anxiety and then test whether they are working. An approach that is more consistent with the scientific method of prediction and testing, as opposed to trying to draw retrospective conclusions. For example, we might test whether policies that foster social connectedness, a known buffer against anxiety, in a neighbourhood result in reduced levels of anxiety within that neighbourhood.

If we were to make these efforts however, we should be wary of treating something that may be a natural part of the human condition. A historical review of previous approaches to anxiety suggests that we might be rehashing an old problem. I get into that in Part B of this post. Until then, enjoy yourself, but not too much, be careful eating cookies and try not to worry too much about things.

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