2020-02Thematic Section
Three Spheres of Catatonia in the Works of Gilles Deleuze

Abstract: The text traces the development of the notion of catatonia in the work of Gilles Deleuze across three spheres – the individual (subjectivity), social and literary. The need for an analysis is based on (1) the author’s perception that Deleuze (and Guattari’s) thought on catatonia and slowness has been undervalued in many interpretations…

2020-02Thematic Section
Death Awaits Me: An Existential Phenomenology of Suicide

Abstract: This paper provides a phenomenology of the suicidal process. It begins with an examination of the self and the breaks that occur within the world that the suicidal individual endures. This includes an examination of suicidal hopelessness, termed in this paper as ontological petrification. It follows with the role in which hope plays…

2020-02Thematic Section
Dis-chronic Experience of No-thing: Existential Analysis of Freud’s and Heidegger’s Concept of Anxiety

Abstract: This essay compares Freud’s and Heidegger’s concept of Angst. Heidegger’s and Freud’s interpretations are guided by different aims: A) in “Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety” Freud tries to define the concept of anxiety as a main element in neurosis; B) Heidegger’s notion plays a major role in gaining the existential meaning of Dasein. Despite the differences, this essay…

2020-02Thematic Section
Understanding Obstacles in Psychiatric Research: An Analysis of the Structure of Mood via Merleau-Ponty

Abstract: It is no secret that the methodology within psychiatric research has been challenged to the point of a possible paradigm shift. After decades of failed attempts to determine biological markers for the mental illnesses classified by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, we are witnessing a radical transformation of the way we think about mental illness. While research seems…

2020-02Thematic Section
Hall of Mirrors: Toward an Open Society of Mental Health Stakeholders in Safeguarding against Psychiatric Abuse

Abstract: This article explores the role of an international open society of mental health stakeholders in raising awareness of values and thereby reducing the vulnerability of psychiatry to abuse. There is evidence that hidden values play a key role in rendering psychiatry vulnerable to being used abusively for purposes of social or political control. Recent work…

2020-02Thematic Section
Expertise and Expert Knowledge in Social and Procedural Entanglement

Abstract: The paper analyzes, on the basis of Ryle’s concepts of knowledge that and knowledge how, both objectified (verbalized, justified and verified) forms of expert knowledge and the performative (procedural, interactional) nature of expertise. Both theoretical and practical aspects of the identified categories are studied from historical and social (institutional) perspectives…

2020-01Thematic Section
Photomontage: Between Fragmentation and Reconstruction of Experience

Abstract: In the twentieth century, due to the development of mechanical reproduction and press, photomontage became a popular means of communication – popular and diverse in its nature and methods of exploitation (considering press in Germany or in the Soviet Union and individual works of art). It is one of the cultural phenomena related to the change of…

2020-01Thematic Section
Film as a Dream of the Modern Man: Interpretation of Susanne Langer’s “Note on the Film”

Abstract: The paper concerns a “Note on the Film,” a short appendix to Feeling and Form by Susanne Langer. The interpretation interweaves the Note into a larger context of Langer’s philosophical work – primarily in terms of her understanding of the dream as a lower symbolic form, to which the film is compared – as well as in terms of her account of…

2020-01Thematic Section
The Images to Come: On Showing the Future without Losing One’s Head

Abstract: The paper discusses the possibility of a cinematic image which represents future catastrophes, while avoiding ideological entrapments and self-serving fantasies. Taking a Japanese ghost story and a brief note by Walter Benjamin as his dual starting point, the author first attempts to define the possible dangers inherent to the very idea of showing the future, the…

2020-01Thematic Section
The Role of Phantasy in Relation to the Socially Innovative Potential of Filmic Experience

Abstract: The aim of my essay is to distinguish the aspects of the filmic experience that are decisive in relation to the film’s capability to sensitize the viewer to social issues in Williams’s sociology of culture. In order to do that, I will take into consideration Williams’s understanding of film as a particular medium that is connected with the general dramatic tradition and…