b ack to the future: rethinking the first person in phenomenological psychopathology ( parergon)

1. back to the future: rethinking the first person in phenomenological psychopathology (parergon) nev jones, ma doctoral student depaul university lived experience research network july 20, 2013

2. prolegomena: a foucauldian frame in the margins questions about the emergence, solidification & weight of subjects, objects & power Nev Jones * Lived Experience Research Network

3. part i the three traditions: phenomenology psychoanalysis (bio)psychiatry Nev Jones * Lived Experience Research Network

4. part ii Fort Da “…a weight (or bob) on the end of a massless cord suspended from a pivot, without friction. When given an initial push, it will swing back and forth [infinitely]” (Wikipedia) Nev Jones * Lived Experience Research Network

5. part iii we’re looking for the first person first two photos appearing in google images under the search [“first person account” + madness] for nev.inbox Nev Jones * Lived Experience Research Network

6. part iv participant 13, phenomenology of psychosis “I also believe that the formation—I was fascinated by what I thought... I was fascinated by the process from the formation of the thought and the expression in language. I say language inevitably distorts the original thought. Because it’s transformed into a different category from thought to language. It’s never going to be an accurate representation, we’re never going to know what experience actually is like because it’s so constrained by language. Absolutely.” “[Laughs] It just happens. It’s a story. It’s like sitting around the campfire telling a story about—it’s a story. [pause] It’s a story of what happened in my brain and around me. Like, I can feel things going through my head that I interpreted as signals between gods. I can actually feel that, so that was the feeling that I had, all through my hair. “ participant 12, phenomenology of psychosis Nev Jones * Lived Experience Research Network

7. part v In a sense I’ve now said everything I wanted to say, and in a sense I haven’t. The paths I have indicated above—a reconsideration of Husserl’s work and the role of the first person, greater attention to the exigencies of proximity; the potentially singular relationship between psychosis and epoché—perhaps demand to be augmented and extended with specific recommendations for contemporary phenomenological psychopathology, and more concrete examples of how and where and why philosophy of psychiatry has taken wrong turns, departing from the spirit, if not the letter, of Husserl’s motivating quest. I might, for instance, underscore the sometimes chasmic gap between essentializing phenomenologies of “schizophrenia” and the far more diverse and tortuous experiences of real service users; the unrecognized heterogeneities of course, chronicity, episodocity, recovery; the many problems inherent in the fetishization and over-use of terms or symptoms du jour, constructs that again fail to do justice to the discursive and embodied complexities of psychosis; the sometimes astonishing reification and naturalization of the almost entirely etic categories of the delusion, thought broadcasting and so on; a near total failure to consider the complex (sometimes mediating and sometimes distorting )phenomenological effects of antipsychotics and other psychotropic drugs; sometimes absurd statements about putatively ‘pure’ states of madness in which reason and insight literally play no roll . I could go on. Maybe what I want to say is: it is high time and past time to stop re-treading old tracks, unless we ask ourselves, within psychopathology, and above all within phenomenology, the “hard questions” between the grooves. Nev Jones * Lived Experience Research Network

8. part v take ii(with timothy kelly) NJ: why is this so hard? :-( TK [some bullets omitted]: 3. phenomenology is useful. we use it. laing's work is extremely powerful, louis sass, etc. you know what the point is you want to make. right? first person phenomenology? but you are grappling with these other questions of-is 'psychosis' even available to be understood? also, there is the fixity of any account, certainly including an artistic one. What’s to prevent someone from simply employing the same methods etc?  4. you can always avoid answering the questions you ask? refuse to answer them, ask instead what structures their very being asked implicate-a Foucauldian approach perhaps. 5. but i know you want to save phenomenology. and that’s ok too. 6. it will always be partial anyway. and besides, it is a question of both 'science' -in the sense of phenomenology as a 'human science' but also political-who gets to do this work. in other words, its both : who *can* do this work? but also who *should*. 7. I really really wish you would have picked up those books. amazing (and deeply disturbing) visual examples of fetishization and othering. would have been useful for power point. NJ: maybe i should just cut part v and instead do something more experimental?  after all, is there really anything else left to say? TK: oh, but dear nev, part 5 is the whole point is it not? NJ: maybe not, maybe it's more powerful to not make these points (which the essay drives at) explicit.  TK: yes. better if you can carry it off. but how? google image search for [“fetishization of psychosis”] = did not match any image results Nev Jones * Lived Experience Research Network

9. finis Nev Jones * Lived Experience Research Network