The Altered Self and Altered Self-Experience

Organizers:  

Dr. Jorge Gonçalves  

Dr. Alexander Gerner 

(Members of the Research Project: Cognitive Foundation of the Self)

“Fundamentos Cognitivos do Si”

Site: http://foundationsoftheself.squarespace.com/

Funding: PTDC/FIL-FCI/110978/2009

Entrance to the workshop is free but please register via email.  Any additional question please contact: [email protected], [email protected]

The Altered Self and Altered Self-Experience

From a theoretical point of view the experiences in which the feeling of self is temporarily or permanently altered, pose opportunities to apply, critically verify or even renew theories of the self.

The altered self, from a human point of view, gains its most relevance when it is related to psychological sufferings, their comprehension, relief or treatment. However, not all altered self-experiences imply suffering or respective treatment. 

In eastern (and some western) philosophical traditions a „No-Self“ is considered. Techniques of a Self/ No- self include states of meditation, mindfulness or effortless attention. Moreover, for some, self-alterations are desired as in technically achieved, or drug induced suspensions of a “fixed”, „regular“, „normalized“ or „orthodox“ experience of self. Other self-alterations are even conceived as deliberately induced „enhancements“ of the self.

Different conceptual and clinical notions of the altered Self and different modes of altered self-experience will be explored in this intensive workshop in order to clarify the notion of self.

Here a list of possible (not necessary, nor exclusive) topics to be treated in the workshop with some examples

(1) What can (Psycho-) pathologies of the self from different perspectives (Phenomenology, Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy of Mind, Evolutionary Psychology, Cognitive (Neuro-) Sciences etc.) tell us about the phenomenon of the self?

Examples:

• Different notions of self/other in Autism/ Schizophrenia/ Dissociated Identity Disorder/ ADHD etc.

(2) Different conceptual approaches towards the altered self in philosophy of psychiatry and modes of treatment

Examples:

• Dysfunctional/ disrupted/ disturbed/ pathologic/ abnormal/ suffering/ ill/ partitioned/ split/ restituted or altered Self
• Dichotomies of  „order/disorder“ „normality/pathology“, „regularity/irregularity“ in relation to the self in „mental disorders“
• Altered self- other relations
• Altered social and ecologic self and its psychosomatic co-relations
• Non- reductionistic accounts of the altered self in philosophy and psychiatry

(3) Altered self in between the minimal/ primordial bodily self and the extended/ personal self

(4) Mineness, Ownership, Self-Control and its exuberance or denial in altered self states

Examples:

• Thought insertion, dissociative self states, Self delusion, Self deception, Self rejection, delirium, hallucinating Self (auditory, visual, vestibular hallucinations)

(5) Constitution, change/dynamics and alteration of the unity of self

Examples:

• The unity/disunity of self
• The unity/disunity of the self in between first- person and second- person perspective
• (Dis-) unity of the Self : Split self, Altered Self-demarcation, self- consistancy, self-coherence
• Transitivism, Ipsiety, territorialization/ desterritorialization of the Self

(6) Modeling or transcending the self? Philosophical concepts and the praxis of the No-Self in western and eastern (buddist, Indian, Japanese, Chinese) psychological philosophical traditions 

(7) Altered bodily self-awareness: Altered self- affection, Hyper- and hypo-responsiveness of the bodily self

Examples:

• Hyperreflexive, self-centered or hyperactive self  
• hyperbolic self-experience
• altered existential feelings of self:
• Self as stranger: being in the wrong body, feeling dead, changes in the feeling of vitality etc.

(8) Altered Self-agency and altered self-concepts

(9) Altered Corporality of the self, altered self –perception, disembodiment and autoscopic self-experiences,

Examples:

• Self in Out-of-body experiences and different forms of autoscopic experience (polyopic autoscopy, heautoscopy, the feeling of a presence etc.)
• Constitution and alteration of the first- and second- person perspective in autoscopic experiences
• Doubles of self
• Altered bodily experience between selfhood and otherness

(10) Techniques of alteration of the self and its philosophical groundings

Examples:

• Self-techniques
• Altered self-experience in flow and effortless attention
• Techniques of mindfulness, compassion, wisdom and meditation as altered self-experience
• Philosophical approaches to self-techniques and self-development

(11) Drugs and altered self-experience: pharmacological and technological inductions of altered self-experience.

Examples:

• Pharmacological alteration of the self 
• Altered Self and the drive for "intoxication"

(12) Self-enhancement: Philosophical issues in non-invasive and invasive (Brain-) Technological and psychopharmacological interventions and changes of the minimal bodily self and the personal self

Examples:

• Can (and should) the self be enhanced?
• invasive (brain-)technological induced alteration of the self

among other topics of Altered Self and Altered Self-experience (ASASE)