Death Flashcards
Tachistoscope
device that displays an image for a specific amount of time. It can be used to increase recognition speed, to show something too fast to be consciously recognized, or to test which elements of an image are memorable.
Galvanic
- relating to or involving electric
currents produced by chemical action.
Somatic
relating to the body, especially as distinct from the mind.
Psychodynamics
the interrelation of the unconscious and conscious mental and emotional forces that determine personality and motivation.
Inchoate
just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary.
Sequelae
a condition that is the consequence of a previous disease or injury.
“the long-term ______ of infection”
Efflorescence
A whitish, powdery deposit on the surface of rocks or soil in dry regions. It is formed as mineral-rich water rises to the surface through capillary action and then evaporates. Usually consists of gypsum, salt, or calcite.
Galvanic skin response (GSR)
a change in the electrical resistance of the skin caused by emotional stress, measurable with a sensitive galvanometer, e.g., in lie-detector tests.
Curvilinear
contained by or consisting of a curved line or lines.
Neurosis
a relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality. Compare with psychosis.
Psychosis
a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.
Vitalism
the theory that the origin and phenomena of life are dependent on a force or principle distinct from purely chemical or physical forces.
Caveat emptor
the principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase is made.
Abreaction
De-repressing certain noxious wishes and thoughts achieved through reliving the experience that caused it (typically through hypnosis or suggestion).
Existential psychotherapy
A dynamic approach to therapy which focuses on concerns that are rooted in the individual’s existence.
Dynamic psychotherapy
A model that posits that there are forces in conflict within the individual, and that thought, emotion, and behavior, both adaptive and psychopathological, are the resultant of these conflicting forces. Furthermore - and this is important - these forces exist at varying levels of awareness; some, indeed, are entirely unconscious.
The four ultimate concerns
Death, freedom, existential isolation, and meaninglessness
Death
The ultimate concern. We exist now, but one day we shall cease to be. Death will come and there is no escape from it. It is a terrible truth and we respond to it with mortal terror. ‘Everything,’ in Spinoza’s words, ‘endeavors to persist in its own being’; and a core existential conflict is the tension between the awareness of the inevitability of death and the wish to continue to be.
Freedom
An ultimate concern. Ordinarily we think of freedom as an unequivocally positive concept. Throughout recorded history has not the human being yearned and striven for freedom? Yet freedom viewed from this perspective of ultimate ground is riveted to dread. In its existential sense ‘freedom’ refers to the absence of external structure. Contrary to everyday experience, the human being does not enter (and leave) a well structured universe that has an inherent design. Rather, the individual is entirely responsible for - that is, is the author of - his or her own world, life design, choices, and actions. ‘Freedom’ in this sense, has a terrifying implication: it means that beneath us there is no ground - nothing, a void, an abyss. A key existential dynamic, then, is the clash between our confrontation with groundlessness and our wish for ground and structure.
Existential isolation
An ultimate concern. Not interpersonal isolation with its attendant loneliness, or intrapersonal isolation (isolation from parts of oneself), but a fundamental isolation - an isolation both from creatures and from world - which cuts beneath other isolation. No matter how close each of us becomes to another, there remains a final, unbridgeable gap; each of us enters existence alone and must depart from it alone. The existential conflict is this the tension between our awareness of our absolute isolation and our wish for contact, for protection, our wish to be part of a larger whole.
Meaninglessness
An ultimate concern. If we must die, if we constitute our own world, if each is ultimately alone in an indifferent universe, then what meaning does life have? Why do we live? How shall we live? If there is no preordained design for us, then each of us must construct our own meanings in life. Yet can a meaning of one’s own creation be sturdy enough to bear one’s life? This existential dynamic conflict stems from the dilemma of a meaning-seeking creature who is thrown into a universe that has no meaning.
the primary tense of existential therapy
The past - that is, one’s memory of the past - is important insofar as it is part of one’s current existence and has contributed to one’s current mode of facing one’s ultimate concerns; but it is as i shall discuss later, not the most rewarding area for therapeutic exploration. The future becoming present is the primary tense of existential therapy.
‘At this moment, at the deepest levels of my being, what are the most fundamental sources of dread?’
The individual’s earliest experiences, though undeniably important in life, do not provide the answer to this fundamental question. In fact, the residue of earliest life creates a biological static that serves to obscure the answer. The answer to the inquiry is transpersonal. it is an answer that cuts beneath any individual’s personal life history. It is an answer that applies to every person: it belongs to the human being’s ‘situation’ in the world.’
As Ludwig Binswanger, one of the best known existential analysts, said, ‘There is not one space and time only, but as many spaces and times as there are subjects.’
‘There is not one space and time only, but as many spaces and times as there are subjects.’ The various existential analysts agreed on one fundamental procedural point: the analyst must approach the patient phenomenologically; that is he or she must enter the patient’s experiential world and listen to the phenomena of that world without the presuppositions that distort understanding.