The Philosophical Project Concerning the Mental Health.

I recently submitted a paper to an academic journal.

It was denied. Bummer!

It uses, I might call, a three-stage, blind review board who reads and assess the papers, who then recommend the paper, yay or nay. They also provide comments as to why they rejected the paper, which I truly appreciated and take to heart.

I found these review comments interesting and an opportunity for growth in my writing, but also personal growth. I see these areas as connected, and after sitting with the comments behind the rejection, I found that they are more than connected. I found that they necessitate a sort of fidelity to the meaning of my paper that still makes me wonder about the method and ideals those involved with the sorting process hold.

I spent about a couple weeks rolling around the feedback from the journal and the various activities that were aroused in myself to it. I did not want to react in a knee-jerk; as a mental health practitioner, and growing writer, I know the value of process, of tuning into myself and allowing the natural reactions, mental, intellectual, physical, but also philosophical and spiritual, to do their things. The rising of unknown or unrecognizable forces within one’s Self often compel us to activity without reason, yet while informing the motion of our reason, albeit, without a full recognition of the irrational forces that are compelling us, that is, as though I have thought it out rationally. So, I wanted to let those waves roll as they would, watching them, thinking the thoughts, feeling the feelings, working through the methodological rebuttals and letting them go to let other ones comes up, the same, different, challenging, agreeing, random, etcetera.

TRUE PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFERENCE and ITS INVOLVEMENT WITH THE REALITY of MENTAL ISSUE

The question that keeps coming up for me is the central question to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s The Differend; I paraphrase:

What justice might be had from a court who is not able to understand the case brought to them, not able to comprehend the evidence nor hear the argument?

The Differend. 1983

Now, the significance of my pervious post is that in this blog I will be moving past the strict conventional philosophical involvements, what I call real in the last post, to philosophy of mental health, what I associate with truth.

THE TRUTH is IN THERE

I do this because of the limitations that are exhibited in the attempt to engage philosophically at the level of truth on the general stage (see my posts, papers and books). Basically, there is no truth to be found ‘out there’. What is ‘out there’ is always real and negotiated as such. The truth of that situation is only found by not referring to ‘reality’ for substantial information about what is actually occurring, and this, thus, cannot be argued in the conventional domain. It must be sought within the domain of the Self. The effort of mental health thus falls into the issue of where I am seeking my Self.

Of course, this is not to suggest that one merely rely upon some ‘inner resource’ such as a ‘spirit’, or ‘mind’, or even ‘rationality’ as opposed or in contrast to what is ‘out there’ in the sense of an objective reality. It is these kinds of polemical and ideological mental postures that I say contributes to the mental issue as a matter for course. this is why it is possible to have such philosophical discourses that we find involving all sorts of psychological ideas, from Fromm, to Lacan, to Zizek. So I say that psychology is not dealing with problems outside of the problems it creates. But again; you can read my works about all that.

Interestingly, I recently read this paper which makes the distinction that I have noticed as well. Cedric Nathaniel, in his small book series, The Philosophical Hack, notices this difference in approach to what is occurring and claims philosophy to involvement. I feel that Maylynne contextualizes her ‘sage’ as what Nathaniel sees as ‘involvement’. Yet, in her proposal, philosophy is specifically oriented with ‘the socratic’, meaning, that it is based in (to paraphrase) a name of an activity specifically oriented ‘a rational questioning of the subject’.

I am writing a paper in response to hers which coincides with the new trajectory of my blog. I offer a big Thank You to Maylynne !

Her paper here.

PHILOSOPHY AND MENTAL HEALTH

I contend that most mental health issues arise because of the individual “missing” themselves. They do not understand what is happening to them and or they are unable to enact the person they think they are effectively. This disconnect in how a person understands themselves manifests as what we know as the ‘mental disorders’ but also just general mental issue.

This does not mean, however, that mental issues are caused by an intellectual farting, if you will, as though the person just needs to be corrected in how they are thinking, through a sort of cognitive formula. Of course, though, some people will be helped through applying a cognitive formula; we know this in the mental health field as cognitive skills. My discussion here is not about the semantic and pragmatic issues around any psychological intervention or theory. And again: you can look to my older posts and papers if you want to get a feeling about what is going on there.

MOVING FORWARD

This phase of my blog will be formed as a hub, of sorts, for papers and other media, to organize and grant an epistemological and philosophical structure that addresses mental health in a manner through which conventional philosophical approaches, underpinnings and manners of understanding mental health lack or otherwise avoid for the sake of psychological adherence and coherence.

I hope you will be down for the ride. Please link this blog to you own, and offer it to others as you might find similar or complementary interests in your travels.