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Summary
Applies postmodern theory to the working assumptions and consequent practices of therapy in various disciplines, from clinical psychology to schooling.
Labyrinths of the Mind critically engages and creatively transforms the patterns of postmodern culture. It envisions strategies of self-discovery emerging in our era as a labyrinth, whose design evolves as we explore it. Nietzsche serves as our guide throughout the book as we wander the shopping mall, travel on an odyssey with Franz Kafka, critically explore the disorders of psychiatry and psychotherapy, attend a Nine Inch Nails concert during the Gulf War, wake on a medical examination table, and contemplate ourselves in the mirror of the biosphere.
"Labyrinths of the Mind traces the archaeology of 'the self' within the context of shifts in communication and culture and breakdowns in modernist institutions. Drawing on Lacan, Foucault, Kafka, Kristeva, Bateson, and, especially, Nietzsche, its central move is to open up ideas of self-formation, what it terms, in its central metaphor, 'the postmodern labyrinth of the self.' At the heart of the book is a critique of the human sciences for what Foucault has termed its 'technologies of control.' Situating postmodernism as 'a radically enlightened diversity of movements,' the authors explore the effects of this decentralization on the 'self.' Their particular interest is to move the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and therapy in postmodern directions. White and Hellerich offer a masterful discussion of Nietzsche's seeming contradictions in his revaluations of consciousness and will, reason and truth." -- Patti Lather, Ohio State University
"This book is full of provocative flashes of brilliance, of odd juxtapositions of various authors, ideas, outcomes." -- Mary Gergen, Pennsylvania State University
Daniel R. White is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Postmodern Ecology: Communication, Evolution, and Play, also published by SUNY Press. Gert Hellerich is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bremen, Germany. He has published two books in Germany on social and postmodern issues.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Into the Labyrinth:
The Self enters the Postmodern Condition
A Sketch of the Labyrinth
The Metaphysical Triad of Modernity
Chapter 1. Nietzsche at the Mall:
Deconstructing the Consumer
The Church of the Consumer
Decentering the Consumer Subject
Learning and the Self-Transformation of the Consumer
The Will to Power and the Will to Play
New Forms of Empowerment
Interlude: Nietzsche Goes to Hell (and so do we)
Beyond Good and Evil: fröhliches Kulturmachen
Chapter 2. They Might be Giants:
Mental Patients in Rebellion
Psychiatry in the Labyrinth: Deconstructing Deviancy
Postmodern Reflections on Modern Psychiatry: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV)
The Foundations of Modern Science
The Lineage of Modern Psychiatry
Dissidents from Scientific Orthodoxy
The DSM-IV
Choose a Case
Postmodern Critics of Modernism
Insanity, Autopoiesis and the Opening of the Lifeworld
A Rose by Any Other Name
Chapter 3. Postmodern Metamorphosis:
The Transformation of the Self from Modern to Postmodern Forms, or The Power of the Uninterpretable in Kafka's Verwandlung
Marxist Criticism
Psychoanalytic Criticism
Deleuze and Guattari: Toward a Postmodern Landscape
Postmodern Metamorphosis
Chapter 4. Nietzsche at the Altar:
Situating the Devotee
Prologue
Event-Scene I: The Situation: A Rock Concert
Event-Scene II: Situation: War Rages
The Neocapitalist Imagology of the Sacred, or, Bush Does Baghdad : The TV Mini Series
Event-Scene III: The Dionysia
The Devotee of Life, or, God Quits Moralizing, Gets a Gender Change and Cultivates a Sense of Humor
Event-Scene IV: Encore
The Philosophy of Laughter, or, Adam Flushes Money and Eve Ditches Bridge when they discover Jouissance
Chapter 5. Nietzsche's Joyous Health and Dionysian Ecology
Nietzsche on the Table? Critical Narratives of a Postmodern "Im-Patient"
Nietzche's Case
The Narrative of Illness and Well-Being in Nietzsche's Autobiographical Writings
On the sick Bed?: Nietzsche's "Joyous Illness"
"Diverse" versus "Normal" Health
Die Fröliche Gesundheit: Toward a New Philosophy of Health
A Genealogy of the Sick Bed: The Birth of the Clinic
Climbing the Magic Mountain: Der Zauberberg as the Cultural Construction of Illness/Health
Nietzsche Breaks out of the Sanatorium
Off the Table and On the Road: The Will to Power
The Ecological Self: Humanity and Nature in Nietzsche and Goethe
The Ecological Sensibility: Nietzsche and Goethe on Mind and Nature
Will the Genuine Übermensch Please Rise?
Ecological Premonitions: Nietzsche, Goethe and Dionysian Ecology
Romanticism and Classicism: Toward a Genealogy of Cybernetics
The Ethical Self: Beyond Good and Evil
Toward a Poststructuralist Cybernetics
The Will to Life: The Ecological Übermensch
Conclusion
Creating Alternatives: Toward a New Joyous Science
