Frank:

Very interesting -- thanks . . . !!

As you know, Ernest Becker was "mentored" by Thomas Szasz, an  
important figure in the "anti-psychiatry" movement of the 1960s.

Just as we are now in another "counter-culture," Szasz was in the  
middle of his (along with some of the rest of us.)  The last time this  
happened, RADIO psychology -- particularly the medical version -- came  
under attack by the *new* techno-paradigm TELEVISION types.   
Psychiatry lost.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Thomas-5FSzasz&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=XAkYRpRyVB6UU9pFYHb8b9G4xQy0T81UTArZU-8mBDE&s=y5HRC2ZOx6lt3U-JNJCXfztJ-zUX7azmsaSvzsK4thE&e=

His 1961 "The Myth of Mental Illness" and 1970 "The Manufacture of  
Madness" accompanied Michel Foucault's 1961 "History of Madness" &c.   
One of the components which fed all this was the use of LSD --  
beginning and becoming widespread in psychotherapy in the 1950s and  
then spread by the anti-psychiatrists in the 1960s, including after it  
became illegal -- which was viewed by some as "mimicking" psychosis,  
while others saw it as opening the "Doors of Perception."  How's that  
for "counter" views (reminding us of the recent "Entropic Brain" post  
by Gregg) . . . !!

Wikipedia notes --

"Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor  
for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not  
"illnesses" in the sense that physical illnesses are; and that except  
for a few identifiable brain diseases, there are "neither biological  
or chemical tests nor biopsy or necropsy findings for verifying DSM  
diagnoses."

"Szasz maintained throughout his career that he was not  
anti-psychiatry but was rather anti-coercive psychiatry. He was a  
staunch opponent of civil commitment and involuntary psychiatric  
treatment but believed in, and practiced, psychiatry and psychotherapy  
between consenting adults."

Yes, the closing of mental institutions was one of the results.  As  
are at least some aspects of the increase in "mass killings" &c.

In the summer of 1967 (aka "The Summer of Love," when I was in  
Haight-Ashbury looking for some LSD), the Tavistock Institute held a  
conference at what was probably the peak of this movement -- called  
the "Dialectics of Liberation Congress" (and published under the title  
"To Free a Generation") -- organized by David Cooper, their resident  
"anti-psychiatrist" (and a colleague of R.D. Laing, widely nominated  
to take over for Tim Leary, also a psychologist, as the LSD "guru.")

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Dialectics-5Fof-5FLiberation-5FCongress&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=XAkYRpRyVB6UU9pFYHb8b9G4xQy0T81UTArZU-8mBDE&s=4PDB5jFs232nZnFGRrkUQ4nEyaGOmGie8A_C7rRTwA0&e=

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Free-2DGeneration-2DDavid-2DCooper_dp_B000V2FMZA&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=XAkYRpRyVB6UU9pFYHb8b9G4xQy0T81UTArZU-8mBDE&s=Iz7r3gjr1MToZMRqRZJIMlml-eFd3p1pdOuxh3zghrc&e=

"Emergent cosmic reality" and "cosmic information exchange dynamism"  
would likely have been phrases that would have been right at home  
there . . . <g>

Mark

Quoting Frank Ambrosio <[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear Gregg,
>
> A preliminary response to your very helpful inventory of puzzle pieces in
> “What Makes Us Different.” For me, what you do there does in fact suggest
> strongly that at least a preliminary “integrated (but not unified) field
> theory” of the sort we are working toward is beginning to emerge on the
> horizon. That said, I do want to urge that we include several other pieces
> in addition to the one you reserved for further discussion at the end of
> your sketch.
>
>  The first of these pieces in my view should be the as yet unspecified
> “fifth dimension” of emergent cosmic reality, along with the nodal point
> that capacites its emergence. I don’t think that “field integrity” is
> possible without a working characterization of the fifth dimension. As you
> know, I suggested at the April conference the idea of “personal identity,”
> as the basic constituent entity of this dimension, and defined it in a
> hyper simplified way by the notion of responsibility arising from freedom
> as the fifth nodal point. Responsibility names the complex interactive
> process by which a person situates him or herself against the horizon of
> possible meaning relationships. In the expanded version of the brief paper
> I read, I tried to suggest some of the reasons for this move and to
> indicate some of its consequences. At the bottom of this conceptual nexus
> of issues is the basic assertion that each and every human being is always
> the bearer of a dignity which must be recognized as requiring absolute
> respect. This dignity has its origin in the arrival of the cosmic
> information exchange dynamism at a point which produces a self conscious
> realization of that dynamic, capable of plausibly asserting its capacity to
> take authentic responsibility for itself as an identity, to call its
> identity its “own,” an embodied meaning structure which can responsibly
> engage the whole of reality from the position of being a participant in
> that wholeness.
>
> To put it in an intentionally provocative formulation, you cannot have
> “values” or wisdom regarding the lived experience of valuing without
> identifying a value dynamic which is respected as “self-justifying,”  
> or *causa
> sui*. If personal identity is not to be regarded as worthy of absolute
> respect, what then possibly could be? Social justification, in my view,
> cannot serve as such a self justifying basis of value – for reasons which I
> think are apparent but which we could certainly discuss further.
>
> This leads me to the specific missing piece I want to argue for including
> in our discussion – death as an irreducible dynamic of personal identity. I
> would put it this way: unless we have a fully elaborated “culture of death”
> including its physical, psychological, sociological, political, economic,
> artistic and creative dynamics we cannot possibly attempt to understand the
> “meaning of life” (or have wisdom).
>
> To forestall pointless confusion, let me quickly say that by death here I
> am not referring simply to physical demise, but to every entropic force
> which constantly penetrates personal existence in tension with the
> evolutionary dynamics of homeostasis, reproduction and growth of every
> form, “thriving,” in other words put in philosophic terms, death here
> refers to every dynamic of finitude in tension with every dynamic of
> “transcendence,” in personal existence and in culture. If some hear echoes
> of Ernest Becker in this, I’m happy to say that, despite the many
> legitimate criticisms that have been made of his work, I continue to find
> it an indispensable contribution.
>
>  I suspect this may be hopelessly dense as an effective contribution to an
> email chain but, for what it’s worth I would certainly welcome your and all
> of our colleagues’ response to the suggestion.
>
>
> Sunday best,
>
> Frank
>
> Francis J. Ambrosio, PhD
> Associate Professor of Philosophy
> Senior Fellow, Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship
> Georgetown University
> 202-687-7441
>
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