Holism (from Greekὅλοςholos "all, whole, entire") is the idea that various systems (e.g. physical, biological, social) should be viewed as wholes, not merely as a collection of parts. The term "holism" was coined by Jan Smuts in his 1926 book Holism and Evolution.
Meaning
The
exact meaning of "holism" depends on context. Smuts originally used
"holism" to refer to the tendency in nature to produce wholes from the
ordered grouping of unit structures. However, in common usage, "holism" usually refers to the idea that a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In this sense, "holism" may also be spelled "wholism" (although the two are not etymologically related), and it may be contrasted with reductionism or atomism.
Diet and health
The term holistic when applied to diet or medical health refers to an intuitive approach to food, eating, or lifestyle. One example is in the context of holistic medicine,
where "holism" refers to treating all aspects of a person's health,
including psychological and societal factors, rather than only their
physical conditions or symptoms. In this sense, holism may also be called "holiatry." Several approaches are used by medical doctors, dietitians, and religious institutions, and are usually recommended based on an individual basis. Adherents of religious institutions that practice a holistic dietary and health approach, such as Hinduism, Shinto, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church, have been shown to have longer lifespans than those of surrounding populations.
René Descartes, in De homine (1662), claimed that non-human animals could be explained reductively as automata; meaning essentially as more mechanically complex versions of this Digesting Duck.
Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena, which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical position that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts.
Definitions
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy
suggests that reductionism is "one of the most used and abused terms in
the philosophical lexicon" and suggests a three part division:
Ontological reductionism: a belief that the whole of reality consists of a minimal number of parts.
Methodological reductionism: the scientific attempt to provide explanation in terms of ever smaller entities.
Theory reductionism: the suggestion that a newer theory does
not replace or absorb an older one, but reduces it to more basic terms.
Theory reduction itself is divisible into three parts: translation,
derivation and explanation.
For the sciences, application of methodological reductionism
attempts explanation of entire systems in terms of their individual,
constituent parts and their interactions. For example, the temperature
of a gas is reduced to nothing beyond the average kinetic energy of its
molecules in motion. Thomas Nagel
and others speak of 'psychophysical reductionism' (the attempted
reduction of psychological phenomena to physics and chemistry), and
'physico-chemical reductionism' (the attempted reduction of biology to
physics and chemistry).
In a very simplified and sometimes contested form, reductionism is said
to imply that a system is nothing but the sum of its parts.
However, a more nuanced opinion is that a system is composed entirely
of its parts, but the system will have features that none of the parts
have (which, in essence is the basis of emergentism). "The point of mechanistic explanations is usually showing how the higher level features arise from the parts."
Other definitions are used by other authors. For example, what John Polkinghorne terms 'conceptual' or 'epistemological' reductionism is the definition provided by Simon Blackburn and by Jaegwon Kim:
that form of reductionism which concerns a program of replacing the
facts or entities involved in one type of discourse with other facts or
entities from another type, thereby providing a relationship between
them. Richard Jones distinguishes ontological and epistemological
reductionism, arguing that many ontological and epistemological
reductionists affirm the need for different concepts for different
degrees of complexity while affirming a reduction of theories.
The idea of reductionism can be expressed by "levels" of
explanation, with higher levels reducible if need be to lower levels.
This use of levels of understanding in part expresses our human
limitations in remembering detail. However, "most philosophers would
insist that our role in conceptualizing reality [our need for a
hierarchy of "levels" of understanding] does not change the fact that
different levels of organization in reality do have different
'properties'."
Reductionism should be distinguished from eliminationism:
reductionists do not deny the existence of phenomena, but explain them
in terms of another reality; eliminationists deny the existence of the
phenomena themselves. For example, eliminationists deny the existence of
life by their explanation in terms of physical and chemical processes.
Reductionism does not preclude the existence of what might be termed emergent phenomena,
but it does imply the ability to understand those phenomena completely
in terms of the processes from which they are composed. This
reductionist understanding is very different from ontological or strong emergentism,
which intends that what emerges in "emergence" is more than the sum of
the processes from which it emerges, respectively either in the
ontological sense or in the epistemological sense.
Some physicists, however, claim that reductionism and emergentism are
complementary: both are needed to explain natural processes.
Types
Most philosophers delineate three types of reductionism and anti-reductionism.
Ontological reductionism
Ontological reductionism is the belief that reality is composed of a minimum number of kinds of entities or substances. This claim is usually metaphysical, and is most commonly a form of monism, in effect claiming that all objects, properties and events are reducible to a single substance. (A dualist
who is an ontological reductionist would believe that everything is
reducible to two substances—as one possible example, a dualist might
claim that reality is composed of "matter" and "spirit".)
Richard Jones divides ontological reductionism into two: the
reductionism of substances (e.g., the reduction of mind to matter) and
the reduction of the number of structures operating in nature (e.g., the
reduction of one physical force to another). This permits scientists
and philosophers to affirm the former while being anti-reductionists
regarding the latter.
Nancey Murphy
has claimed that there are two species of ontological reductionism: one
that claims that wholes are nothing more than their parts; and atomist
reductionism, claiming that wholes are not "really real". She admits
that the phrase "really real" is apparently senseless but she has tried
to explicate the supposed difference between the two.
Ontological reductionism denies the idea of ontological emergence, and claims that emergence is an epistemological phenomenon that only exists through analysis or description of a system, and does not exist fundamentally.
Ontological reductionism takes two forms: token ontological reductionism and type ontological reductionism.
Token ontological reductionism is the idea that every item that
exists is a sum item. For perceivable items, it affirms that every
perceivable item is a sum of items with a lesser degree of complexity.
Token ontological reduction of biological things to chemical things is
generally accepted.
Type ontological reductionism is the idea that every type of item
is a sum type of item, and that every perceivable type of item is a sum
of types of items with a lesser degree of complexity. Type ontological
reduction of biological things to chemical things is often rejected.
Michael Ruse has criticized ontological reductionism as an improper argument against vitalism.
Methodological reductionism
Methodological
reductionism is the position that the best scientific strategy is to
attempt to reduce explanations to the smallest possible entities.
In a biological context, this means attempting to explain all
biological phenomena in terms of their underlying biochemical and
molecular processes.
Claim of efficacy is demonstrated that the gene – unit of classical
heredity – is the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a macro-molecule.
Theory reductionism
Theory reduction is the process by which a more general theory absorbs a special theory. For example, both Kepler's laws of the motion of the planets and Galileo's
theories of motion formulated for terrestrial objects are reducible to
Newtonian theories of mechanics because all the explanatory power of the
former are contained within the latter. Furthermore, the reduction is
considered beneficial because Newtonian mechanics
is a more general theory—that is, it explains more events than
Galileo's or Kepler's. Besides scientific theories, theory reduction
more generally can be the process by which one explanation subsumes
another.
In science
Reductionist thinking and methods form the basis for many of the well-developed topics of modern science, including much of physics, chemistry and molecular biology. Classical mechanics
in particular is seen as a reductionist framework. For instance, we
understand the solar system in terms of its components (the sun and the
planets) and their interactions. Statistical mechanics can be considered as a reconciliation of macroscopicthermodynamic laws with the reductionist method of explaining macroscopic properties in terms of microscopic components.
In science, reductionism implies that certain topics of study are
based on areas that study smaller spatial scales or organizational
units. While it is commonly accepted that the foundations of chemistry are based in physics, and molecular biology
is based on chemistry, similar statements become controversial when one
considers less rigorously defined intellectual pursuits. For example,
claims that sociology is based on psychology, or that economics is based on sociology and psychology
would be met with reservations. These claims are difficult to
substantiate even though there are obvious associations between these
topics (for instance, most would agree that psychology can affect and inform economics). The limit of reductionism's usefulness stems from emergent properties of complex systems, which are more common at certain levels of organization. For example, certain aspects of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology are rejected by some who claim that complex systems are inherently irreducible and that a holistic method is needed to understand them.
Some strong reductionists believe that the behavioral sciences
should become "genuine" scientific disciplines based on genetic biology,
and on the systematic study of culture (see Richard Dawkins's concept
of memes). In his book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins introduced the term "hierarchical reductionism"
to describe the opinion that complex systems can be described with a
hierarchy of organizations, each of which is only described in terms of
objects one level down in the hierarchy. He provides the example of a
computer, which using hierarchical reductionism is explained in terms of
the operation of hard drives, processors, and memory, but not on the level of logic gates, or on the even simpler level of electrons in a semiconductor medium.
Quantum Holonomy theory is a theory of the lowest possible reduction.
Others argue that inappropriate use of reductionism limits our understanding of complex systems. In particular, ecologist Robert Ulanowicz
says that science must develop techniques to study ways in which larger
scales of organization influence smaller ones, and also ways in which
feedback loops create structure at a given level, independently of
details at a lower level of organization. He advocates (and uses) information theory as a framework to study propensities in natural systems. Ulanowicz attributes these criticisms of reductionism to the philosopher Karl Popper and biologist Robert Rosen.
Stuart Kauffman has argued that complex systems theory and phenomena such as emergence pose limits to reductionism. Emergence is especially relevant when systems exhibit historicity. Emergence is strongly related to nonlinearity. The limits of the application of reductionism are claimed to be especially evident at levels of organization with greater complexity, including living cells, neural networks, ecosystems, society, and other systems formed from assemblies of large numbers of diverse components linked by multiple feedback loops.
Nobel laureatePhilip Warren Anderson used the idea that symmetry breaking is an example of an emergent phenomenon in his 1972 Science paper "More is different" to make an argument about the limitations of reductionism. One observation he made was that the sciences can be arranged roughly in a linear hierarchy—particle physics, solid state physics, chemistry, molecular biology, cellular biology, physiology, psychology, social sciences—in
that the elementary entities of one science obeys the principles of the
science that precedes it in the hierarchy; yet this does not imply that
one science is just an applied version of the science that precedes it.
He writes that "At each stage, entirely new laws, concepts and
generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to
just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied
biology nor is biology applied chemistry."
Disciplines such as cybernetics and systems theory
imply non-reductionism, sometimes to the extent of explaining phenomena
at a given level of hierarchy in terms of phenomena at a higher level,
in a sense, the opposite of reductionism.
In mathematics
In mathematics,
reductionism can be interpreted as the philosophy that all mathematics
can (or ought to) be based on a common foundation, which for modern
mathematics is usually axiomatic set theory. Ernst Zermelo
was one of the major advocates of such an opinion; he also developed
much of axiomatic set theory. It has been argued that the generally
accepted method of justifying mathematical axioms by their usefulness in common practice can potentially weaken Zermelo's reductionist claim.
Jouko Väänänen has argued for second-order logic as a foundation for mathematics instead of set theory, whereas others have argued for category theory as a foundation for certain aspects of mathematics.
The incompleteness theorems of Kurt Gödel,
published in 1931, caused doubt about the attainability of an axiomatic
foundation for all of mathematics. Any such foundation would have to
include axioms powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural
numbers (a subset of all mathematics). Yet Gödel proved that, for any consistent
recursively enumerable axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the
arithmetic of the natural numbers, there are (model-theoretically) true propositions about the natural numbers that cannot be proved from the axioms. Such propositions are known as formally undecidable propositions. For example, the continuum hypothesis is undecidable in the Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory as shown by Cohen.
In computer science
The role of reduction in computer science can be thought as a precise and unambiguous mathematical formalization of the philosophical idea of "theory reductionism".
In a general sense, a problem (or set) is said to be reducible to
another problem (or set), if there is a computable/feasible method to
translate the questions of the former into the latter, so that, if one
knows how to computably/feasibly solve the latter problem, then one can
computably/feasibly solve the former. Thus, the latter can only be at
least as "hard" to solve as the former.
Religious
reductionism generally attempts to explain religion by explaining it in
terms of nonreligious causes. A few examples of reductionistic
explanations for the presence of religion are: that religion can be
reduced to humanity's conceptions of right and wrong, that religion is
fundamentally a primitive attempt at controlling our environments, that
religion is a way to explain the existence of a physical world, and that
religion confers an enhanced survivability for members of a group and
so is reinforced by natural selection. Anthropologists Edward Burnett Tylor and James George Frazer employed some religious reductionist arguments.
In linguistics
Linguistic
reductionism is the idea that everything can be described or explained
by a language with a limited number of concepts, and combinations of
those concepts. An example is the language Toki Pona.
In philosophy
The concept of downward causation poses an alternative to reductionism within philosophy. This opinion is developed by Peter Bøgh Andersen, Claus Emmeche, Niels Ole Finnemann, and Peder Voetmann Christiansen,
among others. These philosophers explore ways in which one can talk
about phenomena at a larger-scale level of organization exerting causal
influence on a smaller-scale level, and find that some, but not all
proposed types of downward causation are compatible with science. In
particular, they find that constraint is one way in which downward
causation can operate. The notion of causality as constraint has also been explored as a way to shed light on scientific concepts such as self-organization, natural selection, adaptation, and control.
Free will
Philosophers of the Enlightenment worked to insulate human free will from reductionism. Descartes
separated the material world of mechanical necessity from the world of
mental free will. German philosophers introduced the concept of the "noumenal" realm that is not governed by the deterministic laws of "phenomenal" nature, where every event is completely determined by chains of causality. The most influential formulation was by Immanuel Kant,
who distinguished between the causal deterministic framework the mind
imposes on the world—the phenomenal realm—and the world as it exists for
itself, the noumenal realm, which, as he believed, included free will.
To insulate theology from reductionism, 19th century post-Enlightenment
German theologians, especially Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl, used the Romantic
method of basing religion on the human spirit, so that it is a person's
feeling or sensibility about spiritual matters that comprises religion.
Causation
Most common philosophical understandings of causation
involve reducing it to some collection of non-causal facts. Opponents
of these reductionist views have given arguments that the non-causal
facts in question are insufficient to determine the causal facts.
Criticism
Antireductionism
A contrast to reductionism is holism or emergentism. Holism is the idea that, in the whole, items can have properties, known as emergent properties, that are not explainable from the sum of their parts. The principle of holism was summarized concisely by Aristotle in the Metaphysics: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts".
Fragmentalism
An alternative term for ontological reductionism is fragmentalism, often used in a pejorative sense. Anti-realists use the term fragmentalism in arguments that the world does not exist of separable entities, instead consisting of wholes. For example, advocates of this idea claim that:
The linear deterministic approach to nature and technology promoted a
fragmented perception of reality, and a loss of the ability to foresee,
to adequately evaluate, in all their complexity, global crises in
ecology, civilization and education.
The term fragmentalism is usually applied to reductionist modes of thought, often with the related pejorative term scientism. This usage is popular among some ecological activists:
There is a need now to move away from scientism and the ideology of cause-and-effect determinism toward a radical empiricism, such as William James proposed, as an epistemology of science.
These perspectives are not new; during the early 20th century, William James noted that rationalist science emphasized what he called fragmentation and disconnection.
Such opinions also motivate many criticisms of the scientific method:
The scientific method only acknowledges monophasic
consciousness. The method is a specialized system that emphasizes
studying small and distinctive parts in isolation, which results in
fragmented knowledge.
Alternatives
The development of systems thinking has provided methods that seek to describe issues in a holistic rather than a reductionist way, and many scientists use a holistic paradigm. When the terms are used in a scientific context, holism and reductionism refer primarily to what sorts of models
or theories offer valid explanations of the natural world; the
scientific method of falsifying hypotheses, checking empirical data
against theory, is largely unchanged, but the method guides which
theories are considered.
In many cases (such as the kinetic theory of gases),
given a good understanding of the components of the system, one can
predict all the important properties of the system as a whole. In other
systems, especially concerned with life and life's emergent properties (morphogenesis, autopoiesis, and metabolism), emergent properties of the system are said to be almost impossible to predict from knowledge of the parts of the system. Complexity theory studies systems and properties of the latter type.
Alfred North Whitehead's
metaphysics opposed reductionism. He refers to this as the "fallacy of
the misplaced concreteness". His scheme was to frame a rational, general
understanding of phenomena, derived from our reality.
EcologistSven Erik Jorgensen makes both theoretical and practical arguments for a holistic method in certain topics of science, especially ecology. He argues that many systems are so complex that they can ever be described in complete detail. In analogy to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle
in physics, he argues that many interesting ecological phenomena cannot
be replicated in laboratory conditions, and so cannot be measured or
observed without changing the system in some way. He also indicates the
importance of inter-connectedness in biological systems. He believes
that science can only progress by outlining questions that are
unanswerable and by using models that do not try to explain everything
in terms of smaller hierarchical levels of organization, but instead
model them on the scale of the system itself, taking into account some
(but not all) factors from levels higher and lower in the hierarchy.
In cognitive psychology, George Kelly developed "constructive alternativism" as a form of personal construct psychology
and an alternative to what he considered "accumulative fragmentalism".
For this theory, knowledge is seen as the construction of successful mental models of the exterior world, rather than the accumulation of independent "nuggets of truth".
The "ghost in the machine" is British philosopher Gilbert Ryle's description of René Descartes' mind-body dualism. Ryle introduced the phrase in The Concept of Mind (1949) to highlight the view of Descartes and others that mental and physical activity occur simultaneously but separately.
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) was a philosopher who lectured at Oxford and made important contributions to the philosophy of mind and to "ordinary language philosophy." His most important writings include Philosophical Arguments (1945), The Concept of Mind (1949), Dilemmas (1954), Plato's Progress (1966), and On Thinking (1979).
Ryle's Concept of Mind (1949) critiques the notion that the mind is distinct from the body, and refers to the idea as "the ghost in the machine." According to Ryle, the classical theory of mind, or "Cartesian rationalism," makes a basic category mistake
(a new logical fallacy Ryle himself invented), as it attempts to
analyze the relation between "mind" and "body" as if they were terms of
the same logical category. This confusion of logical categories may be
seen in other theories of the relation between mind and matter. For
example, the idealist theory of mind makes a basic category mistake by
attempting to reduce physical reality to the same status as mental
reality, while the materialist theory of mind makes a basic category
mistake by attempting to reduce mental reality to the same status as
physical reality.
Official doctrine
Ryle states that the doctrine of body/mind dualism was the "official doctrine," or dogma, of philosophers:
There is a doctrine about the nature and place of the mind which is prevalent among theorists, to which most philosophers, psychologists
and religious teachers subscribe with minor reservations. Although they
admit certain theoretical difficulties in it, they tend to assume that
these can be overcome without serious modifications being made to the
architecture of the theory.... [The doctrine states that] with the
doubtful exceptions of the mentally-incompetent and infants-in-arms,
every human being has both a body and a mind.... The body and the mind
are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body the
mind may continue to exist and function.
The central principles of the doctrine, according to Ryle, are
unsound and conflict with the entire body of what we know about the
mind. Of the doctrine, he says "According to the official doctrine each
person has direct and unchangeable cognisance. In consciousness, self-consciousness and introspection, he is directly and authentically apprised of the present states of operation of the mind."
"Descartes' Myth"
In
his essay "Descartes' Myth", Ryle's philosophical arguments lay out his
notion of the mistaken foundations of mind-body dualism. He suggests
that, to speak of mind and body as substances, as a dualist does, is to
commit a category mistake:
Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as "the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine."
I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but
in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It
is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a
category mistake.
Ryle then attempts to show that the "official doctrine" of mind/body
dualism is false by asserting that it confuses two logical-types, or
categories, as being compatible: "it represents the facts of mental life
as if they belonged to one logical type/category, when they actually
belong to another. The dogma is therefore a philosopher's myth."
One of the book's central concepts is that, as the human brain
has grown, it has built upon earlier, more primitive brain structures,
and that this is the eponymous "ghost in the machine." Koestler's theory
is that at times these structures can overpower higher logical functions, and are responsible for hate, anger and other such destructive impulses.
Ghost in the Machine (1981) is the title of The Police's fourth studio album; much of the material on the album was inspired by Arthur Koestler's "The Ghost in the Machine".
2010: Odyssey Two (1982), by Arthur C. Clarke, contains a chapter called "Ghost in the Machine", referring to the virtual consciousness inside a computer.
In Johnny Mnemonic
(1995), a central character uses the phrase "ghost in the machine" to
refer to a virtual consciousness of a dead person that can still exist
inside a computer and interact with the outside world.
Ghost in the Shell, a Japanese manga and anime created by Masamune Shirow,
takes place in a future wherein computer technology has evolved to be
able to interface with the human brain, making artificial intelligence
and cyber-brains indistinguishable from organic brains. The protagonist,
Major Motoko Kusanagi,
has a body that is completely cybernetic, with her brain being the only
part of her that is still human. Shirow adapted the title from Arthur Koestler's 1967 book The Ghost in the Machine.
In season 3 of The Transformers (1986), an episode titled "Ghost In The Machine" focuses on the ghost of Starscream, who possesses Scourge, Astrotrain, and Trypticon in a scheme to get Unicron to recreate his body. In this case it is a literal ghost inside literal machines (robots).
In I, Robot, Dr. Alfred Lanning,
who is a central character, uses the phrase "ghosts in the machine" to
refer to the process of artificial intelligence unexpectedly evolving
past its original intended purpose.
Wilhelm Reich and the post-Reichians are considered the central element of body psychotherapy.
From the 1930s, Reich became known for the idea that muscular tension
reflected repressed emotions, what he called 'body armour', and
developed a way to use pressure to produce emotional release in his
clients.
Reich was expelled from the psychoanalytic mainstream and his work
found a home in the 'growth movement' of the 1960s and 1970s and in the
countercultural project of 'liberating the body'.
Perhaps as a result, body psychotherapy was marginalised within
mainstream psychology and was seen in the 1980s and 1990s as 'the
radical fringe of psychotherapy'.
Body psychotherapy's marginal position may be connected with the
tendency for charismatic leaders to emerge within it, from Reich
onwards.
Alexander Lowen in his Bioenergetic analysis and John Pierrakos in Core energetics extended Reich's finding of the segmented nature of body armour: "The muscular armour has a segmented arrangement...always transverse to the torso, never along it". Lowen claimed that "No words are so clear as the language of body expression". Subsequently, the Chiron approach added influences from Gestalt therapy.
The early 2000s saw a 'renaissance of body psychotherapy' which
was part of a broader increased interest in the body and embodiment in
psychology and other disciplines including philosophy, sociology,
anthropology and cultural studies. Object relations theory has arguably opened the way more recently for a fuller consideration of the body-mind connection in psychotherapy.
Branches
There
are numerous branches of body psychotherapy, often tracing their
origins to particular individuals: for example, 'Bioenergetic analysis'
to the work of Lowen and Pierrakos; 'Radix' to the work of Chuck Kelley;
Organismic Psychotherapy to the work of Malcolm and Katherine Brown; 'Biosynthesis' to the work of David Boadella; 'Biodynamic Psychology' to that of Gerda Boyesen; 'Rubenfeld Synergy' to Ilana Rubenfeld's work; 'Body-Mind Centering' to Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's work, and 'Body-mind Psychotherapy' to Susan Aposhyan; the development of Jack Painter's 'Postural and Energetic Integration' into a psychotherapeutic modality.
Many of these contributors to body psychotherapy were influenced
by the work of Wilhelm Reich, while adding and incorporating a variety
of other influences.
Syntheses of these approaches are also becoming accepted and recognised
in their own right (e.g. The Chiron Approach: Chiron Association of
Body Psychotherapists).
Alongside the body psychotherapies built directly on the work of
Reich, there is a branch of post-Jungian body psychotherapies, developed
from Jung's idea of the 'somatic unconscious'. While many post-Jungians dismiss Reich and do not work with the body, contributors to Jungian derived body psychotherapy include Arnold Mindell with his concept of the 'dreambody' and the development of process oriented psychology. Process oriented psychology is known for its focus on the body and movement.
Body psychotherapy and dance movement therapy have developed
separately and are professionally distinguished, however they have
significant common ground and shared principles including the importance
of non-verbal therapeutic techniques and the development of
body-focused awareness.
A review of body psychotherapy research finds there is a small
but growing empirical evidence base about the outcomes of body
psychotherapy, however it is weakened by the fragmentation of the field
into different branches and schools.
The review reports that one of the strongest studies is longitudinal (2
year) outcome research conducted with 342 participants across 8
different schools (Hakomi Experiental Psychology, Unitive Body
Psychotherapy, Biodynamic Psychology, Bioenergetic Analysis,
Client-Centred Verbal and Body Psychotherapy, Integrative Body
Psychotherapy, Body-Oriented Psychotherapy, and Biosynthesis). Overall
efficacy was demonstrated in symptom reduction, however the study design
limited further substantive conclusions.
The review of outcome research across different types of
body-oriented psychotherapy concludes that the best evidence supports
efficacy for treating somatoform/psychosomatic disorders and
schizophrenia,
while there is also support for 'generally good effects on subjectively
experienced depressive and anxiety symptoms, somatisation and social
insecurity.'
A more recent review found that results in some of these domains were
mixed or might have resulted from other causes (for example, somatic
symptoms in one study improved even after therapy had ended, suggesting
that the improvements may have been unrelated to the therapy).
Recovering a sense of physical boundaries through sensorimotor psychotherapy is an important part of re-establishing trust in the traumatised.
Blending somatic and cognitive awareness, such an approach reaches back
for inspiration to the pioneering work of Janet, as well as employing
the more recent work of António Damásio.
The necessity of often working without touch with traumatised victims presents a special challenge for body psychotherapists.
Organizations
The
European Association for Body Psychotherapy (EABP) and The United
States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP) are two professional
associations for body psychotherapists.
The EABP was founded in 1988 to promote the inclusion of body
psychotherapy within a broader process of professionalisation,
standardisation and regulation of psychotherapy in Europe, driven by the
European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP).
The EABP Board committed to meeting the EAP standards for establishing
the scientific validity of psychotherapy modalities and achieved this
in 1999/2000 for body psychotherapy as a whole, with various individual
modalities subsequently also achieving this recognition. It was accepted as a European-Wide Accrediting Organisation in 2000.
EABP has a bi-annual conference; organises a Council of ten
National B-P Associations; supports a FORUM of Body-Psychotherapy
Organisations, which accredits more than 18 B-P training organisations
in 10 different countries; the EABP website also provides a list of
research papers; a searchable bibliography of body-psychotherapy
publications, containing more than 5,000 entries.
The USABP was formed in June 1996
to provide professional representation for body psychotherapy
practitioners in the United States. The USABP launched a peer-reviewed
professional journal in 2002, the USA Body Psychotherapy Journal, which was published twice-yearly from 2002–2011. In 2012, the sister organisations, EABP and USABP, together launched the International Body Psychotherapy Journal.
There is also an Australian Association of Somatic Psychotherapy Australia.
Cautions
The importance of ethical issues in body psychotherapy has been highlighted on account of the intimacy of the techniques used.
The term bioenergetic has a well established meaning in biochemistry and cell biology.
Its use in RBOP (Reichian body-oriented psychotherapy) has been
criticized as "ignoring the already well established universal consensus
about energy existing in Science."
The concept of earthing has been criticized as pseudoscience by skeptics and the medical community. A review of the available literature on the subject was written by several people that are financially tied to the company espousing the practice of earthing. Steven Novella
referred to the work as, "The studies are typical of the kind of
worthless studies designed to generate false positives—the kind of
in-house studies that companies sometimes use so that they can claim
their products are clinically proven."
There is a group of psychotherapists who believe that
psychotherapy should be thought of as a craft and evaluated based on the
effectiveness of the treatment, rather than evaluated based on
scientific validity.
However, efficacy studies of body psychotherapy have been few in number
and, although the results are supportive of the use of body
psychotherapy in some contexts, this trend "is not overwhelming".
René Descartes' illustration of mind/body dualism. Descartes believed inputs were passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit.
Different approaches toward resolving the mind–body problem
The mind–body problem is a debate concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness
in the human mind, and the brain as part of the physical body. It is
distinct from the question of how mind and body function chemically and physiologically, as that question presupposes an interactionist account of mind–body relations.
This question arises when mind and body are considered as distinct,
based on the premise that the mind and the body are fundamentally
different in nature.
The problem was addressed by René Descartes in the 17th century, resulting in Cartesian dualism, and by pre-Aristotelian philosophers, in Avicennian philosophy, and in earlier Asian traditions. A variety of approaches have been proposed. Most are either dualist or monist. Dualism maintains a rigid distinction between the realms of mind and matter. Monism maintains that there is only one unifying reality, substance or essence, in terms of which everything can be explained.
Each of these categories contains numerous variants. The two main forms of dualism are substance dualism, which holds that the mind is formed of a distinct type of substance not governed by the laws of physics, and property dualism,
which holds that mental properties involving conscious experience are
fundamental properties, alongside the fundamental properties identified
by a completed physics. The three main forms of monism are physicalism, which holds that the mind consists of matter organized in a particular way; idealism, which holds that only thought truly exists and matter is merely a representation of mental processes; and neutral monism, which holds that both mind and matter are aspects of a distinct essence that is itself identical to neither of them. Psychophysical parallelism
is a third possible alternative regarding the relation between mind and
body, between interaction (dualism) and one-sided action (monism).
Several philosophical perspectives have been developed which reject the mind–body dichotomy. The historical materialism of Karl Marx
and subsequent writers, itself a form of physicalism, held that
consciousness was engendered by the material contingencies of one's
environment. An explicit rejection of the dichotomy is found in French structuralism, and is a position that generally characterized post-war Continental philosophy.
The absence of an empirically identifiable meeting point between
the non-physical mind (if there is such a thing) and its physical
extension (if there is such a thing) has proven problematic to dualism,
and many modern philosophers of mind maintain that the mind is not
something separate from the body. These approaches have been particularly influential in the sciences, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology, and the neurosciences.
An ancient model of the mind known as the Five-Aggregate Model,
described in the Buddhist teachings, explains the mind as continuously
changing sense impressions and mental phenomena.
Considering this model, it is possible to understand that it is the
constantly changing sense impressions and mental phenomena (i.e., the
mind) that experiences/analyzes all external phenomena in the world as
well as all internal phenomena including the body anatomy, the nervous
system as well as the organ brain. This conceptualization leads to two
levels of analyses: (i) analyses conducted from a third-person
perspective on how the brain works, and (ii) analyzing the
moment-to-moment manifestation of an individual's mind-stream (analyses
conducted from a first-person perspective). Considering the latter, the
manifestation of the mind-stream is described as happening in every
person all the time, even in a scientist who analyses various phenomena
in the world, including analyzing and hypothesizing about the organ
brain.
Mind–body interaction and mental causation
Philosophers David L. Robb and John F. Heil introduce mental causation in terms of the mind–body problem of interaction:
Mind–body interaction has a central
place in our pretheoretic conception of agency. Indeed, mental
causation often figures explicitly in formulations of the mind–body
problem. Some philosophers insist that the very notion of psychological
explanation turns on the intelligibility of mental causation. If your
mind and its states, such as your beliefs and desires, were causally
isolated from your bodily behavior, then what goes on in your mind could
not explain what you do. If psychological explanation goes, so do the
closely related notions of agency and moral responsibility. Clearly, a
good deal rides on a satisfactory solution to the problem of mental
causation [and] there is more than one way in which puzzles about the
mind's "causal relevance" to behavior (and to the physical world more
generally) can arise.
[René Descartes] set the agenda for subsequent discussions of the
mind–body relation. According to Descartes, minds and bodies are
distinct kinds of "substance". Bodies, he held, are spatially extended
substances, incapable of feeling or thought; minds, in contrast, are
unextended, thinking, feeling substances. If minds and bodies are
radically different kinds of substance, however, it is not easy to see
how they "could" causally interact. Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia puts it forcefully to him in a 1643 letter:
how the human soul can determine the movement of the
animal spirits in the body so as to perform voluntary acts—being as it
is merely a conscious substance. For the determination of movement seems
always to come about from the moving body's being propelled—to depend
on the kind of impulse it gets from what sets it in motion, or again, on
the nature and shape of this latter thing's surface. Now the first two
conditions involve contact, and the third involves that the impelling
thing has extension; but you utterly exclude extension from your notion
of soul, and contact seems to me incompatible with a thing's being
immaterial...
Elizabeth is expressing the prevailing mechanistic view as to how
causation of bodies works. Causal relations countenanced by contemporary
physics can take several forms, not all of which are of the push–pull
variety.
— David Robb and John Heil, "Mental Causation" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Contemporary neurophilosopher Georg Northoff suggests that mental causation is compatible with classical formal and final causality.
Biologist, theoretical neuroscientist and philosopher, Walter J. Freeman, suggests that explaining mind–body interaction in terms of "circular causation" is more relevant than linear causation.
In neuroscience,
much has been learned about correlations between brain activity and
subjective, conscious experiences. Many suggest that neuroscience will
ultimately explain consciousness:
"...consciousness is a biological process that will eventually be
explained in terms of molecular signaling pathways used by interacting
populations of nerve cells..." However, this view has been criticized because consciousness has yet to be shown to be a process, and the "hard problem" of relating consciousness directly to brain activity remains elusive.
Cognitive science today gets
increasingly interested in the embodiment of human perception, thinking,
and action. Abstract information processing models are no longer
accepted as satisfactory accounts of the human mind. Interest has
shifted to interactions between the material human body and its
surroundings and to the way in which such interactions shape the mind.
Proponents of this approach have expressed the hope that it will
ultimately dissolve the Cartesian divide between the immaterial mind and
the material existence of human beings (Damasio, 1994; Gallagher,
2005). A topic that seems particularly promising for providing a bridge
across the mind–body cleavage is the study of bodily actions, which are
neither reflexive reactions to external stimuli nor indications of
mental states, which have only arbitrary relationships to the motor
features of the action (e.g., pressing a button for making a choice
response). The shape, timing, and effects of such actions are
inseparable from their meaning. One might say that they are loaded with
mental content, which cannot be appreciated other than by studying their
material features. Imitation, communicative gesturing, and tool use are
examples of these kinds of actions.
— Georg Goldenberg, "How the Mind Moves the Body: Lessons From Apraxia" in Oxford Handbook of Human Action
Neural correlates
The
neuronal correlates of consciousness constitute the smallest set of
neural events and structures sufficient for a given conscious percept or
explicit memory. This case involves synchronized action potentials in neocortical pyramidal neurons.
The neural correlates of consciousness "are the smallest set
of brain mechanisms and events sufficient for some specific conscious
feeling, as elemental as the color red or as complex as the sensual,
mysterious, and primeval sensation evoked when looking at [a] jungle
scene..." Neuroscientists use empirical approaches to discover neural correlates of subjective phenomena.
Neurobiology and neurophilosophy
A science of consciousness
must explain the exact relationship between subjective conscious mental
states and brain states formed by electrochemical interactions in the
body, the so-called hard problem of consciousness. Neurobiology studies the connection scientifically, as do neuropsychology and neuropsychiatry. Neurophilosophy is the interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy of mind. In this pursuit, neurophilosophers, such as Patricia Churchland, Paul Churchland and Daniel Dennett,
have focused primarily on the body rather than the mind. In this
context, neuronal correlates may be viewed as causing consciousness,
where consciousness can be thought of as an undefined property that
depends upon this complex, adaptive, and highly interconnected biological system.
However, it's unknown if discovering and characterizing neural
correlates may eventually provide a theory of consciousness that can
explain the first-person experience of these "systems", and determine
whether other systems of equal complexity lack such features.
The massive parallelism of neural networks allows redundant
populations of neurons to mediate the same or similar percepts.
Nonetheless, it is assumed that every subjective state will have
associated neural correlates, which can be manipulated to artificially
inhibit or induce the subject's experience of that conscious state. The
growing ability of neuroscientists to manipulate neurons using methods
from molecular biology in combination with optical tools
was achieved by the development of behavioral and organic models that
are amenable to large-scale genomic analysis and manipulation. Non-human
analysis such as this, in combination with imaging of the human brain,
have contributed to a robust and increasingly predictive theoretical
framework.
Arousal and content
Midline
structures in the brainstem and thalamus necessary to regulate the
level of brain arousal. Small, bilateral lesions in many of these nuclei
cause a global loss of consciousness.
There are two common but distinct dimensions of the term consciousness, one involving arousal and states of consciousness and the other involving content of consciousness and conscious states. To be conscious of something, the brain must be in a relatively high state of arousal (sometimes called vigilance), whether awake or in REM sleep. Brain arousal level fluctuates in a circadian rhythm
but these natural cycles may be influenced by lack of sleep, alcohol
and other drugs, physical exertion, etc. Arousal can be measured
behaviorally by the signal amplitude required to trigger a given
reaction (for example, the sound level that causes a subject to turn and
look toward the source). High arousal states involve conscious states
that feature specific perceptual content, planning and recollection or
even fantasy. Clinicians use scoring systems such as the Glasgow Coma Scale to assess the level of arousal in patients with impaired states of consciousness such as the comatose state, the persistent vegetative state, and the minimally conscious state.
Here, "state" refers to different amounts of externalized, physical
consciousness: ranging from a total absence in coma, persistent
vegetative state and general anesthesia, to a fluctuating, minimally conscious state, such as sleep walking and epileptic seizure.
Many nuclei with distinct chemical signatures in the thalamus, midbrain and pons
must function for a subject to be in a sufficient state of brain
arousal to experience anything at all. These nuclei therefore belong to
the enabling factors for consciousness. Conversely it is likely that the
specific content of any particular conscious sensation is mediated by
particular neurons in the cortex and their associated satellite
structures, including the amygdala, thalamus, claustrum and the basal ganglia.
Types of dualism
The following is a very brief account of some contributions to the mind–body problem.
Interactionism
The viewpoint of interactionism suggests that the mind and body are two separate substances, but that each can affect the other. This interaction between the mind and body was first put forward by the philosopher René Descartes.
Descartes believed that the mind was non-physical and permeated the
entire body, but that the mind and body interacted via the pineal gland. This theory has changed throughout the years, and in the 20th century its main adherents were the philosopher of science Karl Popper and the neurophysiologist John Carew Eccles. A more recent and popular version of Interactionism is the viewpoint of emergentism.
This perspective states that mental states are a result of the brain
states, and that the mental events can then influence the brain,
resulting in a two way communication between the mind and body.
Epiphenomenalism
The viewpoint of epiphenomenalism suggests that the physical brain
can cause mental events in the mind, but that the mind cannot interact
with the brain at all; stating that mental occurrences are simply a side
effect of the brain's processes.
This viewpoint explains that while one's body may react to them feeling
joy, fear, or sadness, that the emotion does not cause the physical
response. Rather, it explains that joy, fear, sadness, and all bodily
reactions are caused by chemicals and their interaction with the body.
Psychophysical parallelism
The viewpoint of psychophysical parallelism suggests that the mind
and body are entirely independent from one another. Furthermore, this
viewpoint states that both mental and physical stimuli and reactions are
experienced simultaneously by both the mind and body, however, there is
no interaction nor communication between the two.
Double aspectism
Double aspectism is an extension of psychophysical parallelism which
also suggests that the mind and body cannot interact, nor can they be
separated. Baruch Spinoza and Gustav Fechner
were two of the notable users of double aspectism, however, Fechner
later expanded upon it to form the branch of psychophysics in an attempt
to prove the relationship of the mind and body.
Pre-established harmony
The viewpoint of pre-established harmony is another offshoot of
psychophysical parallelism which suggests that mental events and bodily
events are separate and distinct, but that they are both coordinated by
an external agent, an example of such an agent could be God or another
deity. A notable adherent to the idea of pre-established harmony is Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz in his theory of Monadology.
His explanation of pre-established harmony relied heavily upon God as
the external agent who coordinated the mental and bodily events of all
things in the beginning.
Occasionalism
The viewpoint of Occasionalism is another offshoot of psychophysical
parallelism, however, the major difference is that the mind and body
have some indirect interaction. Occasionalism suggests that the mind and
body are separate and distinct, but that they interact through divine
intervention. Nicolas de Malebranche
was one of the main contributors to this idea, using it as a way to
address his disagreements with Descartes' view of the mind-body problem.
In Malebranche's occasionalism, he viewed thoughts as a wish for the
body to move, which was then fulfilled by God causing the body to act.
Historical background
The Buddha
The Buddha (480–400 B.C.E), founder of Buddhism,
described the mind and the body as depending on each other in a way
that two sheaves of reeds were to stand leaning against one another
and taught that the world consists of mind and matter which work
together, interdependently. Buddhist teachings describe the mind as
manifesting from moment to moment, one thought moment at a time as a
fast flowing stream.
The components that make up the mind are known as the five aggregates
(i.e., material form, feelings, perception, volition, and sensory
consciousness), which arise and pass away continuously. The arising and
passing of these aggregates in the present moment is described as being
influenced by five causal laws: biological laws, psychological laws,
physical laws, volitional laws, and universal laws. The Buddhist practice of mindfulness involves attending to this constantly changing mind-stream.
Ultimately, the Buddha's philosophy is that both mind and forms
are conditionally arising qualities of an ever-changing universe in
which, when nirvāna is attained, all phenomenal experience ceases to exist. According to the anattā
doctrine of the Buddha, the conceptual self is a mere mental construct
of an individual entity and is basically an impermanent illusion,
sustained by form, sensation, perception, thought and consciousness. The Buddha argued that mentally clinging to any views will result in delusion and stress,
since, according to the Buddha, a real self (conceptual self, being the
basis of standpoints and views) cannot be found when the mind has
clarity.
Plato
Plato
(429–347 B.C.E.) believed that the material world is a shadow of a
higher reality that consists of concepts he called Forms. According to
Plato, objects in our everyday world "participate in" these Forms, which
confer identity and meaning to material objects. For example, a circle
drawn in the sand would be a circle only because it participates in the
concept of an ideal circle that exists somewhere in the world of Forms.
He argued that, as the body is from the material world, the soul is from
the world of Forms and is thus immortal. He believed the soul was
temporarily united with the body and would only be separated at death,
when it would return to the world of Forms.
Since the soul does not exist in time and space, as the body does, it
can access universal truths. For Plato, ideas (or Forms) are the true
reality, and are experienced by the soul. The body is for Plato empty in
that it can not access the abstract reality of the world; it can only experience shadows. This is determined by Plato's essentially rationalisticepistemology.
Aristotle
For Aristotle (384–322 BC) mind is a faculty of the soul. Regarding the soul, he said:
It is not necessary to ask whether
soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the
wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each
thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if one and
being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is
the actuality.
In the end, Aristotle saw the relation between soul and body as
uncomplicated, in the same way that it is uncomplicated that a cubical
shape is a property of a toy building block. The soul is a property
exhibited by the body, one among many. Moreover, Aristotle proposed that
when the body perishes, so does the soul, just as the shape of a
building block disappears with destruction of the block.
Influences of Eastern monotheistic religions
In religious philosophy of Eastern monotheism, dualism denotes a binary opposition of an idea that contains two essential parts. The first formal concept of a "mind-body" split may be found in the divinity–secularity dualism of the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism around the mid-fifth century BC. Gnosticism is a modern name for a variety of ancient dualistic ideas inspired by Judaism popular in the first and second century AD. These ideas later seem to have been incorporated into Galen's "tripartite soul" that led into both the Christian sentiments expressed in the later Augustinian theodicy and Avicenna's Platonism in Islamic Philosophy.
Thomas Aquinas
Like Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas
(1225–1274) believed that the mind and the body are one, like the seal
and the wax are one, and it is therefore pointless to ask whether they
are one. However, (referring to "mind" as "the soul") he asserted that
the soul persists after the death of the body in spite of their unity,
calling the soul "this particular thing". Since his view was primarily
theological rather than philosophical, it is impossible to fit it neatly
within either the category of physicalist or dualist.
My view is that this gland is the principal seat of the soul, and the place in which all our thoughts are formed.
— René Descartes, Treatise of Man
[The]
mechanism of our body is so constructed that simply by this gland's
being moved in any way by the soul or by any other cause, it drives the
surrounding spirits towards the pores of the brain, which direct them
through the nerves to the muscles; and in this way the gland makes the
spirits move the limbs.
His posited relation between mind and body is called Cartesian dualism or substance dualism. He held that mind was distinct from matter, but could influence matter. How such an interaction could be exerted remains a contentious issue.
Kant
For Kant (1724–1804) beyond mind and matter there exists a world of a priori
forms, which are seen as necessary preconditions for understanding.
Some of these forms, space and time being examples, today seem to be
pre-programmed in the brain.
...whatever it is that impinges on
us from the mind-independent world does not come located in a spatial or
a temporal matrix,...The mind has two pure forms of intuition built
into it to allow it to... organize this 'manifold of raw intuition'.
— Andrew Brook, Kant's view of the mind and consciousness of self: Transcendental aesthetic
Kant views the mind–body interaction as taking place through forces that may be of different kinds for mind and body.
Huxley
For Huxley (1825–1895) the conscious mind was a by-product of the brain that has no influence upon the brain, a so-called epiphenomenon.
On the epiphenomenalist view,
mental events play no causal role. Huxley, who held the view, compared
mental events to a steam whistle that contributes nothing to the work of
a locomotive.
For Popper (1902–1994) there are three aspects of the mind–body problem: the worlds of matter, mind, and of the creations of the mind, such as mathematics.
In his view, the third-world creations of the mind could be interpreted
by the second-world mind and used to affect the first-world of matter.
An example might be radio, an example of the interpretation of the third-world (Maxwell's electromagnetic theory) by the second-world mind to suggest modifications of the external first world.
The body–mind problem is the
question of whether and how our thought processes in World 2 are bound
up with brain events in World 1. ...I would argue that the first and
oldest of these attempted solutions is the only one that deserves to be
taken seriously [namely]: World 2 and World 1 interact, so that when
someone reads a book or listens to a lecture, brain events occur that act upon the World 2 of the reader's or listener's thoughts; and conversely, when a mathematician follows a proof, his World 2 acts upon his brain and thus upon World 1. This, then, is the thesis of body–mind interaction.
— Karl Popper, Notes of a realist on the body–mind problem
Searle
For Searle (b. 1932) the mind–body problem is a false dichotomy; that is, mind is a perfectly ordinary aspect of the brain. Searle proposed Biological naturalism in 1980.
According to Searle then, there is
no more a mind–body problem than there is a macro–micro economics
problem. They are different levels of description of the same set of
phenomena. [...] But Searle is careful to maintain that the mental – the
domain of qualitative experience and understanding – is autonomous and
has no counterpart on the microlevel; any redescription of these
macroscopic features amounts to a kind of evisceration, ...
— Joshua Rust, John Searle
Ryle
With his book, The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle "was seen to have put the final nail in the coffin of Cartesian dualism".
In the chapter "Descartes' Myth," Ryle introduces "the dogma of the Ghost in the machine" to describe the philosophical concept of the mind as an entity separate from the body:
I
hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in
principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is
one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a
category mistake.
