Mind and matter: a psychoanalytic perspective
Ronald S. Britton
Routledge eBooks October 21, 2018 DOI: 10.4324/9780429482625-1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that opposing positions, illustrated by organic versus dynamic psychiatry and by the terms "sensualism" and "mysticism," tend to dismiss one another rather than engage. Uses Plato's Cave allegory to depict movement from shadowy appearances toward their sources, and contends that Ryle's restriction of knowledge to "knowing how," while assigning "knowing that" to "belief," is a limitation worth examining. |
Abstract
The temptation at either end of this axis is to turn one’s back on the other. This has been so at times in psychiatry, where so-called organic psychiatry is at one end and dynamic psychiatry at the other, and the temptation is for each to turn its back on the other. Sensualism is the common term of abuse for the one philosophy, mysticism for the other. The one doctrine is accused of making men beasts, the other lunatics. The prisoners in the Cave are at first chained to face the back wall where all they can see are shadows, cast by a fire which is behind them, of themselves and of objects which are carried between them and the fire. Later they manage to turn round and they see the fire and the objects which cast the shadows. Ryle distinguished between knowledge and belief. However, he limited knowledge to “knowing how” and dismissed “knowing that” to the realm of “belief”.