Imperfect Cognitions

In today's post, Carme Isern-Mas (University of the Balearic Islands) discusses the potential harms of everyday self-help discourse in contexts of systemic oppression. Carme worked on this topic with Sally Latham (The Open University) and Manuel Almagro (University of Valencia).  Carme Isern-Mas When I was a teenager, Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret took everyone by storm. For some time, conversations about how to better “manifest” our life goals, or on the importance of having a “positive attitude” were frequent. Later I learned about the self-help industry and how The Secret , among others, was a paradigmatic product of it. Criticisms of this cultural phenomenon were not long in coming. But, in recent years, the discourse of the self-help industry has also conquered our everyday talk.  The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne Everyone knows what “vision boards” are, most of us have tried to keep a “gratitude diary”, and we try to “stay positive” despite the adversity. A worry with such d...

In this follow-up to last week's post , Sorin Baiasu (University of Liverpool) and Luke Jordan (NHS Compass Manchester) continue introducing their interdisciplinary project on philosophy and mental well-being. Luke Jordan We currently face a particularly serious problem: a global mental health crisis combined with the psychiatrisation of society and medicalisation of mental disorders. To contribute to a solution to this serious challenge, our interdisciplinary research relies on some of academic philosophy’s untapped resources. In particular, we examine philosophy’s training potential for the mental health workforce through continuing professional development (CPD) sessions. Providing training to mental health practitioners through philosophy may lead to a common problem : misaligned and irrelevant content. On one good account of the differences between psychotherapy and academic philosophy, the latter is a self-reflective discipline, usually classed among the ‘humanities’. These...