Description
Book SynopsisFeelings of Being is the first ever account of the nature, role and variety of ''existential feelings'' in psychiatric illness and in everyday life. There is a great deal of current philosophical and scientific interest in emotional feelings. However, many of the feelings that people struggle to express in their everyday lives do not appear on standard lists of emotions. For example, there are feelings of unreality, surreality, unfamiliarity, estrangement, heightened existence, isolation, emptiness, belonging, significance, insignificance, and the list goes on. Ratcliffe refers to such feelings as ''existential'' because they comprise a changeable sense of being part of a worldIn this book, Ratcliffe argues that existential feelings form a distinctive group by virtue of three characteristics: they are bodily feelings, they constitute ways of relating to the world as a whole, and they are responsible for our sense of reality. He explains how something can be a bodily feeling and, at the
Trade ReviewThis book is for those who wonder about normal and pathological existential experiences. Clinicians who have time to pursue philosophy will be enriched. * Patricia E. Murphy. PhD (Rush University Medical Center) *
Ratcliffe deserves credit for drawing attention to a shortcoming in the discussion of emotions and feelings and for providing an importance corrective to this tendency. * Phenom Cogn Sci *
Table of ContentsPART I - THE STRUCTURE OF EXISTENTIAL FEELING; PART II - VARIETIES OF EXISTENTIAL FEELING IN PSYCHIATRIC ILLNESS; PART III - EXISTENTIAL FEELING AND PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
