Michael Uebel | The University of Texas at Austin (original) (raw)

Books by Michael Uebel

This book studies the manner in which medieval ways of knowing the Oriental "other" were construc... more This book studies the manner in which medieval ways of knowing the Oriental "other" were constructed around the idea of a utopic East as located in the legend and Letter of Prester John (c. 1160). The birth of utopic thinking, it argues, is tied to an understanding of alterity having as much to do with the ways the medieval West understood itself as the manner in which the foreign was mapped. Drawing upon the insights of cultural studies, film studies, and psychoanalysis, this book rethinks the contours of the known and the unknown in the medieval period. It demonstrates how the idea of otherness intersected in intricate ways with other categories of difference (spatial, gender, and religious). Scholars in the fields of history as well as literary and religious studies will be interested in the manner in which the book considers the formal dimensions of how histories of the Oriental "other" were written and lived.

Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages, 2005

This timely volume examines the commitments of historicism in the wake of New Historicism. It con... more This timely volume examines the commitments of historicism in the wake of New Historicism. It contributes to the construction of a materialist historicism while, at the same time, proposing that discussions of work need not be limited to the clash between labor and capital. To this end, the essays offer more than a strictly historical view of the complex terms, social and literary, within which labor was treated in the medieval period. Several of the essays strive to reformulate the very critical language we use to think about the categories of labor and work through a continually doubled engagement with modern theories of labor and medieval theories and practices of labor.

Praise

"This collection of essays examines a favorite topic of medievalists, breathing new life into its analysis. Robertson and Uebel have achieved something remarkable here. The essays are wide-ranging, innovative, and provocative. Medieval labor is granted a complexity and an expansiveness that readers will likely find inspiring. Consistently engaging, lucidly composed, and full of insight, the work gathered in this important book constitutes essential reading for all those interested in the critical reexamination of the past."--Jeffrey J. Cohen, Department of English, George Washington University

Table of Contents

Conceptualizing Labor in the Middle Ages--Michael Uebel * The Idioms of Women's Work and Thomas Hoccleve's Travails--Catherine Batt * "As If She Were Single"--Brian Gastle * "The Workman is Worth his Mede"--Kate Crassons * The Carpenters Company and Lay Spirituality in Late Medieval England--Mark Addison Amos * Reconstructing English Labor Laws--Anthony Musson * Branding and the Technologies of Labor Regulation--Kellie Robertson * The Displacement of Labor in Wynnere and Wastoure--Britton Harwood * Scribal Hermeneutics and the Genres of Social Organization in Piers Plowman--Andrew Cole * Poetic Work and Scribal Labor in Hoccleve and Langland--Ethan Knapp * The Erasure of Labor: Hoccleve, Caxton, and the Information Age--William Kuskin

Duke University Press

Although in recent years scholars have explored the cultural construction of masculinity, they ha... more Although in recent years scholars have explored the cultural construction of masculinity, they have largely ignored the ways in which masculinity intersects with other categories of identity, particularly those of race and ethnicity. The essays in Race and the Subject of Masculinities address this concern and focus on the social construction of masculinity - black, white, ethnic, gay, and straight - in terms of the often complex and dynamic relationships among these inseparable categories.

More details
Race and the Subject of Masculinities
By Harry Stecopoulos, Michael Uebel
Edition: illustrated
Published by Duke University Press, 1997
ISBN 0822319667, 9780822319665
418 pages

Papers by Michael Uebel

Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 2025

In the consulting room, the existence of anger—a perfectly normal human emotion—is less a concern... more In the consulting room, the existence of anger—a perfectly normal human emotion—is less a concern than our relationship to it, whether our own or our patients’. The ways we frame difficult emotions like anger and how we encourage our patients to hold them are crucial to the task of psychological healing. Offered here are some reflections, situated at the crossroads of psychodynamic theory and Buddhist thought, on how such healing may be rooted in the attitude of equanimity.

Keywords: Anger, Equanimity, Treatment, Function of Anger, Buddhism

International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2024

This paper offers a series of propositions concerning how our affective sensibilities are shaped ... more This paper offers a series of propositions concerning how our affective
sensibilities are shaped and unshaped by architectural space. We will
examine the connections between our pre-reflective sense of
atmospheres and other kinds of apprehension, including the
psychoanalytic. The potentiality of spaces to influence feelings is what is
meant by atmosphere. Our conceptual framework, then, will center on
the question of how felt space can give rise to affectivity, thought and,
more controversially, action. References to film noir (especially Fritz
Lang’s psychoanalytic thriller Secret beyond the Door [1948]), the
paradigmatic genre of atmosphere, will frame the contention that our
disposition to the world comes first, before any cognitive assessment,
and, as such, possesses the force to inspire affective states. It will be
suggested that the ways we test and evaluate atmospheres through the
imagination are potentially the inspiration for violence, an idea echoed by
architects such Bernard Tschumi and psychoanalytic thinkers such as
Marcuse. The goal here is to present multiple entry points for a rich
discussion concerning if, or the extent to which, notions of atmosphere
admit psychoanalytic interrogation, and how or whether analytic
assumptions shift as a result of such an investigation.

Scham 4.0, 2024

Um Scham zu verstehen, muss man ihre Beziehung zur Technologie verstehen. In der Tat können wir m... more Um Scham zu verstehen, muss man ihre Beziehung zur Technologie verstehen. In der Tat können wir mit wenigen Einschränkungen und Vorbehalten sagen, dass eine Kritik der Scham eine Kritik der Technologie ist. Auch wenn dieses Kapitel nicht den Anspruch erheben kann, mehr als eine Skizze dieser Beziehung oder eine Nachzeichnung dieser Kritik zu liefern, so wird es doch auf die Behauptung hinweisen, dass es keine andere Art von Scham gibt als die, die im Namen der Technologie produziert wird. In Anbetracht der Grenzen dieses Kapitels habe ich eine entscheidende Dimension der Schamerfahrung im Auge – ihre Identität mit der Sichtbarkeit. Da Scham mit Sichtbarkeit identisch ist, haben die Technologien, die Scham stützen, die sie als phänomenologische Seinsbedingung erkennbar machen, zentral mit der Dialektik von Sichtbarkeit und Unsichtbarkeit zu tun. Meine weitergehende Behauptung ist, dass wir in einer sich entwickelnden Schamkultur leben, dass die Vierte IR zur Konditionierung einer solchen Kultur beigetragen hat, und zwar in einer Weise, die im Großen und Ganzen mit Norbert Elias’ (1939/2000) berühmtem Nachweis übereinstimmt, dass die Moderne – und hier müssen wir die Gegenwart hinzufügen – vor allem durch einen zivilisatorischen Prozess gekennzeichnet ist, der im späten Mittelalter begann und nicht nur durch die Webersche Rationalisierung, sondern auch durch „die eigentümliche Formung der Triebökonomie, die wir Scham nennen“ (S. 292) gekennzeichnet ist.

British Journal of Psychiatry, 2024

With reference to the writing of Sir William Osler and to the Lotus Sutra, this brief reflection ... more With reference to the writing of Sir William Osler and to the Lotus Sutra, this brief reflection suggests that equanimity's deeps roots in Western sources (e. g., the Stoic philosophy upon which Osler explicitly drew) and Eastern ones shows that equanimity is never reducible to stillness, but rather places us the midst of the fluid fullness of what is.

The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2023

The American novelist and journalist Christopher Morley (1890-1957) once declared that “The size ... more The American novelist and journalist Christopher Morley (1890-1957) once declared that “The size of a man is measured by the size of what makes him angry.” How anger affects us is proportional to the mental space in which we hold it. The more mentally capacious and elastic we are, anger, or any difficult emotion, loses its force. So, when asked what size he would be, Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz, in philosopher Martin Buber’s account, responded to the question this way: “Long ago,” he said, “I conquered my anger and placed it in my pocket. When I have need of it, I take it out.” In his equanimity, Rabbi Pinchas does not banish anger, but acts always in such a way that he is bigger than it and can appropriately and flexibly access it.

Transgenerational Haunting in Psychoanalysis: Toxic Errands by Maurice Apprey, 2023

In this book, Apprey, a pioneer in the study of psychic phenomena expressing transgenerational tr... more In this book, Apprey, a pioneer in the study of psychic phenomena expressing transgenerational transmissions of aggressivity, brilliantly shows the implications of such transmissibility for psychoanalytic theory and therapy. Taking Freud’s instinct theory and radically reworking it into an object relations theory that can better account for the temporality of psychic messaging, Apprey offers various strategies for conceptualizing how humans enact and make sense of history. Yet, of Apprey’s dramatis personae, Freud is not the central character. Nor are the philosophers Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Luc Marion, Claude Romano, et alia—all of whom Apprey mobilizes with total perspicacity. The main figure turns out to be the poet W. H. Auden, whose celebrated 1937 poem “On this Island” with its line concerning “urgent voluntary errands” prompted Apprey to think through the seeming contradictions embedded in the poetic phrase: Under what conditions are errands voluntary? And, further, if errands are truly urgent, then what room is left for choice, the spontaneous? Auden’s “errands” would orient Apprey, like the diverging ships in the poem, sending him on a multiplex psychoanalytic errand of his own. Apprey embarked on nothing less than on a career-defining mission to formulate how subjects may become doubly trapped and imperiled by the infused toxicity of ancestral legacies of aggression and by the often self-destructive choices they make.
Without privileging one disciplinary approach over others, Apprey allows the insights offered by philosophy, psychology, and fictional media (especially film) to fluidly inform his readings of the psyche’s hidden sedimentations of history and their toxic reanimations. Apprey the psychoanalyst listens to these otherwise silent layers, noting when they come to life and observing how they are ultimately refashioned to serve contemporary functions. This rich and generous book teaches others how to do the same. It encourages us never to believe that understanding human behavior, cognition, and affect can occur in isolation from deep appreciation of the manifold ways they have been historically conditioned. Apprey’s brilliant deployment of semiology, phenomenology, and Freudian metapsychology yields a number of templates and conceptual lenses for grasping the tensions inhering in the psychic space between unconsciously absorbed toxic forces from the external world and the unconsciously appropriated toxic intrusions he calls internal “dreams” of “urgent voluntary errands.”

Economics and Art Theory. Ed. Myrogiannis Efstratios & Constantinos Repapis. New York: Routledge., 2022

This essay posits that equanimous vision is an approach best suited to seeing objects of inquiry ... more This essay posits that equanimous vision is an approach best suited to seeing objects of inquiry in their fullest reality. In its free-floating attending to what is, equanimity never tries to make sense out of things through fixed concepts/abstractions or single perspectives. Rather, it remains mobile, and describes a way of describing the enactive perception necessary for the insights supporting interpretations of natural, aesthetic, and economic phenomena. The essay will mobilize a few thinkers (e. g., Goethe, Alva Noë, Hilary Putnam) and a few narratives drawn from Zen Buddhism in order to reflect upon the ways in which equanimity may inform the process of knowledge itself—how it is we come to know. It is precisely this encounter of Eastern and Western thought that allows us to appreciate the full extent to which the analytical intellect alone is inadequate to full, real, useful inquiry.

As I will argue, one of the remarkable things about the equanimous approach to knowing is that, by seeing comprehensively, it engages a higher cognitive function than abstracting what is general. Equanimity, despite its broad and sweeping attention, is not primarily a search for commonality in the form of a common plan or general order for things. Rather, by also looking for the internal “spirit” (Goethe) or essence of the thing, it appreciates how parts and wholes intertwine. In this way, it challenges traditional ways of seeing/knowing by overcoming separation but not at the level of separation. In other words, if the mind looks for unity by removing differences, then it works abstractly by means of seeing generally. The equanimous mind, by not taking abstractions as ends, works by apprehending things comprehensively, understanding differences as a unity. In this way, it is free to travel in the opposite direction to knowing or thinking abstractly. Equanimity is well suited for attending to the ways things are internally related to each other as dynamic elements of an expansive, indivisible totality. To know such a totality demands more than safe, disengaged spectatorship, inviting instead involvement sometimes as shambolic as the world itself.

European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling, 2022

In this overview, the existing research on swearing, cussing, and cursing is surveyed in the cont... more In this overview, the existing research on swearing, cussing, and cursing is surveyed in the context of mental health therapy and counseling-related pursuits. Swearing is a subject of longstanding controversy, dating back to the days in which prominent figures of the psychotherapeutic tradition like Albert Ellis and Fritz Perls affirmed profane language in their counseling interviews. Although profanity is seemingly taken for granted as a categorically taboo subject matter in present-day counseling, the notion that swearing might add value to counseling remains underrepresented in the literature. Presented here are studies both supporting and contradicting the generally accepted standards for counselor use of profanity in clinical practice, illustrating the context-laden aspects of the importance of language. This article represents a platform that could act to further academic inquiry in the context of swearing in therapy on the part of therapists in framing, staking out, and subsequently showing their own position on whether swearing is simply wrong or that there is a 'right way' to use it. Ultimately the underpinnings of this article focus on an introduction to a much deeper problematic of language in therapy.

Global Affairs, 2021

Drawing upon a conceptualization of vulnerability, precariousness and precarity, this paper sheds... more Drawing upon a conceptualization of vulnerability, precariousness and precarity, this paper sheds light on the ontological foundation of the vulnerable human condition during the outbreak of the pandemic. While inspiring examples of cooperation among nations during the pandemic bring to the fore a transnational ethics of respect for differences, the pandemic turns out to be the unfortunate breeding ground for confrontation among some nations, highlighting an abdication of ethical responses that the vulnerability of proximate others demands. In this paper we look at the case of Palestine, examining how the solidarity of the Palestinian people to respond to the pandemic is imperiled by the Israeli occupation. The Israeli occupation, we contend, disavows vulnerability and the ethical response it entails, where the crisis of the pandemic serves as a revealing context for oppression of the Palestinians who exist under the threat of displacement and the annexation of the West Bank.

Shame 4.0: Investigating an Emotion in Digital Worlds and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Ed. Elisabeth Vanderheiden & Claude-Hélène Mayer & Paul Wong. New York: Springer, 2021

This speculative essay proposes an account of shame phenomena in the 4th Industrial Revolution th... more This speculative essay proposes an account of shame phenomena in the 4th Industrial Revolution that traces the origin and meaning of shame to technology. Drawing upon sociological and psychological inquiries and theories, the essay explains the origin of shame as related to what Norbert Elias (1939/2000) dubbed generally the “instruments of civilization.” The essay reflects upon the imbrication of human agency, identities, and visibility as it relates to the historically shifting threshold of shame from pre-industrial to post-industrial societies. The essay will have 4 main concerns: outlining the history of shame and its moralities from a sociological perspective; identifying the technological origins of shame; considering some transformations of shame by technology, and speculating upon the future of shame as a moral construct embedded in technology, with some consideration of the binary divisions such as technology/society and subject/object that have traditionally structured the cultural significance of shame.

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2021

This conceptual essay places the Buddhist notion of sunyata, or emptiness, at the heart of the en... more This conceptual essay places the Buddhist notion of sunyata, or emptiness, at the heart of the enterprise of teaching mindfulness with military Veterans. It is a term that brings before us the necessity of having an open and “unknowing” mind, one that frees both students or clients and instructor from becoming mired in routinized, auto-pilot modes of psychotherapy delivery. While attention to the teaching of mindfulness has centered on the training of instructors and their employment of manualized treatment modalities, this essay shifts the emphasis to what humanistic psychologists and educationalists have termed variously “fusion-knowledge” (Maslow) and the “live classroom” (G. I. Brown). Humanistic psychological insights are brought in dialogue with the fields of knowledge management and organizational learning and, most importantly, transformative learning theory. The author’s group-based delivery of mindfulness in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) setting provides an example of a curriculum that is collaboratively generated and based in the ongoing creation of a common vocabulary for living and thinking mindfully. An expansive, improvisational approach to teaching mindfulness is posited as beneficial for the creation of new forms of awareness that shape our psychological and intellectual relations to the lived world.

New Ideas in Psychology, 2019

People with schizophrenia have marked emotional and relational difficulties, such as those with e... more People with schizophrenia have marked emotional and relational difficulties, such as those with eye contact where there is a markedly strong tendency to avoid looking frontally at others appears when occupying a shared space with strangers. A prominent feature of emotional dysregulation in schizophrenia is clinically evident in blunted affect, often observed as reduced emotional expressivity alongside the individual's report of normal or heightened emotional experience. This study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to explore a crucial, largely unexamined, aspect of the embodied experience of emotions: the front-back axis of the body image in its association with positive or negative emotional words (e. g., Joy, Pleasure, Tenderness, Anger, Anxiety, Fear, and so on). We demonstrate that this spatial axis (front-back) of the body image constitutes two principal emotional narratives. One views the front of the body as conflictual and dangerous, and the other apprehends the back as more reassuring, pleasurable and calming. This kind of emotional narrative, conceptualized within Conceptual Metaphor Theory, explains the findings.

Keywords: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Narrative, Emotions, Schizophrenia, Mixed Methods, Body.

Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 2017

Glessner Lee, a pioneer in forensic medicine and crime scene investigation, was an artist against... more Glessner Lee, a pioneer in forensic medicine and crime scene investigation, was an artist against the grain who fostered the investigation of murder using a processing of reasoning that is relied upon in psychiatric diagnosis.

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2016

Approaching the human condition of shame from an ethical point of view, this essay traces the pro... more Approaching the human condition of shame from an ethical point of view, this essay traces the problems involving the relationship between shame and guilt, and between shame and the social field. Drawing on a phenomenological approach to shame phenomena, the essay explores moral and philosophical theories of shame underpinning our humanistic and psychological appreciation of this most basic human experience, one that, as we suggest, has both positive and negative valences.

Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages, 2005

Praise

Table of Contents

Duke University Press

More details
Race and the Subject of Masculinities
By Harry Stecopoulos, Michael Uebel
Edition: illustrated
Published by Duke University Press, 1997
ISBN 0822319667, 9780822319665
418 pages

Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 2025

Keywords: Anger, Equanimity, Treatment, Function of Anger, Buddhism

International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2024

Scham 4.0, 2024

British Journal of Psychiatry, 2024

The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2023

Transgenerational Haunting in Psychoanalysis: Toxic Errands by Maurice Apprey, 2023

Economics and Art Theory. Ed. Myrogiannis Efstratios & Constantinos Repapis. New York: Routledge., 2022

European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling, 2022

Global Affairs, 2021

Shame 4.0: Investigating an Emotion in Digital Worlds and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Ed. Elisabeth Vanderheiden & Claude-Hélène Mayer & Paul Wong. New York: Springer, 2021

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2021

New Ideas in Psychology, 2019

Keywords: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Narrative, Emotions, Schizophrenia, Mixed Methods, Body.

Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 2017

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2016

Mindfulness and Acceptance in Social Work: Evidence-Based Interventions and Emerging Applications, ed. Matthew S. Boone (New Harbinger Publications), 2014

This essay suggests that the attitudinal thrust of engaged Buddhism furnishes generalist macro so... more This essay suggests that the attitudinal thrust of engaged Buddhism furnishes generalist macro social work practice with tools to cultivate the “ecology of mind” (Bateson, 2000) upon which environmental and social justice vitally depend. With Zen insights, ethics, and practices as a model, macro social workers are in a position to skillfully—which is to say mindfully and with equanimity—respond to the interlinking of individual suffering and collective suffering, unable to avoid the conclusion that the great ecological, social, and cultural crises of our time are also spiritual challenges. Thus, any response calls for a spiritual dimension.

The Journal of Social Work Education, 50(2), 2014

Since the mid-twentieth century, instructional technologies and educational media in social work ... more Since the mid-twentieth century, instructional technologies and educational media in social work education have undergone significant development with the goals of improving learning and performance and enhancing access. This growth has been marked by technical advances in hardware and by innovations in media, or "soft" formats. Current distance education and web-based instructional programs allow for the enrichment of onsite instructional activities as well as open possibilities for the ever-expanding outreach of social work educational programs. The paper describes the evolution of instructional technology and media in social work while reviewing the historical contributions of eight pioneering schools.

The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages: On the Unwritten History of Theory. Ed. Andrew Cole & D. Vance Smith. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. 127-58

Sage Encyclopedia of Pharmacology and Society, 2015

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Alcohol: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives, 2014

Green Ethics and Philosophy: An A-to-Z Guide, vol. 8 of the Green Society Series. Eds. Julie Newman and J. Geoffrey Golson, 2011

Encyclopedia of Drug Policy. Eds. Mark Kleiman, James Hawdon, J. Geoffrey Golson. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2011

Encyclopedia of Substance Abuse Prevention, Treatment, & Recovery, 2009

Encyclopedia of Social Work, 20th Edition (Oxford University Press, 2008)

The Encyclopedia of Elder Care: The Comprehensive Resource on Geriatric and Social Care. 2nd Edition. Eds. Elizabeth Capezuti, Eugenia L. Siegler, & Mathy D. Mezey. , 2007

International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities, eds. Michael Flood, Judith Kegan Gardiner, Bob Pease, & Keith Pringle. New York: Routledge., 2007

The International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities offers a comprehensive guide to the curre... more The International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities offers a comprehensive guide to the current state of scholarship about men, masculinities, and gender around the world. The Encyclopedia's coverage is comprehensive across three dimensions: areas of personal and social life, academic disciplines, and cultural and historical contexts and formations.

The Encyclopedia:

examines every area of men's personal and social lives as shaped by gender
covers masculinity politics, the men's groups and movements that have tried to change men's roles
presents entries on working with particular groups of boys or men, from male patients to men in prison
incorporates cross-disciplinary perspectives on and examinations of men, gender and gender relations
gives comprehensive coverage of diverse cultural and historical formations of masculinity and the bodies of scholarship that have documented them.

The Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities is composed of over 350 free-standing entries written from their individual perspectives by eminent scholars in their fields. Entries are organized alphabetically for general ease of access but also listed thematically at the front of the encyclopedia, for the convenience of readers with specific areas of interest.

International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities, 2007

Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work. Ed. Melissa Hope Ditmore, 2006

SADOMASOCHISM. As a form of prostitution, sadomasochism, abbreviated as S/M, typically describes ... more SADOMASOCHISM. As a form of prostitution, sadomasochism, abbreviated as S/M, typically describes the domination of a man by a woman, usually known as a dominatrix or mistress, for payment. More rarely does it describe the domination of a woman by a man, though dominatrices often receive female clients. Sadomasochism combines sexual dominance (sadism, derived from Marquis de Sade' s name) and submission (masochism, derived from Leopold von Sacher Masoch' s name). It is fundamentally an expression of power over another human being in which the dominatrix "tops" or dominates and the client "bottoms" or submits, whether through bondage, wrestling, whipping, bodypiercing, and so on. Most often, this kind of prostitution does not involve sexual penetration, and it usually involves no nudity on the part of the dominatrix. For this reason, this form of prostitution enjoys a certain immunity from law enforcement in some parts of the United States. In the dominatrix' s "dungeon," the session takes place with the client, in a submissive role, seeking some form of humiliation, typically through receiving pain or being rendered immobile. A dominatrix may cause pain by whipping, spanking, caning, or verbally abusing her client. Some clients seek the experience of being bound or tightly wrapped through, for example, rope bondage, mummification (being wrapped or fitted in latex or leather), entombment, or suspension. A client may also desire to be humiliated through receiving "golden showers" (being urinated on), depersonalization fantasies (being treated like an object, such as a footstool, or an animal, most often a pony) or infantilism (being treated like a baby, wearing a diaper and sucking on a bottle). Other forms of pleasurable humiliation include cross-dressing (especially being forced to do so), body worship (foot fetishism is common), enemas, branding, and scarification. The paid session is in many ways a mutually created role-playing or theatrical event with the dominatrix and the client enacting a fantasy of dominance and submission.

Dictionary of the Middle Ages

Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages

Encyclopedia of Substance Abuse Prevention, Treatment, & Recovery

Encyclopedia of Substance Abuse Prevention, Treatment, & Recovery, 2009

Presented through the VISN 17 Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans (U. S. ... more Presented through the VISN 17 Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans (U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs), this talk aims to provide an understanding of the unique perspectivism that equanimity encourages, which will help with conflict management both internal and external. In 2024, this presentation was delivered to the VISN 17 Nursing staff during Nurses' Education Week.

This paper takes as its starting point the artist Patrick Heron’s observation that “ethics are th... more This paper takes as its starting point the artist Patrick Heron’s observation that “ethics are the aesthetics of behavior.” I wish to consider how aesthetic objects mediate ethical subjectivity. Can it be said, for example, that the aesthetic and social spheres appear to converge from the standpoint of Simmel’s Hegelianism? If they do superimpose, what’s left for subjectivity? Of course, Simmel is not in any strict sense a Hegelian (though his contemporary Max Adler rightly pointed to what he termed a “great affinity” between Simmel’s philosophical project and Hegel’s). Yet his social theory, predicated upon the tensions between subjectivity and objectivity, is nothing other than one extended thematic riff on Hegel’s subject-object dialectic. What interests me is Simmel’s radical revision of this duality as tragically unbridgeable, and so I will consider some implications for contemplating social interaction and lived experience in the shadow of Hegel’s notorious postulate of the “end of art” in Aesthetics (1828). For it is in relation to Hegel’s patterning of the final subsumption of art in philosophy that Simmel’s most radical sociological ideas concerning the necessity of ongoing vital flux emerge. What, finally, are the implications of such ideas for building or enhancing an ethics inseparable from aesthetics?

Structures of Feeling (ISRF Bulletin XXII), ed. Lars Cornelissen, 2020

Its final version carefully edited by Niall Gildea, this conversation took place in the context o... more Its final version carefully edited by Niall Gildea, this conversation took place in the context of an online series of research meetings with Louise Braddock’s essay on Raymond Williams (same volume, pp. 27-34) as the point of departure for a conversation about structures of feeling and their implications in psychoanalysis and beyond.

Given increasingly prevalent use of cannabinoids among Veterans to address such issues as pain an... more Given increasingly prevalent use of cannabinoids among Veterans to address such issues as pain and anxiety, it is incumbent upon providers to enhance their familiarity and clinical “comfort level” in working with Veterans who use these substances (Metrik et al., 2018). With the majority of U.S. states having adopted legislation to medically and/or recreationally legalize cannabis, the already high prevalence of cannabis use (Hasin et al., 2015) is expected to further increase nationwide, especially among existing users (Hall & Lynskey, 2016; Pacula & Lundberg, 2014). States that allow the legal use of cannabis for medicinal purposes have higher rates of cannabis use and cannabis use disorder (CUD) in national survey data (Cerdá, Wall, Keyes, Galea, & Hasin, 2012) and specifically within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA; Bonn-Miller, Harris, & Trafton, 2012). Veteran advocacy groups have been created to further veterans’ rights to access cannabis for medical (MC) purposes and discuss its use with their VHA providers (for e.g., “http://www.vetscp.org/#,” 2017). There are also published reports that veterans perceive cannabis to be a low-risk or safe substance unlike other drugs of abuse (Wilkinson, van Schalkwyk, Davidson, & D’Souza, 2016) and expect cannabis to provide relief from symptoms of combat-related trauma (Earleywine & Bolles, 2014).

Bonn-Miller MO, Harris AHS, Trafton JA. Prevalence of cannabis use disorder diagnoses among veterans in 2002, 2008, and 2009. Psychological Services. 2012;9(4):404–416. doi: 10.1037/a0027622

Cerdá M, Wall M, Keyes KM, Galea S, Hasin D. Medical marijuana laws in 50 states: Investigating the relationship between state legalization of medical marijuana and marijuana use, abuse and dependence. Drug and Alcohol Dependence. 2012;120(1–3):22–27. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2011.06.011.

Earleywine M, Bolles JR. Marijuana, expectancies, and post-traumatic stress symptoms: A preliminary investigation. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. 2014;46(3):171–177. doi: 10.1080/02791072.2014.920118

Hall W, Lynskey M. Evaluating the public health impacts of legalizing recreational cannabis use in the United States. Addiction. 2016;111(10):1764–1773. doi: 10.1111/add.13428.

Hasin DS, Saha TD, Kerridge BT, Goldstein RB, Chou SP, Zhang H, Grant BF. Prevalence of marijuana use disorders in the United States between 2001–2002 and 2012–2013. JAMA Psychiatry. 2015;72(12):1235–1242. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2015.1858.

Metrik, J., Bassett, S. S., Aston, E. R., Jackson, K. M., & Borsari, B. (2018). Medicinal versus recreational cannabis use among returning veterans. Translational issues in psychological science, 4(1), 6.

Pacula RL, Lundberg R. Why changes in price matter when thinking about marijuana policy: A review of the literature on the elasticity of demand. Public Health Reviews. 2014;35(2):1–18.

Wilkinson ST, van Schalkwyk GI, Davidson L, D’Souza DC. The formation of marijuana risk perception in a population of substance abusing patients. The Psychiatric Quarterly. 2016;87(1):177–187. doi: 10.1007/s11126-015-9369-z.

Target Audience

The primary target for this presentation is mental health clinicians at VA health care facilities (VHA), and this includes psychiatrists, clinical social workers, psychologists, LPCs, LMFTs, and psychiatric NPs.
Outcome/Objectives
At the conclusion of this educational program, learners will be able to:

1. Identify indications for cannabinoid use in the Veteran population, as well as evaluate claims not currently supported.
2. Identify the common pharmacological targets of cannabinoids, endo/phytocannabinoids
3. Discuss common formulations utilized by patients (e.g., edibles, vapor, tincture, whole flower) and risk-benefits associated with their use
4. Understand the evolution of cannabinoids from recreational to medical use

The fact that the specific topic of “Madness and Creativity” is taught as a course in at least tw... more The fact that the specific topic of “Madness and Creativity” is taught as a course in at least two universities in the U.S., suggests that the “twin” themes, whether or not there is a causal link between them, are compelling subjects for discussion in a world where the sciences and the humanities are attempting to bridge fields of learning. The question as to whether “insane” people are more creative than their sane counterparts has been at the heart of theories and therapies since their inception, from Philippe Pinel, the father of modern psychiatry, to clinicians and thinkers like Hans Prinzhorn and R. D. Laing. Because critical perceptions of derangement or mental instability among artists have, chronologically speaking, been far in advance of medical science, the attempt at a rapprochement between the disciplines might enable a more fruitful discussion to evolve. This talk is offered on the way clinical space affects creativity and madness will address resistances among doctors to regard literature and the other arts, such as architecture, as sources of material on mental disorder which can carry the diagnostic weight of their own disciplines.

OBJECTIVES: At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to will be able to:
• Explain historical developments in asylum architecture that bear upon mental health care outcomes.
• Compare case studies in psychiatric space as rethought by patients suffering from severe mental illness.
• Discuss the importance of space for creativity.

SPEAKERS: Michael Uebel, PhD, LCSW

FORMAT: Didactic lecture enhanced by PowerPoint presentation

ABSTRACT: This presentation looks at how the space of the 19th- and 20th-century asylum shapes—and unshapes—the artistic creativity of institutionalized psychotic and neurasthenic patients. The architecture of the asylums was considered integral and essential to curing “madness,” and this presentation will examine how the built environment contributed to the structures and themes of two institutionalized patients, Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) and Martin Ramirez (1895-1963). While focusing on the work of Wölfli and Ramirez, other drawings and paintings from psychotic artists will be shown as points of comparison and to support a fuller look at the principal themes emerging: how the divisions between sanity/insanity, freedom/confinement, privacy/the public, and creativity/destruction are negotiated by patients, their treating clinicians, and the architects of the environment in which they lived.

References:
Spoerri, E. (Ed.) (1997). Adolf Wolfli: Draughtsman, writer, poet, composer. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Topp, L., Moran, J. E., & Andrews, J. (Eds.) (2007). Madness, architecture and the built environment: Psychiatric spaces in historical context. New York: Routledge.
Yanni, C. (2007). The Architecture of madness: Insane asylums in the United States. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

The conceptual ground upon which masochism rests, with attention to "moral masochism" and its soc... more The conceptual ground upon which masochism rests, with attention to "moral masochism" and its social formations, including male masochism.

This conference presentation showcases the change mechanisms of mindfulness-based approaches, as ... more This conference presentation showcases the change mechanisms of mindfulness-based approaches, as rooted in the empirically-based treatments Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR). With a focus on Veterans and their spouses/partners, the presenters will share their qualitative experience co-facilitating groups for Veteran couples, as built around selected mindfulness themes: non-permanence, the value of pausing, non-judgment, psychological flexibility, compassion for others and self-compassion, loving-kindness, mindful speech and mindful listening, and awareness of interdependence.

This talk, presented to the social work service of the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System,... more This talk, presented to the social work service of the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and delivered on 9/11/2015, maps the historical/cultural, moral/philosophical, and psychological terrain in which the phenomenon of suicide may be understood.

This presentation interrogates the linkages between the concepts religion/spirituality, psychosis... more This presentation interrogates the linkages between the concepts religion/spirituality, psychosis, and mystical experience. It suggests that the mystical holds certain keys to well-being, keys that are often set aside for complex reasons. It includes a discussion of entheogens.

Approaching the human condition of shame from a largely ethical point of view, this paper traces ... more Approaching the human condition of shame from a largely ethical point of view, this paper traces the problems involving the relationship between shame and the ego, and between shame and the Other. There can be no question that shame is located in the most private and secret regions of the subject, since the private arena resides at the very heart of a subject’s identity. Any critical or clinical approach to shame depends upon attending to its ethical nature, to, for example, the private vicissitudes of narcissism and masochism that appear to be intimately bound up with the shame experience. Our goal will be the exploration of moral and philosophical theories of shame underpinning our psychoanalytic appreciation and treatment of this most basic human experience, one that, as we shall see, has both positive and negative valences.
Objectives:
1. Summarize the conceptual ground upon which shame theory in psychoanalysis is built
2. Discuss the ethical frames of reference for understanding shame in relation to self and other.

This podcast features a lecture and discussion at IDP Austin with Ethan Nichtern and Dr. Michael ... more This podcast features a lecture and discussion at IDP Austin with Ethan Nichtern and Dr. Michael Uebel in which they discuss self-aggression and self-loathing as it relates to Buddhist practice and philosophy.

The talk will examine the humanistic currents of mindfulness as they are obfuscated by the discou... more The talk will examine the humanistic currents of mindfulness as they are obfuscated by the discourse and representational topoi of neurobiology. We will look at the seductions of neuroscientific explanations for the therapeutic—indeed, phenomenological—changes that mindfulness can produce. Our goal will be less to critique neuroscience than to draw attention to what precisely gets "sacrificed" when we do not carefully balance the humanistic with the neuroscientific. Both neuroscience and humanism have long histories, and we will interrogate these histories, from the angle of representation and language, for what they reveal about where mindfulness as a therapeutic practice currently resides in its relation to "art" and science.

This presentation will focus on chief characteristics of the biomedical theories of pain, the maj... more This presentation will focus on chief characteristics of the biomedical theories of pain, the major philosophical investigations of pain since antiquity, the chief treatment modalities to address pain, and relevant statistics concerning pain frequency and severity among different populations. Pain therapy is also situated in the context of efforts by the Department of Veterans Affairs to manage the pain of service men and women.

This talk explains the history of Buddhism as a science of the mind, exploring its relation to we... more This talk explains the history of Buddhism as a science of the mind, exploring its relation to western psychology generally, and specifically to the issue of chemical dependency. I discuss modalities of mindfulness-based practice, including MBSR, MBRP, MBCT, ACT, DBT, and Morita therapy.

His talk on Friday, Feb. 29th, 2008 at 6:00 p.m. in the Little Theater at the Toledo Museum of Ar... more His talk on Friday, Feb. 29th, 2008 at 6:00 p.m. in the Little Theater at the Toledo Museum of Art is entitled, "Masochism in America." The talk examines the production of moral and social consciousness in the post-war period with special attention to the two decades following WWII, an era in which the threshold of shame declined enough to allow the formation of two predominant modes of its expression, both of which share an interest in libidinalizing shame from complementary, if competing, angles. These modes are psychological theory, especially combat psychiatry, as it developed to explain the violence of WWII and to treat those affected by it, and the popular imagery of Nazi atrocity and sadomasochism, which attempted to work out the shame of the American response to the concentration camps. Fascination with fascism in the post-war period makes a spectacle out of interanimating desires and anxieties associated with gender (the rise of feminism, the dominant woman, and the fading of masculinity into mass man), racial identity (nationalism and the formation of a Jewish state in Israel), and consumerism (fashion and the suburban idyll).

Five-part series of films noirs by American, British, and Japanese directors. The series will cha... more Five-part series of films noirs by American, British, and Japanese directors. The series will chart the postwar attitudes toward treating clinicians and their patients, with an attention to the shifting boundaries between them. 5.0 CE/CME/CEU/Professional Development Credits (Ethics) if the series is attended in its entirety (or 1.0 hour per film).

Abstract of "This Sporting Life: Plato, Ortega y Gasset, and the Problem of Violence."

4-5 July 2019 - Goldsmiths, University of London Organiser: Dr Constantinos Repapis The impulse... more 4-5 July 2019 - Goldsmiths, University of London

Organiser: Dr Constantinos Repapis

The impulse for this workshop is to explore what is the evolving nature of art, and how this can relate and inform the way we understand economics. Gotthold Lessing in his seminal enlightenment work, Laocoön wrote about the strengths of the arts in representing different aspects of reality, and created the groundwork both for renewing the link between the perception of reality and mimetic representation, and for distinguishing the domain of the different arts in what they can faithfully capture. In contrast, August Schlegel's work, distinguished between ancient and the modern aesthetics, by both problematizing the very nature of representation in art, and as a consequence the distinct separation of fields of art. Schlegel is chiefly remembered today as a central figure of the German Romantic movement. He argued that modern art relates to an environment that arose within specific historical conditions, and, as a result, requires a completely new framework of understanding. Art cannot be seen to mimic nature, an aspiration of ancient art that was reaffirmed in the enlightenment and the classicist tradition. For Schlegel, art could not be a mere 'imitation' or 'representation' of nature; it is the product of a creative force and therefore of expression. Thus he writes in relation to poetry, "the poetry of the ancients was the poetry of enjoyment, and ours is that of desire" (Schlegel, 2015 [1845], 10). This workshop will examine the relation and dialogue that plastic arts and economics can have. Both terms are used widely, but definitions are elusive. If plastic arts essentially relate to the world as something that can be moulded, shaped and transformed, then it is nothing more than a mode of expression, a state of mind. Is, then, economics with all its devises and other trappings another plastic art? According to some of its practitioners, economics appears to be a rational-enlightenment inspired-machine to uncover social and economic reality. However, at the same time, economics, as a field, has debated on what are its links with reality. Economic theory has been described as representing, predicting, abstracting, imagining, mimicking and simplifying reality, in its effort to define how it relates to the social sphere. Furthermore, traditions that emanate from different epochs and strands within the discipline come up with a range of answers. At the same time, it may be more accurate to see economic theory as a romantic re-engineering of our society, its values and its processes. Therefore, does it explain and uncover natural, immutable and ever-present tendencies or does it form and transform our understanding of the social environment by appealing to modern aspirations? How does art mediate this difficult relation between reality, representation and transformation? These are the themes that this workshop will investigate.