Kafka, paranoic doubles and the brain: hypnagogic vs. hyper-reflexive models of disrupted self in neuropsychiatric disorders and anomalous conscious states

Abstract

Kafka's writings are frequently interpreted as representing the historical period of modernism in which he was writing. Little attention has been paid, however, to the possibility that his writings may reflect neural mechanisms in the processing of self during hypnagogic (i.e., between waking and sleep) states. Kafka suffered from dream-like, hypnagogic hallucinations during a sleep-deprived state while writing. This paper discusses reasons (phenomenological and neurobiological) why the self projects an imaginary double (autoscopy) in its spontaneous hallucinations and how Kafka's writings help to elucidate the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. I further discuss how the proposed mechanisms may be relevant to understanding paranoid delusions in schizophrenia. Literature documents and records cognitive and neural processes of self with an intimacy that may be otherwise unavailable to neuroscience. To elucidate this approach, I contrast it with the apparently popularizing view that the symptoms of schizophrenia result from what has been called an operative (i.e., pre-reflective) hyper-reflexivity. The latter approach claims that pre-reflective self-awareness (diminished in schizophrenia) pervades all conscious experience (however, in a manner that remains unverifiable for both phenomenological and experimental methods). This contribution argues the opposite: the "self" informs our hypnagogic imagery precisely to the extent that we are not self-aware.

Kafka on gender, organization and technology: The role of ‘bureaucratic eros’ in administering change

“…Kafka and Weber fundamentally differ in their understanding of change in the modern world: while Weber understands change scientifically as rationalization, Kafka understands change aesthetically as metamorphosis. Rationalization makes change comprehensible; metamorphosis — to a large extent driven by ‘bureaucratic eros’ — makes change incomprehensible (Mishara, ). Waldo (, p. 5) notes that Kafka's aesthetic notion of metamorphosis that he uses to make a comedy of the world of work and organization manifests a certain ‘hostility of the man of letters towards the world of organization’ that is absent in Weber's scientific (and critical) notion of rationalization.…”

“…Kafka's vision of metamorphosis is an expression of what Paul Valéry (, p. 161) calls ‘the artist's antipathy for progress’. And indeed, Kafka is a Dionysian, not an Apollonian writer: change goes hand in hand with trance, orgies, drunkenness and descent to an underworld (Mishara, , pp. 24–25).…”

Respice...prospice: Philosophy, ethics and medical care- past, present, and future.

“…The papers appearing in PEHM illustrate this, and also seek to inform, educate, and at times, provoke debate and controversy. This year has seen a fine complement of papers: some re-examining longstanding questions and constructs of medicine [ 1 - 3 ]; others focusing upon issues that reveal the shifting exigencies and contingencies of healthcare in an evermore technololgic and globalized world culture [ 4 - 10 ], and still others that look to philosophy and history to portend the potential constructs, contexts and concerns that will establish the ethical landscape of medicine in years to come [ 11 - 14 ] Certain papers remain the focus of discourse - and dialectic - for some time as the issues they raise seethe anew in the crucible of professional, public and/or political conversation. To be sure, this has been the case with Prof. Thomas Papadimos' essay "Healthcare Access as a Right not a Privilege: A Construct of Western Thought" [ 15 ], that has stimulated ongoing deliberation and debate upon putative right to medical care, the relationship of ethics to policy, and the assertion of Aristotelian philosophical claims to healthcare-as-right.…”

PhenomenologyisBayesian in its application to delusions

“…The phenomenological psychiatrist Binswanger also described the self in schizophrenia as captive in the present moment in a “temporal shrinking” of past and future which resembles dreaming . In his fiction, Kafka depicts the reduced expectation in dreamlike‐hypnagogic experiences, where protagonists report “expecting” the very events that “surprise” them . This is not “bizarre‐as‐banal”, but the absence of banal altogether .…”