Existential phenomenology can be a particularly helpful philosophical method for understanding human experience. Starting from the perspective of the subject, it can clarify and problematize subtle everyday relations, enabling greater insight into difficult situations. Used by contemporary philosophers as a way of understanding the embodied experience of illness, this method has been helpful for understanding physical illness in the medical humanities, offering a fruitful way of reading the subjectivity of mental states. An Existential Phenomenology of Addiction examines how the experience of addiction engages both mental and physical phenomena within the existence of a particular human life, using the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas and Søren Kierkegaard. The book maps out an existential phenomenology of subject-in-relation. Both Lévinas and Kierkegaard use decidedly psychological and theological language to situate their philosophy, discussing the subject through concepts of love, otherness, responsibility and hope, while played out in a situation of anxiety, suffering, desire and revelation. Combining existential phenomenological discourse with contemporary addiction discourse, Westin argues that the concept of subject as 'addict', as found in the Twelve Steps Program and disease models of addiction, ought to be replaced with the free and relational identity of subject as 'addicted'.

Existential phenomenology can be a particularly helpful philosophical method for understanding human experience. Starting from the perspective of the subject, it can clarify and problematize subtle everyday relations, enabling greater insight into difficult situations. Used by contemporary philosophers as a way of understanding the embodied experience of illness, this method has been helpful for understanding physical illness in the medical humanities, offering a fruitful way of reading the subjectivity of mental states. An Existential Phenomenology of Addiction examines how the experience of addiction engages both mental and physical phenomena within the existence of a particular human life, using the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas and Søren Kierkegaard. The book maps out an existential phenomenology of subject-in-relation. Both Lévinas and Kierkegaard use decidedly psychological and theological language to situate their philosophy, discussing the subject through concepts of love, otherness, responsibility and hope, while played out in a situation of anxiety, suffering, desire and revelation. Combining existential phenomenological discourse with contemporary addiction discourse, Westin argues that the concept of subject as 'addict', as found in the Twelve Steps Program and disease models of addiction, ought to be replaced with the free and relational identity of subject as 'addicted'.

This book addresses an epidemic that has developed on a global scale, and, which under the heading of “addiction,” presents a new narrative about the travails of the human predicament. The book introduces phenomenological motifs, such as desire, embodiment, and temporality, to uncover the existential roots of addiction, and develops Martin Heidegger’s insights into technology to uncover the challenge of becoming a self within the impulsiveness and depersonalization of our digital age. By charting a new path of philosophical inquiry, the book allows a pervasive, cultural phenomenon, ordinarily reserved to psychology, to speak as a referendum about the danger which technology poses to us on a daily basis. In this regard, addiction ceases to be merely a clinical malady, and instead becomes a “signpost” to exposing a hidden danger posed by the assimilation of our culture within a technological framework.

Addiction is often thought about in terms of cause, be that brain chemistry, attachment patterns or cognitive schemas. But this does not allow an understanding of what addiction "is". It does not illuminate how addiction is lived. A phenomenology of addiction reveals that addiction is characterised by an intolerance of pain, a pursuit of pleasure, immediacy, technocratic solutions, alienation, ambiguity and is drenched in deception. These are its individual clinical manifestations, but this is also the way life, in this century, is lived. The addict is thus the ultimate 21st century subject, consuming without end, intolerant of emotion and unable to grasp their own limitations. Rather than embraced, these subjects act as a denied symptom, haunting late capitalism and exposing the vampire-like nature of our culture. As such, these subjects need to be treated not just as individuals who have "gone too far", but as victims of the political agenda shaping our lives. Thus the heart of the book is a description of addiction deepened by existential-phenomenological theory. This description is then used to understand the historical emergence of addiction, its socio-political manifestation and also the crucial issue of how to clinically treat the addict-subject.

"Existential phenomenology can be a particularly helpful philosophical method for understanding human experience. Starting from the perspective of the subject, it can clarify and problematize subtle everyday relations, enabling greater insight into difficult situations. Used by contemporary philosophers as a way of understanding the embodied experience of illness, this method has been helpful for understanding physical illness in the medical humanities, offering a fruitful way of reading the subjectivity of mental states. An Existential Phenomenology of Addiction examines how the experience of addiction engages both mental and physical phenomena within the existence of a particular human life, using the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas and Søren Kierkegaard. The book maps out an existential phenomenology of subject-in-relation. Both Lévinas and Kierkegaard use decidedly psychological and theological language to situate their philosophy, discussing the subject through concepts of love, otherness, responsibility and hope, while played out in a situation of anxiety, suffering, desire and revelation. Combining existential phenomenological discourse with contemporary addiction discourse, Westin argues that the concept of subject as 'addict', as found in the Twelve Steps Program and disease models of addiction, ought to be replaced with the free and relational identity of subject as 'addicted'."--

Why is it that even amidst affluence and power, our culture is plagued by a variety of addiction? In this pioneering book, the author searchers for answers by giving serious attention to our genetic legacy from our hunter-gatherer ancestors as well as to the unique ways we adapt to our environment through the practice of science addiction - including drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and gambling - suggesting that wilderness exploration, in the arts, myths, and ceremonies, can help us rediscover what it means to be human creatures. Bringing together the insights of philosophy, religion, cultural anthropology, behavioural biology, and the vast socio-medical literature on addiction. The author ingeniously explores the limits of our adaptive capacity and the costs of depleting the natural regenerative functions of the body.

The brief, practical texts in the Essentials of Qualitative Methods series introduce social science and psychology researchers to key approaches to qualitative methods, offering exciting opportunities to gather in-depth qualitative data and to develop rich and useful findings. In this book, Scott D. Churchill introduces readers to existential phenomenological research, an approach that seeks an in-depth, embodied understanding of subjective human existence that reflects a person's values, purposes, ideals, intentions, emotions, and relationships. This method helps researchers understand the lives and needs of others by helping identify and set aside theoretical and ideological prejudgments. About the Essentials of Qualitative Methods book series: Even for experienced researchers, selecting and correctly applying the right method can be challenging. In this groundbreaking series, leading experts in qualitative methods provide clear, crisp, and comprehensive descriptions of their approach, including its methodological integrity, and its benefits and limitations. Each book includes numerous examples to enable readers to quickly and thoroughly grasp how to leverage these valuable methods.

Feelings 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 world In 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 same time, a sense of reality and belonging. He then explores the role of altered feeling in psychiatric illness, showing how an account of existential feeling can help us to understand experiential changes that occur in a range of conditions, including depression, circumscribed delusions, depersonalisation and schizophrenia. The book also addresses the contribution made by existential feelings to religious experience and to philosophical thought.

Lyrically evoking the Española Valley and its residents through conversations, encounters, and recollections, The Pastoral Clinic is at once a devastating portrait of addiction, a rich ethnography of place, and an eloquent call for a new ethics of care. --amazon.com.

This volume centers on the exploration of the ways in which the canonical texts and thinkers of the phenomenological and existential tradition can be utilized to address contemporary, concrete philosophical issues. In particular, the included essays address the key facets of the work of Charles Guignon, and as such, honor and extend his thought and approach to philosophy. To this end, the four main sections of the volume deal with the question of authenticity, i.e. what it means to be an authentic person, the ways in which the phenomenological and existential traditions can impact the sciences, how best to understand the fact of human mortality, and, finally, the ways philosophical reflection can help address current questions of value. The volume is designed primarily to serve as a secondary resource for students and specialists interested in rediscovering the practical application of existential and phenomenological thought. The collection of scholarly essays, then, could be used in conjunction with some of the more recent scholarship concerning the practical value of philosophy. Along with contributing to previous scholarship, the essays in this proposed volume attempt to update and expand the scope of phenomenological and existential inquiry. ​