This collection of essays and interviews highlights the modern movement of ‘philosophical practice’. Taking their cue and call from Socrates’ summons to ‘know thyself’, contemporary philosophical counsellors and practitioners have returned to the ancient understanding of philosophy as consolation and contemplation, as a life directed to the loving search for wisdom and clarity. Socrates and the Stoics continued this tradition, seeing philosophy primarily as a practical way of living in alignment with oneself and the logos. Thus interpreted, philosophy is a path, teaches a method more than pronounces a thesis, and issues a living praxis devoted to daily spiritual exercises whose aim is nothing less than the transformation of the self – a metamorphosis of the personality. This conception of philosophy’s essence was lost, but was later retrieved by certain philosophers, such as Viktor Frankl and Ludwig Wittgenstein, in the twentieth-century, who have unleashed and uncovered philosophy’s original therapeutic impulse and intent. As such, this book will prove of inestimable value to philosophers, psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, counsellors, clients, and students of these disciplines.

In The Aesthetic Clinic, Fernanda Negrete brings together contemporary women writers and artists well known for their formal experimentation—Louise Bourgeois, Sophie Calle, Lygia Clark, Marguerite Duras, Roni Horn, and Clarice Lispector—to argue that the aesthetic experiences afforded by their work are underwritten by a tenacious and uniquely feminine ethics of desire. To elaborate this ethics, Negrete looks to notions of sublimation and feminine sexuality developed by Freud, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Nietzsche, and their reinvention with and after Jacques Lacan, including in the schizoanalysis of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. But she also highlights how psychoanalytic theory draws on writing and other creative practices to conceive of unconscious processes and the transformation sought through analysis. Thus, the "aesthetic clinic" of the book's title (a term Negrete adopts from Deleuze) is not an applied psychoanalysis or schizoanalysis. Rather, The Aesthetic Clinic privileges the call and constraints issued by each woman's individual work. Engaging an artwork here is less about retrieving a hidden meaning through interpretation than about receiving a precise transmission of sensation, a jouissance irreducible to meaning. Not only do art and literature serve an urgent clinical function in Negrete's reading but sublimation itself requires an embrace of femininity.

Foucault's classic study of the history of medicine.

Despite increasingly nuanced understandings of the neurobiology of addiction and a greater appreciation of the social and economic conditions that allow drug dependency to persist, there remain many unknowns regarding the individual experience of substance abuse and its treatment. In recent years, novel pharmaceutical therapies have given rise to both new hopes for recovery and renewed fears about drug diversion and abuse. In The Clinic and Elsewhere, Todd Meyers looks at the problems of meaning caused by drug dependency and appraises the changing terms of medical intervention today. By following a group of adolescents from the time they enter drug rehabilitation treatment through their reentry into the outside world-the clinic, their homes and neighborhoods, and other institutional settings-Meyers traces patterns of life that become mediated by pharmaceutical intervention. His focus is not on the drug economy but rather on the therapeutic economy, where new markets, transactions of care, and highly porous conceptions of success and failure come together to shape addiction and recovery. The book is at once a meditative work of anthropology, a demonstration of the theoretical and methodological limits of medical research, and a forceful intervention into the philosophy of therapeutics at the level of the individual. Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nfyy21fxp8&list=UUge4MONgLFncQ1w1C_BnHcw&index=12&feature=plc

This open access book is a unique resource for health professionals who are interested in understanding the philosophical foundations of their daily practice. It provides tools for untangling the motivations and rationality behind the way medicine and healthcare is studied, evaluated and practiced. In particular, it illustrates the impact that thinking about causation, complexity and evidence has on the clinical encounter. The book shows how medicine is grounded in philosophical assumptions that could at least be challenged. By engaging with ideas that have shaped the medical profession, clinicians are empowered to actively take part in setting the premises for their own practice and knowledge development. Written in an engaging and accessible style, with contributions from experienced clinicians, this book presents a new philosophical framework that takes causal complexity, individual variation and medical uniqueness as default expectations for health and illness.

Psychotherapist Eliot Rosenstock proposes a philosophical foundation for mental health treatment based on the writings and ideas of Slavoj Žižek. Žižek in the Clinic examines the state of the psychotherapy profession, capital motivated reductionist treatment modalities and a philosophy of liberation for the therapeutic subject. With the acceleration of technological advancement reminiscent of the machine gun’s implementation in World War One, the contemporary subject can be benefited by a working knowledge of their own psyche so as not to be pulled in the direction of anything that provides comfort and vague entertainment. Žižek's analysis and application of Lacanian theory is a necessary component in the psychoanalytic fight for our own minds and our will to shape our own future in the deterritorialized hellscape of modern technocapital. Civilization has never known discontents like the ones currently wrought. This is not to say, Civilization is more brutal than it has ever been. Civilization is however, at a certain tipping point regarding technological information flow and the expansion of capital: a future demanding illusion. The answer isn’t a collapse of all ideology which we use to function in our day to day lives, but a clinical Žižekian lens.

Discovering Spinoza's early modern psychology some 35 years into his own clinical practice, Ian Miller now gives shape to this connection through a close reading of Spinoza's key philosophical ideas. With a rigorous and expansive analysis of Spinoza's Ethics in particular, Miller explores how Spinozan thought simultaneously empowered the original conceptual direction of psychoanalytic thinking, and anticipated the field's contemporary theoretical dimensions. Miller offers a detailed overview of the philosopher's psychoanalytic reception from the early work of German-langauge psychoanalytic thinkers, such as Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé, forward into its Anglophone reception, influencing both mid-century humanistic American psychoanalysis as well as anticipating thinkers such as Bion and Winnicott. Covering key concepts in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, this book demonstrates how knowledge of Spinoza's philosophical work can help to both illulminate and improve modern psychoanalytic therapies.

This book provides a look at philosophical practice from the viewpoint of the practitioner or prospective practitioner. It answers the questions: What is philosophical practice? What are its aims and methods? How does philosophical counseling differ from psychological counseling and other forms of psychotherapy. How are philosophical practitioners educated and trained? How do philosophical practitioners relate to other professions? What are the politics of philosophical practice? How does one become a practitioner? What is APPA Certification? What are the prospects for philosophical practice in the USA and elsewhere?Handbook of Philosophical Practice provides an account of philosophy's current renaissance as a discipline of applied practice while critiquing the historical, social, and cultural forces which have contributed to its earlier descent into obscurity.

Many common health problems can be treated with simple remedies you can do at home. Even if the steps you take don't cure the problem, they can relieve symptoms and allow you to go about your daily life, or at least help you until you're able to see a doctor. Some remedies, such as changing your diet to deal with heartburn or adapting your home environment to cope with chronic pain, may seem like common sense. You may have questions about when to apply heat or cold to injuries, what helps relieve the itch of an insect bite, or whether certain herbs, vitamins or minerals are really effective against the common cold or insomnia. You'll find these answers and more in Mayo Clinic Book of Home Remedies. In situations involving your health or the health of your family, the same questions typically arise: What actions can I take that are immediate, safe and effective? When should I contact my doctor? What symptoms signal an emergency? Mayo Clinic Book of Home Remedies clearly defines these questions with regard to your health concerns and guides you to choose the appropriate and most effective response.

Unlock the secret to groundbreaking innovation with this game-changing guide Innovation means putting ideas to work. It is a discipline that can be learned, practiced, and leveraged to propel meaningful transformation and sustainable success, and it is proving to be the margin of difference in the largest concentrated sector of our economy: healthcare. This is where the stakes may be highest because the transcendent ideas that come from the patient bedside or laboratory bench don’t just translate to a bottom line, they improve and extend human life. Since its inception in 1921, Cleveland Clinic has been at the forefront of life-saving innovations in healthcare, pioneering a new model of care, advancing surgical techniques, and developing cutting-edge medical technologies. It has revolutionized the industry with a proven and tested working model for mission-driven, results-oriented success—one that is applicable to industries beyond healthcare. In Innovation the Cleveland Clinic Way, Thomas J. Graham, MD, describes the Clinic’s unique approach. Learn: • How to align the innovation strategy with your organization’s mission • How to identify your organization’s innovation assets and put them to work • How to foster collaboration within and across teams to spark creative ideation • The process of taking “napkin ideas” through successful commercialization • The most common innovation pitfalls and how to avoid and address them • Cleveland Clinic’s 10 commandments of innovation and the six degrees of innovation Packed with enterprising solutions and inspiring examples, this practical guide will equip any individual or institution seeking to affect purposeful transformation. Use these best practices to put ideas to work and turn yours into a high-innovation organization. Thomas J. Graham, MD, is the Chief Innovation Officer of Cleveland Clinic and Vice Chairman of Orthopedic Surgery. A prolific inventor with nearly 50 worldwide patents and a serial entrepreneur, he is a renowned orthopaedic surgeon whose practice is the premier destination for the care of the professional athlete’s hand and wrist. He is regularly recognized as one of “America’s Best Doctors.”