Under the Cobblestones: Politics and Possibilities of the Art Therapy Large Group.

This paper discusses the politics and possibilities of linking the personal and political with therapeutic and social transformation through a teaching method provided on the art therapy training at Goldsmiths, the art therapy large group (ATLG). Three key ideas of May 68 are related to the ATLG and their relevance to other psychotherapies and psychotherapy trainings is considered. These are: the importance of the ‘capitalist’ university as an essential terrain in the struggle for social change; the Atelier Populaire’s use of art in an anti capitalist critique of the commodification of art and artist in society; and the anti imperialist character of the May events. These ideas are related to the theoretical base of the ATLG in the large verbal group literature, performance art and to the wide international membership of the ATLG creating a forum for engaging with global issues. To illustrate these points, we give an example of the interface of the political and the impact of a real event, the university lecturers’ strike in 2007 and the learning that took place in relation to this through the ATLG. We conclude that through a critical engagement with the university within the global terrain of contemporary neo-liberalism, the ATLG provides a territory that can: integrates the political and therapeutic in arts/psychotherapy trainings; provides a critique and alternative to the commodification of art and artist; engages with issues of difference in the globalized market place. The ATLG prepares the artist/student/therapist/worker to critically engage in the personal and social transformation of the politics of art and psychotherapy provision in the public, private and voluntary sectors

Sense of agency, associative learning, and schizotypy

Despite the fact that the role of learning is recognised in empirical and theoretical work on sense of agency (SoA), the nature of this learning has, rather surprisingly, received little attention. In the present study we consider the contribution of associative mechanisms to SoA. SoA can be measured quantitatively as a temporal linkage between voluntary actions and their external effects. Using an outcome blocking procedure, it was shown that training action-outcome associations under conditions of increased surprise augmented this temporal linkage. Moreover, these effects of surprise were correlated with schizotypy scores, suggesting that individual differences in higher level experiences are related to associative learning and to its impact on SoA. These results are discussed in terms of models of SoA, and our understanding of disrupted SoA in certain disorders

Caring Culture: Art, Architecture and the Politics of Public Health

Caring Culture: Art, Architecture and the Politics of Public Health examines changing political uses of the concept of care in neoliberal democracies and asks how artists, architects and designers both contribute to and attempt to critique its social manifestations. The publication brings together case studies of artistic and design interventions within health and social care institutions, and broader political and philosophical essays and interviews relating to civic "wellbeing." Contributors include curators, artists, politicians, architects and healthcare professionals. Caring Culture is the first volume in the Actors, Agents and Attendants series of publications and symposia commissioned by SKOR in partnership with Andrea Phillips to investigate the role of cultural practice in the organization of the public domain

”Oooh...that’s a bit weird”: Attempting to rationalise the irrational and explain the unexplainable

In this paper I aim to explore how people make sense of their anomalous experiences in contemporary society. Using data collected from unstructured interviews with six women I consider the ways in which these experiences are conveyed, articulated and constructed

Intentional binding and higher order agency experience

Recent research has shown that human instrumental action is associated with systematic changes in time perception: The interval between a voluntary action and an outcome is perceived as shorter than the interval between a physically similar involuntary movement and an outcome. The study by, Ebert and Wegner (2010) suggests that this change in time perception is related to higher order agency experience. Notwithstanding certain issues arising from their study, which are discussed, we believe it offers validation of binding as a measure of sense of agency

Time, action and psychosis: using subjective time to investigate the effects of ketamine on sense of agency

Sense of agency refers to the experience of initiating and controlling actions in order to influence events in the outside world. A disturbed sense of agency is found in certain psychiatric and neurological disorders, most notably schizophrenia. Sense of agency is associated with a subjective compression of time: actions and their outcomes are perceived as bound together in time. This is known as ‘intentional binding’ and, in healthy adults, depends partly on advance prediction of action outcomes. Notably, this predictive contribution is disrupted in patients with schizophrenia. In the present study we aimed to characterise the psychotomimetic effect of ketamine, a drug model for psychosis, on the predictive contribution to intentional binding. It was shown that ketamine produced a disruption that closely resembled previous data from patients in the early, prodromal, stage of schizophrenic illness. These results are discussed in terms of established models of delusion formation in schizophrenia. The link between time and agency, more generally, is also considered

Visual control of action in step descent

Visual guidance of forwards, sideways, and upwards stepping has been investigated, but there is little knowledge about the visuomotor processes underlying stepping down actions. In this study we investigated the visual control of a single vertical step. We measured which aspects of the stepping down movement scaled with visual information about step height, and how this visual control varied with binocular versus monocular vision. Subjects stepped down a single step of variable and unpredictable height. Several kinematic measures were extracted including a new measure, “kneedrop”. This describes a transition in the movement of the lower leg, which occurs at a point proportional to step height. In a within-subjects design, measurements were made with either full vision, monocular vision, or no vision. Subjects scaled kneedrop relative to step height with vision, but this scaling was significantly impaired in monocular and no vision conditions. The study establishes a kinematic marker of visually controlled scaling in single-step locomotion which will allow further study of the visuomotor control processes involved in stepping down

On the Critique of Secular Ethics: An Essay with Flannery O'Connor and Hannah Arendt

Referring to Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem, the Southern US fiction writer Flannery O'Connor expressed the effect of the revelations about the horrors of Nazi Germany as "haunting". Taking this comment and her admiration of Arendt as a cue, this article rereads Flannery O'Connor's fictional depiction of secular characters. Usually lauded or critiqued for her entanglement in 'otherworldly' concerns, here these concerns become comprehensible as much as political intervention as motivated by 'religious' belief. O'Connor's frequently humorous use of her fiction as a retort to the secular world was inflected by her reading of Eric Voegelin's contemporary secularization thesis with its criticism of all 'isms'. In this context, O'Connor's admiration for Arendt becomes all the more intriguing (since Arendt's interpretations of the human condition clashed with Voegelin's), and allows one to stage a theoretical meeting in order to explore O'Connor's depiction of the secular in relation to a speculative exploration of how Arendt might have responded to the fiction of O'Connor. Such a staging is accomplished here via a reading of O'Connor's short story 'The Lame Shall Enter First' read against Arendt's concerns, principally those expressed in The Human Condition