Alienation and in-habitation : the educating journey in west and east

The concept of 'the whole world as a school' is deeply rooted in the European tradition. We find it in Nicholas of Cusa as well as in texts of Paracelsus, Alsted, and Comenius. And not much younger is the practice that embodies this concept like no other: the educating or formative journey, or – as it is known in German: die Bildungsreise

\u201cMeasuring up to Measure\u201d Dysmorphophobia as a Language Game

We look into the transformation of meanings in psychotherapy and suggest a clinical application for Wittgenstein\u2019s intuitions concerning the role of linguistic practices in generating significance. In post-modern theory, therapy does not necessarily change reality as much as it does our way of experiencing it by intervening in the linguistic-representational rules responsible for constructing the text which expresses the problem. Since \u201cstates of mind assume the truths and forms of the language devices that we use to represent them\u201d (Foucault, 1963, p. 57), therapy may be intended as a narrative path toward a new naming of one\u2019s reified experiences. The clinical problem we consider here, the pervasive feeling of inadequacy due to one\u2019s excessive height (dysmorphophobia), is an excellent example of \u201clanguage game\u201d by which a \u201cperspicuous representation\u201d (the \u201ctherapy\u201d proposed by Wittgenstein in the 1953) may bring out alternatives to linguisticallybuilt \u201ctraps\u201d, putting the blocked semiotic mechanism back into motion