Author: Giovanni Stanghellini File Type: pdf To be human means to be in dialogue. Dialogue is a unitary concept used by the author to address, in a coherent way, three essential issues for clinical practice What is a human being?, What is mental pathology?, and What is care?. In this book Stanghellini argues that to be human means to be in dialogue with alterity, that mental pathology is the outcome of a crisis of ones dialogue with alterity, and that care is a method wherein dialogues take place whose aim is to re-enact interrupted dialogue with alterity within oneself and with the external world. This essay is an attempt to re-establish such a fragile dialogue of the soul with herself and with others. Such an attempt is based on two pillars a dialectic, person-centered understanding of mental disorders and values-based practice. The dialectic understanding of mental disorders acknowledges the vulnerability constitutive of human personhood. It assumes that the person is engaged in trying to cope, solve and make sense of new, disturbing, puzzling experiences stemming from her encounter with alterity. Values-based practice assumes that the forms of human life are inherently plural. Value-pluralism and recognition are the basis for care. This statement reflects the ideal of modus vivendi that aims to find terms in which different forms of life can coexist, and learn how to live with irreconcilable value conflicts, rather than striving for consensus or agreement. Care is a method wherein dialogues take place whose aim is to re-enact interrupted dialogue with alterity within oneself and with the external world. It includes practices that belong both to logic - e.g., the method for unfolding the Others form of life and to rescue its fundamental structure - and empathy - e.g., the readiness to offer oneself as a dialoguing person and the capacity to resonate with the Others experience and attuneregulate the emotional field. **

Author: James Peck File Type: mobi From a noted historian and foreign-policy analyst, a groundbreaking critique of the troubling symbiosis between Washington and the human rights movement The United States has long been hailed as a powerful force for global human rights. Now, drawing on thousands of documents from the CIA, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and development agencies, James Peck shows in blunt detail how Washington has shaped human rights into a potent ideological weapon for purposes having little to do with rightsand everything to do with furthering Americas global reach.Using the words of Washingtons leaders when they are speaking among themselves, Peck tracks the rise of human rights from its dismissal in the cold war years as fuzzy minded to its calculated adoption, after the Vietnam War, as a rationale for American foreign engagement. He considers such milestones as the fight for Soviet dissidents, Tiananmen Square, and todays war on terror, exposing in the process how the human rights movement has too often failed to challenge Washingtons strategies. A gripping and elegant work of analysis, Ideal Illusions argues that the movement must break free from Washington if it is to develop a truly uncompromising critique of power in all its forms. ReviewChomskyesque . . .A useful, thought-provoking challenge to the Western human rights consensus.Publishers WeeklyAn engaging and original look at Americas foreign policy, accessible and well researched.Library JournalA prodigiously researched, provocative critique.KirkusIdeal Illusions forces us to confront a great contradiction how the noble vision of human rights has been compromised and manipulated to serve the purposes of the national security state and divert attention from deep economic, political, and military pathologies. James Pecks work, based on a rigorous examination of an enormous collection of official and archival documents, is essential, sobering, and eye-opening.John Dower, author of Embracing Defeat Japan in the Wake of World War IIThis incisive and sophisticated analysis exposes the hidden history that once again reveals just how tied into U.S. national security concerns the evolution of human rights attitudes has been. Ideal Illusions is a well-documented, impressive account and a timely warning to seek the interests that lie behind appealing rhetoric.Noam Chomsky, author of Failed States The Abuse of Power and the Assault on DemocracyIn this searing book, James Peck strips away the comforting illusion that, give or take a mistake or two, U.S. foreign policy for the past thirty years or more has been shaped by a dedication to the principles of human rights. He demonstrates how, on the contrary, successive administrations have captured the language of human rights and bent it to Americas purpose. In clear and compelling prose, Peck calls on the human rights community to understand the dangers of its reliance on American powerand on American citizens to address the contradictions between a genuine dedication to the rights of humanity and prevailing definitions of U.S. national interests.Marilyn Young, author of The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 Ideal Illusions is both a devastating book and a deeply disturbing one. James Peck lays bare any lingering illusions that human rights concerns seriously influence U.S. policy. Yet he goes further showing how Washington has consciously and cynically manipulated the very concept of human rights to serve the interests of American power.Andrew J. Bacevich, author of Washington Rules Americas Path to Permanent WarAbout the AuthorJames Peck is the author of Washingtons China. Founder of the Culture and Civilization of China project at Yale University Press and the China International Publishing Group in Beijing, he has written for The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. He lives in New York City.