Ben Alderson-Day
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In Two Minds
in Presence
Chapter DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526173515.00018
Online Publication Date:
21 Mar 2023
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The author begins this chapter by describing a study to test an unusual observation – that reading, in some senses, could be considered almost like a hallucinatory experience, and thus that there are parallels between imagination and hallucination. The author proposes a second kind of presence – those that are not out there in the world but in here with us and feel more real for it. If we think of the self as being defined in relation to others, it should not be a surprise that in some cases we can almost activate that other in our lives. It may even be a direct parallel to the ways in which disrupting the bodily self can bring forth bodily presences. The author suggests that it is a mistake to think that presences come from nowhere. They are other, and yet they are us – echoed, reflected and transformed. They are what can come forth when times become strange or pressured, when we lose track of where we begin and where the world ends. Their origin gives presences that feeling of significance and familiarity, for they are that scaffold when all is otherwise lost. They have been beside us all this time.
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Presence

The strange science and true stories of the unseen other

eISBN:
9781526173515
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Cover Presence
Subjects:
Psychology
Page Count:
26
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

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Cover Presence

Presence

The strange science and true stories of the unseen other

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
21 Mar 2023
Subjects:
  1. Psychology
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This book follows a psychologist's quest to understand one of the most curious experiences known to humankind: the universal, disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. What does this feeling mean and where does it come from? When and why do presences emerge? And how can we begin to understand a phenomenon that can be transformative for those who experience it and yet almost impossible to put into words? The answers to these questions lie in this tour-de-force through contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience and philosophy. Presence follows Ben Alderson-Day's attempts to understand how this experience is possible. The journey takes us to meet explorers, mediums and robots, and step through real, imagined and virtual worlds. Presence is the story of whom we carry with us, at all times, as parts of ourselves.