Valeria Bizzari

In this paper, drawing on phenomenological and clinical literature, we will describe shame as a resonant emotion where the subjects involved are intertwined with one another thanks to two pre-reflective features of selfhood: embodiment and common sense. Furthermore, we will pay particular attention to the notion of intercorporeality, as it reflects the fact that our self, since birth, is essentially relational and embodied. In doing so, we will use the case of autism spectrum disorder as a paradigmatic situation and we will claim that the difficulties experienced by autistic subjects in feeling shame (and other complex emotions) are primarily due to the lack or the impairments in the domains of intercorporeality and common sense. In this view, shame reveals its complex nature and it is synonymous with a bodily and essentially relational emotion.

The topic of the second chapter seeks to develop precisely the main theme, namely that of the pedagogical trainer’s attitude and posture towards their trainees. Our aim, in the light of the tools that phenomenology has provided us with (as illustrated in Chap. 1), is to structure, on this basis, a genuine training of the trainer. Before entering into a relationship with the trainees, according to this approach it is necessary to establish a deep relationship with oneself and to prepare oneself, in the light of one’s ‘personal core’, for an authentic encounter with the other. This type of relationship, the subject of the entire chapter, requires first of all the choice to intentionally place oneself in a new way and decidedly against the current with respect to an educational tradition that, in spite of everything, is still predominant. In particular, we will refer to that type of ‘reverseeducation’ that has the characteristic of indoctrinating or educating to homologising behaviour. We will define it as a kind of ‘miseducation’ that ‘does not form’ or worse, ‘deforms’ the trainees. Such training, as will be said, is clearly an improper formation, and a radical change of prosepective is needed today that modifies, not only the school context and its didactic structures (the logistical structures, or the choice of didactic contents), but rather the trainers’ way of disposing themselves towards the trainee and, before that, in the fundamental role that the entire educational process plays for the progress of humanity. Here, phenomenology has great potential: through the phenomenological approach both objectives are possible. Thus for both empathic relationality and a revolution in traditional attitudes, phenomenology will be able to provide us with the appropriate ways and tools.

The paper critiques the prevalent “neurodiverse mind” paradigm for its disembodied approach, which focusses exclusively on cognitive and neural aspects of neurodivergence while neglecting the lived body and its socio-environmental context. Drawing from phenomenology, I therefore propose an alternative framework that emphasizes embodiment, intercorporeality, temporality, and shared social spaces. I explore how the notion of musicality, defined as rhythm, synchrony, and coordination, can illuminate the nuances of neurodivergent experiences, such as those in autism and ADHD. By shifting the focus from deficits to bodily and temporal attunement, I advocate for inclusive, dynamic, and context-sensitive interventions. The analysis underscores the importance of reconfiguring social and educational spaces to support neurodivergent lived experiences, fostering both self-awareness and intersubjective alignment.

The phenomenological perspective makes reflective and inclusive postures and practices available to educational professionals.In this direction, the chapter dwells on postures that it is hoped will become central in initial and continuing education contexts, which concern learning to name thought and work on the implicit, learning to design from a narrative framework that knows how to speak for “stories,” practicing looking, listening and negotiating as opportunities for knowledge and understanding, and recognizing the centrality of error and reflecting on it as a privileged opportunity for unveiling and relating. These postures can be stimulated by certain tools that, used within this framework, become indispensable mediators. In particular, tools such as descriptive observation, the logbook, the team report and the functioning profile are presented. In this perspective, documentations become dynamic repositories of memory but also backgrounds for reflection and planning.To solicit reflective practices and postures, it is necessary to build a working methodology that accommodates a background attitude that consciously declares every theoretical choice and seeks to contain all deterministic risks.The challenge is to build a professional background that knows how to renounce control and prediction, opening up to the wonder of the unseen and unexpected that every encounter brings from a strictly phenomenological perspective.Constructing a phenomenology-oriented methodology therefore means searching for the essence of the educational experience, describing it with “fidelity,” paying attention even to what seems superfluous, and constantly reflecting on the thought processes brought into play, documenting them with rigor and respect, resorting to different types of professional writing.

This chapter aims to investigate the issue of Special Educational Needs through a phenomenological approach with the intention of giving a different view of this theoretical construct and possible tools to design authentic educational practices of recognition and accompaniment.The issue of Special Educational Needs is, in fact, much debated in the pedagogical field today. The medical model often used to read and understand needs produces educational practices of simplification and labeling that do not allow the recognition of identity and personal dimensions. The most widespread methodological shift is the derivation of needs from pathology or disorders, thus generating stereotyped ideas and practices of intervention by categories, defined a priori. Educational needs, even before being connoted as “special”, deserve to be read not only as shortcomings, ignorance, “faults to be repaired”: in this perspective, they are important traces to be able to reveal the identity of those who meet in the educational relationship. Their specialty is given by the need to put in place contexts and actions that know how to be personalized, differentiated, plural so that everyone can find their own language of expression and realization. On the other hand, it also changes the perspective—the focus is no longer an intervention seeking to restore or fix the individual individual but the possibility to evolve contexts so that each can be recognized and valued. The differentiation of interventions is not about helping a select few but an ordinary way of proceeding in education for all.It is increasingly necessary, then, to look at special education as knowledge at the service of all, in a path of personal and political-institutional awareness that recognizes the uniqueness of each person and the importance of contexts that know how to be ready to welcome and allow each person to “bloom”.The paper reviews key paradigm shifts and presents a focus on the Italian case and responses to special education challenges in ordinary settings.

The aim of this chapter is to advocate for a shift from deficit-focused paradigms toward inclusive, embodied, and shared learning practices. Highlighting issues with ableism in current educational structures, I compare the Special Educational Needs (SEN) model, which often isolates through diagnostic labels, with the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which accommodates individual learning variability but lacks an embodied, communal approach. I therefore introduce phenomenological and somatic methodologies, including the DIRE model and practices such as the ENACT and music therapy, which focus on bodily awareness, emotional engagement, and shared intercorporeality. These approaches foster creativity, inclusivity, and mutual growth within classrooms, enabling neurodiverse and neurotypical students to co-create meaningful learning experiences.

The aim of the first chapter is to highlight the novelty of the phenomenological approach applied to the educational sphere. With its ‘amethodic’ structure countered by continuous flexibility and re-adjustment to the essential presentations of the learners, the phenomenological educational approach can well be called ‘revolutionary’. This is even more evident when one considers that educational training (Bildung) is to be conceived first and foremost as a transformation of the trainer’s attitude. But phenomenology does not aim to be a solid and immovable system. Nor does it aim to propose an alternative philosophical system to those that preceded it. Rather, phenomenology is an approach that aims to make the assumptions of the sciences scientific, based on a fundamental focus on the essential: on the primary structures of meaning. As a ‘science of phenomena’, i.e. a science that deals with what is shown, what is offered to consciousness, it takes its trainee from experience and has no ambition to become a static system consisting of unquestionable and definitive laws. The basic principle is the experience and acceptance of what is presented. This, for the educational sciences with a phenomenological orientation, is the starting point and also what distinguishes the phenomenological approach in pedagogy from all others. There are many aspects of phenomenology that have a strong impact in education. Stein herself, as a teacher of pedagogy, constantly applied the basic principles of phenomenology to her teaching. In order to give a face to the educator who chooses the phenomenological approach and to describe its educational possibilities and desirable outcomes, this first chapter attempts to enuclearise the fundamental aspects of this science of phenomena in order to bring out its profound productivity in the field of application.

This volume covers the application of phenomenology not only to psychology and psychiatry but precisely to pedagogy and the training of educators. It fills a gap in offering a unique resource which combines both theory and practice. Through an interdisciplinary means, this book provides new theories and applications of phenomenological pedagogy at all levels of education and with a unique focus on autism and special educational needs. It proposes a shift in the paradigm and treatment: from a neuro-cognitivist approach at the present core of most pedagogical theories to a phenomenological and enactivist perspective on subjectivity. It appeals to students, researchers, and practitioners working in phenomenology, psychology and education.

Challenging a philosophical background dominated by a strong Cartesian dualism, new phenomenological approaches, reinforced by empirical discoveries, are suggesting the existence of a corporeal sense of self that is necessary for the definition of our identity and for the understanding of others and the world. Drawing upon the contributions of classical phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Husserl, I will try to understand the relevance of this corporeal self in several and different areas, such as feminist theories and psychiatry, and I will also underline how we can observe the link between the self and the body in meditation. These remarks will lead to hypothesising therapies based on the strengthening of bodily awareness. In fact, adopting an “embodied approach” enables a full understanding of the complexity of human beings, complexity that emerges in several pathologies. Accordingly, it seems that medical as well as psychiatric approaches, too, should analyse the self as a whole, as an “embodied mind.”

Drawing on the work of classic phenomenologists like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, my paper aims to show that our subjectivity and our emotional life strictly depend upon two fundamental structures: embodiment and temporality. Thus, I account for embodiment and temporality as fundamental elements for raising self-awareness, intersubjective understanding, and world perception. I argue that musicality characterizes the subject in terms of rhythm, synchrony, and coordination, respectively. In the second part, I apply this account to a specific case study: autism spectrum disorder—the so called high-functioning autism in particular in which I describe the subject’s detachment from the intersubjective world caused by problems in bodily synchrony. This view affirms that autism spectrum condition is characterized by an “interbody-blindness”—a different way of attunement of the intercorporeal, temporal self.

ABSTRACT Who is the human being? A powerful, enhanceable biological organism, which techniques and artifacts can augment or a disembodied spirit damned to be influenced by its fragile body? In Defense of the Human Being accounts for both perspectives existing in the contemporary debate on the human and provides us with an answer: we should conceive of “ … the human person as a physical or embodied being, as a free, self- determining being, and ultimately as an essentially social being connected with others.” (p. 2). Temporality, embodiment, relationality, vulnerability: we need to take into account these features and embrace them, even though this means to accept that we cannot live forever, we cannot rely on machines only, but we have to fulfil our existence.

The purpose of this article is to develop a phenomenological understanding of schizophrenia and to affirm the existence of a corporeal self that is necessary for our “being-in-the-world” and for our common sense. This corporeal sense of self could be lost in specific psychiatric disorders. In fact, adopting an embodied approach and applying phenomenological concepts to neuroscientific, psychiatric and medical studies allows us to fully understand the complexity of the human being, a being completely rooted in his/her body and in the world. After briefly describing the role of Leib in the phenomenological tradition, I will compare the typical symptoms of schizophrenia and those of melancholic depression. Then, I will show that the symptoms that characterize schizophrenia, such as the weakness of the sense of self, the disruption of corporeal functions and the isolation of the subject from the world, could be synonymous with a disorder of an embodied self, something that psychiatrists like Thomas Fuchs and Giovanni Stanghellini have defined as a “disembodiment”. This progressive alienation of the self involves structural loss in the most important perceptual, cognitive and affective fields of human life: for this reason, a phenomenological analysis seems to be useful to the scientific approach in order to clarify how this tacit bodily structure of the self is lost and how our bodily self is central to our common understanding of reality.

In this paper, drawing on phenomenological and clinical literature, we will describe shame as a resonant emotion where the subjects involved are intertwined with one another thanks to two pre-reflective features of selfhood: embodiment and common sense. Furthermore, we will pay particular attention to the notion of intercorporeality, as it reflects the fact that our self, since birth, is essentially relational and embodied. In doing so, we will use the case of autism spectrum disorder as a paradigmatic situation and we will claim that the difficulties experienced by autistic subjects in feeling shame (and other complex emotions) are primarily due to the lack or the impairments in the domains of intercorporeality and common sense. In this view, shame reveals its complex nature and it is synonymous with a bodily and essentially relational emotion.

In this paper we aim to show that motor intentionality, as the underlying ground for social cognition, can be explained through the predictive engagement model. Sensorimotor processes seem to play central roles in social interaction, cognition and language. We question the phenomenological role of the body in social cognition and further investigate a causal neural explanation. We will adopt a different perspective by linking the role of the body and intercorporeality with recent findings in philosophy of neuroscience under the predictive brain hypothesis. In fact, the living body seems to entertain a dialogical and enactive relationship with the surrounding context, as well as with neural circuits actively responding to external stimuli. The body is thus configured as a living organism, and not as a mere biological substratum, offering to phenomenology and empirical sciences further confirmations of the possibility-and need-for a cooperation.

The mind-body relationship is a fundamental issue that has interested philosophers from very different schools of thought. Nowadays we can observe several positions being taken on this topic — my aim is to emphasize the phenomenological perspective on the mind-body relationship and, in particular, the role of Aristotelian thought in the contributions of philosophers such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper consists of three different parts: in the first part, I will briefly sketch out a phenomenological account of the living body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty; in the second part, I will try to find parallels between phenomenology and Aristotle’s philosophy. Finally, I will argue for an Aristotelian reading of schizophrenia, a pathology that seems to be caused by a disruption of the corporeal Self.