ABSTRACT
Chapter 5, Body-mind thinking, argues that thinking is a type of expressive ‘pointing’ and that pointing needs a body in order to take place. Like the human mind, the body is the medium by which we represent ourselves and our unique manifestations as subjects. We think and feel with our bodies, especially with the body parts that constitute the brain and nervous system but also with other dimensions of the body manifesting itself as a somatic tonus. Our bodies are likewise affected by mental life and cultural ideas of what is thinkable and behaviorally possible. Most of the hostility toward people with mental and/or physical disabilities is the product not of rational thought but of deep cultural prejudices that are somatically marked in terms of vague uncomfortable feelings aroused by disabled bodies and facial features. These feelings are experienced implicitly and thus embodied beneath the level of explicit consciousness. By seeing the body as a kind of experiential tool, our physical body is revealed as intrinsically existential. Our body also functions as a surface toward the world that surrounds it. If the body is situated in an overregulated working place, such as a modern mental health care institution, or is governed by a disciplinary bureaucracy or by another person, the governmental structure will enter the body-mind structure and guide its thinking and forms of expressions to such an extent that it becomes alienated from itself and others.
