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The normal is pathological: semi-conscious brains, mindless habits, and the paradoxical science of mindfulness

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Abstract

The article investigates the recent attempts to create a medical technique and a scientific object of knowledge out of ‘mindfulness’, paying particular attention to the paradoxical implications of these attempts for biosocial theorizing. The author compares the scholarly and non-scholarly works of mindfulness therapists to understand how they introduce their practice to the medical/scientific community and their clients. This comparison reveals that ‘mindfulness’ is translated differently in these two realms, as a bio-neurological process in the former and an ethical practice in the latter. Mindfulness therapy is made possible by the linking together of these different translations, which results in a paradoxical relationship to modern medicine and biosocial disciplines. Whereas in most contemporary biosocial theories, ‘mindless’ (automated) processes are considered as being essential to the ‘normal’ functioning of both biologic and social life, in mindfulness therapy ‘mindlessness’ and socially induced habits are viewed as obstacles to one’s wellbeing. Thus, mindfulness therapy challenges some of the fundamental assumptions of biosocial sciences about ‘normality’, while seeking recognition in the world of those very sciences by adopting their methodology. Ultimately, this paradoxical attitude gives mindfulness therapy a capacity to both serve and resist the biopolitical interests underlying modern therapeutic culture.

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Notes

  1. There are, however, also theories of mindfulness that do not rely on Buddhist teachings (Langer 1989, 2014).

  2. There are however some important exceptions such as Smolka’s (2022) praxiographic research on clinical trials, Stanley and Kortelainen’s (2019) study of a training session and Stanley and Longden’s (2016) interactional analysis.

  3. The authors of the many scholarly publications cited here include researchers (particularly neuroscientists) who are not engaged in therapeutic work. The involvement of these researchers in mindfulness studies, however, does not mean that they are always supportive of the therapeutic uses of mindfulness (Komjathy 2018).

  4. Although in recent years various new media technologies have been put to use for self-modification purposes in everyday life contexts (Karakayali and Alpertan 2021), the heavy hardware of MRI machines forbids such a use.

  5. The number of studies investigating the therapeutic effects of mindfulness training/intervention is too vast to be cited here.

  6. These aims are also mentioned in articles that provide practical advice to other therapists (e.g., Kabat-Zinn 2003).

  7. This aesthetic orientation, of course, is not a unique invention of mindfulness therapy. It would not be difficult to show that in many ancient as well as contemporary spiritual traditions, mindfulness practices are embedded in an aesthetic aura. What is, however, unprecedented in mindfulness therapy is the assembling together of this aestheticization with, among other things, ‘neurologizing’ and medicalizing translations.

  8. The works covered in this study are published over a period of some thirty years. During this period, the ideas of some of the proponents of mindfulness therapy have gone through changes. No doubt, a detailed historiography of mindfulness therapy might reveal nuances missing from the analysis provided here. Braun’s (2017) and Kucinskas (2019) analyses of Kabat-Zinn’s texts, for example, implies that he became more concerned with ethical and social implications of mindfulness therapy over time. This, however, does not mean that ethical concerns were lacking from earlier books written by mindfulness therapists. As we can see from the above discussion, they were already there in the very first editions of both Kabat-Zinn’s and Langer’s books.

  9. While this invitation to escape society is quite unique to non-academic publications, there are some vaguely noticeable allusions to this idea in academic publications as well. The widespread use of monks in neuroscientific mindfulness research is noteworthy in this respect (for overviews, see: Khalsa, et al. 2008; Lutz, et al. 2008; Tang, et al. 2015). This implies that monks are viewed as ideal representatives of a mindful existence. But who are ‘monks’? They are not just subjects who happen to participate in mindfulness therapy; they are people who often detach themselves from society in pursuit of a mindful existence in all respects of their lives.

  10. A viewpoint that is, of course, also shared by mindfulness therapists (Kabat-Zinn 2005).

  11. The suggestion of one of the leading contributors to the field that mindfulness therapy can be highly useful for CEOs and people in the world of business (Langer 1989) lends support to these arguments.

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Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Egesu Sayar for help with the formatting and to Dr. Ozlen Konu for reading and commenting on an earlier version of the paper.

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    Nedim Karakayali

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Karakayali, N. The normal is pathological: semi-conscious brains, mindless habits, and the paradoxical science of mindfulness. BioSocieties 19, 59–83 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-022-00292-6

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