Centre for Qualitative Research : Event Report
Focus on Existential Therapy
Report on the annual Simon Silverman Phenomenology Symposium
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA, 4-6 March, 2004.
A series of four linked talks and discussions on self-deception, masochism, repetition, and the body's role in psychotherapy.
This account is by Professor Les Todres who participated as one of the four invited symposiasts.
The Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center is dedicated to the promotion of phenomenology and carries out this mission in various ways, one of which is the acquisition of a comprehensive collection of books and other materials relating to the discipline. It also incorporates a 'Live' Center, which sponsors an annual symposium. These conferences take place in the early part of March each year and bring together four scholars for two days to present papers and debate a specific issue in phenomenology.
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Simon Silverman Phenomenology Symposium Professors Les Todres pictured with colleagues at the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Symposium. |
This year's theme was Daseinsanalysis, a form of existential psychotherapy that arose out of the collaboration between Martin Heidegger and Medard Boss, a Swiss Psychiatrist, during the 1950's and 1960's. The other three symposiasts were Dr. Perikles Kastrinidis, a Swiss Psychiatrist who trained under Medard Boss and a past president of the Swiss Society for Daseinsanalysis, Dr. Erik Craig, a past president of the American Psychological Association's Division 32 for Humanistic Psychology and a main proponent of this approach in the USA, and Prof. Emmy van Deurzen, founder of the Society for Existential Analysis in Britain. The Duquesne Times advertised the symposium as follows: "These scholar-practitioners will recount the abiding value of Daseinsanalysis for the challenges confronting the practice of psychotherapy in the 21st century."
Erik Craig was first to speak and this inhabited the morning session. His presentation focused on the phenomenon of 'repetition', a topic that has received much attention in psychoanalysis ever since Freud's early article on the 'repetition compulsion'. In a nutshell, Freud was focusing on the negative aspects of how human beings often find themselves repeating experiential and behavioural patterns that are self-defeating, almost as if they were being informed by forces beyond their conscious awareness that were not rational. Erik showed how a Daseinsanalytic perspective wishes to also remember the positive dimensions of repetition, how this is grounded in our relation with nature, rhythm, and even our need to live towards the future with some degree of anticipation. He was thus able to articulate the essence of repetition as the 'renewal of ourselves in time', our need to connect to the familiar and live from there. The talk thus focused not only on the burdens of repetition but on its gifts as well, and this raised the possibility that, in this day and age, one may also have difficulties in welcoming repetition as a positive experience. This may affect our kinship with the natural order; an impatience with a slower rhythm that modern life has transcended. Ding-dong, sing, song, pitter-patter: the talk made me think about how it is good to hear the bell ringing on the hour outside my window.
Emmy van Deurzen took the afternoon session and presented a lively talk on the nature of self-deception and its implications for existential therapy. She drew on a number of existential philosophers to indicate how, as human beings, we are faced with existential boundaries and dilemmas that are given with human existence and not merely 'constructed' by us. She wondered whether 'truth' has become rather too optional in our postmodern society and gave examples of how our capacity for denying existential realities can reflect both a positive as well as a self-restrictive possibility. She thus spoke of the rhythm of 'finding' ourselves and 'losing' ourselves and the inevitability of this. Her talk made me think about how Heidegger, in his later years, had affinities with a Taoist vision in which a greater tolerance is encouraged for allowing 'hidden mysteries' that are not prematurely reduced to the 'known'. In wishing to honour both the fertility of what is hidden from us as well as its problematic power, Emmy characterised human consciousness as a play of 'light and dark'. By means of a sensitively portrayed case study, Emmy was able to demonstrate how she worked therapeutically with someone in order to facilitate the recovery from a self-defeating style of self-deception, yet at the same time, how she was respectful of rhythms of withdrawal, timing and productive mystery.
Perikles Kastrinidis opened the next day's session with a presentation on masochism from a Daseinsanalytic point of view. In understanding how psychopathology involves truncated attempts to achieve healthy existential possibilities, Daseinsanalysis is always awake to the positive energy that may be hidden in symptoms and actions.
As such, Perikles demonstrated how masochism is a modification of the fact that living humanly always involves some sacrifice. However, if due to circumstance or choice, we sacrifice or are sacrificed too much, we may easily embark on a trajectory in which we feel that to 'get good things' we need to pay a price in order to deserve or 'earn' them. In its extreme forms, such 'paying a price' can even turn into the seeking of self-punishment as a central focus. He thus revealed how masochism is not just about how sensations of pain are confused with sensations of pleasure, but more broadly, about the 'felt need to suffer' and even more deeply, the extent to which we can question what we deserve. Such human conscience can then also become a great source of repression. Perikles also provided some interesting case material which demonstrated one person's attempt to differentiate the 'things happening' that are inevitable and the 'things happening' over which one can have some degree of control. The presentation had a number of resonances with the first two presentations, particularly how our human capacity to question our own being is a double edged sword, a wonderful and maddening complication of human existence.
On the final afternoon, I gave a presentation which wished to honour the contributions of Medard Boss and Martin Heidegger in giving direction to existential therapy. I wanted to show how they articulated the 'soulful space' of being human, of how human beings are grounded in both great freedom and great vulnerability. By analysing Heidegger's understanding of these dimensions, I attempted to show how they are part of one another, and I expressed this 'intertwining' in the term 'freedom-wound'. This was characterised as an 'openness' that is existentially given to us and which can be refused by the ways we objectify ourselves and others. It is also characterised as the vulnerability of being relationally and perceptually open and 'unfinished'. This vulnerability can also be refused to varying degrees as we attempt 'close in' on ourselves and, in its extreme versions, follow the path of Narcissus who worshipped his own isolation. The talk further considered some of the implications of these understandings for giving direction to existentially-oriented therapy. More than this, however, I wished to share how I had increasingly found direction in a modification of Heidegger and Boss's thought as articulated by Eugene Gendlin in his philosophy of implicit entry. This focused on the ways the body knows and has access to relational directions that imply a 'life-forward' direction that is enlivening, complex and meaningful. The talk ended with how these understandings can inform the practice of experiential-existential psychotherapy.
Each talk was followed by responses from the other symposiasts as well as an opportunity for the speaker to reply before opening the discussion for audience participation. This format, which devoted an entire morning or afternoon to each paper, ensured lively and in-depth debates. Having experienced this format for the first time I can recommend it as one that quickly develops a sense of academic community and coherent focus, something that is often lacking in the smorgasbord of large and hurried conferences. The talks will be published in the next year by Duquesne University Press.
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