Substance Related Disorders
Perspectives from psychopathology and existential psychotherapy
Contents
Introduction and aims 1
DSM IV 2
Purpose 2
Multi-Axial 2
Stakeholders 3
Substance Disorders 4
Definition 4
Source for Criterial evidence 4
Existentialism and the DSM 4
Axioms of DSM 4
Existentialsms refutation of DSM’s axioms 4
The logical argument 5
The phenomenologial argument 5
The argument from experience 5
The transcendental argument 5
The dictionary argument 5
Spinellis Worlding and Worldview 5
Existentialism and Substance Disorder 5
DSM’s disorders are not the clients 6
Sedimentation 6
Concluding Comments 6
Bibliography 6
Introduction and aims
In this paper my aim is to understand Substance Related Disorders as defined in DSM IV, DSM hereafter. This will be done firstly through understanding the DSM, it’s purpose, methods and how it is used. Then Substance Related Disorders will be explained from its DSM definition.
From there I will open up an existential perspective both with regard to the project of the DSM and then specifically looking at Substance Related Disorders.
In summary I will then look at what can be useful from both disciplines, that of the psychiatric view of the DSM and the existential view.
When I talk of existentialism, I am not talking about a unified body of thought, rather the disparate and competing views, who label themselves, or have been labelled under this banner.
DSM IV
Purpose
The DSM is the American Associations Diagnostics and Statistical Manual written by the American Psychiatric association. It provides taxonomy of psychopathology that is a set of groupings of psychic phenomena and behaviours that have been used to create a diagnostic framework for psychiatry.
“The utility and credibility of DSM IV require that it focus on its clinical, research and educational purposes and be supported by an extensive empirical foundation. Our highest priority has been to provide a helpful guide to clinical practice. We hoped to make the DSM IV practical and useful...by striving for explicit statements of the constructs embodied in criteria” DSM IV (2000 Introduction xxiii)
To clarify this statement the key aims are to provide taxonomy for diagnostic criteria for clinicians in the mental health arena, and to have an empirical, i.e. repeatable causal evidence to enable the diagnosis of a patient who presents a disorder.
Multi-Axial
The DSM doesn’t use merely atomic classification but rather uses axes to diagnose disorder. Thus they use a multiaxial assessment. There are 5 Axes, that split into three groups; the first that classify disorders and the second that isolates problems the person is having, and the third which focuses on the client’s ability to function as defined by the therapist.
Group 1
Axis 1: Clinical Disorders (e.g. Delirium, Dementia and Amnesia)
Axis 2: Personality Disorders (e.g. Obsessive Compulsive Disorders)
Group 2
Axis 3: General Medical Conditions (e.g. Post Natal Problems)
Axis IV: Psychosocial and Environmental Problems (e.g. Housing Problems)
Group 3
Axis 5: Global Assessment of Functioning (what is the overall level of functioning and its prognosis)
Therefore diagnosis would see a person’s behaviour plotted on the axes against the following criteria, for defining the symptoms in the first group:
1. Mild
2. Moderate
3. Severe
4. In Partial Remission (They used to have the disorder, but now only have a few symptoms)
5. In Full Remission(They used to have the disorder, don’t anymore, but it is clinically useful to remember they did)
A couple of points should be noted about the application of the DSM diagnostic criteria:
1. “There is no assumption that all individuals described as having the same mental disorder are alike in all important ways” DSM[Introduction xxxi]
2. “DSM IV often includes polythetic criteria sets, in which the individual need only present with a subset of a longer list” DSM[Introduction xxxii]
In other words the diagnosis only provides a heuristic tool and does not define the individual’s behaviour and that there need be no absolute match between all criteria, and it is down to the interpretation of the diagnostician which are to be significant.
Stakeholders
The DSM then gives common concepts and language for all those who are involved in the discourse of mental disorder. Here I use discourse in Foucault’s ideology in the sense of the combination of concepts, language, action and institution, the manifestation of power.
The people involved in this discourse are wide ranging. Directly the psychotherapist and their client will be involved in it. The therapist who will use the DSM to diagnose the client’s malady. The client, who will be led to this understanding of their condition. Thus the psychotherapist might say you have a bi-polar condition, and then explain this to the client. The advantages to both sides can be that they provide a degree of certainty. The client, who may be distressed, feeling they are going mad and going to implode, now has some structure to understand their existence. Likewise the therapist faced with the complexity of human behaviour, can provide help that is legitimised via the empirical evidence that supports his diagnosis. The other significant people to mention are:
1. The legal profession
a. Who whilst use experts to define diminished responsibilities, will in turn refer to the DSM to provide empirical support
b. To substantiate claims for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, e.g. Vietnam Veterans
2. The gatekeepers at mental institutions, who will admit, or section people based on diagnosis from the DSM
3. Medical companies, who will target the symptoms of these disorders to produce products
4. Governments, who can monitor the levels of mental health in a country and act accordingly
Substance Disorders
Definition
Now we have an idea of the workings of the DSM let’s see it in action when used in Substance Disorders.
“Substance Dependence is a cluster of cognitive, behavioural, and physiological symptoms indicating that the individual continues use of the substance despite significant substance related problems. There is a pattern of repeated self administration that can result in tolerance, withdrawal, and compulsive drug taking behaviour” DSM [P192]
Thus DSM defines the behaviour of someone who has a Substance Disorder. It then specifies the criteria for the key elements of:
1. Dependence
2. Abuse
3. Intoxication
4. Withdrawal
The other criteria they use is whether there is or isn’t physiological dependence, which means evidence of tolerance and withdrawal.
Source for Criterial evidence
The criteria that are used are indicated by the client and a constellation of people around them, from diagnostician, to family, friends, work colleagues and members of the social and legal professions who will testify to the clients mood and behaviour, which if maladaptive will mean they are classifiable under the above criteria. The other aspect that is included is Culture, age and gender features, which will help define the disorder by classifying what normal behaviour is.
Existentialism and the DSM
Axioms of DSM
The DSM has a wide ranging theoretical underpinning. The major one is that of subject and object. This can be seen by their use of diagnosis of the client. The client has a disorder which the therapist, through use of interpretative skill and knowledge diagnoses. Thus the client and therapist are separate and there is a distinct client (the subject) that has the disorder the object. The extension of this, albeit implicit, is that subjects live in a box called world where they can bump into other subjects or objects.
Existentialism's refutation of DSM’s axioms
Existentialists see this in another way, that of inter-relation and interpretation.
“We ... understand ... human beings through their inter-relational context” Spinelli (2007, P12)
This argument can be supported in the following ways using logic, experience, Immanuel Kant’s work and a dictionary.
The logical argument
Subject, Object and World concepts and relations must logically be a theoretical standpoint as you would need to stand outside them (take Gods eye view) to be able to define them.
The phenomenological argument
Perception or experience are always of something, you never experience the subject object split, but rather there is experience, which whilst can change I am fully immersed in.
The argument from experience
As people interact with their world thus there being changes, as new possibilities are shown and old possibilities removed. Indeed the past provides the possibilities that provide the actions in the present which are involved in our futural projects. These changes happen through interactions within a person’s world.
The transcendental argument
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant brings us the following. All experience is understood in terms of space and time, therefore space and time are conditions of experience and not facts for experience. Therefore all you have is interpretation as space and time do not exist in themselves. As space and time do not exist therefore all we are doing is interpreting the noumena with our categories.
The dictionary argument
In a dictionary all you is circular explanation. To understand dog, it points you to the entry on animal, on animal it points you to other definitions and so on, and thus it is circular. To say well I can point at a dog, is to presuppose the meaning you are trying to prove. Therefore all there is, is an interrelation between interpretations of our experience, there is no fact to work from.
Spinelli's Worlding and Worldview
On the basis that all we have is interpretation and that this only makes sense when taken as a whole. This is show within the ideas Worlding and Worldview from Spinelli. Worlding being the experience of Being and Worldview, being how we essentialise it, or interpret: “Worlding is the term that I am employing to express the process-like experiencing of the ontological conditions of human existence” Spinelli (2007 P31)“Worldview expresses the selective focus or bias imposed upon the ontic experience of Worlding” Spinelli (2007 P32).
So using the above thoughts the DSM is entirely misguided. It takes a disorder as being a discrete if complex aspect of the human that is a disorder that should be removed. The danger of this approach, is without fully understanding the behaviour, and how it fits in with the overall Worldview of a person, you may remove a thorn, to expose a greater and more gaping wound.
Existentialism and Substance Disorder
As discussed in the preceding section, an existential approach to substance disorder, would seek to understand how a person’s problems and conflicts fit into their overall Worldview. In doing so they would understand what it means to them, it would highlight their values in the world, and then if the client sees that their behaviour is not what they want then change would happen.
DSM’s disorders are not the clients
This is in distinction to the work of the DSM and psychopathology. Part of the defining criteria that the DSM uses for Substance Abuse is the testimony of those around the client. The therapist as part of this constellation is also the one who pronounces the disorder on the basis of diagnosis, which is then given to the client. In this way the client doesn’t own their behaviour, rather they are given it as outside things, such they might say “I have an alcohol dependence” or “I am an addict”. The changes that come from this depend on their levels of introjections, as a Kleinian might think, their willingness to accept and identify with the truths of others.
Sedimentation
One concept that an existentialist may use with Substance Dependence would be the notion of Sedimentation that comes up in Spinelli’s thought. “Sedimentation refers to fixed patterns of rigid dispositional stances maintained by the Worldview. For example: ‘I can’t tolerate making mistakes’” Spinelli (2007 P 35). This sedimentation which is an essential aspect of a person’s Worldview may be more or less articulated, or present to the consciousness of a person. In issues of substance dependence you have some very strongly sedimented positions: I must drink, I can’t survive without a drink. The use of imperatives in an “addicts” vocabulary is large. Indeed whilst I presuppose an “addicts” world, there are more than likely some other sedimented positions underlying these, such as No one will love me, and that the use of the substance, is there to manage the pain generated by how the world is, the Worlding and how it is for you, the Worldview.
Concluding Comments
A pleasing story is generally one with a denouement, where thesis and anti-thesis have been synthesised. Here I struggle as the worlds of psychopathology and existentialism diverge so strongly in their underlying theory and practice. The world of psychopathology however is more widely accepted and engaged with by professionals and the general populace than is existentialism. For someone practising existentially they may well find themselves with a client who speaks from the psychopathological world, I am bulimic, or I am bi polar. If this is something the client wants to work with then what is important is to find out what they mean by these words, not what the DSM states, as you are working with their world, and not the world of the DSM.
Bibliography
1. DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th Edition (2000)
2. Spinelli(2007) Practising Existential Psychotherapy, The Relational World
3. Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason Translated by Norman Kemp Smith (1929)
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Winnicott:Hate in the Countertransference
Winnicott:
Hate in the Countertransference
Contents
Introduction 1
What then is countertransference for Winnicott? 1
What may the therapist feel working with the client? 1
Hate from the therapist 2
The environment of therapy 2
Why the client needs hate. 3
Winnicott and Existentialism 3
Introduction
Winnicott's paper hate in the countertransferance looks at the position of hate in therapy. He sees therapy as the repetition of the maternal relation and as an attempt to correct any of the inadequacies of the initial mother infant relationship.
What then is countertransference for Winnicott?
1. Abnormal countertransference
a. The therapist identifies with what the client says and what is identified with is repressed by the therapist and they react to the client in abnormal or unfamiliar ways
2. Objective countertransference
a. Where the client replays a previous relationship with the therapist and the therapist has a very conscious and considered feeling, which can be hate or love
What may the therapist feel working with the client?
For Winnicott, the patient understands the therapist in terms of their own way of being in the world. Thus the psychotic whose early environment didn’t afford the ability for integration, realization and personalisation and leads to a psychotic relationship with the world, i.e. delusional and erratic will understand the therapist in these terms. To explain these three terms. Integration is the process of pulling together the soma and the psyche both individually and together. Realisation is orientating oneself within space and time. Personalisation is the process of understanding oneself in ones particularity, as rooted in this mind and this body and distinct from you. Thus the psychotic can have coincident love hate states of feeling, this is to say I believe that there is no integration of feelings in the patients world merely coincidence. Thus the therapist who currently shows love could also show hate, in reciprocation the client can show love as much as hate to the therapist without rational or integration between the two.
Hate from the therapist
There are then three aspects of how the therapist may feel hate. Firstly through transference from the client, secondly through the clients behaviour triggering repressed hateful feelings, i.e. abnormal countertransference and thirdly through the clients actual behaviour i.e. objective countertransference.
There are ways that the therapist can assuage these feelings of hate. They can see it as a necessary evil of therapy that can be put up with for the higher cause which they are involved in, the pay, the training or helping people.
However Winnicott sees hate as a sometime necessary reaction that should not be shied away from but should when the client is ready be handed back to them in a manageable form. For Winnicott therapy is the replaying of the inadequate prior mother infant relationship. What the mother / therapist needs to do has two central aspects. Firstly they need to provide a continual stable environment such that all aspects of the child/client can be acknowledge and engaged with such that the child/client can integrate these aspects into a unified whole. Secondly any aspect of the external or internal world that is acknowledged or handed back to the child/client must be done in manageable doses. The primitive state of the child/client is unintegrated where there is no connection between emotional or physical events the child that cries has no relation to the child who laughs. The mother who feeds has no relation to the mother who is absent. Gradually integration of self happens, gradually the distinction of the self to world happens and gradually the awareness of the other happens as does the relation between these components. If the difference between the current development of these structure is too small to cope with a piece handed back to the child/client then disintegration can happen. The unintegrated state is for Winnicott, the origins of man; we also carry it with us and is the font of creativity within our lives. For Winnicott we are poor if we are only sane The unintegrated state can only be managed or accessed in later life if there is a stable enough holding environment to support it. The disintegrated state is a terrifying plunge from integration to disintegration where the integrated state collapses and the holding environment doesn’t support the unintegrated state.
Thus the therapist needs to provide both the acknowledgement of all of the client and to only acknowledge those bits that the client can safely integrate. Thus the client can provide feelings of hate in the therapist. If the client’s relationship with the client or themselves is not significantly integrated or stable to withstand it, then the therapist must withhold this feeling. As the clients relationships with self and therapist strengthen the this hate can either be acknowledged directly or drip fed until the structure is in place to support this. There is something in all of us that we hate, for Winnicott a client needs objective love and this requires all parts of the client to be acknowledged and this includes the hated part, thus it can be necessary for the therapist to hate the client and for the client to be able to access this hate to know the objective love.
The environment of therapy
The analyst must be prepared to bear strain without expecting the patient to know anything about what he is doing, perhaps even for a long time. For psychotics and people who have not had an adequate early maternal relationship the environment that the therapist provides that does more work than the interpretation. For the neurotic the couch and warmth and comfort may be symbolic of the mothers love for the psychotic it would actually be it.
Winnicott sees that people can test their environment and seeks proof that he can be hated to get proof that he is truly loved. This is quite an outlandish thought, to think of the impossibly behaved teenager as wanting to be hated such that he can prove the love of his parents.
Winnicott sees the mother as hating the baby before the baby hates the mother. Winnicott calls part of the initial relationship between infant ruthless love where the infant cares for nothing but his own desires and will attack his environment in a wild rage including his mother if he doesn’t get his way. Winnicott uses the term ruthless love to distinguish a hate which doesn’t intend to hurt, as there is no distinction at this stage of self and other.
Thus in the therapeutic relationship the therapist must be open to the ruthless love of the client which may hate him, hurt him use him for his needs then dispense with him when his needs are done. In spite of all this the therapist as with the mother must be able to tolerate hating her baby/client without doing anything about it, in the non expectant hope that reward will come.
Without hating the client/child’s hate they will never integrate this, will never be able to tolerate their own hate. Hate is also seen as a crude way of loving
Why the client needs hate.
Winnicott’s development process sees hate as a central part. An infant initially exists as omnipotent if he has a good enough mother, where there is the sense that when he wants he gets, and contra wise when he doesn’t want he doesn’t get. Should the mother get this wrong badly enough then the child can create a false self, a compliant self as they find their own desires too traumatising. In the omnipotent stage the infant is not aware of their mother as a separate being and engages with their mother with ruthless love, in the way they would engage with their own desires. As the infant develops and the world is handed by the mother piece by piece, there is integration of the child’s soma and psyche and indeed in each aspect so the infant realises that he is the same infant who cries as the one who smiles. At each stage the infant needs to feel safe that they can move onto the next stage and a key element of this is when they realise that they are the same infant who loves and hates the mother. The mother makes this real in the infant by hating him. Klein talks about this as the depressive position whereas Winnicott talks about the position of concern.
This position of realising that you hate the person that you also love brings the idea of concern and care. When you realise you hate the person you love, you then start to think about caring for them, and developing feelings of guilt to guide this. Infants, who have been deficient in this stage, show no care of concern for those around them as they were not appropriately hated, and never integrated their love and their hate.
Winnicott and Existentialism
Winnicott is interesting sure, putting the relationship back into the arena of psychopathology and is an interesting development from Freud who had the psyche only as the arena of psychopathology. Whilst Winnicott adds something to the psyche’s development process by adding the mother in, the area he misses is what happens to the adult.
The well adjust child who had a good enough mother still has to face death, uncertainty and groundlessness. So as an aid to good parenting with Winnicott you can’t go wrong. As an aid to reparenting with Winnicott you can’t go wrong. However there are many areas of pain people suffer that are not to do with the outcome of their parenting.
Hate in the Countertransference
Contents
Introduction 1
What then is countertransference for Winnicott? 1
What may the therapist feel working with the client? 1
Hate from the therapist 2
The environment of therapy 2
Why the client needs hate. 3
Winnicott and Existentialism 3
Introduction
Winnicott's paper hate in the countertransferance looks at the position of hate in therapy. He sees therapy as the repetition of the maternal relation and as an attempt to correct any of the inadequacies of the initial mother infant relationship.
What then is countertransference for Winnicott?
1. Abnormal countertransference
a. The therapist identifies with what the client says and what is identified with is repressed by the therapist and they react to the client in abnormal or unfamiliar ways
2. Objective countertransference
a. Where the client replays a previous relationship with the therapist and the therapist has a very conscious and considered feeling, which can be hate or love
What may the therapist feel working with the client?
For Winnicott, the patient understands the therapist in terms of their own way of being in the world. Thus the psychotic whose early environment didn’t afford the ability for integration, realization and personalisation and leads to a psychotic relationship with the world, i.e. delusional and erratic will understand the therapist in these terms. To explain these three terms. Integration is the process of pulling together the soma and the psyche both individually and together. Realisation is orientating oneself within space and time. Personalisation is the process of understanding oneself in ones particularity, as rooted in this mind and this body and distinct from you. Thus the psychotic can have coincident love hate states of feeling, this is to say I believe that there is no integration of feelings in the patients world merely coincidence. Thus the therapist who currently shows love could also show hate, in reciprocation the client can show love as much as hate to the therapist without rational or integration between the two.
Hate from the therapist
There are then three aspects of how the therapist may feel hate. Firstly through transference from the client, secondly through the clients behaviour triggering repressed hateful feelings, i.e. abnormal countertransference and thirdly through the clients actual behaviour i.e. objective countertransference.
There are ways that the therapist can assuage these feelings of hate. They can see it as a necessary evil of therapy that can be put up with for the higher cause which they are involved in, the pay, the training or helping people.
However Winnicott sees hate as a sometime necessary reaction that should not be shied away from but should when the client is ready be handed back to them in a manageable form. For Winnicott therapy is the replaying of the inadequate prior mother infant relationship. What the mother / therapist needs to do has two central aspects. Firstly they need to provide a continual stable environment such that all aspects of the child/client can be acknowledge and engaged with such that the child/client can integrate these aspects into a unified whole. Secondly any aspect of the external or internal world that is acknowledged or handed back to the child/client must be done in manageable doses. The primitive state of the child/client is unintegrated where there is no connection between emotional or physical events the child that cries has no relation to the child who laughs. The mother who feeds has no relation to the mother who is absent. Gradually integration of self happens, gradually the distinction of the self to world happens and gradually the awareness of the other happens as does the relation between these components. If the difference between the current development of these structure is too small to cope with a piece handed back to the child/client then disintegration can happen. The unintegrated state is for Winnicott, the origins of man; we also carry it with us and is the font of creativity within our lives. For Winnicott we are poor if we are only sane The unintegrated state can only be managed or accessed in later life if there is a stable enough holding environment to support it. The disintegrated state is a terrifying plunge from integration to disintegration where the integrated state collapses and the holding environment doesn’t support the unintegrated state.
Thus the therapist needs to provide both the acknowledgement of all of the client and to only acknowledge those bits that the client can safely integrate. Thus the client can provide feelings of hate in the therapist. If the client’s relationship with the client or themselves is not significantly integrated or stable to withstand it, then the therapist must withhold this feeling. As the clients relationships with self and therapist strengthen the this hate can either be acknowledged directly or drip fed until the structure is in place to support this. There is something in all of us that we hate, for Winnicott a client needs objective love and this requires all parts of the client to be acknowledged and this includes the hated part, thus it can be necessary for the therapist to hate the client and for the client to be able to access this hate to know the objective love.
The environment of therapy
The analyst must be prepared to bear strain without expecting the patient to know anything about what he is doing, perhaps even for a long time. For psychotics and people who have not had an adequate early maternal relationship the environment that the therapist provides that does more work than the interpretation. For the neurotic the couch and warmth and comfort may be symbolic of the mothers love for the psychotic it would actually be it.
Winnicott sees that people can test their environment and seeks proof that he can be hated to get proof that he is truly loved. This is quite an outlandish thought, to think of the impossibly behaved teenager as wanting to be hated such that he can prove the love of his parents.
Winnicott sees the mother as hating the baby before the baby hates the mother. Winnicott calls part of the initial relationship between infant ruthless love where the infant cares for nothing but his own desires and will attack his environment in a wild rage including his mother if he doesn’t get his way. Winnicott uses the term ruthless love to distinguish a hate which doesn’t intend to hurt, as there is no distinction at this stage of self and other.
Thus in the therapeutic relationship the therapist must be open to the ruthless love of the client which may hate him, hurt him use him for his needs then dispense with him when his needs are done. In spite of all this the therapist as with the mother must be able to tolerate hating her baby/client without doing anything about it, in the non expectant hope that reward will come.
Without hating the client/child’s hate they will never integrate this, will never be able to tolerate their own hate. Hate is also seen as a crude way of loving
Why the client needs hate.
Winnicott’s development process sees hate as a central part. An infant initially exists as omnipotent if he has a good enough mother, where there is the sense that when he wants he gets, and contra wise when he doesn’t want he doesn’t get. Should the mother get this wrong badly enough then the child can create a false self, a compliant self as they find their own desires too traumatising. In the omnipotent stage the infant is not aware of their mother as a separate being and engages with their mother with ruthless love, in the way they would engage with their own desires. As the infant develops and the world is handed by the mother piece by piece, there is integration of the child’s soma and psyche and indeed in each aspect so the infant realises that he is the same infant who cries as the one who smiles. At each stage the infant needs to feel safe that they can move onto the next stage and a key element of this is when they realise that they are the same infant who loves and hates the mother. The mother makes this real in the infant by hating him. Klein talks about this as the depressive position whereas Winnicott talks about the position of concern.
This position of realising that you hate the person that you also love brings the idea of concern and care. When you realise you hate the person you love, you then start to think about caring for them, and developing feelings of guilt to guide this. Infants, who have been deficient in this stage, show no care of concern for those around them as they were not appropriately hated, and never integrated their love and their hate.
Winnicott and Existentialism
Winnicott is interesting sure, putting the relationship back into the arena of psychopathology and is an interesting development from Freud who had the psyche only as the arena of psychopathology. Whilst Winnicott adds something to the psyche’s development process by adding the mother in, the area he misses is what happens to the adult.
The well adjust child who had a good enough mother still has to face death, uncertainty and groundlessness. So as an aid to good parenting with Winnicott you can’t go wrong. As an aid to reparenting with Winnicott you can’t go wrong. However there are many areas of pain people suffer that are not to do with the outcome of their parenting.
Merleau-Ponty and psychotherapy
Merleau-Ponty and psychotherapy
Contents
Introduction 1
Science, objectivity and perception 1
The Body 4
Being in the World 5
Bibliography 6
Introduction
In this paper I will look at concepts from Merleau-Ponty’s (MP) writings that can aid in psychotherapy:
1. Science, objectivity and phenomena
2. The Body
3. Being in the World
Science, objectivity and perception
MP sees the worth and utility of the scientific view of the objective world, but doesn’t see this as primordial.
The common held scientific view is a combination of Newtonian physics , Cartesian dualism and Freud’s psychic topography.
Newtonian physics, sees a box called world which is spatial and in which there are objects. These objects are subject to cause and effect ,and this principle shows the temporality in which people move through this box. People access the world through perception and knowledge of objects, which are represented as ideas of sensations from these objects.
Rene Descartes book Meditations placed the mind in Newton’s world. He attempted to provide an indubitable position for knowledge. His position was the only thing that couldn’t be doubted was thought and through his attempt he established dichotomies: mind\ body and subject\object .The key aspect here is the res cogitans, the mind became a thing, and whilst he saw it as a non-material entity, that did not adhere to the laws of physics, this then led the way for Freud to apply physics to the mind.
Freud’s causal psychic apparatus saw that there are instinctive drives within humans coming from the id that have energy attached to them that must be discharged. Thus I am hungry, the ego is aware of this and interacts with the world to reduce this tension, which produces pleasure. Should the super ego, the internalised moral agent of society, object to this desire, then there will come repression that pushes the desire into the unconscious. The act of managing this repression will produce the symptoms that the client will then present with, and all the therapist needs do, is to ensure the clients ego is strong enough, reconciled with his super-ego and uncover the repressed desire. The patient is fixed like a car after a service, what Freud calls abreaction.
To view science as the ultimate truth is commonly held as is the client’s view that they can be fixed like a broken machine, by finding the causes of their distress, they can by changing their engagement with these causes (e.g. positive thinking and emotional catharsis) change their outcomes. Indeed CBT, REBT and NLP are testament to this approach.
MP whilst seeing the worth of a scientific view, didn’t see it as being able to fully explain human life. “A child perceives before it thinks” (Merleau-Ponty 1968 p27). Science draws universal laws that are derived from specific experience. There is experience first which is the raw data that science uses. It is this experience, or perception to use MP’s terminology that he seeks to investigate, as it is that which is the foundation of human experience.
What is perception for MP? Perception is our meaningful relation to the world. This isn’t the relation of subject to object, or idea to thing, but rather a relation that constitutes both sides. My perception is an embeddedness within the world, where my perception is of a world that is distinct from me. This world that I am aware of and embedded within, is one that I engage with meaningfully, and that supports or blocks my desires. Thus it is co-constituting, with each side dependent on the other. Thus mental phenomena are intentional, pointing out to objects within the world.
“Perception is precisely the kind of act for which there can be no question of distinguishing the act itself from the end to which it is directed...Perception and the perceived necessarily have the same existential modality..If I see an ashtray in the full sense of the word “see”, there must be an ashtray there...To see is to see something” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p435-436)
The nature of perception has several facets. It arises from a horizon which attention leaves to an object which it focuses on. The nature of this object, is related to and points to a united infinitude of objects which constitutes the world. Our engagement with it is by a unity of all of the senses, a perspective.
To explain this in more detail: when we perceive an apple then what we do is focus our attention on it, and the bowl in which it sits, has less attention, the desk on which the bowl sits less still, and we are not even aware of the floor on which the desk sits, although we know there is something there as we presume an infinite totality of relations. “I should realize it is necessary to put the surroundings in abeyance [...], to see the object, and to lose in background what one gains in focal figure” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p78)
The apple has meaning for me, it could satisfy my hunger, or should be avoided to protect my diet. My perception of it, is not purely visual, but rather through the entirety of the senses that the body has. As I see the apple, I can hear the noise as I push my teeth into its flesh, and taste and smell the sweet apple juice as I swallow, “the senses communicate in perception as the two eyes collaborate in vision” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p271-2)
What then can MP’s understanding of perception offer to psychotherapy? Firstly that causal objective explanations aren’t part of a client’s primal engagement with the world. Many clients want to be fixed by their therapist. This approach would always leave the client with an objective relationship with themselves, and not a more intimate one. Whilst this can have worth it is not the deepest and most significant relationship that can be had.
Engaging phenomenologically, to move to the things in themselves by using an atheoretical description of how clients experience their world as a meaningful place, is to move to the primal relation of perception that a client has. To look at the relations between things and events in a client’s world, instead of atomistically looking at parts, again moves towards this primal experience. MP would see the worth in psychotherapy of a deepening description of client’s distress and engagement with experience as being one that enriches and invigorates a person’s life.
MP’s belief in our embodied being in the world, means that he doesn’t believe in ideas, or emotions that are representetative of something else, i.e. idea with an object, or idea as symbolising a repressed desire in the unconscious.
In the example in the Phenomenology of Perception p186, a girl who has been prohibited by her parents from seeing her lover who loses her speech, this loss of speech is not seen to be an action that symbolises her unconscious repression, but rather it directly expresses emotion, “in so far as the emotion elects to find its expression in loss of speech” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186) “Loss of speech, then stands for the refusal of co-existence. “ (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186). The girl also loses her appetite. “the swallowing symbolises the movement of existence which carries them [...] the patient is literally unable to ‘swallow’ the prohibition” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186)
What we see here is twofold. Firstly the act of the emotional is embodied action. When a client is depressed, they may eschew interaction with things and people, and solitarily comfort themselves with food or alcohol. This action is meaningful to them; they want to draw away from relation people and things for a reason. Emotional expression is often seen as an affective mental state e.g. my relationship ended and I became depressed; explained as my heart has been broken and the pain felt was the result of this. Emotions are seen as the product of the initial action and the thought being when I come to terms with them then the pain will go away.
MP sees emotion as an embodied way of being in the world. In depression this can be the withdrawal from the activities and people. MP would see depression as embodied action, and see how it serves you. You may well find out beliefs and values such as I feel shame as my relationship has ended and therefore I don’t want to be seen by people, everything goes wrong when I do it, so I don’t want to be active or maybe I can’t trust myself to do things so I can’t trust myself to be active or be in relation with people. So in psychotherapy MP would take us towards a combination of REBT, existentialist and logotherapy approaches. Emotion is embodied action, embodied beliefs and values, so to work with people in distress would be to understand that action in terms of beliefs and values through description, and then to hold that up to the client to see if that works for them.
The second thing to come out of this is the notion of symbolism. MP sees perception and emotion as embodied in the world and whilst fully given, not always obvious:” The body does not constantly express the modalities of existence in the way that stripes indicate rank” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186). In the example above, the girl couldn’t swallow food which represented her inability to swallow the prohibition. Here we see the interpretation that is needed when working with clients, which the therapist can lead, but the client must always be the final arbiter of. This runs counter to the standard existential psychotherapeutic work, which is non directive and highly client led as they see everyone’s life as unique. However MP would take a different view. We are embodied beings within the world, we come to a world already existing and to a language that has meaning that is shared with others, thus interpretation is not purely subjective.
The Body
The body is a powerful phenomena, I see my body as an object in front of me and whilst changeable in form, permanent in presentation. It has a strong effect of me seeing myself as an object in the world and supports the scientific view of the world.
However it’s very different from other objects which I can look at from a variety of angles, but my body I cannot. The body is that which takes a perspective on the world, it sees from a certain angle, feels from a certain position. Thus there is proprioception, immediate self awareness of the senses that engage with the world. When I see I have immediate awareness of sight, if I feel hot or cold, I don’t need to look to see where I am hot or cold, I am immediately aware of it. Exterioception is the awareness of external things in the world. “External perception and the perception of one’s own body vary together because they are two sides of one and the same act” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p237)
When I look at myself in the mirror, listen to my voice in recording, I am not looking at my body from the proprioceptive angle but rather as an exterioceptive one. I see not my bodily being in the world, but see myself as an object.
The body then in its pre-objective sense, is that which enables us perceptions, but is not a direct object of perception. It is the dynamic condition of experience “my body appears to me as a posture with view to a certain actual or possible task” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p114-5)
Seeing the bodies initial relationship with the world as intentionally proprioceptive opens up possibilities for therapy. The body has sense and is intentionally directional in the world. This leads to interventions such as Gendlin’s Focusing, where the felt sense of the body is explored. This is a process of letting the body speak, of focussing internally on the felt experience and allowing it to name itself, not rationalising, or using emotions with it, but letting it name itself.
The sense of the body as a dynamic transcendental condition of experience again opens the way to altering a client’s engagement in the world. The work here could develop through looking at a client’s current perspective in the world, from their physical deportment, through their functional and conceptual directedness. Comparing their current conceivably distressed engagement with the world, to one where they have not been so, might show them how they can re-orientate. This can be seen in the recognition in NLP of how depressed people standardly look down, and that one way to change this, is to look up.
Being in the World
Being in the world is the primal, pre objective state of our engagement in the world. For MP “memory, emotion and the phantom limb are equivalent in regards to being in the world“ (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p99).
1. Proprioceptive
a. We are immediately aware of the world, via our bodily senses and perspective
2. Memory
a. Our memories which are actively chosen provide the horizon from which the present emerges
3. Emotion
a. We engage with the world emotionally in a primordial manner
4. Body Schema
a. The phantom limb example, where the limb is still felt though absent, highlights our body schema, how our body engages in the world, which is not purely physical but an intentional engagement.
All of the above are subsumed underneath the axis of intentionality and alterity, in that we are purposively directed to the world, and the world is other from us.
The impact that being in the world can have on therapy is the MPian notion of time. Time for MP is not succession of the events of now, the past being now no longer, the future being now to come and now being now. The subjective time for MP is an intentional flow that “projects around the present a double horizon of past and future “ (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p278) . Memory is the horizon from which the past flows out, and the future is that which flows out from the present. The flow is of the client’s intentionality. Past events are not defining, in that childhood trauma causes present distress, but rather, the past functions as the opening for the future and present. Looking at temporality this way enables investigation with clients where they can see how the past events form a path that lead to current action, belief and value. This means you can work with clients by making explicit the beliefs and values that have been part of their path, and the possible path to the desired position. The novelty of this can be understood in the following example.
I can drink too much alcohol. There has been a succession of choices that have led me to this which has involved beliefs such as I need comfort when in discomfort and that to do it myself is a dependable solution. There are a variety of approaches taken to dealing with substance misuse. The cognitive behavioural disciplines may well look at the activating events and beliefs and look to change these. Existential therpaists will look to get the client to a deeper understanding of their drinking such that they can see what values are contained there, then they can change if their current actions if they see that they are as a result of a now redundant values. Freudians will look to deal with the repressed desire that has its symptoms in drinking. These three approaches take a static approach to the problem, and either fix the beliefs, values or repression of the problem. MP thinks of the past and the future as horizons for the present.Then to use the path analogy, the movement from a client’s distress can be out of forging a path from where they are to where they want to be.
This could be seen as trivial, but for me this is a new way of looking at clients problems. The client emerges from their distress taking one small step that will implicate the next. In my case with drinking too much, the steps would be to start generally living more healthily, so for instance start always having breakfast in the morning. As this becomes a way that I engage in the world, then the next step comes where you start valuing having a clear head in the morning, so the drinking in the evening becomes less appealing. I have also noticed when I have thought to improve my life, I will buy and use some meditation cds, that even whilst I didn’t use them immediately, the act of buying them, then opened me up to other possibilities, so that I started to get involved say with a philosophy group down here, that I had always wanted to, but never got around to doing.
This path approach, can be used in whatever way the client feels capable of doing, so if they feel entirely hemmed in by their problem, even the smallest gesture, can start to provide the way to freeing themselves from their prison. Thus it is not a case of solving problems, but rather changing the emergent horizon such that problems don’t emerge.
Bibliography
1. Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology of Perception published 1945 reprinted 2008 Translation by Routledge and Kegan Paul
2. Merleau-Ponty Visible and Invisible 1968 translated A Lingis
Contents
Introduction 1
Science, objectivity and perception 1
The Body 4
Being in the World 5
Bibliography 6
Introduction
In this paper I will look at concepts from Merleau-Ponty’s (MP) writings that can aid in psychotherapy:
1. Science, objectivity and phenomena
2. The Body
3. Being in the World
Science, objectivity and perception
MP sees the worth and utility of the scientific view of the objective world, but doesn’t see this as primordial.
The common held scientific view is a combination of Newtonian physics , Cartesian dualism and Freud’s psychic topography.
Newtonian physics, sees a box called world which is spatial and in which there are objects. These objects are subject to cause and effect ,and this principle shows the temporality in which people move through this box. People access the world through perception and knowledge of objects, which are represented as ideas of sensations from these objects.
Rene Descartes book Meditations placed the mind in Newton’s world. He attempted to provide an indubitable position for knowledge. His position was the only thing that couldn’t be doubted was thought and through his attempt he established dichotomies: mind\ body and subject\object .The key aspect here is the res cogitans, the mind became a thing, and whilst he saw it as a non-material entity, that did not adhere to the laws of physics, this then led the way for Freud to apply physics to the mind.
Freud’s causal psychic apparatus saw that there are instinctive drives within humans coming from the id that have energy attached to them that must be discharged. Thus I am hungry, the ego is aware of this and interacts with the world to reduce this tension, which produces pleasure. Should the super ego, the internalised moral agent of society, object to this desire, then there will come repression that pushes the desire into the unconscious. The act of managing this repression will produce the symptoms that the client will then present with, and all the therapist needs do, is to ensure the clients ego is strong enough, reconciled with his super-ego and uncover the repressed desire. The patient is fixed like a car after a service, what Freud calls abreaction.
To view science as the ultimate truth is commonly held as is the client’s view that they can be fixed like a broken machine, by finding the causes of their distress, they can by changing their engagement with these causes (e.g. positive thinking and emotional catharsis) change their outcomes. Indeed CBT, REBT and NLP are testament to this approach.
MP whilst seeing the worth of a scientific view, didn’t see it as being able to fully explain human life. “A child perceives before it thinks” (Merleau-Ponty 1968 p27). Science draws universal laws that are derived from specific experience. There is experience first which is the raw data that science uses. It is this experience, or perception to use MP’s terminology that he seeks to investigate, as it is that which is the foundation of human experience.
What is perception for MP? Perception is our meaningful relation to the world. This isn’t the relation of subject to object, or idea to thing, but rather a relation that constitutes both sides. My perception is an embeddedness within the world, where my perception is of a world that is distinct from me. This world that I am aware of and embedded within, is one that I engage with meaningfully, and that supports or blocks my desires. Thus it is co-constituting, with each side dependent on the other. Thus mental phenomena are intentional, pointing out to objects within the world.
“Perception is precisely the kind of act for which there can be no question of distinguishing the act itself from the end to which it is directed...Perception and the perceived necessarily have the same existential modality..If I see an ashtray in the full sense of the word “see”, there must be an ashtray there...To see is to see something” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p435-436)
The nature of perception has several facets. It arises from a horizon which attention leaves to an object which it focuses on. The nature of this object, is related to and points to a united infinitude of objects which constitutes the world. Our engagement with it is by a unity of all of the senses, a perspective.
To explain this in more detail: when we perceive an apple then what we do is focus our attention on it, and the bowl in which it sits, has less attention, the desk on which the bowl sits less still, and we are not even aware of the floor on which the desk sits, although we know there is something there as we presume an infinite totality of relations. “I should realize it is necessary to put the surroundings in abeyance [...], to see the object, and to lose in background what one gains in focal figure” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p78)
The apple has meaning for me, it could satisfy my hunger, or should be avoided to protect my diet. My perception of it, is not purely visual, but rather through the entirety of the senses that the body has. As I see the apple, I can hear the noise as I push my teeth into its flesh, and taste and smell the sweet apple juice as I swallow, “the senses communicate in perception as the two eyes collaborate in vision” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p271-2)
What then can MP’s understanding of perception offer to psychotherapy? Firstly that causal objective explanations aren’t part of a client’s primal engagement with the world. Many clients want to be fixed by their therapist. This approach would always leave the client with an objective relationship with themselves, and not a more intimate one. Whilst this can have worth it is not the deepest and most significant relationship that can be had.
Engaging phenomenologically, to move to the things in themselves by using an atheoretical description of how clients experience their world as a meaningful place, is to move to the primal relation of perception that a client has. To look at the relations between things and events in a client’s world, instead of atomistically looking at parts, again moves towards this primal experience. MP would see the worth in psychotherapy of a deepening description of client’s distress and engagement with experience as being one that enriches and invigorates a person’s life.
MP’s belief in our embodied being in the world, means that he doesn’t believe in ideas, or emotions that are representetative of something else, i.e. idea with an object, or idea as symbolising a repressed desire in the unconscious.
In the example in the Phenomenology of Perception p186, a girl who has been prohibited by her parents from seeing her lover who loses her speech, this loss of speech is not seen to be an action that symbolises her unconscious repression, but rather it directly expresses emotion, “in so far as the emotion elects to find its expression in loss of speech” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186) “Loss of speech, then stands for the refusal of co-existence. “ (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186). The girl also loses her appetite. “the swallowing symbolises the movement of existence which carries them [...] the patient is literally unable to ‘swallow’ the prohibition” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186)
What we see here is twofold. Firstly the act of the emotional is embodied action. When a client is depressed, they may eschew interaction with things and people, and solitarily comfort themselves with food or alcohol. This action is meaningful to them; they want to draw away from relation people and things for a reason. Emotional expression is often seen as an affective mental state e.g. my relationship ended and I became depressed; explained as my heart has been broken and the pain felt was the result of this. Emotions are seen as the product of the initial action and the thought being when I come to terms with them then the pain will go away.
MP sees emotion as an embodied way of being in the world. In depression this can be the withdrawal from the activities and people. MP would see depression as embodied action, and see how it serves you. You may well find out beliefs and values such as I feel shame as my relationship has ended and therefore I don’t want to be seen by people, everything goes wrong when I do it, so I don’t want to be active or maybe I can’t trust myself to do things so I can’t trust myself to be active or be in relation with people. So in psychotherapy MP would take us towards a combination of REBT, existentialist and logotherapy approaches. Emotion is embodied action, embodied beliefs and values, so to work with people in distress would be to understand that action in terms of beliefs and values through description, and then to hold that up to the client to see if that works for them.
The second thing to come out of this is the notion of symbolism. MP sees perception and emotion as embodied in the world and whilst fully given, not always obvious:” The body does not constantly express the modalities of existence in the way that stripes indicate rank” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186). In the example above, the girl couldn’t swallow food which represented her inability to swallow the prohibition. Here we see the interpretation that is needed when working with clients, which the therapist can lead, but the client must always be the final arbiter of. This runs counter to the standard existential psychotherapeutic work, which is non directive and highly client led as they see everyone’s life as unique. However MP would take a different view. We are embodied beings within the world, we come to a world already existing and to a language that has meaning that is shared with others, thus interpretation is not purely subjective.
The Body
The body is a powerful phenomena, I see my body as an object in front of me and whilst changeable in form, permanent in presentation. It has a strong effect of me seeing myself as an object in the world and supports the scientific view of the world.
However it’s very different from other objects which I can look at from a variety of angles, but my body I cannot. The body is that which takes a perspective on the world, it sees from a certain angle, feels from a certain position. Thus there is proprioception, immediate self awareness of the senses that engage with the world. When I see I have immediate awareness of sight, if I feel hot or cold, I don’t need to look to see where I am hot or cold, I am immediately aware of it. Exterioception is the awareness of external things in the world. “External perception and the perception of one’s own body vary together because they are two sides of one and the same act” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p237)
When I look at myself in the mirror, listen to my voice in recording, I am not looking at my body from the proprioceptive angle but rather as an exterioceptive one. I see not my bodily being in the world, but see myself as an object.
The body then in its pre-objective sense, is that which enables us perceptions, but is not a direct object of perception. It is the dynamic condition of experience “my body appears to me as a posture with view to a certain actual or possible task” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p114-5)
Seeing the bodies initial relationship with the world as intentionally proprioceptive opens up possibilities for therapy. The body has sense and is intentionally directional in the world. This leads to interventions such as Gendlin’s Focusing, where the felt sense of the body is explored. This is a process of letting the body speak, of focussing internally on the felt experience and allowing it to name itself, not rationalising, or using emotions with it, but letting it name itself.
The sense of the body as a dynamic transcendental condition of experience again opens the way to altering a client’s engagement in the world. The work here could develop through looking at a client’s current perspective in the world, from their physical deportment, through their functional and conceptual directedness. Comparing their current conceivably distressed engagement with the world, to one where they have not been so, might show them how they can re-orientate. This can be seen in the recognition in NLP of how depressed people standardly look down, and that one way to change this, is to look up.
Being in the World
Being in the world is the primal, pre objective state of our engagement in the world. For MP “memory, emotion and the phantom limb are equivalent in regards to being in the world“ (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p99).
1. Proprioceptive
a. We are immediately aware of the world, via our bodily senses and perspective
2. Memory
a. Our memories which are actively chosen provide the horizon from which the present emerges
3. Emotion
a. We engage with the world emotionally in a primordial manner
4. Body Schema
a. The phantom limb example, where the limb is still felt though absent, highlights our body schema, how our body engages in the world, which is not purely physical but an intentional engagement.
All of the above are subsumed underneath the axis of intentionality and alterity, in that we are purposively directed to the world, and the world is other from us.
The impact that being in the world can have on therapy is the MPian notion of time. Time for MP is not succession of the events of now, the past being now no longer, the future being now to come and now being now. The subjective time for MP is an intentional flow that “projects around the present a double horizon of past and future “ (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p278) . Memory is the horizon from which the past flows out, and the future is that which flows out from the present. The flow is of the client’s intentionality. Past events are not defining, in that childhood trauma causes present distress, but rather, the past functions as the opening for the future and present. Looking at temporality this way enables investigation with clients where they can see how the past events form a path that lead to current action, belief and value. This means you can work with clients by making explicit the beliefs and values that have been part of their path, and the possible path to the desired position. The novelty of this can be understood in the following example.
I can drink too much alcohol. There has been a succession of choices that have led me to this which has involved beliefs such as I need comfort when in discomfort and that to do it myself is a dependable solution. There are a variety of approaches taken to dealing with substance misuse. The cognitive behavioural disciplines may well look at the activating events and beliefs and look to change these. Existential therpaists will look to get the client to a deeper understanding of their drinking such that they can see what values are contained there, then they can change if their current actions if they see that they are as a result of a now redundant values. Freudians will look to deal with the repressed desire that has its symptoms in drinking. These three approaches take a static approach to the problem, and either fix the beliefs, values or repression of the problem. MP thinks of the past and the future as horizons for the present.Then to use the path analogy, the movement from a client’s distress can be out of forging a path from where they are to where they want to be.
This could be seen as trivial, but for me this is a new way of looking at clients problems. The client emerges from their distress taking one small step that will implicate the next. In my case with drinking too much, the steps would be to start generally living more healthily, so for instance start always having breakfast in the morning. As this becomes a way that I engage in the world, then the next step comes where you start valuing having a clear head in the morning, so the drinking in the evening becomes less appealing. I have also noticed when I have thought to improve my life, I will buy and use some meditation cds, that even whilst I didn’t use them immediately, the act of buying them, then opened me up to other possibilities, so that I started to get involved say with a philosophy group down here, that I had always wanted to, but never got around to doing.
This path approach, can be used in whatever way the client feels capable of doing, so if they feel entirely hemmed in by their problem, even the smallest gesture, can start to provide the way to freeing themselves from their prison. Thus it is not a case of solving problems, but rather changing the emergent horizon such that problems don’t emerge.
Bibliography
1. Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology of Perception published 1945 reprinted 2008 Translation by Routledge and Kegan Paul
2. Merleau-Ponty Visible and Invisible 1968 translated A Lingis
Bubers I and Thou
Buber’s I and Thou
Contents
Introduction 1
Metaphysics 1
I-Thou 2
How do we access Thou? 3
History 3
The emotional outcome of living with Thou 4
Modern World 4
Freedom 5
Destiny 5
The Eternal Thou 6
Implications for Psychotherapy 6
Bibliography 7
Introduction
Here I will look at Buber’s thoughts from I and Thou, with most focus put on the I-It and I Thou relations, as opposed to the Eternal Thou, which I struggle to agree with. Then I will look at some of the implications for Psychotherapy of Buber’s thoughts.
Metaphysics
Buber’s project in I and Thou is an understanding of what I am, effectively an ontological examination, what it means to exist:
“There is no I taken in itself, but only the I of the primary word I-Thou and the I of the primary word I-It”. (Buber 1937 p11)
Thus the existence of self is only to be understood in the two relations either I-Thou or I-It. Thus Buber’s position is one that sees existence as a relational aspect and not, as with the sciences one of a subject object relationship.
When we relate to objects, for example, I see a cat, then this is an I-it relationship, indeed when we think, feel, or imagine something, this is an I-It, a relationship between two objects of subject I and object Thought\feeling etc. Thus there is a finite relationship:
“For where there is a thing, there is another thing. Every it is bounded by others, it only exists by being bounded by others.” (Buber 1937 p11)
So the I-It relationship, objectifies both the I and the It.
The I-Thou relationship is different:
“When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing; he has indeed nothing. But he takes his stand in relation” (Buber 1937 P11)
Buber therefore sees the I-It as the combination of objects, a finite and restricted combination and with I-Thou there is relation, where I and Thou are both no-thing and free.
The I of the I-it exists in space and time, the I-Thou is relational.
I-Thou
There are three areas where we see relations in the world
1. Relations with Nature, but here whilst creatures live and move they do not respond as Thou, as there is no reciprocation of Being, whilst a dog can show his devotion with you, he cannot reciprocate in your full range of being, and linguistically, the description of Thou, with Nature “clings to the threshold of speech” (Buber 1937 P13). Therefore what Buber appears to be saying is that to fully use Thou, there must be a relation of meaning, a relation of being.
2. Relations with Humans, here “the relation is open and in the form of speech” (Buber 1937 P13). Here Buber sees the I-Thou possibly in its strongest clarity, in some sense the blue print, that he uses for the other two relations, with nature, and spiritually.
3. Relation with Spiritual Beings: here Buber sees the relation as clouded but “yet it discloses itself..we feel we are address and we answer” (Buber 1937 P 13)
The I-Thou relationship that we have with humans, is however a derived one from the I-Thou relationship we have with spiritual beings: “in each Thou we address the eternal Thou” (Buber 1937 (Buber 1937 p14))
For Buber to encounter Being, is to be in relation. "in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusivity" (Buber 1937 p14) Thus to be in relation to something in its totality, in all the things it can be and its uniqueness is to be in relation to its being. To be in relation to a tree can take it out of an I It relationship, but there is no reciprocity of being, so not a truly I-Thou relationship.
To encounter Thou is to encounter a melody, a chord. As a harmony is produced by 3 notes you cannot find the harmony by taking any of the individual notes and looking at them. So it is with Thou, the existence that emerges as the totality of being in its uniqueness.
So the I –Thou relationship is characterised by its uniqueness and also its inclusivity. To have a Thou relationship is to meet the uniqueness of the Other, and to be fully in relation to it, I.e. inclusive.
However to access the Thou to relate to it is not via experience, as Buber says “In the act of experience Thou is far away" (Buber 1937 (Buber 1937 p15)). Any act of experience is an act of object relations. So how do we relate to Thou, if it is not via experience?
"The primary word can be spoken only with the whole being. Concentration and fusion into the whole being can never take place through my agency, nor can it ever take place without me" (Buber 1937 p17). To be in relation requires all of me and all of you relating. To fully relate to my whole being I would need to step outside myself to see my limits which is impossible, of course without me I could never access my full being. Thus the I-Thou is a relationship you can come to, it is not a relationship you can force, nor can it happen without you.
How do we access Thou?
Buber’s words here can be instructive. " we do not find by seeking" (Buber 1937 p17) but rather by meeting it, so "we know nothing isolated about it anymore" (Buber 1937 p17). This act of meeting the whole unity is "the act of my being" (Buber 1937 p17).
What then is the relationship of Thou? Being in relation to Thou, means activity and passivity "being chosen and choosing, suffering and action in one;" (Buber 1937 p17). To meet the Thou, to meet your totality to the totality of the other due is "bound to resemble suffering" (Buber 1937 p17). Here Buber is slightly mystical where to meet the Thou, involves suffering. The only possibility I can see here is that to give up myself and the other that has things, experience feeling and concepts is to open us up to the wild roar of uncertainty. As Spinelli said our Worldview is a necessary construct to make life bearable, here I feel Buber doing the same, to lose self and self construct is a scary thing.
The effect of relating I and Thou, is that of love. This is not the feeling of love that you may have for an object, a partner or a pet. This is the love that encompass man, the majesty and wonder of being As Buber says "feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love" (Buber 1937 p18)
To meet Thou is to meet it in the present. This present isn’t the current now in a series of nows, "the point which indicates in our Thought .. The conclusion of 'finished' time " (Buber 1937 p18). Rather "the real filled present exists only so far as actual presentness, meeting and relation exist" (Buber 1937 p18). To objectify things is to put them in the past, to view things in relation, is to pull things to the present. Time for Buber is thus a concept that emanates from our relations to being in the world, and not a container in which we exist. The more we understand existence as a related event the more it exists in our present and the closer we get to being and Thou. As Buber says “true beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is in the past" (Buber 1937 p18)
History
The I-Thou, is the original relationship out of which the I-It relation emerges, this can be seen from the linguistic structures of ancient people, where “far away: the Zulu has for that a word which means, in our sentence form:”There where someone cries out ‘Oh mother I am lost’” (Buber 1937 p22). Here we see the relational understanding, both to emotion and to the other, where there is no primacy of I. Indeed I, the split between subject and object, I and world, only comes later through splitting. Indeed the word I, used to only give the sense of uniqueness, rather than, ownership, and primacy. “In the primary relational event, in virtue of its exclusiveness, the I is included” (Buber 1937 p24)
This separation of mind to body, or self to others and world causes both consciousness and melancholy. To live relationally is for Buber to live closer to God, and to live consciously and objectively is to live around nothingness, as nothingness only arises when you have something. The does remind me of the Freudian idea, where all encompassing feelings can be sought, through affect or substance to take you back to the primal unity of child in womb.
We develop the world of objects in so far as we affect and are affected. “For no-thing is a ready-made part of an experience: only in the strength, acting and being acted upon, of what is over against men, is anything made accessible” (Buber 1937 p27). Thus for Buber the world of the It, of something and nothing, comes through power, but this is not truth. On one hand is there is the functional world of objects that we can affect, and can be affected by, but this is a different realm to the world of truth, which is relational and pre conscious. A thing is the sum of all qualities, Being is the sum of all relations.
The emotional outcome of living with Thou
“To man the world is twofold [...] things entered in the graph of place, events in that of time” (Buber 1937 p30). This provides a reliable world, “You cannot hold on to life without it, its reliability sustains you” (Buber 1937 p31)
The other option is to encounter the world as one being, the world of Thou. This world is unreliable, “it vanishes when it is tightly held” (Buber 1937 p31) “It cannot be surveyed, and if you wish to make it capable of survey you lost it” (Buber 1937 p31) “ It does not help to sustain you in life, it only helps you to glimpse eternity” (Buber 1937 p31)
The world of It is a necessary one “the world of It [..] the world in which he has to live, and in which it is comfortable to live[..] indeed, which offers him all manner of incitements and excitements, activity and knowledge” (Buber 1937 p32)
The Thou world is more dangerous, “the moments of Thou appear a strange lyric and dramatic episode, seductive and magical, but tearing us away to dangerous extremes, loosening the well-tried context, leaving more questions than satisfactions behind them, shattering security-in short uncanny moments that we can well dispense with “(Buber 1937 p32)
“Without It man cannot live. But he who lives with It alone is not a man.” (Buber 1937 p32)
Modern World
The modern world is defined by its ever increasing refinement of the world of It. As advancements come in our ability to experience and use the world, so we come more abstract, more distant both from the world from either direct relation with the world of It, and more significantly from the world of Thou.
Interaction with the Thou is paradoxical, on one level the most profound interaction, but “The stronger the response, the more strongly does it bind up the Thou and banish it to be an object. Only silence before the Thou[..] leaves the Thou free.” (Buber 1937 p37)
The I It world, is constituted by two things the I and the It, between I and It there is separation, where there is not between I and Thou. The It is outside the I, it is the place of Institutions, where the I is that of feelings “where life is lived and man recovers from institutions[..] . Here he is at home” (Buber 1937 p39) Both of these though because they deal at the object level are short when it comes to Spirit to the Thou “Institutions yield no public life, feelings no personal life” (Buber 1937 (Buber 1937 p39)
Freedom
In the world of It, we have the world of causality, every effect has a cause and everything is determined. In the world of Thou we have freedom. “Only he who knows relation and knows about the presence of the Thou is capable of decision” (Buber 1937 P44). How then can we make decisions using the Thou when we must objectify to take decisions? In choosing to do one thing we always reject another, or plurality of other choices. “But he alone who directs the whole strength of the alternative into the doing of the charge, who lets the abundant passion of what is rejected invade the growth to reality of what is chosen [..] makes decision, decides the event” (Buber 1937 P44). Thus Buber is saying to be free we need to operate in the world of Thou, and to take decisions freely then our action needs to be infused with the choices that we have discarded. We decide therefore relationally.
“In my discovery of the deed that aims at me, in this movement of my freedom the mystery is revealed to me [..] He who forgets all that is caused and makes decisions out of the depths [..] is a free man” (Buber 1937 P45). For Buber, to act freely, with the Thou, can be to discover action, to find out what the world asks of you, as opposed to what you ask of the world.
Destiny
Destiny and freedom go hand in hand, “Destiny and freedom are solemnly promised to one another. Only the man who makes freedom real to himself meets destiny” (Buber 1937 p45). Here Buber sees that we have destiny and that through living in the I-Thou we will access it. Man accesses his destiny when “he intervenes no more, but at the same time he does not let things merely happen. He listens to what is emerging from himself, to the course of being in the world; not in order to be supported by it, but in order to bring it to reality as it desire, in its needs of him” (Buber 1937 p49). Thus Buber sees humans as having two wills, self will, the will of causality and utility, and grand will, the deep will of freedom and of destiny.
The Eternal Thou
For Buber, “Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the Eternal Thou” (Buber 1937 p61). The Eternal Thou, being the Thou, that cannot be It.
Implications for Psychotherapy
The world of I-It, is one of causality, necessity supported on nothingness. The world of I-Thou is the world of freedom, destiny and meaning.
The world of I-It makes the world bearable and predictable. The world of I-Thou, gives meaning, unity and mystery.
The world of I-it is one that is created, the world of I-Thou is a world that is met.
The world of It-it is one that is experienced the world of I-Thou is one that entered into.
If we are to take Buber at his world, then he offers us much as therapists.
To work with the client relationally, to see what emerges between you, to not direct but rather meet, will have a movement towards the Thou. The effects of this will be to create a closeness, an intimacy between you. To see yourself and your client in all that they may be, rather than any specific aspect that you or they may show, will take to you to the Thou of Freedom. This will offer both to the client and to the therapist the option of change, which can be of benefit in the therapeutic relationship.
The effect of moving from a subject object relation with the client to a relational one could be profound. To see meaning and action as something that comes from the relation rather than something that we bring as subject can have significant effects.
It is quite often with a client that they have problems. They are depressed, they have a problem with their relationships. Implicit within this are meta-feelings, i.e. feelings about feelings. So that if I am depressed, then I can be angry and disappointed that I feel this way. If I have problems with my relationships then I can have feelings of failure of myself because of this. Looking at the problem as being something that exists between yourself and your world weakens the sense of your being responsible for this, and therefore reduces the meta-feelings.
To work with a client relationally can also have significant impacts as it can be that the pain a client may feel can be the outcome of a mismatch between how the client sees or wants the world, and how the world presents to them. If a more relational approach is taken then this gap can reduce and with it the pain that is felt trying to maintain the gap.
For Buber reality is within presentness, the past is that of objects. Thus he would advocate a phenomenological approach, where we look to access that which shows itself as itself. The benefit to working with a client in this way is several fold. When working like this, there is a concomitant sense of wonder as mystery as new relations of things are shown, as new ways of understanding and interacting with the present are shown. This sense of mystery and wonder can again be invigorating to a client, to encourage their investigation of their world, attached to the dynamicism that new understandings can provide.
In must be noted, as has been stated above, that the I-It is a necessary construct to make the world bearable, where the I-Thou is a construct to make it desirable. Therefore in working with clients, there will inevitably be a combination of these two ways of working, to fully move into the world of Thou, would be a destabilising and uncomfortable world, and leave the therapist, joined in unity but without consciousness, in something of an unaware state.
The other aspect I think is notable is how Buber doesn’t see feelings as giving access to the personal life. Standardly within therapy the goal seems to be to remove the bad feelings, the pain, and to replace with the good feelings, happiness, joy etc. For Buber feelings act at the I-It relationship, with the It being either yourself or the other. For Buber I think working with feelings in a therapeutic relationship which is common, would be to extend and deepen the understanding of the feeling. To have feeling is to interact with one part of a person, or event. For Buber this would be only a partial understanding of them, and that through seeing more of their possibility and indeed yours. To take his project through to his conclusion would be to reduce all feeling to that of love, and that is not a love for someone or something, but rather a foundational love, in which you and they exist. A wonder of the mystery that is being.
Bibliography
Buber I and Thou 1937
Contents
Introduction 1
Metaphysics 1
I-Thou 2
How do we access Thou? 3
History 3
The emotional outcome of living with Thou 4
Modern World 4
Freedom 5
Destiny 5
The Eternal Thou 6
Implications for Psychotherapy 6
Bibliography 7
Introduction
Here I will look at Buber’s thoughts from I and Thou, with most focus put on the I-It and I Thou relations, as opposed to the Eternal Thou, which I struggle to agree with. Then I will look at some of the implications for Psychotherapy of Buber’s thoughts.
Metaphysics
Buber’s project in I and Thou is an understanding of what I am, effectively an ontological examination, what it means to exist:
“There is no I taken in itself, but only the I of the primary word I-Thou and the I of the primary word I-It”. (Buber 1937 p11)
Thus the existence of self is only to be understood in the two relations either I-Thou or I-It. Thus Buber’s position is one that sees existence as a relational aspect and not, as with the sciences one of a subject object relationship.
When we relate to objects, for example, I see a cat, then this is an I-it relationship, indeed when we think, feel, or imagine something, this is an I-It, a relationship between two objects of subject I and object Thought\feeling etc. Thus there is a finite relationship:
“For where there is a thing, there is another thing. Every it is bounded by others, it only exists by being bounded by others.” (Buber 1937 p11)
So the I-It relationship, objectifies both the I and the It.
The I-Thou relationship is different:
“When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing; he has indeed nothing. But he takes his stand in relation” (Buber 1937 P11)
Buber therefore sees the I-It as the combination of objects, a finite and restricted combination and with I-Thou there is relation, where I and Thou are both no-thing and free.
The I of the I-it exists in space and time, the I-Thou is relational.
I-Thou
There are three areas where we see relations in the world
1. Relations with Nature, but here whilst creatures live and move they do not respond as Thou, as there is no reciprocation of Being, whilst a dog can show his devotion with you, he cannot reciprocate in your full range of being, and linguistically, the description of Thou, with Nature “clings to the threshold of speech” (Buber 1937 P13). Therefore what Buber appears to be saying is that to fully use Thou, there must be a relation of meaning, a relation of being.
2. Relations with Humans, here “the relation is open and in the form of speech” (Buber 1937 P13). Here Buber sees the I-Thou possibly in its strongest clarity, in some sense the blue print, that he uses for the other two relations, with nature, and spiritually.
3. Relation with Spiritual Beings: here Buber sees the relation as clouded but “yet it discloses itself..we feel we are address and we answer” (Buber 1937 P 13)
The I-Thou relationship that we have with humans, is however a derived one from the I-Thou relationship we have with spiritual beings: “in each Thou we address the eternal Thou” (Buber 1937 (Buber 1937 p14))
For Buber to encounter Being, is to be in relation. "in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusivity" (Buber 1937 p14) Thus to be in relation to something in its totality, in all the things it can be and its uniqueness is to be in relation to its being. To be in relation to a tree can take it out of an I It relationship, but there is no reciprocity of being, so not a truly I-Thou relationship.
To encounter Thou is to encounter a melody, a chord. As a harmony is produced by 3 notes you cannot find the harmony by taking any of the individual notes and looking at them. So it is with Thou, the existence that emerges as the totality of being in its uniqueness.
So the I –Thou relationship is characterised by its uniqueness and also its inclusivity. To have a Thou relationship is to meet the uniqueness of the Other, and to be fully in relation to it, I.e. inclusive.
However to access the Thou to relate to it is not via experience, as Buber says “In the act of experience Thou is far away" (Buber 1937 (Buber 1937 p15)). Any act of experience is an act of object relations. So how do we relate to Thou, if it is not via experience?
"The primary word can be spoken only with the whole being. Concentration and fusion into the whole being can never take place through my agency, nor can it ever take place without me" (Buber 1937 p17). To be in relation requires all of me and all of you relating. To fully relate to my whole being I would need to step outside myself to see my limits which is impossible, of course without me I could never access my full being. Thus the I-Thou is a relationship you can come to, it is not a relationship you can force, nor can it happen without you.
How do we access Thou?
Buber’s words here can be instructive. " we do not find by seeking" (Buber 1937 p17) but rather by meeting it, so "we know nothing isolated about it anymore" (Buber 1937 p17). This act of meeting the whole unity is "the act of my being" (Buber 1937 p17).
What then is the relationship of Thou? Being in relation to Thou, means activity and passivity "being chosen and choosing, suffering and action in one;" (Buber 1937 p17). To meet the Thou, to meet your totality to the totality of the other due is "bound to resemble suffering" (Buber 1937 p17). Here Buber is slightly mystical where to meet the Thou, involves suffering. The only possibility I can see here is that to give up myself and the other that has things, experience feeling and concepts is to open us up to the wild roar of uncertainty. As Spinelli said our Worldview is a necessary construct to make life bearable, here I feel Buber doing the same, to lose self and self construct is a scary thing.
The effect of relating I and Thou, is that of love. This is not the feeling of love that you may have for an object, a partner or a pet. This is the love that encompass man, the majesty and wonder of being As Buber says "feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love" (Buber 1937 p18)
To meet Thou is to meet it in the present. This present isn’t the current now in a series of nows, "the point which indicates in our Thought .. The conclusion of 'finished' time " (Buber 1937 p18). Rather "the real filled present exists only so far as actual presentness, meeting and relation exist" (Buber 1937 p18). To objectify things is to put them in the past, to view things in relation, is to pull things to the present. Time for Buber is thus a concept that emanates from our relations to being in the world, and not a container in which we exist. The more we understand existence as a related event the more it exists in our present and the closer we get to being and Thou. As Buber says “true beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is in the past" (Buber 1937 p18)
History
The I-Thou, is the original relationship out of which the I-It relation emerges, this can be seen from the linguistic structures of ancient people, where “far away: the Zulu has for that a word which means, in our sentence form:”There where someone cries out ‘Oh mother I am lost’” (Buber 1937 p22). Here we see the relational understanding, both to emotion and to the other, where there is no primacy of I. Indeed I, the split between subject and object, I and world, only comes later through splitting. Indeed the word I, used to only give the sense of uniqueness, rather than, ownership, and primacy. “In the primary relational event, in virtue of its exclusiveness, the I is included” (Buber 1937 p24)
This separation of mind to body, or self to others and world causes both consciousness and melancholy. To live relationally is for Buber to live closer to God, and to live consciously and objectively is to live around nothingness, as nothingness only arises when you have something. The does remind me of the Freudian idea, where all encompassing feelings can be sought, through affect or substance to take you back to the primal unity of child in womb.
We develop the world of objects in so far as we affect and are affected. “For no-thing is a ready-made part of an experience: only in the strength, acting and being acted upon, of what is over against men, is anything made accessible” (Buber 1937 p27). Thus for Buber the world of the It, of something and nothing, comes through power, but this is not truth. On one hand is there is the functional world of objects that we can affect, and can be affected by, but this is a different realm to the world of truth, which is relational and pre conscious. A thing is the sum of all qualities, Being is the sum of all relations.
The emotional outcome of living with Thou
“To man the world is twofold [...] things entered in the graph of place, events in that of time” (Buber 1937 p30). This provides a reliable world, “You cannot hold on to life without it, its reliability sustains you” (Buber 1937 p31)
The other option is to encounter the world as one being, the world of Thou. This world is unreliable, “it vanishes when it is tightly held” (Buber 1937 p31) “It cannot be surveyed, and if you wish to make it capable of survey you lost it” (Buber 1937 p31) “ It does not help to sustain you in life, it only helps you to glimpse eternity” (Buber 1937 p31)
The world of It is a necessary one “the world of It [..] the world in which he has to live, and in which it is comfortable to live[..] indeed, which offers him all manner of incitements and excitements, activity and knowledge” (Buber 1937 p32)
The Thou world is more dangerous, “the moments of Thou appear a strange lyric and dramatic episode, seductive and magical, but tearing us away to dangerous extremes, loosening the well-tried context, leaving more questions than satisfactions behind them, shattering security-in short uncanny moments that we can well dispense with “(Buber 1937 p32)
“Without It man cannot live. But he who lives with It alone is not a man.” (Buber 1937 p32)
Modern World
The modern world is defined by its ever increasing refinement of the world of It. As advancements come in our ability to experience and use the world, so we come more abstract, more distant both from the world from either direct relation with the world of It, and more significantly from the world of Thou.
Interaction with the Thou is paradoxical, on one level the most profound interaction, but “The stronger the response, the more strongly does it bind up the Thou and banish it to be an object. Only silence before the Thou[..] leaves the Thou free.” (Buber 1937 p37)
The I It world, is constituted by two things the I and the It, between I and It there is separation, where there is not between I and Thou. The It is outside the I, it is the place of Institutions, where the I is that of feelings “where life is lived and man recovers from institutions[..] . Here he is at home” (Buber 1937 p39) Both of these though because they deal at the object level are short when it comes to Spirit to the Thou “Institutions yield no public life, feelings no personal life” (Buber 1937 (Buber 1937 p39)
Freedom
In the world of It, we have the world of causality, every effect has a cause and everything is determined. In the world of Thou we have freedom. “Only he who knows relation and knows about the presence of the Thou is capable of decision” (Buber 1937 P44). How then can we make decisions using the Thou when we must objectify to take decisions? In choosing to do one thing we always reject another, or plurality of other choices. “But he alone who directs the whole strength of the alternative into the doing of the charge, who lets the abundant passion of what is rejected invade the growth to reality of what is chosen [..] makes decision, decides the event” (Buber 1937 P44). Thus Buber is saying to be free we need to operate in the world of Thou, and to take decisions freely then our action needs to be infused with the choices that we have discarded. We decide therefore relationally.
“In my discovery of the deed that aims at me, in this movement of my freedom the mystery is revealed to me [..] He who forgets all that is caused and makes decisions out of the depths [..] is a free man” (Buber 1937 P45). For Buber, to act freely, with the Thou, can be to discover action, to find out what the world asks of you, as opposed to what you ask of the world.
Destiny
Destiny and freedom go hand in hand, “Destiny and freedom are solemnly promised to one another. Only the man who makes freedom real to himself meets destiny” (Buber 1937 p45). Here Buber sees that we have destiny and that through living in the I-Thou we will access it. Man accesses his destiny when “he intervenes no more, but at the same time he does not let things merely happen. He listens to what is emerging from himself, to the course of being in the world; not in order to be supported by it, but in order to bring it to reality as it desire, in its needs of him” (Buber 1937 p49). Thus Buber sees humans as having two wills, self will, the will of causality and utility, and grand will, the deep will of freedom and of destiny.
The Eternal Thou
For Buber, “Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the Eternal Thou” (Buber 1937 p61). The Eternal Thou, being the Thou, that cannot be It.
Implications for Psychotherapy
The world of I-It, is one of causality, necessity supported on nothingness. The world of I-Thou is the world of freedom, destiny and meaning.
The world of I-It makes the world bearable and predictable. The world of I-Thou, gives meaning, unity and mystery.
The world of I-it is one that is created, the world of I-Thou is a world that is met.
The world of It-it is one that is experienced the world of I-Thou is one that entered into.
If we are to take Buber at his world, then he offers us much as therapists.
To work with the client relationally, to see what emerges between you, to not direct but rather meet, will have a movement towards the Thou. The effects of this will be to create a closeness, an intimacy between you. To see yourself and your client in all that they may be, rather than any specific aspect that you or they may show, will take to you to the Thou of Freedom. This will offer both to the client and to the therapist the option of change, which can be of benefit in the therapeutic relationship.
The effect of moving from a subject object relation with the client to a relational one could be profound. To see meaning and action as something that comes from the relation rather than something that we bring as subject can have significant effects.
It is quite often with a client that they have problems. They are depressed, they have a problem with their relationships. Implicit within this are meta-feelings, i.e. feelings about feelings. So that if I am depressed, then I can be angry and disappointed that I feel this way. If I have problems with my relationships then I can have feelings of failure of myself because of this. Looking at the problem as being something that exists between yourself and your world weakens the sense of your being responsible for this, and therefore reduces the meta-feelings.
To work with a client relationally can also have significant impacts as it can be that the pain a client may feel can be the outcome of a mismatch between how the client sees or wants the world, and how the world presents to them. If a more relational approach is taken then this gap can reduce and with it the pain that is felt trying to maintain the gap.
For Buber reality is within presentness, the past is that of objects. Thus he would advocate a phenomenological approach, where we look to access that which shows itself as itself. The benefit to working with a client in this way is several fold. When working like this, there is a concomitant sense of wonder as mystery as new relations of things are shown, as new ways of understanding and interacting with the present are shown. This sense of mystery and wonder can again be invigorating to a client, to encourage their investigation of their world, attached to the dynamicism that new understandings can provide.
In must be noted, as has been stated above, that the I-It is a necessary construct to make the world bearable, where the I-Thou is a construct to make it desirable. Therefore in working with clients, there will inevitably be a combination of these two ways of working, to fully move into the world of Thou, would be a destabilising and uncomfortable world, and leave the therapist, joined in unity but without consciousness, in something of an unaware state.
The other aspect I think is notable is how Buber doesn’t see feelings as giving access to the personal life. Standardly within therapy the goal seems to be to remove the bad feelings, the pain, and to replace with the good feelings, happiness, joy etc. For Buber feelings act at the I-It relationship, with the It being either yourself or the other. For Buber I think working with feelings in a therapeutic relationship which is common, would be to extend and deepen the understanding of the feeling. To have feeling is to interact with one part of a person, or event. For Buber this would be only a partial understanding of them, and that through seeing more of their possibility and indeed yours. To take his project through to his conclusion would be to reduce all feeling to that of love, and that is not a love for someone or something, but rather a foundational love, in which you and they exist. A wonder of the mystery that is being.
Bibliography
Buber I and Thou 1937
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