Advance Purchase for New Release from EPIS Publishing Co.

EPIS Publishing Co. is please to announce the imminent release of its first 2012 publication entitled Three Essays on Phenomenology (with subtitles following). If you’d like a discounted, advance purchase on the volume, please send an email to epispublishing1@gmail.com. or a check mailed to the following address, for $20.00:
323 16th Ave E, #103
Seattle, WA 98112.

Here is the Preface for the book:
These three essays represent a period of intense philosophical research and writing in conjunction with Professor David A. Boileau (now deceased) during the early years of this new millennium. Like so much other intellectual work, I consider them as preliminary and introductory—unfinished in many ways. Before his passing, David Boileau and I were working on various theoretical criticisms of modern humanism, especially how inadequate conceptions of phenomenology resulted in anthropological distortion, in moral theory, social relations, and psychology. It is in these essays, that I attempt to begin working out the phenomenological problems in psychology, examining the relation between ego distortions and moral behavior, and finally proposing a line of inquiry into radical subjectivity. This volume is the very first volume in the proposed “ZeroPoint Series,” which initiates a line of inquiry into the possibilities for introspective and radical cognitive autonomy, which might have applications for clinical work in psychoanalysis, cultural criticism, social and political philosophy, and moral theory. It is my belief that each one can be further developed and that together they can lead to new critical perspectives in the accounting of radical subjectivity. I am planning further volumes in this series. I also acknowledge that although I have turned to a number of thinkers for discussion and understanding of this work, that it contains a number of mistakes and lacunas, all of which are solely mine.

Here is the back cover description:
These three essays are phenomenological investigations into moral theory, humanistic/modern social relations, and the possibility of radical subjectivity. The first essay, Chasing the Self, is a criticism of 20th-Century psychology, arguing that it rests upon scientific assumptions that prevent a fuller and richer anthropological conception of humans. It is rich in theory and has practical, clinical applications. The second essay, Existential Psychoanalysis, is a study of Jean-Paul Sartre’s dialectic between psychoanalytic distortions in self-concept and the resulting moral problematic of sado-masochistic social relations. It is well researched and is a valuable contribution to the complicated question concerning radical subjectivity. The third and final essay, Prolegomena to The Possessive Self, concerns the problem of the Other by examining and criticizing the possessive self of the Enlightenment. By criticizing the very construction of the modernist self, the “I” of humanism is dismantled, opening up theoretical and practical possibilities for new structures in social relations. All three essays are introductory and open up fertile possibilities for continued development of their ideas and assertions.

KCB
Writing from our Seattle, WA, office

Seminar in Existential Phenomenology: Heidegger (Part 2)

This is more preliminary commentary and analysis as our seminar group moves toward the February session in existential phenomenology. We need to emphasize how important Husserl’s phenomenological attitude is for Heidegger study. This means that we must focus initially on our everyday experience of the world in a way that is unadulterated by theory and concept. The goal is that by avoiding these distortions caused by learning and by knowledge, we can see the world as it is in itself. When I look at things in the world, I always see them in terms of an intentionality (a concept we covered in our Brentano studies, which was an idea he took from the Scholastics). What this means for us, however, is that when we look at something, we always see it as something; it means something for us in terms of the place it occupies within a constellation of meanings. This notion, which Heidegger follows, allows him to develop further one of his basic, anti-Cartesian positions that consciousness is always outside itself, in the world. This is the very important idea that my consciousness is always embedded in relationships to the world, to others, to ideas, and so forth, from the ground up. It is, in fact, one of the fundamental tenets of existential psychotherapy and existential analysis. Thus, consciousness is never just conscious. In contrast, it is always conscious of something. Furthermore, the world is never something qualitatively different from consciousness–out there–as Descartes would have us believe. Instead, consciousness is always its world: they go together as conceptual poles of an intrinsic quality to being human and not separate.

It might also then be helpful to consider Heidegger’s early History of the Concept of Time because there are some passages in it that explain phenomenology. We must consider how we relate to the concept of intentionality. In the natural attitude, which Heidegger exposes for collapsing the ontological within the ontic, we think of ourselves as any other object (one can also see here the strong influence of Kierkegaard in this way of thinking). Nevertheless, Heidegger utilizes phenomenology to show that we humans are not the same as other things. For example, even though we humans relate to the furniture of the world, we can also take a point of view on that relation. Thus, when I reflect on any relation I have to an object in the world, the object is immanent in consciousness–to that reflection– and not transcendent to it as it is in my basic relational stance to my world of things. In the transcendent mode, the material world is alien (and full of nausea, for Sartre). Thus, I am both a part of the world and separate from it. What is interesting is that the recognition of this split between me and the world leads to objectivity. More interesting is that it arises from the immanent reflection upon a transcendent perception. That is, without transcendent perceptions there would not be the experience of objectivity. For example, my intentional experience of a car comes from an immanent reflection on my transcendent relation/perception of car in the world.

In the phenomenological reduction, we focus attention not so much on the object of perception but on the act of perceiving as we reflect on the (transcendent object) in perception. This allows the objectivity of the transcendent object to appear in consciousness. Thus, in the Husserlian epoche–the bracketing of the world–we focus on thinking about the act of perceiving as something immanent to reflection. We don’t focus on the object as external/transcendent. This is where phenomenological analysis starts, for Heidegger. It is also the basic stance for an existentially oriented psychotherapist or an existential psychoanalyst in the dyadic encounter with patient or client. It dialectically opposes the natural attitude of positive science, and of Descartes.

As William Large points out, a real object, i.e., a car, is external to consciousness. The objective car, in contrast, is internal to consciousness. For Husserl, there is an absolute split between the world and consciousness. In contrast, Heidegger parts company with Husserl here by questioning how this split is possible when the concrete living beings who have this split in consciousness are also a part of the world. The problem that Heidegger sees is that we have not investigated the Being of consciousness with the same rigor as we have investigated those objects that are immanent within consciousness. For Heidegger, even Husserl did not get beyond the Cartesian position of a substance ontology. This leads Heidegger to the question about the being of the being who relates to the world intentionally.

Pushing this issue further, Heidegger realized that traditional phenomenology, including that of Husserl, operated in such a way to make the inquiry into subjectivity vanish as a problem as we prioritized objectivity through knowledge. In short, the phenomenological under-structure to modern, Western philosophy takes knowledge to be the primary way of relating to the world; the understanding of consciousness is based on this prioritization. In stark contrast, Heidegger questions whether there is not a more fundamental way of relating to the world than through the (immanent) subject-object split that occurs through the prioritization of knowledge (as way of being). Instead of being ensnared in this prioritization, Heidegger sought to un-conceal a more fundamental ontological basis for epistemological inquiry. Thus, Heidegger’s approach to the question of being is phenomenological. Let’s pursue what he means by this, as well as its relation to ontology. Then, let’s focus on the question of being itself.

For Heidegger, laying bare Husserl’s implicit ontology means that this question can only be approached through the question of what it means to be a human being. We will see that this is so because what differentiates humans from other objects is that its life matters to it; the meaning of its life–as projected possibility–matters to it. In Being and Time, section 7 of the introduction, Heidegger explores what he means by phenomenology. It involves the attempt to reach the “things themselves,” (and thereby overcome Kant’s position that we cannot access the noumenal realm). Heidegger urges us not to presuppose the same metaphysics that Husserl did. He believes that we can uncover new possibilities within our past by going back all the way to the ancient Greeks who had an original experience of the world that has been distorted by substance metaphysics through time. More specifically, he argues that phenomenon as appearance (object of consciousness) is not opposed to an underlying thing in itself. That is, we have come to believe [think Plato's theory of the forms] that appearance is deceptive and that it is somehow unrelated to an underlying thing in itself. However, in Heidegger’s etymological search he discovers that there is a more primordial meaning to phenomenon than appearance and that is that which can be brought into the light, that which shows itself. There are objects of consciousness, therefore, only because there are things made visible by the light. Furthermore, by investigating underneath our traditional metaphysics with all its conceptual and theoretical categories, we can return to a more fundamental level and mode of experience that occurs in our everyday lives. It is descriptive phenomenology that can accomplish this task. Logos thus implies a making clear of things in our everyday life. Thus, to speak the truth means foundationally to clarify and bring to the light, and only derivatively to assert a true judgment. Heidegger believes that this unconcealment is based on the ancient Greek notion of aletheia. This unconcealing process occurs by description rather than by argument. It is the attempt to allow beings to reveal themselves as they are and not in terms of theoretical or conceptual categories or explanations that distort and make hidden. For Heidegger, this phenomenological method leads to fundamental ontology by examining the meaning of the Being of phenomena. For him, it is Dasein that can ask these questions about meaning and therefore approach the meaning of Being in general.

Let’s now make a few comments about being. These comments are few, at this point, and preliminary, so we will attempt to refine them over time by future sections on these points. It can be said that Heidegger tries to think Being (and essence) as a creative occurrence of the new rather than as a “noetic and teleologically predetermined order” [as occurs in Aristotle], according to Kisiel’s introduction to Werner Marx’s excellent text on Heidegger. For Heidegger, we must replace thinking the essence of man as substance with the a notion of essence as occurrence. This implies the temporal rather than the analytic, static interpretation of human existence. We must work hard to challenge tradition when it becomes “dormant” (or in therapeutic terms, sedimented), re-awakening primordial and re-vitalizing experiences within it. This requires us to overcome a passive stance in our orientation toward being and instead, adopt a more assertive, proactive questioning of the natural attitude. It is work. Thus, we follow Nietzsche in his admonition that the Apollinian outweighs the Dionysian, and therefore we must engage in a deconstruction of the structures that have become accepted and hardened–implicit in all experience–and thereby revitalize the new which is always hidden in the old. By returning to the Greek beginnings of our Western culture, we may radically start from primordial experience that is unadulterated by the centuries of traditional belief and value structures that have only served to conceal. He [Heidegger] assumes that these originary experiences still exist though hidden in our current cultural framework and that by “thinking against ourselves” (as Von Will would say) or by reconsidering the meaning of Being, we can reveal the creative power of those early experience sin our civilization. This, in turn, would open up new epistemological possibilities, set within new frameworks of value. I will continue these sorts of questions at my next sitting.

KCB
Writing for the Existential Psychoanalytic Institute of Seattle

Introductory Comments to January Phenomenological Process Seminar (Part I)

This seminar has become one of our most intriguing and valuable intellectual and clinical gatherings. We bring clinical case studies or social transactions and then analyze them from a purely phenomenological & existential point of view. Participation is unanimous and everyone reports a great deal of personal satisfaction and growth. I’d like to make some suggestions–reminders for the old and news for the new–because I think it will make this shared time even more gratifying and valuable, both personally and professionally.

We are using a number of texts as foundation, and I want to encourage all of us to continue purchasing, reading, analyzing and utilizing them as theoretical and methodological fulcra for case study analysis. Sokolowski’s text, Introduction to Phenomenology, while not formally required, is an excellent introduction to this sort of thinking, and I highly recommend it to all participants. Not only does he carefully place phenomenology historically, he unravels what it is and what it does. Chapters 8 & 9 are especially helpful treatments of the self and of temporality. The bibliography is an excellent source of further reading.

As main texts, we have using Van Deurzen’s Skills in Existential Counselling, and Spinelli’s The Interpreted World, along with the his later Practising Existential Psychotherapy. All three have excellent outlines, diagrams, and models for existential clinical thinking, and they are indispensable to this seminar.

Along these lines, Spinelli in the later text (Practising), which focuses on the relational world, has a condensed chapter on philosophical foundations including the following concepts: He says that at bottom there are three main principles in this way to approach clinical work. He is speaking of the human condition.

First, he asserts that there is always relatedness, including subjectivity and its relation to others, the way we exist our subjectivity, and how we each create a world. Second, he asserts that we live in existential uncertainty–always–and as we see, this is both a burden and privilege from a transcendental point of view. Third, we always live in anxiety as we try to uncover and construct meaning, moving forward temporally in our lives. You would do well to carefully read this chapter and actually methodically and slowly apply it to either a case or to a social transaction. I would also like to point out that Part Two of this applications-oriented text is an excellent starting point for clinicians who want to learn this type of therapeutic orientation.

In the near future–perhaps February–we will be adding additional texts to our resource base. One of them is Giorgi’s The Descriptive Phenomenological Method in Psychology, which he bases on Husserl’s work, as well as other important thinkers. Chapter Five is an excellent recapitulation of the phenomenological method, and I advise reading it. Don Ihde wrote a book entitled Experimental Phenomenology. Chapter One is a solid rendition of the phenomenological method. There are many other texts which we will bring to the table in 2012, but if you read through these five carefully, you will have a good start on the “process” aspects of phenomenology and a solid method for our seminar.

KCB
Writing in Seattle

Introductory Comments on January Seminar in Culture & Psychoanalysis (Part 1)

We will be discussing two texts by Herbert Marcuse this year, starting with Eros and Civilization in January. Recall that the purpose of this seminar is to review intelligent criticism that helps us understand the relation between culture and the way we think about psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and mental health in general. That is to say that clinical work does not occur in a vacuum; instead, it operates from a deeper foundation of the construction of value, scientific paradigm, language, power relations, and many other factors. Marcuse was very sensitive to these issues in his own right and offers an exciting volume that we will use as a basis for discussion.

He is deeply concerned with the fact that our civilization is repressed and that individuals are dominated by various forms of a repressive system. He, like Nietzsche, queries about the possibility of a transvaluation of values that would lead to non-repressive forms of culture. He proposes in his book the idea of “non-repressive sublimation,” in which the sexual impulses maintain their erotic energy, bypass their immediate object, and eroticize (energize) non-erotic relationships between individuals. Otherwise, we exist in forms of personal and social alienation that separate the intellectual from the instinctual, of pleasure from thought. Therefore, for Marcuse, we must engage in intellectual liberation from totalitarian forms of thought that regress our instinctual nature. This necessarily is a social and political issue. While the Existential Psychoanalytic Institute of Seattle is not necessarily an agent of political activism, it does recognize that the political does meet both the professional and the clinical. Because we are sensitive to these influences and “effects,” and because we recognize that critical social and political theory is necessary for the development of contemporary psychoanalytic thought and practice, we offer this seminar to our members. We’ll proceed here by way of a series of questions.

1. What is the relationship between social/political issues and psychology (psychoanalysis), according to Marcuse? On this note, what is totalitarianism? How does it affect psychology/psychoanalysis?

2. Has the sacrifice of libido and happiness (through social & cultural repression) actually paid off in our culture/society? What sort of evidence can we give either way? Are there counter-finalities (Sartre’s term from the Critique of Dialectical Reason) that have proven more harmful than any perceived gains?

3. In “Freudian terms, is the conflict between pleasure principle and reality principle irreconcilable to such a degree that it necessitates the repressive transformation of man’s instinctual nature?”; or does it allow for a new, non-repessive relationship to nature [note Heidegger's exegesis on the four-fold] as well as for new, non-repressive social and existential relations between individuals?

4. Following the previous question, might it be true that the “repressive” form of civilization is only historically accidental but not necessarily true in any analytic sense?

5. Is it true that Freud’s theory itself refutes his consistent denial of a non-repressive civilization? Do the achievements of a repressive civilization create the seeds for the gradual abolition of repression?

6. What is the relationship between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, according to Freud?

7. Does the reality principle safeguard the pleasure principle?

8. Does the social organization of personal desire/instinct thereby render their resulting aim and direction less than fully authentic, somehow untrue to individuals?

9. What does Freud mean when he asserts that the reality principle never entirely overcomes the pleasure principle and therefore has to be constantly re-established?

10. Can we overcome inner repression? Should we?

11. Is there a possible synthesis for the dialectical struggle between the pleasure principle and the reality principle?

12. What is happiness? How is it related to pleasure?

13. How is regression progressive? How can this inform psychotherapeutic/analytic practice?

14. How does Freud think that the repressive function at the ontogenetic level is interrelated to the phylogenetic level? How can this dialectic inform knowledge between clinical practice and cultural criticism/critical social theory?

KCB
Writing in Seattle

Some Ideas for January Seminar in Psychoanalysis (Part I)

This month in the psychoanalytic seminar, the EPIS group is going to review Parts II and III in Morris Eagle’s text, From Classical to Contemporary Psychoanalysis,  as we transition into Wachtel’s text, Relational Theory (and the Practice of Psychotherapy). We will start by comparing contemporary conceptions of mind in psychoanalytic theories with Freud’s earlier view. I suggest thinking a great deal about the metaphors that they use; consider historical and other reasons why these metaphors shifted, along with clinical reasons. Also consider Eagle’s assertion that contemporary psychoanalytic theories do not offer a systematic theory of mind. Here are some questions and issues you might ponder in preparation for the seminar: 1) what is the critique of the Freudian, “hidden reality” conception of the unconscious? 2) How does contemporary analysis, as a whole, alter this view? 3) How is Sartre’s idea of mauvaise foi consonant with and perhaps informative about the contemporary notion that the unconscious is just those experiences that remain implicit and unrefined? 4) How is personal “ownership” of one’s experience relevant to the definition and conception of what counts as unconscious? 5) How is the failure to make relevant connections within one’s experience part of the unconscious? How is this relevant to Bion’s notions of Alpha and Beta elements and linking? 6) How does the contemporary analytic notion of constructing meaning parallel postmodern epistemology? How does the Freudian position track modernist epistemology? 7) What is Sartre’s famous criticism of Freud’s idea of the censor? How does the notion of signal anxiety perhaps overcome this challenge? 8) Are pre-linguistic experiences more authentic than post-linguistic (given the charge that language distorts)? 9) How does the relationalist notion that the unconscious is just a concatenation of transactional patterns compare to the existentialist notion of sedimentation? 10) Is the mind socially constructed or is it a stable inner structure?

With regard to Eagle’s chapter on conceptions of object relations in contemporary analytic theory, we must define what an “object” is.  Thus, we can ask these questions (amongst others):  11) How do we compare Freud’s conception to the modern relationalists’? Which is more accurate? 12) Is there a way to theoretically and clinically resolve the dialectical tension between drive theory and relational theory as it pertains to object relatedness? 13) How does object relations relate to sexuality in contemporary views? 14) Why do we need objects?

With regard to contemporary views on psychopathology, here are some questions that may trigger lively discussion: 15) How is pathology linked to environment failure? maladaptive representations? clinging to original representations? 16) How can the quest for autonomy conflict with the desire to retain attachment to early object? 17) How can pathology come from failure to internalize a secure base? 18) What is Kohut’s idea that pathology comes from self defects? 19) What is the distinction between unmet needs and conflictual wishes regarding pathology, according to Kohut? 20) How can pathology be viewed as a restriction of a full range of experience? 21) How is a failure to regulate affect indicative of pathology?

As a way to transition into Wachtel’s text, Relational Theory, please start considering the epistemological problems of both the one-person view and the two-person views of understanding another person. Consider how the transition from modernity to postmodernity might have affected at a structural level this transition. Along these lines, consider Kuhn’s ideas about scientific paradigm shifts and “abnormal” science that occurs within revolutions in ideas. Consider whether there are factors exogenous to the clinical experience that might have influenced this paradigm shift.  Question: 22) How can we represent the current weltanschauung?

KCB
Writing in Seattle

Introductory Comments to January Seminars (Part 1)

As we approach the four core January seminars, I’d like to use some space here to raise some questions and issues about the material in an informal and casual way, with the intent to focus members toward a 2012 dialectic. Last night, we started our new Seminar in Film, Phenomenology & Psychoanalysis. We watched Roman Polanski’s first feature film, entitled Knife in the Water, had good food and drink, and overall a generally enjoyable evening. In a few months, we will watch, analyze, and discuss another film, so feel free to send your suggestions to EPIS.

Let’s now move on to the four core seminars. We intend to read all of Heidegger’s Being and Time, along with supplemental texts and perhaps some of his later work as it bears on BT.

We need to try to understand what Heidegger means by Being. He uses the term “Sein,” which should not be thought of as an entity but rather as the infinitive that means “to be.” In contrast, Heidegger uses das Seiende to mean “being” in the sense of an entity. As such, we can ask: 1) How does the distinction between these two terms act as foundation for his ontology? 2) How does Heidegger change the question from what things exist to the question of what it means to exist at all? This shifts the focus from a taxonomic inquiry into the things that exist to the inquiry into the meaning of Being. For example, we can ask “What is a psychoanalytic institute?” This question is, for Heidegger, about an entity. In contrast, we could ask “What does it mean to belong to a psychoanalytic institute?” This second question is more foundational than the first because the determination of meaning determines the institute. Therefore, Heidegger concludes that the meaning precedes the entity. By avoiding the question of whether or not something exists or what kind of an entity it is, we ask a more fundamental question. Similarly, we can the question “What does it mean to be at all?” As Michael Gelven points out in his commentary, p. 9, in all the ways we exist or act, the “being” question is foundational. By looking at all the ways we exist and what is common to them all, we can pursue what it means “to be” in the first place. By thinking about what it means to be a human being we can then determine what a human being is. For Heidegger, the very fact that we can ask this basic question shows that our existence is meaningful to us.

Heidegger also takes up the issue of the subject-object dichotomy. In the tradition, we conceptually distinguish the knower from a world that can be known. However, Heidegger repudiates this distinction and argues that at the most foundational level we are already in the world. in order to even have the subject-object distinction we must already be in the world. Therefore, opposing Schopenhauer, the world can never actually be my representation be it is never outside me. Yet, if we pursue the Being question, we realize that the world matters to us in various ways. We care about it in various ways that exemplify how and what it means to us in any given aspect. Therefore, for Heidegger, fundamental ontology must precede any inquiry in to subject-object explorations into facts and values. We can see here that the very subject-object distinction is itself an abstraction and only covers a restricted realm of inquiry.

Heidegger thus takes it upon himself to analyze human existence and reinterprets traditional problems in philosophy in terms of transcendental awareness or meaning categories. As I mentioned, the focus shifts from entities to the underlying meaning of thinking them. That is, we re-focus our inquiry on an entity toward what it means to be in the world through/by thinking that entity; these are what Heidegger calls “existentials.” Questions at this point could be: 3) How can we determine all of these existentials? 4) Are they cultural and/or historically dependent? A good way to start this exploration is to think of them as presuppositions in experience that make that experience possible. They are, therefore, a priori and transcendental. More formally, the quest is to identify and explain the modes of awareness that allow one to ask questions about the meaning of one’s existence, i.e., how we construct meaning.

For Heidegger, there are two movements in the construction of the analysis of existence. The first movement is from the everyday or inauthentic perspective. The second movement is a re-analysis in terms of human’s temporal structure. This fundamental ontology–the study of Being–was for Heidegger that which had been covered up by traditional metaphysics, which was the study of entities and the motivation of natural & social science. Because knowing is only one of the ways that we exist, we must first examine all the ways that we exist and then understand how knowing and science are just one of those ways. This was his choice of “first” philosophy, which would serve as the basis for all other philosophical exploration.

Furthermore, the analysis of this ontology must be phenomenological, which we will discuss in the Seminar. For example, we could ask 5) How are ontology and phenomenology compatible, given that phenomenology studies appearances and ontology studies that which is real?; or, 6) how does this phenomenology operate? Another question could be as follows: 7) How can an existential analysis of Dasein give us answers to the question about Being?; and 8) isn’t he actually engaged in constructing a philosophical anthropology rather than an ontology?

Perhaps the clue is in Dasein itself, who is the one who engages in this ontological search. Thus, as Gelven points out, the answers about Being can only be analyzed through self-reflective human consciousness and therefore, existential analysis must be a part of ontology. That is, the study of Being cannot be separated from the study of man. As Heidegger himself said in What is Called Thinking?, “every way of thinking takes its way already within the total relation of Being and man’s nature, or else it is not thinking at all.” (p. 79, NY: Harper & Row, 1968). There is no difference between the study of man and a study of Being.

We will continue our musings on BT in later installments, focusing next on Heidegger’s introductions to the text. We will also pen some comments with regard to the other seminars, on psychoanalysis and on cultural studies.

KCB
Writing in Seattle

Introductory Thoughts to 2012, January, Seminars

Regarding the Seminar in Phenomenological Process (the case study group!), there are a number of helpful items in our assigned texts that I want to encourage all of you to sample. Spinelli’s text, The Interpreted World, has a nice introduction to phenomenology (as does Sokolowski’s text, Introduction to Phenomenology), along with hints pertaining to method and psychotherapy. He has a brief summary of both Heidegger’s and Sartre’s ontological formations, as well as a nice integration of existentialism and phenomenology in his section on psychotherapy. Van Deurzen’s helpful text entitled, Skills in Existential Counselling & Psychotherapy has clear methodological summaries, as well as exercises. She also carefully focuses the reader on the value of introspection for the therapist, which aligns itself nicely with the critique of objectification in social science. I have found that her section on self scrutiny is quite helpful and I think, in line with the phenomenological method in general, focuses the therapist on her own experience just as much as on her perceptions of the client/patient. Another text by Spinelli, Practising Existential Psychotherapy, focuses directly on the work of psychotherapy and is replete with techniques and exercises that are are useful. My suggestion for participants is to read all pages of each of these texts, and then try to relate any particular chapter to a current case study. This really helps the text to come alive. I also want to point out two additional texts that we will formally assign in the future, but which could be helpful presently. They are Giorgi’s text, The Descriptive Method in Psychology, which has a particularly useful chapter on the phenomenological method, and Mearn’s and Cooper’s new text, entitled Relational Depth (short title). Again, my suggestion is to actually pull out a section or a chapter from any one of these texts and apply it to a case study.

With regard to the Seminar in Existential Phenomenology, we will soon be wading into deep waters in our study of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (see both Macquarrie’s and Stambaugh’s translations). Please note that there are a number of commentaries and guides available. I recommend Blattner’s Heidegger’s Being and Time, Dreyfus’s Being-in-the-World, and The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, 2nd. I think it is helpful to consider Heidegger as a historical figure reacting to the western tradition, Cartesianism, Kierkegaard, Dilthey, and his teacher, Husserl, amongst others. Initially, I’d suggest focusing on basic concepts and thinkers presented in the commentaries, developing a conceptual outline, and then moving forward in understanding. I also suggest reading ahead in the text because I think that this would be helpful in understanding our present assignments. I’d also consider the comparison with Sartre’s ontology, his concept of authenticity and the relation to cultural criticism, and finally how his concepts are foundational to existential psychoanalysis.

With regard to the Seminar in Psychoanalysis & Philosophy, make sure that you carefully review Eagle’s book, From Classical to Contemporary Psychoanalysis, sections II & III, on theories of mind, object relations, psychopathology, and treatment in contemporary psychoanalysis. Make sure that you re-read Green’s book, Key Ideas for a Contemporary Psychoanalysis, especially Part Three, “Situating Psychoanalysis At The Dawn Of The Third Millennium.”  Most importantly, read carefully our assigned text by Paul Wachtel, Relational Theory, focusing especially on the first several chapters and his ideas on relationality and the distinction between 1-person and 2-person paradigms.

Finally, with regard to the Seminar on Cultural Criticism & Psychoanalysis, please carefully read Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man, focusing on the first half of Eros for the January session. I also advise taking a look at Erich Fromm’s work, along with both the Cambridge and Routledge Companions to Critical Theory (which we will read directly in the ensuing months). In addition, I think it would be helpful to look at Foucault’s History of Sexuality, Power/Knowledge, and his historical analyses of discipline, medicine, and health.

Enjoy. January will be a five-star meal!

KCB
writing in Seattle, Washington USA

Reading List for January Seminars

Seminar in Phenomenological Process
The Interpreted World, Spinelli
Practicising Existential Psychotherapy, Spinelli
Skills in Existential Counseling & Psychotherapy, Van Deurzen

Seminar in Existential Phenomenology
Being and Time, Heidegger

Seminar in Philosophy & Psychoanalysis
Relational Theory, Wachtel

Seminar in Cultural Criticism & Psychoanalysis
Eros and Civilization, Marcuse

Seminar in Film, Phenomenology & Psychoanalysis Meets January 7, 2012

The first Seminar in Film, Phenomenology & Psychoanalysis will meet January 7 in the Jewel Box, The Rendezvous Theater, located at 2322 2nd Ave. (2nd & Bell), in downtown Seattle. Please arrive at 4:15 p.m. to watch Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water. After the film, we will retire to the Red Velvet Lounge to discuss the psychoanalytic and phenomenological aspects of the story and its direction. The event ends at 8:00 p.m.

December Readings for Psychoanalytic & Cultural Studies Seminars

For the December 16 Seminar in Psychoanalysis & Philosophy, please focus on Morris Eagle, chapter 6, on conceptions of mind in contemporary psychoanalytic theories.

For the December 17 Seminar on Cultural Studies & Psychoanalysis, please focus on chapters 4 (The precarious chances of Eros) and 5 (Pedagological Hopes for the Future), in Drassinower.

KCB