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
