At the outdoor Contact Improv jam, snippets from the philosophy I’ve been engaging slipped into my dance. I walked to the edge of a little cliff, overlooking the river and thought about Pyrrho, who was said to have relied on the protection of his friends because he doubted even that a cliff was really there or that he would fall in. I leaned forward, holding onto a pole and recalled Sartre’s reflection on the anxiety connected to the thought one may hurl oneself off a cliff down to one’s death. As I danced, I wondered what the experience of dance would have to say with regards to Descartes mind-body dualism. If I consider the body less real in some way, how do I experience it when refraining from speech and moving through the world. I thought of Merleau-Ponty, remembering that some time ago, a French teacher lead an intensive exploring his philosophy through dance.
For me, kink and CI have been two embodied practices I encountered at the same time. They have been deeply transformative, and interwoven, helping me spread the presence cultivated in meditation into engagement with others and movement through the world. Interestingly, reading and writing about kink became a passion of mine at social work grad school, while I never quite got in the habit of reading much about CI.
There are several threads of interest to me. In every social work textbook, in approximately the 2nd chapter, the author apologizes for overviewing the 5 or 6 theories relevant to that aspect of practice. Psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral and humanistic streams are usually included, along with others, depending on the topic and author. I want to see the schools of psychotherapy within historic context, evolving over time. I want to see the theories of psychotherapy within the broader cultural (including regional and national) intellectual contexts in which they developed.
I want to connect my MSW learning with my undergrad engagement with Western philosophy. There is a part of me that strives for some type of comprehensive overview, that wants some type of big picture on which I can rely so that when I hear a claim, or conceive of one myself, I can situate it within the range of theory. I would, with that, like to be aware of the theory informing clinical interpretations and interventions. I would like this line of inquiry to inform choices of clinical intervention and investment professional growth that benefit my clients.
I could see some common threads between the existentialists and Carl Rogers, especially when I look at some of the existential therapists who bridge the gap. The existentialists see anxiety as endemic to the human condition of having to create meaning and make choices in world without absolutes. Anxiety, therefore, is not pathology per se. Instead of various disorders, the undesirable psychological phenomena existentialists target is bad faith, uncritical conformity to the values or expectations of other people or of the culture. The solution is to accept the human condition, own the responsibility to make choices amidst uncertainty and cultivate authenticity. In different ways, existential voices explore the challenge of being true to oneself amidst various pressures to do otherwise. One of those key pressures is religion.
Some replace the essence of humans posited by religion with new essences. Sometimes, this takes the form of a universal Nature common to all. Freud’s structure of the unconscious and his various theories about the role of childhood experience in personality development constitute a posited essence of being human. While Freud’s account does involve the nurture elements of the nature/nurture source of behavior, the impact of nurture in his view is predetermined by the structure of being a human organisms. This continues today with attachment theory as reflected in the book Wired for Love by Tatkin.
Philosophers through the ages commit themselves to a rigorous search for truth. Their questioning of accepted beliefs makes many unpopular, particularly with those in power and, as a result, many are imprisoned or executed. Philosophers challenge the dominant views of their eras, but there are limits to those challenges. In my view, before the Enlightenment, many European philosophers did all sorts of intellectual contortions to reconcile their skepticism with faith in Christian God. Some of the more adventurous and daring put forward conceptions of God that differ from those of the church. Others reject the church in some sense, but still cling to certain values and teachings of the church. Few doubt God and church completely. Perhaps as a result of growing scientific sensibilities reflected in the Enlightenment and for example, acceptance of the work of Darwin, by the time of Nietzsche, a philosopher could explore a reality that God is dead, along with the implications of that, to a new level.
Listening to Carl Rogers feels lightyears away from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Rogers feels to me by contrast so American, so down to earth, so pragmatic, so direct, unadorned, clear. His worldview resonates so much with the worldview that permeated my experience with the Zen Peacemakers and other healing communities of which I was a part. While Roger’s existential-informed humanistic psychology is often portrayed as a reaction that limits the excesses of Freud’s tradition, there are also similarities between the two. I have read that Freud’s patients reported appreciating his warm presence, nonjudgmental acceptance, careful listening and empathy. Like Freudians, Rogers talks about helping clients become aware of thoughts and feelings of which they are scarcely conscious. Yet we also know that Freud angerly clashed with and broke ties with disciplines who disagreed with him on key principles. Indeed, one of the key differences I observe between Jung and Freud is that Jung holds onto a sense of openness and not-knowing while Freud calcifies into dogma.
Once psychology begins to be built on scientific rather than religious foundations, existentialists and humanists reject new essences that are taken to inform the foundation of human experience. They challenge the tendency of the Freudian to treat the client as an object by assuming authority to impose an interpretation on the client. They instead encourage exquisite attention to the internal world and meaning-making process of the client themselves. They eschew the idea that clients and therapists merely bring forward transference and counter-transference feelings based on previous experience, but rather see the ways in which the therapeutic encounter is a genuine meeting of two human beings.
If we follow the thread of disrupting claims of human essence, we continue to gain insight into various ways that phenomena taken as human nature are socially constructed. This is especially important in the realm of sexuality, in which scientists have imposed rigid normativities perhaps as harmful as religious moralists. Practices like meditation, dance and kink help cultivate emotional intelligence, in the form of self-awareness and other-awareness, so that choices and ethics can be based on one’s true feelings and desires and on true care for others and not by imposing or thoughtlessly reproducing arbitrary social norms. Mindfulness meditation, in that it involves close attention to the internal experience, resonates with a focus of phenomenology.
Authenticity is a common element in bohemian or counter-culture expressions. Learning about Sartre and the artists and intellectuals of the Left Bank, I wondered if they were a European equivalent of the Beats in the U.S.. They struck me as more intellectual and politically committed than most Beats. By contrast, the Beats appear aloof and indulgent. This contrast may be explained by context. French and Americans in the 1950’s struggled with very different threats to freedom. France had been taken over by a fascist Germany, which was also committing genocide, while Americans were more threatened by the conformity that accompanies prosperity and stability. Even though the U.S. did belatedly play a significant role in WWII, the violence mostly occurred away from American soil.
