Existential Framework Research Articles

Beyond the academic’s dilemma: Transdisciplinary and existential perspectives of re-enchantment

The purpose of this article is to stimulate debate about the developing paradoxes and dilemmas facing the university academic. This article argues that academics are increasingly being steeped in an inauthentic existence due, at least partly to, egocentrism and sociocentrism. A modest transdisciplinary- existential analytical framework is applied as an intellectual method to reflect on the prevailing monological perspectives stifling the role of academics, in working towards building a more sustainable future. Using concepts such as the subject, facticity and transcendence, the article investigates the dialectical tensions between some of these monological perspectives and proposes avenues to create new possibilities to progress the role of the academic. The article argues that the multilogical perspectives of transdisciplinary thinking and the empowering perspectives of existential thinking can provide academics with the necessary conceptual tools to transcend egocentrism and sociocentrism. While it is likely that new contradictions will emerge as a result of this synthesis, open-minded academics are urged to ignite their imaginative powers and take up the challenge of creating and acting on new possibilities. A transdisciplinary-existential dialectical approach can provide a richer understanding of present dilemmas in academia and the world, and suggest more satisfying paths to a sustainable future.

Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties’ engagement in wilderness protection at home and in Antarctica

The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty has stipulated the protection of Antarctica’s wilderness values since it came into force in 1998. A review of 2800 documents from the website of the Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty indicates that the consideration of wilderness is a very small component in the discussions and decisions of the 29 Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties between 1998 and 2014. Fourteen Parties have never or very rarely spoken or written about wilderness, yet at least three of them have wilderness legislations for their domestic territories. The existence or absence of domestic wilderness policies or wilderness areas in a Party’s home country cannot explain the degree of its engagement on the issue of Antarctica’s wilderness values. Instead, Parties’ engagement on the issue of Antarctica’s wilderness values can be seen as a subset of the larger pattern of their engagement within the Antarctic Treaty System in general and on Antarctic environmental matters in particular. For Parties that have engaged little on the issue, we postulate that wilderness is unlikely to be a priority. For Parties that have engaged on the issue, we postulate that they envision Antarctic wilderness within a strongly anthropocentric utilitarian framework, similar to that adopted domestically within the European Union, and in contrast with the more existential framework adopted domestically by the USA. We argue that an anthropocentric utilitarian framework, together with de facto zoning of the Antarctic Treaty area into infrastructure and protected zones and Every Man’s Land, cannot provide effective protection to Antarctica’s wilderness.

Re-imagining inclusive, existential approaches to spirituality in therapeutic recreation

ABSTRACTIn this conceptual paper we make a case for frameworks of spirituality and spiritual practice in Therapeutic Recreation (TR) to be broadened in order to be supportive and inclusive of all forms of beliefs and practice. While acknowledging contributions that Christian-Judeo models have made to spiritual practice in TR settings, our paper illuminates a need for grounding approaches to discussing, exploring, and fostering spirituality in the context of TR, particularly to address diversity through a framework that is complementary of individuals with an array of spiritual beliefs and practices. This critique is primarily an effort to re-shape TR landscapes, beyond Christian-Judeo frameworks that dominate spirituality literature in TR, to address spiritual diversity and accessibility for individuals who embrace non-dominant spiritual practices. In this paper, Purdy and Dupey’s (2005) Holistic Flow Model and Howe-Murphy and Murphy’s (1997) Consciousness Paradigm are synthesized to reflect an umbrella under which diverse spiritual approaches can flourish in TR contexts where traditional, dominant TR practices keep spirituality at the periphery. We advocate for an existential framework to ground this understanding of spirituality in settings where TR is practiced to inform a holistic leisure practice between individuals and with TR partners in care. To support these aims for an existentially grounded, spirituality-driven approach in TR, we describe how care partners can support spiritual explorations with others for all involved in the process through authenticity and equanimity in care practice. We believe TR partners in care are integral to reconstructions of TR practices and expanding possibilities for spirituality in contexts of TR.

Potential persons and the welfare of the (potential) child test

This article considers and critiques the theoretical basis of section 13(5) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (HFE Act),1 which requires the welfare of the potential child to be taken into account when considering whether parents should be given access to fertility treatment. It will be argued that potential persons, that is, persons who do not yet exist, have no claims, interests or standing that can restrict the actions of actual persons. This claim will be based upon the necessity of existence before things can be said to affect a person. As persons are the subjects for whom ‘good’ and ‘bad’ outcomes apply, actions which establish the preconditions for their existence cannot be subjected to considerations of the effect on the potential person. This is because potential persons are not affected by actions, but are the consequence of actions. Prospective parents, for example, should not be prohibited from having disabled offspring on the basis of the effect on the child, as different decisions relating to that child will change which persons exist, and thus the necessary preconditions for value will change. Based upon this existential framework, it will be argued that only the interests of actual persons can constrain the actions of those involved in reproduction. Thus, the HFE Act’s formulation of the welfare test must be repealed and only the interests of prospective parents and other actually existing people should be capable of constraining reproduction.

How does mental–physical multimorbidity express itself in lived time and space? A phenomenological analysis of encounters with depression and chronic physical illness

Mental–physical multimorbidity (the co-existence of mental and physical ill health) is highly prevalent and associated with significant impairments and high healthcare costs. While the sociology of chronic illness has developed a mature discourse on coping with long term physical illness the impact of mental and physical health have remained analytically separated, highlighting the need for a better understanding of the day-to-day complexities encountered by people living with mental–physical multimorbidity. We used the phenomenological paradigm of the lived body to elucidate how the experience of mental–physical multimorbidity shapes people's lifeworlds. Nineteen people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and depression (defined as a score ≥8 on depression scale of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale) were recruited from secondary NHS care and interviewed at their homes. Data were analysed phenomenologically using van Manen's lifeworld existential framework of the lived body, lived time, lived space, lived relations. Additionally, we re-analysed data (using the same framework) collected from 13 people recruited from secondary NHS care with either COPD, rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, or type 1 or type 2 diabetes and depression. The phenomenology of mental–physical multimorbidity was articulated through embodied and emotional encounters with day-to-day life in four ways: [a] participants' perception of lived time and lived space contracted; [b] time and [c] space were experienced as liminal categories, enforcing negative mood and temporal and spatial contraction; and [d] time and space could also be customised to reinstate agency and self-determination. Mental–physical multimorbidity negatively impacts on individuals' perceptions of lived time and lived space, leading to a loss of agency, heightened uncertainty, and poor well-being. Harnessing people's capacity to modify their experience of time and space may be a novel way to support people with mental–physical multimorbidity to live well with illness.

When the Analyst's Protected Space is Breached: Commentary on Paper by Stephanie R. Brody

This discussion explores the realm of the analyst's “forced disclosures,” that is, self revelations that, while deliberate, are not so much chosen as required. In focusing on self disclosures regarding the analyst's health and embodied vulnerability, I investigate the psychic challenges we are up against when our human vulnerability becomes evident to our patients. I implicate the legacy of historical analytic ideals that can threaten analytic identity when this occurs. While relational psychoanalysis is founded on a philosophical appreciation for the existential dimension of human experience as the inexorable meeting ground of the analytic encounter, this relational sensibility does not translate readily into a concrete holding environment for the dyad when the analyst becomes seriously ill. I suggest that relational theory and practice need to develop a more fully articulated and elaborated existential framework that can hold the analyst and patient securely when the analyst inhabits the position of a suffering subject with the patient. I describe how manifestations of the analyst's vulnerability may jar existing transference phenomena, creating the opportunity for the dyad to engage the existential dimension of experience as it interacts with the patient's history and dynamics. This discussion concludes with a consideration of problematic social and psychic forces that are often at play when knowledge of the analyst's vulnerability filters through psychoanalytic communities.

Impact of simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation: patients' perspectives

Background:Few qualitative studies of simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation (SPK Tx) have been published. The aims of this study were to explore from the perspective of patients, the experience of living with diabetes mellitus type 1 (T1DM), suffering from complications, and undergoing SPK Tx with good outcome; and to determine the impact of SPK Tx on patients and their social and cultural environment.Methods:We performed a focused ethnographic study. Twenty patients were interviewed. Data were analyzed using content analysis and constant comparison following the method proposed by Miles and Huberman.Results:A functioning SPK Tx allowed renal replacement therapy and insulin to be discontinued. To describe their new situation, patients used words and phrases such as “miracle”, “being reborn” or “coming back to life”. Although the complications of T1DM, its surgery and treatment, and associated psychological problems did not disappear after SPK Tx, these were minimized when compared with the pretransplantation situation.Conclusion:For patients, SPK Tx represents a recovery of their health and autonomy despite remaining problems associated with the complications of T1DM and SPK Tx. The understanding of patients’ existential framework and their experience of disease are key factors for planning new intervention and improvement strategies.

The world and image of poetic language: Heidegger and Blanchot

This essay engages ways in which the manifestation of ‘world’ occurs in poetry specifically through images, and how we can conceive of the imagination in this regard without reducing the imagination to a mimetic faculty of consciousness subordinate to cognition. Continental thought in the last century offers rich resources for this study. The notion of a ‘world’ is related to the poetic image in ways fundamental to the Heidegger’s theory of language, and may be seen in Continental poetics following Heidegger, including Blanchot’s examination of poetry in his account of the space of literature. By means of images, I shall demonstrate, poetic language is exemplary in relation to ‘world’ in two ways. (1) Images, poetically arranged, generate and open up a sense or experience of a world, specific to that poem, for its reader. Poetic images then, exhibit a generative evocation of world. (2) Through images, a poem may evoke the way in which space and time are inhabited as a world of human dwelling in an ontologically or existentially meaningful way. The relation of images to world is, then, an illumination or a disclosure of world. The first of these relations remains, to a large extent, immanent to the poem, but may be seen as an analogue of the essentially human experience of inhabiting a world. The second relation transcends the poem and relates the poem immediately to the existential framework of human dwelling.

Meaning Making, Uncertainty Reduction, and Autobiographical Memory: A Replication and Reinterpretation of the TALE Questionnaire

The present research was guided by two primary goals: 1) replicate the empirical structure of the Thinking about Life Experiences (TALE) questionnaire (Bluck, Alea, Habermas, & Rubin, 2005); and 2) explore how the functions of autobiographical memory may interact and support one another. Toward the second goal, it is suggested that the potential functions of autobiographical memory may be understood from an existential framework that is grounded by two principles: humans are driven by a need for meaning and meaning is found in relation to others and other things in the world. In this pursuit of meaning making, and a desire to know what to expect from the world, humans seek to create a coherent set of relations among the various existential elements in their lives (Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006); accordingly, humans strive to reduce uncertainty about the world and their place in it. As such, the TALE was reinterpreted using a relational framework and a 28-item self-report measure was developed. Participants completed the TALE and the reinterpreted TALE (RTALE). The results provide some support for the 3-factor structure of the TALE. The proposed 4-factor structure of the RTALE was supported.

Unforeseen Implications of Regulation to Authenticity in Clinical Practice

The authors, both long-time LCSWs, utilize an existential framework and postmodern lens to explore the implications of increased professional regulation in clinical practice. Specifically emphasized, are the themes of litigation-fear and the threat of license revocation that are prevalent in the field of clinical social work at this time. The authors argue that this “climate of fear” can lead to a slippery slope for a profession that has long valued the individual’s right (both client’s and practitioner’s) to self-determination, authenticity, and creativity and call for an increased conversation among practitioners about the desired role of regulation in the profession with the overall goal of protecting a true understanding of ethics in social work.

An Existential Gaze at Multiracial Self-Concept: Implications for Psychotherapy

Multiracial self-concept is conceptualized using an existential framework. First, the authors offer an analysis of how existential concerns are revealed within the multiracial experience, employing the theoretical constructs of terror management and social identity theories. Expanding on this foundation, they apply Heideggerian notions of human existence and self to multiracialness. And finally, using the aforementioned analysis as a backdrop, the authors discuss the emergence of existential themes in psychotherapy with multiracial individuals.

Albania and Apulia Contribution to European Identity

The contribution focuses on the identity issue with reference to the European integration process. To this aim, the case of the Southern Adriatic area – covering the Italian South-East and South western Balkans (namely Apulia and Albania) – will be highlighted. This region shows many reasons of interest for the whole process of European integration, as it represents a kind of hinge between Western civilization and the East, Europe and the Mediterranean, North and South of the World. Our thesis is that, despite the different traditions, cultural heritage, histories, political dominion etc., the societies facing on the two sides of the lower Adriatic sea share common core attitudes. They were forged on the basis of a similar existential framework: the secular (or century-old?) condition of marginalisation in relation to the hubs of political power. So, the lower Adriatic inhabitants have acquired a particular skill to win the grace of the ruler in office, whoever he was, building, at the same time, a hidden orb in which to preserve their authenticity, their original cultural references. This framework has produced, in the long run, an anti-identitarian people’s constitution, i.e. an “anthropology of the absence,” consisting of two complementary dimensions: mimicry and the vernacular order. This ensures both the merger of dissimilarities and the preservation of an impregnable singularity. The anthropology of the absence still emerges strongly in relation to the new political focus with which this region relates nowadays: the European Union. The implemented policies aimed at cohesion and integration of the peripheral regions are here systematically diverted to reproduce life forms consolidated over the centuries, which escape the fundamental canons of the Western-European model of society. But, far from being included as a disease, the attitude developed in the lower Adriatic could represent a useful suggestion for Europe itself, always faced with the problem of its unresolved identity.

Free time as a necessary condition of free life

Human life is finite. Given that lifetime is necessarily limited, the experience of time in any given society is a central ethical problem. If all or most of human lifetime is consumed by routine tasks (or resting for the resumption of routine) then human beings are dominated by the socially determined experience of time. This article first examines time as the fundamental existential framework of human life. It then goes on to explore the determination of time today by the ruling value system that underlies advanced capitalist society. It concludes that the equation ‘time is money’ rules the contemporary experience of time, and goes on to argue that this experience deprives those who live under this ruling value system of a central requirement of free human life: the experience of time as an open matrix of possibilities for action (or free time).

Dating Violence: Counseling Adolescent Females From an Existential Perspective

The authors present an existential framework for conceptualizing and intervening with adolescent females who are in violent relationships. Interventions involve addressing the adolescent female's anxiety associated with I. D. Yalom's (1980) constructs of meaning, death, isolation, and freedom. The goal of therapy is to assist the abused adolescent in the creation or transformation of meaning.

Ongoing Self-Reflection

To suggest that ongoing self-reflection sharpens clinical performance. This is an amplifying, affirming response to "An Existential Framework for Understanding the Counseling Needs of Clients" (C. S. Spillers, 2007). Attending skills improve as we increase self-awareness. By becoming increasingly aware of our beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world around us that fashion our actions and feelings, we become increasingly able to distinguish clients' and caregivers' cares, concerns, and lives from projections of our own.

An Existential Framework for Understanding the Counseling Needs of Clients

To offer an existential framework for understanding some of the emotional and grieving issues that can accompany communication disorders. A narrative review of selected existential psychology literature is provided. I. Yalom's (1980, 1986) model is used as a foundation to explore the 4 existential issues of death, freedom/responsibility, loneliness, and meaninglessness. This model is then applied to communication disorders based on the work of D. Luterman (1984, 2001). These 4 existential issues are juxtaposed with K. Moses' (1989) model of the grief response, which includes denial, anxiety, fear, depression, anger, and guilt. Suggestions for responding within one's scope of practice are provided. Combined, existential and grieving models can offer clinicians new insight into clients' loss resolution work. This inner work constitutes a spiritual journey that may parallel the journey through therapy and rehabilitation. The case is made that attending to these issues can enhance long-term outcomes of treatment.

Existential considerations for contemporary career counseling

This article was written to remind career counselors of the potential depth and subjective impact of both unemployment and employment transitions. An existential framework is used in discussing today's world of work, previous and contemporary career counseling models, existential theory in career counseling, and existential considerations for career counselors. Results from 3 research projects are discussed in light of I. D. Yalom's (1980, 1998) 4 existential themes. Using quotations from participants, the authors move beyond theoretical ideas and underscore the real‐life importance of including the individual's larger subjective perspective when engaging in career counseling. Implications for practice are discussed.

An existential framework of spirituality

A holistic approach to spirituality indicates a spiritual development that is relevant for all students and not just for those who have a religious background. However, debates in England surrounding spirituality in education often generally locate it within the religious domain (Blake, 1996;Carr, 1995, 1999;Isherwood, 1999). Conceptualizing spirituality in such a way tends to deny access to this development for non‐religious students or students in non‐religious contexts. Alternatively the other approaches to spirituality have adopted non‐religious viewpoints (see Erricker, 2003, p. 7). Such either/or approaches work against the notion that spirituality should be conceived as intrinsic to the enterprise of education. This paper offers a brief view of a more elaborate existential framework of spirituality which has been developed in order to transcend the religious/secular divide. A short account of Existentialist philosophy is provided before an outline of the framework is discussed.

The Boy With the Glass Flute

This study describes music therapy sessions over 21 months with a preadolescent boy who had several diagnoses including Atypical Asperger Syndrome, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Reading Disability, and "probable" Conduct Disorder (CD). He had also been physically abused. John's initial rejection of music led me, as clinician, to question the appropriateness of a music therapy programme for him, the philosophical underpinnings of the work, and my skills as a clinician. However, by maintaining the humanistic existential framework that was familiar to me, and employing aspects of Paraverbal therapy, I was able to develop a relationship of trust with John and to facilitate his involvement in creative activities. Following an extremely tentative beginning he was able to communicate his love and fascination for music by creating the fantasy of owning a "glass flute", a symbolic object of beauty that can be enjoyed, but which was delicate and fragile. As his self awareness and identity became more established the image of the glass flute was replaced by the reality of recorder playing and he developed a new confidence in the mastery of music which allowed him to successfully perform for his peers and the general public.

The Existential Framework of Zentropa's Narrative

THE EXISTENTIAL FRAMEWORK OF ZENTROPA'S NARRATIVE: A CLASH OF TWO NATIONAL IDENTITIES "... The difference between what you should be and what you are is something that means quite a lot to me. That's why idealism, or the idealist, interest me as much as they do".Lars Von Trier. (Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars Von Trier) Lars Von Trier is considered by some film critics to be Denmark's most gifted director since Carl T. Dreyer. His highly technical and innovative style have brought him international recognition at prominent film festivals, including the most prestigious prize Palme d'Or at Cannes, which he received recently for his work Dancer in the Dark (2000). His innovative approach to narrative film is made manifest in his co-authoring and co-founding of "Dogma 95" a group intent on reforming mainstream aesthetics in order to return to a perceived lost authenticity in cinema.(1) This reform...