Existential Position Research Articles

La noción de tradición y la reflexión sobre la historia de la filosofía mexicana

In this essay, I argue to support that the concept of Tradition has an important meaning for our philosophical reflection. This concept has ontological and epistemological support, and understand it in this way give us perspectives and possibilities to our philosophical exercise from our own existential position. Nevertheless, the reflection must be made whit a hermeneutic exercise, which only can start from the history of the philosophy.

True dreams: Encounter of the worlds in Islamic philosophy

True dreams that explicitly or symbolically reveal the events of the past and the future, in the ontological sense tell more than just about the content of a dream because they bespeak the supratemporal dimension of human beings and represent man's ability to connect to different worlds, and respectively multitudinous forms and levels of being. In this paper, without going into the psychological or physiological analysis of dreams, we try to clarify the ontological significance and position of true dreams in existing worlds. In Islamic philosophy, the underlying cognitive basis for the description of the ontological level of true dreams was established by the founder of Illuminative Philosophy, Shaykh al-Ishraq (1155-1191), and it was expanded by the founder of Transcendental Philosophy, Mulla Sadra Shirazi (1572-1640). Shaykh al-Ishraq explained in detail existential position of supramaterial beings that on the one hand are above the world of matter and in a direct active contact with it, and on the other hand, are under the dominant world of intellect. He called these creatures Midworld (Barzakh) and, for the first time in Islamic philosophy, stated that it is a separate world of imagination that is different from the material and intelligible one. True dreams are one of the many indications that man has a supratemporal dimension that exposes supramaterial and temporally unlimited worlds to him. Apart from true dreams, most important signs of supramaterial worlds in human life are the prophetic revelation, as well as revelations and mystical-gnostic intuition. Unlike the last two examples, true dreams are known and accessible to all people, both from their immediate experience and from the stories of the ones close to them. For this reason, in this paper we explain how true dreams represent a blend of worlds in human life.

Le jeu récurrent de la norme et de la transgression dans Erasure de Percival Everett

The protagonist and narrator of Percival Everett’s novel Erasure sells his soul to the devil when he accepts that his parody of the Afro-American novel be taken seriously and rewarded by a jury he despises but of which he is one of the members. Right from the start Everett’s narrative unfolds according to the norm/transgression dynamics. This paper shows that the movement that carries this dynamics throughout the whole narrative reproduces the cinetism of the system of the English article – discovered by the French linguist Gustave Guillaume – and that the existential position of a man as rebellious as he is conformist can be grammatically declined according to the potential uses of the substantive « writer ».

The OK Position: Freedom, Equality, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Transactional analysis is becoming increasingly identified with the concept of the OKness of people. This essay offers a historical review of the OK concept and a suggestion for how it can be adopted as a banner for the transactional analysis world movement even though, in the writer's opinion, its modern version is far from what Berne had in mind when he postulated the OK/not-OK existential positions.

Penerapan Analisis Transaksional Dalam Terapi Perkawinan Berdasarkan Pengalaman Praktek

Transactional analysis concept is firstly introduced by Eric Berne at 60's. the books “Games People Play” and “Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy” written by Berne, and also “I'm OK You're OK” written by Thomas Harris explain those concept obviously. Transactional analysis concept could be applied in marriage therapy. Recognition about spouse's ego state could be the early step to fix up the marriage relationship. Husband or wife could figure out the transactional situation in their relationship, whether they would like to make use of their ego state as parent, adult, or child. The relation between therapist and client, so does relation between spouses, are also the significant factor in marriage therapy. Hopefully, in-depth understanding about relationship concept in transactional analysis perspective would increase both the therapy effectiveness and the position of the clients & therapist. Example of this concept in a marriage therapy is intended to increase the understanding about how to operationalize this concept into the therapy. Keywords: transactional analysis, parent-adult-child ego state, existential position

Studying Acculturation using Transactional Analysis Theory: the Interplay between Existential Positions and Acculturation Styles

This article is a partial report about quantitative research on the role of the Negative Existential Position in Authoritarian Personality formation (reported on elsewhere) and acculturation features among immigrants with authoritarian backgrounds in a democratic milieu (Germany). Data were collected among respondents of different backgrounds: immigrants in Germany from Turkey, the former Soviet Union and Western countries, and native Germans as a quasi-control group (N=1318), with each subsample encompassing at least 200 respondents. Various statistical analyses were performed in order to validate the empirical outcomes (from correlation analysis to structural equation modelling). The hypothesis that a Negative Existential Position is more articulated among individuals who were exposed to an authoritarian socialization was confirmed. The hypothesis that a Negative Existential Position serves as a predictor for the so called Acculturation Dysfunction was confirmed as well. The conceptual analogy between Existential Positions and Styles of Acculturation was examined and the hypothesis that four possible styles of acculturation (Berry et al., 1987, Berry & Kim, 1988; Berry et al., 1989) are correlated with correspondent Existential Position found support.

Jack London’s Dialectical Philosophy between Nietzsche’s Radical Nihilism and Jules de Gaultier’s Bovarysme

I first discussed the significance of Jules de Gaultier’s philosophy in Jack London’s work in my article “Jack London’s Medusa of Truth,” published by Philosophy and Literature in 2002 (26.1). This article offers a more systematic approach to the kind of dialectical philosophy that Gaultier and London shared, and which accounts for London’s eureka response when Benjamin De Casseres first introduced him to the French philosopher’s conception of reality ( le réel ) as “a fact of opposition between two states of one and the same force,” in a form of conflict between powers of impulsion/flux and arrest. Throughout his writing career, London had been articulating and negotiating the same kind of dialectical conflict, notably the tension between his radical nihilism, the “white logic” of naturalism, and his existential need for some vitalistic impulsion, a “Maya-Lie,” what Gaultier would term bovarysme and define as “the power given man to see himself other than what he is” (“le pouvoir départi à l’homme de se concevoir autre qu’il n’est”). Saddled with Nietzsche’s intellectual conscience, London would have to cope dialectically with the inherent contradictions and partial answers of his existential position, in terms of which any synthesis of transcendence must necessarily be precarious and intermittent.

Psychoéducation et attitude phénoménologique en psychothérapie de groupe

Objectives Psychoeducation contains the risk of a misunderstanding in the effective experiences of recognition. We want to show that group psychotherapy can be a means to reconcile recommendations in disease prevention aimed by psychoeducative measures, the vivid and lively dimension of experience found in phenomenological attitudes and aspects, turned to the community world of therapeutic mediation. Method To articulate these various domains, we approach the principles of psychoeducation, the risks which this one can contain and the contributions of clinical phenomenology. Phenomenological method is different from what we call collectively clinical intuition which is always implicitly colored by the typical contexts of meanings of what appears (meanings which have a practical and effective reach for example) and stay, in spite of the critical distance which we can put it, stuffed with various emotional and theoretical predicates muddled between them. The phenomenological attitude aims as much as possible to a suspension of these predicates, that these predicates arise from the common sense of everyday life or that they arise from a detailed specialized knowledge, and this to remove the “coats of sense” which settled on the perception. Results The group, by its multiple interactions, aims at an optimization of the articulation of the self-relationship with relationship socially adapted to the others. The therapist constantly has to attend to dialectical dynamics which reigns between a certain self-dissolution in the group and a return to oneself from the meshing which build up itself within the group. For certain patients, it is particularly difficult to maintain a just balance between the two moments of identity, the one which is peculiar to oneself and the one which emanates from relations with the others towards which we are normally constantly turned. The interest of this psychotherapeutic work in group is here to offer to each of participants the possibility of holding, with a little more confindence, an existential position within a meshing of social links, that is a capacity to seize oneself as existing among the other beings having themselves an own existence. From there, the subjective capacities of each can be better recognized, what can also give place to adjustment of these capacities with individual aspirations. The active implication of patients, so looked for by psychoeducation, is all the more tangible as we were so able to appeal, by the phenomenological attitude, to what feels immediately and without distance as much in an intimate self-relation as in relationship to the others. Conclusions Phenomenological attitude allows not to get stuck in imaginary expert skills, in rational projects of organization and other methodical constructions of the science. This attitude is particularly interesting for group psychotherapy which privileges the opening rather than a work of elaboration. The stake is so the authenticity of a real therapeutic alliance based on fine regulations of the global situation of co-presence taking into account the interlacing of the implicit and the explicit in the exchanges which weave with the patients. We privilege a fertile step rather than rigorous observance of a method which would lead only to a systematization against the spirit of phenomenology. The clinical experience shows that this psychotherapeutic method allows in particular a regular attendance of the group, what is one of major ingredients of its efficiency.

“Walls” between “Those People”? Contrasting Perspectives on World Politics

This lecture inquires into two existential positions that concern Robert Frost in an excerpt from his poem “Mending Wall.”

Five Hebrew Translations of Else Lasker-Schüler's Poem “An mein Kind”

This article introduces five translations from German into Hebrew of the Jewish German poet Else Lasker-Schuler's poem An mein Kind. The translations—by Lea Goldberg, Yehuda Amichai, Natan Zach, Judith Shargal and Pnina Nurenberg—are analyzed and compared, using two key concepts in the practice and theory of translation: fidelity and transparency. The article discusses the salient features of each translation as a distinctive artistic production and as a gateway through which Hebrew readers may enter and enjoy the work of Lasker-Schuler, one of the most important Jewish artists to live and work (briefly) in pre-state Israel. The variety of options in terms of structure and content, melody, meter, etc., as manifested in these translations, offers a remarkably cogent and rich indication of the extent to which translation is a subjective artistic creation, with almost limitless horizons, open to endless elaboration, transformation and interpretation. The translator's work enables the Hebrew reader who is not familiar with the original language to enjoy the new productions, albeit from the existential position of one who senses the beauty of the Promised Land but will never have the same full and direct access to the original poem as the German reader will.

Matka głupich? Filozoficzne aspekty nadziei

This text focuses on the problem of hope in a philosophical aspect. It has been based on the thought of st. Thomas, Roman Ingarden, Karol, Wojtyla, and particularly Gabriel Marcel. The author concentrates on two questions: 1. Are there any criteria to distinguish between two forms of hope: the first – that reveals reality, second – that deludes. 2. Can the experience of men in terms of natural, philosophical categories lead us to discovering and understanding hope? „To be future in the present” – is the existential position of hope. It ought to be based on reality, not on desires or dreams. Hope means: no situation of evil or fear is ultimate. It is not the prediction of the future. Transcendental acts of men are philosophical basis of hope (Marcel, Wojtyla); they oppose everything, that passes away, ultimately – they oppose death.

Bearing witness: An existential position in caring

A basic assumption for the study is that perceiving a person’s deepest needs and desires to be on hand for another person, and their attempt to do so, have, in an ontological sense, the power to bear witness of goodness and eternity. The study was based on a theoretical basis of a caring science view of suffering, as well as the ethics of the philosopher Lévinas. The aim was to explore and clinically validate nuances of witnessing as a caring act. A Socratic dialogue was performed and an interpretive (hermeneutic) method was employed in this study. The Socratic dialogue with four nurses in palliative care focused on and analysed one clinical example of witnessing in palliative care. As basis for the findings are the participating nurses jointly formulated assumptions on the subject: To be a witness you have to be with the patient and refer back to him or her what you have seen; but also to act in accordance with what you have perceived. In the moment you witness, a window is opened onto the unknown; you become vulnerable as a caregiver and require courage. Being a witness encompasses existential and spiritual aspects; being a fellow human being, having a heart to heart relationship is a wilful act on the part of the nurse. Our theoretical discussion focuses on the language of the body, courage as a bridge to an existential encounter and the alleviation of patients’ suffering through caregivers’ witnessing. A conclusive aspect is that being a witness may bring a new understanding of life in the face of death and suffering. The existential position of being a witness requires the caregiver to be courageous because of its tranforma-tive prospect, but may utterly enrich both parties’ inner life of shared meaning.

A Lost Connection: Existential Positions and Melanie Klein's Infant Development

This article presents some links between the work of Eric Berne and that of Melanie Klein before discussing Berne's theory of the four existential positions and some later developments of this model. The author examines a lost connection with Klein's theory on positions along with a Kleinian perspective on early childhood development and psychopathology, which provided the inspiration for Berne's positions. The article suggests that transactional analysis theory and practice would be enriched by the addition of such a Kleinian perspective. This argument is supported by case examples along with some clinical discussion. A new interpretation of existential positions is proposed.

Alice Aycock: sculpture and projects

Alice Aycock's large, semi-architectural works deal with the interaction of structure, site, materials, and the psychophysical responses of the viewer. Offered meaningful but contradictory clues by both her images and her texts, viewers attempt to discover not only what the work of art conveys but how it communicates its contents, in investigations that parallel the artist's own. In Alice Aycock: Sculpture and Projects, Robert Hobbs examines the development of Aycock's work over twenty years and her negotiation -- along with other artists who came of age in the early 1970s -- of the transition from modernism to postmodernism.The problem, wrote Aycock in 1977, seems to be how to connect without connecting. Hobbs describes Aycock's strategies for doing just this: for creating a work with disparate image and texts that offer a new perspective on reality. Influenced by the objects of minimalism's hybrid forms and by conceptualism's emphasis on language, Aycock relies on paradigms, cybernetics, phenomenology, physics, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, information overload, outdated scientific thinking, and computer programming to create a complex that is architectural and sculptural as well as mental and emotional. Schizophrenia and other mental conditions, sometimes considered metaphors for the disconnections of postmodern existence, are specific sources of inspiration in Aycock's work. By exploring the physical and existential positions of isolation, estrangement, disorientation, entrapment and fear, her three-dimensional constructions not only posit alternative states of mind, they suppose possible narratives and suggest multiple truths and lies. Aycock's work invites the viewer to experience sculpture with the entire body and a fully mind. Her sculpture has had a transformative effect on the contemporary art experience.

Sisyphus happy: the experience of depression

Depression has been well documented, in the academic sense. This paper offers one person's experience of periods of depression. It describes symptoms and personal ideas about this commonly experienced condition. It raises questions about the legitimacy of psychiatric and psychological theorizing, and draws from various existential positions to support the text. The author suggests that depression is not, particularly a 'learning experience' and, far less, a form of personal growth.

»Pozabljena« slovenska pričevanja iz vélike vojne

Ivan Pregelj's judgement of the Slovene literature during the First World War, claiming it provided few aesthetic values worth remembering in spite of a great theme, can be upgraded with recognition that during the wartime the relation between external literary experience and literary verbalisation altered so drastically that the literary styles known at the time proved to be insufficient. Juxtaposing the literary works of Fran Kozak, Zofka Kveder, Fran Saleški Finžgar and Ivan Cankar with testimonies in military diaries and memoirs shows that the new procedures are correlated to the intrusion of direct factography, a realistic expansion of experience and multiplication of extreme existential positions. Pathos, so typical of expressionism, is a reflection of a tendency to express linguistically complete uncertainty, the fear of dying, shaken religion and doubt in the sense of battle, which results in a decay of the civilisational, cultural and ethic norms and gives way to a need for renewal.

Trys filosofijos mokymo kryptys Lietuvos vidurinėje mokykloje

Straipsnyje analizuojama filosofijos metodo samprata ir jos sąsajos su mokyklinės filosofijos didaktikos metodais. Atskleidžiama, kaip filosofijos metodas, turintis aiškią, prognozuojamą užbaigą, šiuolaikinėje filosofijos didaktikoje išstumiamas kitų mokymo būdų (žaidimo, kelio metodų). Pastarųjų ypatumas yra tas, kad jie nesiejami su konkrečiais, iš anksto užsibrėžtais rezultatais, o pabrėžia paties proceso reikšmę. Mokyklinės filosofijos didaktikos metodai atliepia filosofijos metodus, jų sampratos kaitą. Todėl straipsnyje metodologiniu požiūriu analizuojamos Lietuvos filosofų parengtos filosofijos programos ir lyginami išleisti vadovėliai mokyklai. Išskiriamos trys Lietuvoje susiformavusios filosofijos mokymo kryptys, nurodant kiekvienos siūlomus mokymo būdus.

Aux sources de la philosophie selon E. Weil. II. Finitude et infinité de la liberté

The want of a coherent discourse hesitates between the transcendental conscience and the speculative system, before finding itself invincibly taken back to finiteness, without help of its existential position. From this story of irreducible tensions results a new requirement for philosophy : to conceive itself, in its originality, as the milieu of sense, of a dialogic sense freely required and shared, the empty shape of which works on the interactions of the finite existence, up to finally carrying it beyond itself.

Methodological Individualism and Sociological Reductionism

Having for nearly a century lived a shadowy existence on the margins of main stream ethnography, summoned forth only to play bit parts in some exemplary anecdote or illustrative vignette, over the last two decades the individual has emerged to take anthropological center stage. And not just the particular indi vidual (the individual individual, so to speak)—the Nisa or the Tuhami (Cra panzano 1980; Shostak 1981)—but also the generic individual. Of course, the ethnographic foregrounding of individual individuals cannot be decoupled from a theoretical reconsideration of the generic individual, but it is the prominence granted the latter that marks a fairly decisive shift in current explanatory and interpretative paradigms (or at least rhetoric), so that nowadays it is common place to remind readers that the individual members of any society discussed are all agents actively engaged in contesting, disputing, negotiating, if not creating the social or cultural rules and norms to which they remain subject only in so far as those rules and norms may be incorporated into their own strategic pursuits. Thus, although I suspect that quite a few people were rather surprised to read in Rapport's Introduction to British Subjects (2002) that nothing might be found in human experience that could not be found in (2002: 8), the assertion was not merely a partisan appreciation of the rich variety of cultural forms that exist within Britain today—a variety, by the way, that the essays col lected in this edited volume (including his own) admirably demonstrate. Rather, Rapport's advocacy of an anthropology of Britain is based on a desire to shift the discipline toward he terms a post-cultural (ibid.: 9) and existential (ibid.: 10) position in which what is central to anthropological discovery is the human psyche and this is a universal (ibid.: 8). Thus, [a] 11 of human life is here, inasmuch as social milieux in Britain could be said to contain all the potential of individual human creativity; in its capacities and its dispositions, the human psyche is a constant (ibid.: 9). And citing Sartre to the effect that humans are condemned to be free (ibid.: 12), Rapport not only wants to put

Retrieving a posthumous text-message; Nietzsche's fall: the significance of the disputed asylum writing,My Sister and I

This paper discusses the disputed asylum writing of Nietzsche's whose provenance is still unresolved. It argues that the marginalisation of this remarkable work is a further extension of Nietzsche's predicament, which was and is to be marginalised and rendered acceptable in merely conventional terms. Both this predicament and the work itself are of great interest to Psychotherapists and Post-modernists. Besides its compelling tragic story, and exposure of his relations with women including his incest with his sister, the significance which can be derived from the work itself (whoever it is by) is that it is one of the earliest examples of such positions as that of the later Wittgenstein, in relation to belief and fixed ideology, which release us from the constraint of the requirement of objective belief basis. The author of this book applies this not only to cognitive beliefs, but to whole genres of writing, ways of life and free existential positions.