Immanuel Kant and the Task of Understanding Another’s Lived-Experience Simon Wharne*, PhD Professor katie harster has considered the phenomenon of psychological trauma, bringing philosophical understandings into play. She provides an informed account of observed “symptoms,” and associated treatments. I comment as a counseling psychologist, although I do not specialize in the evidence-based treatments that she describes. Usually, in my work with clients, we are trying to make sense of what has happened, with a concern for what might happen in the future. I am grateful therefore to colleagues who have the expertise that I lack. I recall a discussion with one of these colleagues, who suggested that, “If a house is on fire, your priority should be to put out the flames and you can worry about how it caught on fire sometime later.” A good point I thought, and this is supported by Harster’s account. I am stretching the analogy, but a traumatized person could be like that annoying faulty smoke alarm. It keeps going off even though there is no actual fire. When a person’s anxiety appears to be unwarranted, it is taken to be a symptom of mental illness. My colleagues measure anxiety, using standard rating scales, and interventions are considered evidence-based when they reduce scores on those measures. However, we know that removing the batteries from an annoying smoke alarm is not an adequate response. I observe below that anxiety can be positive and protective. I also observe that trauma can be so far off the scale of what we usually experience, that it will be difficult to make sense of what has happened, or to adjust to it. Harster describes how a Kantian framework supports pragmatic and stoic responses to trauma. This framework underpins certain areas of psychological theory and practice, in which it is suggested that we cannot trust our emotions, and we must turn instead to reason. I support this to a degree, but I am concerned that reason and symptom reduction will not always be enough. Harster describes how traumatized people can struggle with self-blame. How they lack a sense of self-worth and how they can lapse into extreme risk taking. Within that Kantian framework, it is assumed that there is something wrong with them. However, if we take time with them to explore what happened, [End Page 161] we might come to understand why they respond in that manner (see the PTMF: British Psychological Society, 2021) In my understanding of trauma, I turn to Søren Kierkegaard, who observed the value of anxiety. Anxiety can motivate the development of a moral and purposeful sense of self (Kierkegaard, 1981/1844). Kierkegaard and Immanuel Kant share a lot in the way that they approach morality and freedom (Assiter, 2013). In other ways they are radically opposed. Kant builds on Aristotelian logic in syllogisms and the formal concepts that he calls categories. He is trying to observe the human condition from a remote vantage point somewhere outside of that state of being. Kierkegaard approaches the human condition, instead, as it is lived. Harster supports Kant’s claim that, before we can have experiences and make moral judgments, we need to be possessed of certain capabilities of mind. We need a capacity for synthesizing information; when that is, we “apprehend in intuition,” and we “reproduce in imagination,” and we are thereby “recognizing concepts.” This framing of the human state as an information-processing device is supported in cognitive psychology and related treatments. It is also expressed in the UK, in the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (Department for Constitutional Affairs, 2007). The act permits statutory authorities to impose decisions on those who are assessed as mentally incapacitated. The human condition is seen again from a supposed authoritative vantage point. As if people were just objects in the world, alongside other objects, with given properties that can be manipulated. Within our statutory administrative systems, we assess mental capacity, and thereby facilitate expedient decisions. We squeeze the person into our predetermined categories, ignoring the idiosyncratic nature of their being. Our knowledge framework will hold them in a circular argument; they are mentally ill because they are irrational, and they...
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Mar 30, 2024
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