3. Existential Philosophy and Psychotherapy

Buber, Martin Buber, who was a theologian and also a philosopher, spoke about das zwischenmenschlichen, the inter-human, what happens between people.

And he said, it is not you or I that do communication, it is something we create together.

When we come together with another person, we create the interpersonal world, and it is a third thing.

In the space between us, something is created that each of us responds to differently.

It is a bit like cooking together. We create a new sauce to life, and we both contribute to that.

So existential therapists aim to teach people how they are powerful in that dialogue.

Not to dominate that dialogue, but to enable the other person to become conversant with what happens for them when they enter into that dialogue.

Buber thought that truth is found in that conversation, and that all actual life is an encounter.

An encounter between me and other people, or an encounter between me and a landscape, for instance, or a place, or a memory.

It is only when I enter into that encounter that something new takes place, that something is changed.

This is what we call inter-subjectivity.

It isn't about me being subjective and you being subjective. It is about us both putting our subjectivities together and creating something quite new, which we call inter-subjectivity.

But we can only do that if we've taken that first step of not just being in our own subjectivity in a defensive way, or accuse the other of being, objectively speaking, this, that, or the other.

We need to open our minds, get out from our defenses, and enter into what Thiele called a loving struggle.

A loving struggle with the other, but also a loving struggle with life.

You know that Buber made a distinction between I-it relationships and I-thou relationships.

Very clever insight.

So, the most cleverest part of it is usually forgotten, and it works like this.

When I enter into a relationship with this clock, I see this as an object, I relate to it as a thing.

Same with the computer, same with that table, same with this clicker, and I might get very annoyed with it.

I am in an I-it relationship.

Now, a lot of the time we treat people as if they too are like objects in our life.

We use them, we, you know, abuse them, we say nasty things to them, we think bad things of them, we become suspicious of them, we're annoyed with them.

We treat them as annoying objects, or objects we can use in our lives.

To truly learn to see the other person as a subjective entity, as a bit of life in the world, takes quite a bit of undoing.

Even when I stand here, I can do it with you because you've got a nice open look in your eyes, and some of the other looks, you know, make me a little frightened.

I think, I mustn't pick you because you might feel I'm assaulting you in some way. You're up for it.

I look at you, and I think, gosh, what's hidden behind your eyes? What history is hidden there? What experiences, what worries are there? What anxieties?

And it's quite overwhelming when I start seeing you like that, with an inquiring and open mind.

And I already feel something quite different about you when I allow myself to do that.

It almost brings me to tears to start guessing at who you really are, and what your struggles are in this world.

And if you can do the same for me, too, then something amazing happens between us.

We put together that loving openness with the other, and we change ourselves.

And that's the genius bit in Buba.

When I relate to the world in an objective, I-it way, I harden myself. I make myself instrumental. I become like a thing myself.

When I open to the other, and I inquire as to who really they are, and how really they are in life, in the world, what they live for, what matters to them, something shifts.

Something shifts in them, in between us, and something shifts in myself.

And so it is when I'm in therapy with my clients.

I become a better me than when I am doing the principal bits, and I have to, you know, keep order, or I have to make annoying decisions about discipline or things like that.

I become instrumentalist, and I hate that feeling.

But that, too, needs doing.

We cannot just be in I-thou. Some of the time, we have to be I-it. We have to be tough-minded, and we have to deal with the world of things.

So both those things are necessary.

As long as we remember, as Paul Ricoeur has it, a very good philosopher, hasn't had anything like the fame he deserves.

He spoke about the only way to achieve some form of knowledge is to come through it through dialogue.

And you know why that is? It is simply because if I come to knowledge without coming through dialogue, I have only one perspective on it.

I do not have the benefit of the different views.

And it is really in dialogue that we find out all the blind spots we've got, and all the set ways of interpreting and thinking and meaning-finding that we're all stuck with.

So this kind of therapeutic dialogue we get into is amazing because it helps us to go beyond what we normally would assume is the case about things.

It involves us both in the archaeology or the landscapes of the past.

So yes, we explore the past as if it is archaeology.

And also the teleology or the landscapes of the future.

And of course, we do that very much in the present by creating this intersubjective dialoguing that changes us both.

And in that process, going between past and future and present, weaving like the symbol of eternity the whole time, looping around, we create something quite new.

We alter meanings.

And I'll briefly go back to what I said before about sense and meaning and the distinctions between them.

So sense-making we do by relating to external things and meaning we make by coming to our own intrinsic motivations.

And of course, we need to, again, loop around and do both.

If people make meanings that are intrinsically important to themselves, they become cut off from the world.

If people make sense without making meaning and connecting things to themselves, they become very good at functioning in the outside world.

They may get very high up in society because they fit in nicely, but they might find that life is lacking that depth of meaning.

And I see both kinds of people.

I see people who have gotten to amazing situations in their lives, heads of businesses, politicians, pop stars even, and they've got this down to a T, but they use drugs or alcohol or are in despair most of the time because they've completely missed out on this.

But I also work with people who have become cut off from the outside world, who live in a universe of their own making, where they dare not go out of their room, where they have to be brought to the therapy room by their mother or their father or their sister or their wife or their husband because they're in a world of their own, and they have disconnected.

Why?

Because, as usual, there was no place for them in the world, or so they thought.

And these people, just as poor as these people, thought they had to be out there in the world and just conquer the world all the time, and there was no room for that inner thought that helps us reconnect with meaning.

So we need to do both these things, funnily enough.

And I don't know how many of you know about linguistic theory and the saussure and structuralism and all of that, but that was a large part of my training in philosophy, and I can't help but go back to it.

As the saussure said, the sign, like table, has always two parts to it. One is the signifier, and one is the signifier.

So the signifier is the word or the image, and the signified is what is actually evoked in the mind about it.

And the funny thing is that there is a slippage between those things, and that is what makes it possible for us to communicate.

When I say to Joyce, Joyce, I'm going to buy some more shoes, Joyce thinks of some particular kinds of shoes that she likes, and I think of some particular shoes that I like.

When I say to my husband, you really need a new pair of shoes, he says, no, why?

And then we become aware, we talk about it, that his idea of his really old shoes that I think are scandalous and full of holes is the right idea about shoes.

And my idea of nasty new shoes that will be hard and horrible is not his idea of shoes.

So though we communicate about shoes, actually we have very different meanings attached to it.

And it's funny how we forget that, and it's also good we forget it, because it allows us to think we're talking about the same things when actually we are not.

Now, this is hugely important in existential therapy, because we constantly go back to asking people, what does it mean to you? What is that like for you? Or what is your idea of that? Or how would you define that?

We investigate with the other person what their life, their universe is actually about.

And the difference, the slippage between those terms is the most interesting bit.

And you know how I told you earlier that I grew up in the Netherlands for 18 years, did my classical education there, then moved to France, then worked and studied and lived there for many years, then came to England.

Well, you know, each time I made that linguistic move, I lost all my signals. I lost all my ability to make myself understood or explain things.

But you know, at the end of the day, and there is now research on this, when you do that, one really good thing happens.

You get disconnected from the signifiers and you tune into the signified.

So I'm always aware when I use words, I don't think about the words, I think about the thing itself.

I think about what it is I'm actually talking about.

And then like magic, I get words in Dutch, in French and in English, and I just need to pick the right one.

Sometimes now that I'm getting ancient, that is failing, the wrong language coming into my mind.

And I go, I know it in Dutch and in French, but what the hell was it in English? Or the other way around. It's random.

Well, it isn't random, but you know, it can be different languages that come or don't come.

So to get back to what you were talking about earlier today, dreams, but also to get back to what you were talking before this session, memories.

These things are not connected to the words.

They are in between your dreams and your private meanings and your memories and your imagination.

They are not objectified in the way that you might think.

They are invisible.

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