Existential Psychoanalysis

This paper presents a critical philosophical inquiry into Jean-Paul Sartre's doctrine of radical human freedom, arguing that the notion of absolute freedom is a myth. While Sartre posits that human beings are entirely free to define their essence through choice-even under extreme constraint-this theory contends that such freedom is overstated. Drawing upon insights from psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and sociocultural theory, I propose a revised model: the human condition is not one of total freedom nor total determinism, but of semi-freedom-a bounded agency shaped by unconscious drives, developmental history, cultural frameworks, and cognitive biases. This model preserves the existential imperative of responsibility while acknowledging the structural forces that condition human choice. The theory concludes that true freedom arises not from denying limitation, but from conscious recognition of it.

What was causing you to not be aware or to be aware when you're not aware? Or, wait a minute, you're aware,  but your brain isn't aware. How can you be aware when your brain isn't? What's going on there? 

It doesn't make any sense. You mean something that happens to me a quarter of a second later keeps me from noticing what's happening to me now.  And if what happens to me a quarter of a second later doesn't happen to me, then I respond now.

En este escrito se hará un abreve exposición del psicoanálisis existencial de Sartre, presentado en el Ser y la nada. Veremos que la libertad es el fundamento de todas las elecciones, de modo que la voluntad de poder y la libido serán nociones que para este psicoanálisis tiene sólo un valor relativo. Veremos que la realidad humana, el hombre, es en fondo una nada arrojada a la situación, de modo que todo comportamiento se basa en el deseo de ser Dios. Trataremos también los tres grados en los que se observan todas las decisiones de las personas y el lugar que le corresponde en ellos a el deseo absoluto de ser Dios, deseo que no se puede cumplir nunca.

R. K. Narayan's novel, The Guide (1958), which is also known as his magnum opus, tells us about the life-story of Mr. Raju who starts his career at the Malgudi Railway Station as a keeper of the shop, established by his father, who deviates himself from their traditional profession of priesthood as they are Brahmins by caste. Raju, later, builds up a checkered career throughout his life. But, he adapts himself much in every profession he chooses and in every situation he faces. Interestingly, to the utter surprise of the readers, Raju sacrifices finally his life in a fasting, like a spiritual guide, to appease the god of water for rains with an aim to save the people of Mangala from the impending famine. Still, the ending of the novel, The Guide, with Raju's metamorphosis from a tourist guide to a spiritual guide, seems to be "enigmatic" to most of Narayan critics. The present study aims to demystify this enigma in The Guide by exploring the life-story of Mr. Raju in the light of "existential psychoanalysis" propounded by Jean-Paul Sartre. For this purpose, the writer of this paper intends to adopt some key ideas found in Sartre's existential philosophy.

This study reflects on traumatic suffering and provides clinical guidelines within the framework of Daseinsanalysis. It explores how ontic and ontological dimensions of trauma interact, showing that even in violent experiences, the ontological foundation of human existence is crucial for understanding trauma.

This study attempts to apply Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics to personal therapy by drawing parallels between his philosophy and different existential and phenomenological approaches to psychotherapy that resonate with it. Hermeneutics, the art of interpretation, seeks understanding by bridging the distance between a text and its reader, or more generally at turning strangeness into familiarity. Following Gadamer but also Heidegger and Sartre, with whom he is contrasted, therapy is viewed as an exploration of the strange and surprising elements of one’s situation that is firmly based on reflectivity. This study explores why self-understanding is necessary because of self-division and how psychotherapists can provide a link to tradition and common humanity, while avoiding certain philosophical obstacles to interpretation. In Truth and Method, Gadamer defines interpretation with the help of his three original concepts of “play”, “fusion of horizons” and “effective history”. These are used here as the philosophical basis, along with his general outlook based on classical humanism whose ideal of “cultivation” implies a constant openness to other perspectives and voices. Various theories of psychotherapy that aim at bridging the distance to oneself through reflectivity and at viewing problems in living from multiple perspectives are described and compared with Gadamer’s hermeneutics, such as Medard Boss’s phenomenological method of dream analysis, Emmy van Deurzen’s reflective existential approach, the self-help version of Albert Ellis’s rational emotive behaviour therapy, different types of narrative therapy and Kohut’s self psychology.

In this manuscript we argue that there is no scientific basis to sustain Heidegger’ philosophical preconceptions. There is not a Being, there are beings; and human beings are not essentially free. Therefore, exercising freedom is not a necessity to exist. Time, as understood by Heidegger, is not human beings’ fundamental existential condition. The fundamental existential condition that defines human beings is their synchronicity with the existential universe, which is attained through the three belonging ways defined in this book. Humans’ fundamental source of anxiety is not related to their future and their consciousness of their own individual death, but to the lack of adequate living conditions to develop their potential belonging properly. Humans’ main concern is what happens in their life, not the knowledge that they will imminently die. That is why this book is titled being and existence, because it is their synchronicity with the outside universe what mainly defines human beings’ existence.

This paper offers a series of reflections on 50 years of experience as a psychotherapist. The topics covered include recollections of working with the most severe psychological disturbances, the risks and rewards of clinical practice, the indispensable importance to the clinician of self knowledge, and the ways that psychotherapy transforms not only the patient but also the therapist. The most significant future directions of work in the field of psychoanalytic psychotherapy are also discussed.

The aim of the present work is to expose existential psychoanalysis, which is described in Being and Nothingness (1943/2008), as being the guiding thread between the individual and the collective dimensions in the Sartrean oeuvre. Specifically, we try to interpret the comprehension method of phenomenological ontology as a primordial attempt to formulate the "purification" of the anthropological field. In other words, to show that subjectivity can not be framed within the assumptions of traditional science, thus reifying the existential process. In order to do so, our exposition is divided into two parts: (1) the elucidation of the premises of existential psychoanalysis and (2) the interpreting of the work Search for a Method (1957/1966) in light of the results acquired in (1). Therefore, we first expose the subject as an existential projection to then proceed to demonstrate that social dynamics is intimately articulated with this subjective structure. This means that, to some extent, there is no ontological separation between the individual and collective dimensions. In this sense, we underline how, according to Sartre, existentialism can aid in Marxist pretensions. In this research, it is possible to see that, despite the inflection present in Sartre's intellectual trajectory, the attempt to "humanize" the means by which human actions are investigated was always present in his writings. It is in this sense that we propose the articulation between existential psychoanalysis and the comprehension method of the anthropological field.

The research theme is the question of the authenticity of human behavior examined from two perspectives: the psychoanalytical one, developed by Sigmund Freud, and the one of philosophy of being embodied by Martin Heidegger. As concerns the Freudian psychoanalysis, I am primarily interested in the conflict among: self, ego, and superego. Because of the requisitions of the supergo, the subject mostly behaves according to the censorships imposed by this psychic instance. The self, dominated by sexuality and aggressiveness, exhibits the pulsional tendency to manifest itself in the conscious behavior of the individual. As regards the Heideggerian endeavor, I am interested in distinguishing between the authentic and non-authentic existences. In Heidegger’s vision, the nonauthentic existence manifests when we are living together with the others in society. This is the horizon of the impersonal “as it is done”, the Heideggerian das Man, which may be understood by the three dimensions: curio...

This paper seeks to raise questions about crying. It points out that, despite crying being a peculiarly human phenomenon, and despite it being an almost everyday occurrence in therapy, there is a lack of phenomenological research into it. The paper goes on to suggest that crying may only be adequately understood as language and ends with an attempt at a phenomenology of crying that neither seeks to describe nor explain, proclaim or teach, but rather, to say.

In this chapter, I propose a new Freudian notion of the unconscious that differs from other notions one can find in Freud’s writings, in particular the one Sartre criticises, according to which the unconscious is conceived as a metaphorical secret room for conflictual mental states. At the heart of Sartre’s criticism is the notion of “the censor,” a little person within us, a homunculus, whose function is to either lock in forbidden emotions and desires in or let them out “disguised”, or symbolically distorted. The new notion I propose is still Freudian, and that is based on two interrelated psychological processes: one is what Freud calls “primary processes,” which are associative processes, and the other is Sartre’s notion of bad faith. Sartre’s notion of bad faith was meant to replace the Freudian unconscious, which he sought to demolish. And yet my aim is to show that bad faith is in fact an aspect of the Freudian unconscious. I use Sartre’s example of the date or the coquette, re-read as a case of #METOO, in order to demonstrate this new notion of the unconscious as associative patterns of inattention.

This Is A Case Presentation in Gestalt Therapy. This case study integrates Gestalt Psychotherapy and Existential Psychoanalytic understanding within the context of Intensive Experiential Psychotherapy.
The Presenter is Rudolph Bauer,Ph.D. A.B.P.P.
Discussant Erving Polster,PhD, Joel Latner,Ph.D., Elizabeth Mintz Ph.D.
Moderator Stephen Tobin,Ph,D.

This presentation was made at the First Conference of the Gestalt Journal. 1984.

Having become known as one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Lev Shestov (1866–1938) advanced his pioneering ideas in parallel to Freud’s development of psychoanalysis. Originating in his earlier works, his views of philosophy as art and the corresponding idea of the possibility of a fundamental, inner and creative transformation of one’s worldview found its further expression in his mature writings, in which his insight into the nature of other thinkers’ creativity took on a definitively active role in his philosophy. With the focus on the notion of the transformative capability of thought in Shestov’s writing and based on my archival research and translations, in this article, I explore the Kyiv-born philosopher’s ideas in dialogue with Freud’s psychoanalytical theory and in the context of the postmodern view of reality as a symbolical and multifaceted representation.

This paper is an exploration into an (intuitive) relationship between the existential psychoanalysis of Jean–Paul Sartre and the contemporary neurobiological approach in evolutionary biology. Sartre argues that the source of normative behavior lies in the nothinging activity of consciousness which necessarily has its neurobiological correlate. We argue that their relationship can be explained when considered together with Freudian psychoanalysis. After the introduction, the article explicates the relationship between Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis and Freud’s empirical psychoanalysis. The latter provides an intuitive ground for the former. The last part of the article focuses on the neurobiological account of the sublime emotions and motivations which influence the social behavior of human beings. It is found that group formation is an evolutionary product which plays a vital role in determining social behavior. It is concluded that existential psychoanalysis is compatible with...

El psicoanálisis existencial es una de esas críticas constructivas derivadas del psicoanálisis empírico que intenta abrirse camino como alternativa, renovación y modelo de terapia psicoanalítica. Ha encontrado una fundamentación óntico-ontológica desde la cual mostrar al ser descrito tal como se manifiesta en tres estadios concretos: el para-sí, en-sí y para-otro, para llegar a ver que las relaciones con los otros son las que nos provocan esos desequilibrios psíquicos. Nuestro psicoanálisis se plantea como una superación al psicoanálisis empírico en el rechazo al postulado del inconsciente y en la elección que renuncia a suponer una acción mecánica del medio sobre el sujeto considerado a abandonar la simbología utilizada hasta entonces. El psicoanálisis existencial deberá ser enteramente flexible y amoldable a los menores cambios observables en el sujeto, ya que se trata de descubrir una elección no un estado. Como el psicoanálisis existencial tiene como objeto descubrir una elecció...

This essay examines the similarities and dissimilarities between Freudian psychoanalysis and the form of analysis outlined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness in relation to the theory of intentionality developed by Brentano and Husserl. The principal aim of the paper is to establish a suitable starting point for a dialogue between these two forms of analysis, whose respective terminologies with respect to consciousness and the unconscious appear to cancel one another out. "I did that," says my memory. "I could not have done that," says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually-the memory yields.-Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil. Ch. IV (68) Essence and Existence as Contrasting Temporal Orientations On the one hand, the existentialists maintain that existence precedes essence. There is no inner person within the person that ultimately defines who one is. The idea that there is some kind of homunculus living within us belongs to an essentialist world-view and, like a ghost in the machine, it still haunts certain contemporary forms of discourse that have not rid themselves of a residual Cartesianism. 1 According to the existentialist orientation, however, if one peels away the layers of oneself, all that is revealed at the core of one's being is pure nothingness. One is a project a transitive movement in which the fulfilment of Self as consciousness coming to itself is always a futural affair (possible state of affairs). On the other side of the same hand, Freudian psychoanalysis is not by any means rooted in an essentialist doctrine of the human psyche (despite the 'populist' images of the id and the ego), but it places particular stress on the affective nature of the past in determining the characteristic behaviour of the individual-the traces (traumatic or benign) that shape the contours of the present and influence the way in which the future unfolds. Freud demonstrated a number of ways in which the psyche appears to be fragmented within itself (indeed, his whole discourse on the psyche involved mapping out its different regions according to various different perspectives, e.g., the topographic model, the economic model, etc.), and it is in the discourse on the id and the ego that we find similar characteristics to an essentialist thesis. This is particularly apparent in the way in which psychoanalytic theory

There are a variety of different ways in which such an assumption could be upheld in the daily life of a political subject. No doubt, for many, there may simply be a lack of positive knowledge about certain world events and scientific discourse, while others may be genuinely skeptical towards the available evidence. These epistemological cases, however, will not be the focus of this discussion. There is a far more enigmatic kind of thinking to be reckoned with that cannot be reduced to ignorance or skepticism, as it manifests itself in the vast amount of those who accept these catastrophic terms as legitimate descriptions of the state of their situation, but nonetheless proceed through their daily lives as if this were not the case. The second premise of this discussion will accordingly be that "proximally and for the most part" 2 the majority of those who 'rationally' accept the basic reality of this crisis are not responding to it as such. This condition poses the central problem that will be addressed in this paper. Attending to the question of empirical ignorance or skepticism in this regard is a task for empirical research, not philosophical discourse. No doubt, the prevalent dissonances on this issue between public knowledge and scientific evidence, or between scientific evidence and "personal belief," is remarkably troubling and problematic given the urgency of the overall situation. However, what is taken here to be far more troubling and problematic is the fact that, even when ignorance and skepticism appear to be overcome, a dissonance between knowledge and belief seems to remain-and, in effect, remain just as politically immobilizing. Describing this condition as a question of 'belief' and its relation to 'knowledge' would certainly be Slavoj Žižek's approach to addressing the issue, as he often has. The overall situation 2 In Being and Time, Heidegger uses this phrase to described how things are in their "everydayness," which is to be understood in its temporal connotations. It could in a certain way be rephrased, "in the order of the everyday." Heidegger most clearly explains what he means by this towards the end of the book: "'Everydayness' means the 'how' in accordance with which Dasein 'lives unto the day', whether in all its ways of behaving or only in certain ones which have been prescribed by Being-with-one-another. To this 'how' there belongs further the comfortableness of the accustomed, even if it forces one to do something burdensome and 'repugnant'" (422).

The Social Phenomenology of R. D. Laing:
A Re-Appraisal of R.D. Laing, His Relationship to J.-P. Sartre,
and the Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia

Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, DLFAPA, FCAHS
Psychiatric Fellow, AAPDPP
University of Montreal

American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (AAPDPP)
2022-2023 Virtual Presentation Series

Abstract

Scottish psychiatrist-psychoanalyst Ronald David Laing (1927-1989) is known for his pioneering studies in the tradition of psychodynamic psychiatry (cf. Ellenberger, 1970) of the alien and alienating experiences that are known under the rubric of schizophrenia (cf. Woods, 2011). Along the way, he explored the “divided self” (Laing, 1960) in the “politics of the family” (Laing, 1969) and the sources of “reason and violence” (Laing & Cooper, 1964) in modern society, creating a model of existential psychotherapy (Laing, 1987a) with his social phenomenology (Laing, 1987b).

Schooled in mainstream mid-20th century British psychiatry and then psychoanalysis, reading phenomenological philosophy the whole time, R.D. Laing wrote an undisputed classic, The Divided Self (1960; see Itten & Young, 2012), followed by Self and Others (1961) and others. Before post-modernism and deconstruction, Laing posited the dispersion of self in the bosom of the modern family with its attendant anxieties and insecurities (Laing, 1969; Di Nicola, 2022). Instead of the romantic notion of two becoming one, Laing gives us a vision of the self at odds with and divided against itself, and this opens up vistas for admitting all kinds of psychological and relational experiences on the analytic couch, including psychosis and paranoia. Furthermore, he attempted to normalize such experiences going so far as to argue that they were part of a process of psychic exploration and a shamanic journey rather than pathologizing them. This has even greater resonance today in such contemporary movements as the Hearing Voices Network.

In Laing’s (1987a) model, employing “existential phenomenology in psychotherapy,” even supposedly psychotic and paranoid experiences have meaning if we could only hear them and understand them. Rather than being reductive, it’s hermeneutic, leading existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1964) to write of Laing’s and Cooper’s (1964) efforts create “a truly human psychiatry”:

"I am convinced that your efforts will bring us closer to the day when psychiatry will, at last, become a truly human psychiatry."

Keywords: RD Laing, social phenomenology, Karl Jaspers, J-P Sartre, psychotherapy, schizophrenia, paranoia

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.34543.15524

This article explores the vagaries of Agnes Heller's relationship to humanism. It initially outlines a brief account of both the historical adventures of humanism and of the great debates in the middle of the 20th century that conditioned the contemporary reception of the concept of humanism. It then analyses Heller's own unique intellectual formation under the tutelage of Lukács. After briefly outlining her initial commitment to his humanist programme for the 'renaissance of Marxism', it looks in more depth at her initial critique of its humanist philosophical anthropology and her efforts, under the auspices of Arendt, to develop a more sophisticated account of the human condition. The analysis of Heller finally explores the impact of a postmodern awareness of contingency, fallibility and historical open-endedness on this account. The article concludes by pointing to both the commonalities and differences with the contemporary critical humanism of Tzvetan Todorov. It is argued that despite the many parallels these differences signify Heller's final parting of the ways with humanism strictly speaking and also represent unresolved issues for any reanimation of contemporary humanism.

Esta ponencia se refiere al aparte «El psicoanalisis existencial», seccion I del capitulo II de la cuarta parte del libro El ser y la nada, de Jean-Paul Sartre (JPS), publicado por ediciones Gallimard en 1943. Este aparte del libro basicamente define lo que entiende JPS por psicoanalisis existencial, por oposicion a los llamados por el «psicoanalisis empirico» y «psicoanalisis de Freud y sus discipulos». Este capitulo es ademas importante porque aqui se encuentran varios de los temas mas recurrentes en la filosofia sartriana, como son los temas de la libertad, Dios como para– si del hombre y la razon como luz que descubre las ultimas evidencias. A pesar de la reconocida «inspiracion freudiana», ademas de Freud, este aparte arremete contra algunos de los pensadores que critica la obra sartriana: Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger.Palabras claves: Psicoanalisis existencial, psicoanalisis empirico.This paper refers to the text “The Existential Psychoanalysis”, section I, Chapter II, 4th part o...

En este artículo hemos explorado fenomenológicamente la experiencia profundamente humana del despertar al Ser. Hemos explorado explícitamente la fenomenología de la percepción directa del ser y hemos elaborado fenomenológicamente la metabolización de la experiencia y el poder de la transmisión del campo de la conciencia, que es el campo del ser. También hemos elaborado las huellas de la experiencia metabolizada que son el campo radiante energético del ser luminoso que continúa vida tras vida y muerte tras muerte.

Though commonly seen as a member of the so-called "culturistic" school of psychoanalysis that rejected Freudian drive theory and embraced an "oversocialized" conception of human nature, Fromm's qualified essentialism and neo-Marxist existentialism significantly transcend both biological and social determinism (although he succumbs to the latter in regard to his theory of the Oedipus complex). His existential Freudo-Marxism contributes to the integration of psychoanalysis and social science. In place of the authoritarian superego and the pseudo-objective stance of the classical Freudians, Fromm offers conscientious, egalitarian, personalistic, and humane values. Erich Fromm has been widely viewed as a "neo-Freudian" member of the so-called "culturistic" school of psychoanalysis, along with Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan, and others who, in rejecting the "biologism" of the classical Freudian theory of the instincts, succumbed to a radically constructivist and culturally relativist "sociologism" that Dennis H. Wrong (1961) called "the over-socialized conception of man in modern sociology" (p. 183). While agreeing with Wrong's critique of the one-sided social determinism prevalent in the mainstream structural-functionalist sociology of the 1950s, I subsequently argued against Wrong that to simply replace the oversocialized model of human nature with the undersocialized and overly biologized conception offered by Freudian drive theory is no solution (Carveth, 1984). In my dissatisfaction with both overand under-socialized models and my search for a dialectical solution to the nature/nurture polarity, I was following in the footsteps of Fromm, who was quite as alert to the danger of sociological as of biological reductionism.-485-Copyrighted Material. For use only by PEPWeb. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).

Journal of Psychopathology 2016;22:30-38 Summary Building on and extending Sartre’s last work, The Family Idiot (a biography of French novelist Flaubert), this paper considers the ways language may construct or disrupt the subjectivity of the speaker. Sartre’s understanding of Flaubert’s attitude toward language offers an extraordinary amount of material that allows us to answer the question about who is speaking when a subject utters a speech act. His answer is that it is always the Other who is speaking at the origin – until something occurs, which enables a subject to speak by himself and as a Self. Yet this being-spoken by the Other never fades away completely and can always come back, both as a creative resource (as with Flaubert) or as a constant, alienated and alienating foreground of our subjectivity. I argue that this state of alienation from the speech-act is apparent in disorders of self-affection, and especially in instances of verbal-acoustic hallucinations.

Ontological differentiation: difference between beings and being. Beings are things which are; being refers to the general fact that all beings "are". The relation is reciprocal: all beings "are" ("have" being, so to say), and "being" always pertains to beings (as they alone "are"). Generally "being" is translated as "Being" to avoid conflating it with beings in the singular form. So: the chair I see is a being; the mere fact that it "is" constitutes its Being Question of Being: the fundamental question of metaphysics: not a question about beings, as in the sciences, but about the most general fact that they "are" Ontic: pertaining to beings Ontological: pertaining to Being Dasein: a being (a type of being, not "Being") which exists. I.e.: among all things in the world, there is one sort of thing which "exists"; it is called Dasein (literally "being-there"). Only humans are Dasein; animals do not "exist" in the strict sense as they are not being-there (they don't relate to their own being

The Social Phenomenology of R.D. Laing:
A Re-Appraisal of R.D. Laing, His Relationship to J.-P. Sartre,
and the Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia

Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, DLFAPA, FCAHS
University of Montreal
Psychiatric Fellow, AAPDPP


American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (AAPDPP)
2022-2023 Virtual Presentation Series

Brief Abstract

Scottish psychiatrist-psychoanalyst Ronald David Laing (1927-1989) is known for his pioneering studies in the tradition of psychodynamic psychiatry (cf. Ellenberger, 1970) of the alien and alienating experiences that are known under the rubric of schizophrenia (cf. Woods, 2011). Along the way, he explored the "divided self" (Laing, 1960) in the "politics of the family" (Laing, 1969) and the sources of "reason and violence" (Laing & Cooper, 1964) in modern society, creating a model of existential psychotherapy (Laing, 1987a) with his social phenomenology (Laing, 1987b).

In this thesis I focus on what, if any, philosophical implications for a conception of the self follow from the psychological and neurological study of dementia. After comparing different types of conceptions of the self and the expression they have found in philosophical examinations of dementia, I argue that the most pertinent philosophical theory of the self is Heidegger‟s‟ conception of Dasein. This conception is found to be illuminating particularly when it comes to understanding the changes in the experiential dimensions of someone suffering from dementia.

In "Pierre Loves Horranges ", a little noticed essay on Sartre's existential psychoanalysis, emerging French philosopher Catherine Malabou offers a new reading of "Doing and Having", in Sartre's Being and Nothingness for her philosophy of the fantastic. We compare Sartre and Malabou on the fantastic, focusing on their analyses of quality, viscosity and ontological difference. We argue that Malabou's reinterpretation of Sartre's symbolic schema, which serves to make visible the change and exchange in the ontological difference, is valuable for a psychoanalysis of the future, one that comes after metaphysics and deconstruction. 

In Sartre's tater philosophy, he substitutes need for desire as a description of the basic relationship between hUDWl beings and the world. Some have laken this substitution, along with Sartre's description ofhuman reality as praxis rather than as consciousness or Being-Jor-itself, to be an abandonment of his earlier ontology. While it is certainly true that the new terminology indicates a new emphasis on social awareness and action in the socio-material world, the idea that Sartre the Marxist has abandoned his earlier philosophy of freedom proves not to be tbe case. Sartre himself says in an interview that his philosophy "underwent a continuous evolution beginning with La Nausee all the way up to the Cr;tique de La Raison DiaLeet;que... 1 In any case, although there is no abandonment of the earlier ontology, there is certainly a shift in emphasis and the introduction of new ideas in the laler philosophy-new ideas which will have consequences for Sartre's conceptualization of social science theory in general and for existential psychoanalysis in particular. Here I would Iike to investigate the significance of Sartre's usage ofthe terms need andpraxis (and its contrary, hais) as these might relate to a Sartrean view of human development and to existentially oriented psychotherapy. In doing so, I will make use both of ideas tThis quote is from an interview wilb Michel Rybalka and olbers in 1he Philosophy 0/Jean-Paul

Julie Reshe is an anti-positive psychologist and necro-psychotherapist of Ukrainian Gypsy origin. She is a professor at the School of Advanced Studies (SAS) at the University of Tyumen in Siberia, and director of the Institute of Psychoanalysis at the Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS). Here, she develops the idea that sadness is human destiny.

Our starting point in this article is that the question of the essence of psychotherapy has to some extent been neglected. Its medical context has strengthened the tendency to interpret psychotherapy in general from a technical and overtly rationalistic standpoint. Instead, we would underline the importance of the philosophical and historical roots of all psychotherapies. In our view, it is imperative to acknowledge the antirationalistic underpinnings that have always informed the discipline. We show how speculative mysticism and the late philosophy of Martin Heidegger have proved to be indispensable tools in setting psychotherapies in their philosophical and historical context. Robert Stolorow has also recently emphasised that Heidegger’s philosophy in Time and Being can be used to both understand and develop thinking in psychotherapies. We find it surprising that Heidegger’s late philosophy has not previously been considered a promising standpoint for theoretical research and show...

Kate Grenville’s 1994 novel Dark Places is a study in Australian colonial misogyny and the phenomenology of narcissism. Its narrator, the odious Albion Singer, offers an extended account of his obsession with the look of the other. This article explores Singer’s relationship with himself and others through Sartrean psychoanalysis. Singer attempts to hide his ‘real self’ – an absence, or lack – from the look of the other by constructing an elaborate shell through conscious performativity, while simultaneously owning the other’s freedom. When this fails, he seeks to destroy the subjectivity of the other in order to escape the shame he experiences at their look and to reject his objectness to them. This exercise must fail, though, for Singer has internalised the look, and he finally sees himself, and his nothingness, and he disintegrates to death.

Keywords: Sartrean psychoanalysis; the look; misogyny; Australian literature