Existential Psychoanalysis

This article presents an existential psychotherapist’s examination of foundational concerns in depth psychology and psychotherapy. Following a phenomenological, hermeneutic approach to inquiry, it begins by tracing the historical origins of the term depth psychology (Tiefenpsychologie) as well as the meaning of the concepts of the soul (Seele) and the life of the soul (Seelenleben) as these latter terms are used in the works of Sigmund Freud. Drawing on the evidence of immediate experience as well as the daseinsanalytic thought of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and the Swiss psychiatrist Medard Boss, the article then presents an understanding of human existence as Being-in-the-world or Da-sein, that kind of being whose essence is described, first, as existing as such (i.e., rather than not existing) and, second, as being-there (Da-sein). The article goes on to unfold an existential understanding of the meaning of soul (Seele) as the individual human being’s very own situated gathering of lived-experience. Grounded in this ontological analysis, the article considers Freud’s descriptive understanding of the unconscious before offering an existential view of being conscious or not as two basic ways of relating to one’s own existence. Finally, the article proposes that the human being’s ontological constitution as finite, fallen, forgetful, and fleeing as well as the world’s own ontological concealment make possible these two basic ontical ways human beings relate to their own existence. Throughout the article, a steady dialectic is developed between the author’s own everyday and clinical experience and psychoanalytic, existential, phenomenological, and humanistic thought.

This article assesses a realm of psychoanalytic social theory that is relatively under-discussed – existential psychoanalysis – in order to gain further insight into the relationship of psychoanalytic ideas to humanism. I offer a reading of certain influential thinkers in this tradition, namely Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss, presenting conceptual clarifications while highlighting a cluster of important aspects of their respective repertoires relevant to humanism. I do so with the intention of teasing out how contributing voices to existential psychoanalysis negotiate humanism’s foundational ideas, specifically the notion of ‘the individual subject’, with the bed-rocks of psychoanalytic thought, namely the unconscious. Finally, I conclude with critical commentary on the existential-psychoanalytic project drawn from what is often thought of as the anti-humanist tradition, with specific attention paid to Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault.

This paper compares the analytic and experiential approaches to dreams in order to illuminate the intrinsic and necessary relationships between the two understandings. It describes how dream work reflects the bimodalness of symbolism, thought and ultimately human consciousness. An extended example of dream work reflecting both analytic and experiential modalities is presented.

We have two ways of knowing. Our mind knows forms, things, both subtle and gross. Faces, hands, buildings, trees, math formulas, mind knows subject and the mind knows otherness. The mind knows dualities, the mind knows me and you, us and them, and this and that. Mind knows time, mind knows the past, the present and the sense of the future. The mind knows things and entities, the mind knows beings, infinite numbers of beings and things. The mind knows difference. The mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through imagery, the mind has sense and the mind has memory. The mind knows dualistically.

Issue of The Humanistic Psychologist (Volume 16, Number 1, Spring 1988, 278 pp.) "Existential analysis" was introduced to the English reader in 1958 with the publication of Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri Ellenberger's Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology. While Erwin Straus, Viktor von Gebsattel, and Eugene Minkowski were cited as pioneers in "Psychiatric phenomenology," Ludwig Binswanger alone was named founder and representative of "existential analysis," a new school of psychoanalysis built upon the edifice of Martin Heidegger's (1927/1962) early ontology. Subsequent texts (Spiegelberg, 1972; van den Berg, 1972) have followed suit, discussing Heidegger's influence on psychiatry with primary reference to Binswanger, either ignoring the distinctive contribution of Medard Boss altogether or giving him curiously short shrift in comparison to his colleagues.

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 each other out.

Donald Winnicott's radical existential psychoanalytic understanding of transitional awareness and transitional relatedness is an amazing and little used doorway for today's psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. In today's cognitive clinical culture we have become cognitions tampering with cognitions. Life as cognition. Existential Ontology Winnicott's creative understanding of our capacity for transitional awareness and transitional relatedness intertwines both our personal psychology and our innermost experience of our own existential ontology. Transitional knowingness intertwines both our mind and our primordial awareness field. Our field of awareness knows the field of Being since awareness is the field of Being. Transitional awareness intertwines both our mind and our psyche. Donald Winnicott's phenomenological understanding of the self radicalizes our sense of self from being a representational picture or cognitive affective schema or synthesis of disparate psychological part's to a fluid sense of self as a direct experiential felt sense of ongoing continuity of Being. Our knowingness though the medium of awareness, opens for us the direct knowing of the experience of Being. The experience of Being is for us our sense of natural spirituality. Our liminal transitional awareness field opens us into the immediate ongoing intimate experience of Being. This experience of Being is of Being within our very own self and of Being within our very own relational life-world. Ordinary Personhood We, as a most ordinary person, can experience the unfolding movement of the experiencing of Being within our own self as our self, and simultaneously, the unfolding experiencing of our own being as the being-ness of Being which is the Being of the world. As we experience the Being .

In this article, I reconsider the philosophical significance of Jacques Lacan’s reading of Freud in light of Jean-Paul Sartre’s early critique of Freudian psychoanalysis. Since direct comparisons between the work of Sartre and Lacan are sparse in the English literature, Betty Cannon’s comprehensive treatment proves to be an invaluable resource in opening up this line of inquiry. I claim that one reason for the limited attention given to comparisons of their work is the continued strength of the polemics between humanism and structuralism. Lacan’s structuralism is regularly indicted by humanists for failing to provide a conception of subjective responsibility in the way that Sartre’s humanism does. Taking Cannon’s critique of Lacanian psychoanalysis on this issue as a point of departure, I argue that a conception of subjective responsibility can be found throughout Lacan’s work, serving as a point of common ground upon which further inquiry—particularly of Sartre’s later work—might begin.

Mind Alone For many years psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy was singularly centered on the unconscious mind and conscious mind. There was only mind and the mind could become aware of its own self and its own representational realm. The self itself was representational and the emphasis on the mind was in the light of analytic thinking and analytic observation. There was an emphasis on objectification of mental phenomena and subjectivity itself. Knowing was knowledge by association, by reflection and mediation by linguistic signifiers. Knowing was neither non-conceptual nor pre-reflective, nor was there a place for direct experiential knowingness. Knowing was associated as mind alone and singular mind functions such as thinking, feeling, sensation, memory and imagination. Transitional Space as Space of Awareness With the presentation of the work of Donald Winnicott there was a shift in the psychoanalytic understanding of knowingness. A similar change in psychoanalytic thinking about knowing was also taking place in the Jungian and archetypal analytic schools. In psychotherapy Winnicott emphasizes a focus on the suspension of mind and in the process of suspension of mind, awareness was freed to focus within awareness, free to focus itself on itself. In the suspension of mind (a Winnicottian form of the phenomenological reduction,) the patient relocates themselves. The patient relocates from being located in mind alone or even located in a particular function of mind alone such as: feeling function or thinking function or sensation function or memory function; the patient enters or relocates themselves into the intermediate area of experience. This intermediate area of experience or this in-between space of experience is also described as the transitional area of experience and relatedness. Sometime this place is also described as the place of potential space. The sense of self shifts from being located in the mind or mental function of the mind into the more embodied sense of spacious awareness or as the place of potential space. Winnicott would described this knowing

The focus of Dzogchen practice is to experientially understand the nature of our awareness through awareness itself. To be nonconceptually aware of the nature of our awareness is rig pa or open presence.The root or the source of all phenomena is Presence. This word presence is often used by 14th century Longechenpa as well the contemporary Namkai Norbu and many dzogchen masters as the signifier of ground of being, the ground as presence. Contemporary Christian philosophers influenced by existential phenomenology, such as Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner, describe the ground of being and ground of presence as Divinity. In Dzogchen philosophy descriptors are added such as the divine presence, luminous presence, radiant presence, pure presence, immaculate presence.

In the Gudyargarbha tantra there is this most wonderful verse. Appearances, sounds, and thoughts are the diety, mantra and the state of dharmakaya. What this wonderful language brings forward into our awareness is the amazing understanding that self liberation is the direct experiencing of the appearing of appearances.

We have focused on the transmission of the field of awareness and on the extension of the field into the present, the past and the future. We have focused on cutting through methods which are forms of the methodology of the ancient Vajrakilaya. We used cutting through methods as ways of dissolving mental structures. We especially focused on the primitive superego's structuring of unhappy experience. We use various methods of awareness cutting through configurations of awareness. This is why these actions are so direct, immediate and powerful. We are using awareness to cut through the configurations of awareness.

Within the nature of the primordial ground of Being ,there is Spontaneous Presence.This spontaneous presence is the nature of the ground. This spontaneous presence abides as the inner radiance of the ground, the ground is basic space and is original purity of Being.

Our .personal innermost awareness is our very own subjectivity . Our subjectivity is our awareness and awareness is our subjectivity. Aham ah! I am becoming who I am!. This subjectivity is not the subjectivity of the mind. Such mind based subjectivity is of mind alone. Such subjectivity is bound like I am my mind or I am my thinking function or I am my feeling function or I am my sensation function, I am memory function. This subjectivity of mind is limited and contained and is often called the ego and is locked into duality. Western phenomenology undersands that person must know the difference between their mind and their awareness. In the upadesha instructions of dzogchen there is the admonition that it is necessary to experience the difference between your awareness and your mind. In this way you can directly and easily know that your very own innermost awareness is the manifestation of primordial awareness itself. The primordial ground manfiest within us as our own awareness. Primordial awareness manifest within us as us. This self recognition can and does take place easily. This awareness is not the mind or the functions of the mind . Nonetheless the mind can be an expression of this awareness field. The essential method of dzogchen is by becoming aware of awareness we experience directly the manifestation of ground awareness, pure awareness. To know awareness as awareness is to know primordial awareness what ever the context,whatever the dimension.

Welcome to our study of contemporary existential phenomenological psychotherapy. We will focus on the phenomenology of awareness. Through the practice of the suspension (epoche) of the mind, a person can enter into transitional space or the intermediate area of experience or liminal space. Within this context, the experiential field becomes manifest and the innermost sense of self can be experienced, brought forth and embodied. From within the stability of this inner most base, this intrinsic nonconceptual base, this sense of immanence , this sense of indwelling, the mind itself can be more deeply integrated within this awareness state, within this self.

1.For Husserl phenomenology is an experiential philosophy of essence as phenomena. For Husserl there is the indivisibility of the essence and the manifestation of the essence which manifestation is phenomena, the manifestation of appearance. This was Husserl's great contribution to philosophy, the inseparability of essence and phenomena. Merleau Ponty made this the focus of his philosophical work.

1. Welcome to our study of contemporary awareness field psychotherapy. We will focus on the phenomenology of awareness. Through the practice of the suspension (epoche) of the mind, a person can enter into transitional space or the intermediate area of experience or liminal space. Within this context, the experiential field becomes manifest and the innermost sense of self can be experienced, brought forth and embodied. From within the stability of this inner most base, this intrinsic non-conceptual base, this sense of imminence, this sense of indwelling, the mind itself can be more deeply integrated within this awareness state, within this self.

I appreciate Erin's sharing of her meditation experience within which the experience of the symbolic body is cut through…or cutting through in the context of Troma Nagmo. It was both beautiful and completely informing about the archetypal process within us and around us and the unfolding and expanding process of luminosity.

1. To experience the unfolding of the kayas of the awareness field, to experience the manifestations of the nature of consciousness in ourselves, or to experience the unfolding of gnosis, direct perception, as the ground of being…is a gifted experience. At times, when this gift and its manifestations are wrapped in the cloth of excess and saturation, the mystic life feels excessive. And so it is really useful to read and to hear about the lives of yogis: To read [Swami Muktananda's] The Play of Consciousness: A Spiritual Autobiography, or [Padampa Sangye's] The Lion of Siddhas; to hear of the life of Meister Eckhart, and of [Ibn] Al-Arabi, to name a few. It is also useful to hear the experiences of [Dzogchen teacher, Chogyal] Namkai Norbu, Yan Xin [siddha qi gong master], Lama Wangdor [holder of both Nyingma and Kagyu lineages and an eclectic teacher], Lama Norhla [who teaches in the Kagyu tradition], Lama Kunzang Dechen Lingpa [Nyingma terton, a revealer of Dharma treasures], H.E. Dudjom Rinpoche [head of the Nyingma lineage during his lifetime]… and Amma [Sri Mata Amritanandamayi, world-renowned saint of love, compassion, and selflessness]…all luminous flesh.