Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | J | Journal of Phenomenological Psychology

Introduction.

Article Excerpt
"In its own intrinsic structure subjectivity is already, and in the most profound sense, genuinely inter-subjective." Gabriel Marcel (1960, p. 224)

The focus for this edition of the Journal of Phenomenological Psychology is dialogue and collaboration. As the philosopher Martin Buber (1958) has indicated dialogue involves a fundamental attitude of openness to oneself and to the other while it also fosters a deepening of one's humanity. Moreover, in dialogue one's "own relation to truth is heightened by the other's different relation to the same truth" (Buber, 1965, p. 69). Buber's writings on genuine meeting and dialogue have significantly influenced the practice of many psychotherapists, especially those with interpersonal, existential, and phenomenological orientations. At Seattle University we have also explored the importance of dialogue for research.

The notion of collaboration goes along with but is different from dialogue. Quite simply, collaboration means working together. Dialogue is certainly an important dimension of collaboration, but dialogue does not necessarily involve joining together around a concrete project. In practice, as all of us know from our family or professional life or from news reports, especially about the failure of politicians and world leaders to cooperate, collaboration can be very difficult as well as immensely rewarding. All of the articles in this edition address dialogue and collaboration either in the domain of psychotherapy or in research.

Yet stereotypically the existential-phenomenological tradition brings to mind not collaboration but the efforts of solitary thinkers, most notably S[empty set]ren Kierkegaard, Frederich Nietszche, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Although they were influenced by and in dialogue with other thinkers, they did not have collaborators. Even philosophers such as Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers, and Emmanuel Levinas whose thought emphasizes the importance of the intersubjective and the critical role of meeting and conversation in human life produced writings that were uniquely theirs. Yes, all of these major figures had followers, but not co-workers. Likewise, existential-phenomenological psychology and psychiatry are more readily associated with particular individuals than with groups: Medard Boss, Ludwig Bisnwanger, R. D. Laing, Rollo May, James Bugental, Irwin Yalom, and Amedeo Giorgi, are some...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!