Giampiero Arciero

The paradigm of production, which grasps things as products, has supported the ancient Greek as well as the contemporary vision of man that constitutes the foundation of therapeutic practice. Thus, the theme of healing is understood in the light of the paradigm of production and hence of a way of accessing the motility of life according to a detached mode of grasping and discovering the world and the self, theorein, capable of ensuring a stable and enduring form of knowledge. Can the therapeutic care be regulated according to forms of knowledge other than the theoretical one?

The central questions of this chapter spring from a theme already explored in the previous one: what possible new relations with the natural sciences are engendered by the ontological and methodological release of scientific psychology from the paradigm of production on which it rests? In other words, how can a phenomenological psychology and psychotherapy open up to the natural sciences by cooperating with them in a relationship of mutual enlightenment? The new alliance between phenomenological psychology and the natural sciences most certainly revolves around corporeality. Corporeality is understood as a phenomenon, and hence something that is constantly in the process of being actualized and is not limited to the mere presence of the body as a material entity that ends with the skin. Then, this chapter introduces the phenomenon of corporeality and its intertwining with existence, the relation between corporeality and the body, and the topic of pathology—of the trauma, of violence, and its healing.

The phenomenological psychology and psychotherapy, which cannot access the meaning of experience through reflective objectification, must do so by grasping it in its enactment: by grasping the taking shape of lived experience in relation to this or that circumstance, as it actually occurs in everyday life—in different ways for different people. The specifying of what method guides us in grasping the way in which each person prereflectively experiences this or that situation is the cornerstone of this chapter. In the footsteps of Heidegger’s phenomenology, we have referred to this method as formal indication. In order to account for the incompleteness of each person’s being-there, this indication focuses on the intentional involvement without specifying any content. This method, which accompanies the taking shape of other people’s experience of this or that, enables us to study the way in which ipseity relates to the world in different situations, in a way that carries different meanings for different people. The analysis of a clinical case helps further explicate the new method.

This chapter outlines a path that allows us to grasp phenomenological psychotherapy within the framework of the care of self—a tradition that has thematized the relation between one’s way of living and the disclosing and transforming of oneself—as the reappropriation and renewal of this tradition. This itinerary starts from Classical antiquity, passes through the practice of confession in Eastern monasticism, and reaches the Cartesian turn of the self-foundation of the thinking I. Resting on this new basis, which marks the beginning of modern thought, is the link between the truth about oneself and the truth of reason, mediated by the act of reflection and the theory guiding it, which has endured as the foundation of contemporary psychology and psychotherapy. This “Cartesian moment” thus marks the dramatic transition from an original mode of accessing the truth that requires the subject to make some changes to himself, and a different mode, according to which the accessing of the truth about oneself actualized in the act of knowing is fixed by those principles that guide the process of knowledge-acquisition. Within the framework of this contrast, it is possible to appreciate the difference between phenomenological psychotherapy and all forms of theoretically oriented contemporary psychotherapy.

Deriving from the new methodological approach of formal indication is the general principle that guides what we refer to as phenomenological psychotherapy. It consists in an interpretative understanding faithfully focusing on the actual occurrence of living experience, as this manifests itself to the individual, with no theoretical mediation. Then, this chapter focuses on the definition of the margins, themes, and disclosures offered by phenomenological psychotherapy while developing a radical critique of theoretically founded psychotherapies. The close engagement with the hot topics in psychotherapy research—the therapeutic relationship, intimacy, alliance, the individual differences, the effectiveness of therapeutic discourse, the common factors, empathy, and compassion—and with the answers that theoretical forms of psychotherapy have to offer with regard to these topics enables us to deconstruct the reflexive approach to therapeutic care.

A detailed analysis of the conceptual developments of cybernetics is provided down to the contemporary neurosciences (in particular neurophenomenology) and psychologies that stem from them. The chapter then touches upon the debate between the easy and the hard problem that monopolized the attention of scientists, philosophers, researchers, and thinkers in the late twentieth century, especially focusing on the limits of the deconstructive criticism delivered by Varela’s suggested way of approaching this dialectic.

The chapter follows the various stages in the development of the paradigm of production in the modern age, with a particular attention to how, first with Kant and then—and especially—with Fichte, it came to establish itself as the foundation of the natural-scientific psychology and the life sciences up to present-day cognitive neurosciences. Helmholtz grafted Fichte’s philosophy onto the very heart of physiology, producing two remarkable consequences: (a) he disclosed a new method of investigation that via Magnus, DeBarenne, and McCulloch ushered in a new—and still contemporary—era in the mathematical modeling of natural phenomena; (b) he laid the physiological foundations for the development of technologies in the image and likeness of man.

The difference between human beings and animals is more fully explored in this chapter which elucidates the difference in question in the light of the contrasting modes of enactment of the motility of life among living beings. These phenomenological analyses ultimately trace the humanity of man—and hence the difference between human beings and animals—back to the freedom of man to understand the things that meaningfully address him. From this perspective, ipseity manifests itself as the very possibility of the experience of freedom.The analyses conducted enable an engagement with some of the key points of extended evolutionary synthesis, and outline a range of new spheres in which psychology and the natural sciences can cooperate, according to a phenomenologically oriented methodology. In particular, the focus becomes the co-productivity of psychology and cardiology, the neurosciences, and psychiatry.

The core of this chapter consists in an engagement with theoretical biology. Touching upon Heidegger’s dialog with von Uexküll’s work, by developing a phenomenological reappraisal of facticity, it reaches a new understanding of the difference between human beings and animals.On the one hand, this difference has to do with an unequal relation with the world, namely the ability to access the meaningfulness of the world that distinguishes the human being from all other life forms; on the other hand, this difference emerges from an original unity of life, understood in terms of motility. Man and animal (and, more generally, every living organism) are therefore different modes of enacting the motility of life. Indeed, the motility of life establishes again and again that relation which for each living creature takes shape as an act of individuation pertaining to the choice of life’s possibilities. Investigating the difference between human beings and animals, then, raises a methodological question insofar as it is the method adopted which must provide a route to gain access to the animal as such. The step which Heidegger takes is to extend the method of formal indication to living beings in general.

Ipseity rather than as a produced thing appears as an event or rather as a phenomenon. The constitutive temporariness of human existence, its motility, is seen at each moment as a disclosure of meaning, as an intelligible space that opens up with respect to the meaningful things we encounter. Clearly, ipseity does not create the world, nor does it “constitute” it; rather, in each case, it comes to itself, it finds itself, while at the same time enabling the appearance of the world as something meaningful. This chapter elucidates the structure of ipseity in relation to the world, everyday life, one’s own history, the changes occurring over the course of one’s life, the unprominent sphere of meaning, the trauma, and the creation of a symptom.

The failure of a way of conceiving and grasping man’s being starting from the question of what that being is exactly (the paradigm of production) calls for an ontology capable of thematizing the guiding idea of man that has shaped the development of psychology and psychotherapy. What is suggested, then, is the outlining of a new perspective on man’s being, which is to say, of an ontology—that is phenomenological in its method of inquiry—capable of conceptualizing the incompleteness of existence. Phenomenological ontology thus presents psychology and psychotherapy with a new positum, ipseity, and, hence a new method to study it, formal indication. The chapter explores the impact of this ontology in creating a paradigm shift in psychology and therapeutic practices.

This book addresses selected central questions in phenomenological psychology, a discipline that investigates the experience of self that emerges over the course of an individual’s life, while also outlining a new method, the formal indication, as a means of accessing personal experience while remaining faithful to its uniqueness. In phenomenological psychology, the psyche no longer refers to an isolated self that remains unchanged by life’s changing situations, but is rather a phenomenon which manifests itself and constantly takes form over the course of a person’s unique existence. Thus, the formal indication allows us to study the way in which ipseity relates to the world in different situations, in a way that holds different meanings for different people. Based on this new approach, phenomenological psychotherapy marks a transition from a mode of grasping the truth about oneself through reflection, to a mode of accessing the disclosure of self through a work of self-transformation that requires the person to actually change her position on herself. By putting forward this method, the authors shed new light on the dynamic interplay between a person’s historicity and uniqueness on the one hand, and the related physiopathological mechanisms on the other, providing evidence from the fields of genetics, cardiology, the neurosciences and psychiatry. The book will appeal to a broad readership, from psychiatrists, psychologist and psychotherapists, to researchers in these fields.

Since Kraeplin and Kretschmer, the clarification of the limits between ordinary sadness and clinical depression has been a major concern. Much of the controversy has focused on whether and on which bases can be fixed a boundary in the continuum from the experience of sadness to major depressive episode. The new emphasis on the role of clinical judgment introduced by DSM-5 can be regarded as a way to address these issues, though leaving several questions open. After examining the implications of the main topics raised by this still ongoing discussion, we will argue that in a clinical reality both mobility and intensity of emotional states may account for the discontinuity between ordinary sadness and clinical depression.