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Part I
Existentialism after postmodernism and the psychological therapies
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Chapter 1
Introduction
Existential psychotherapy and counselling after postmodernism and R. D. Laing
This chapter has been written specifically to introduce this book of my collected works.
I am interested in phenomenology and existentialism; as David Cooper has written, ‘existentialism is worth revisiting at intervals for the help it may offer with themes of contemporary interest’ (1990: vii). But what happened to phenomenology with the advent of postmodernism, and what are the potential implications of this for existential psychotherapy and counselling (and psychotherapy and counselling more generally) in the twenty-first century? Are we now in a neoliberal world where ‘we are all – like it or not – post-modern existentialists, searching for connections and meanings, trying to find our way’ (Margulies, 1999: 7041)? This book, comprising a collection of my work, can be seen as an exploration of these questions.
Like so many young people of the 1960s, I was influenced by the existential–analytic psychiatrist R. D. Laing (1960, 1969, 1972, 1990), and in my case particularly his book The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise (1967), in which he writes: ‘the really decisive moments in psychotherapy, as every patient or therapist who has experienced them knows, are unpredictable, unique, unforgettable, always unrepeatable and often indescribable’ (Laing, 1967: 34). In 1980, after having been involved in counselling, including being personally introduced to existentialism by Emmy van Deurzen, I started my training at the Philadelphia Association in London, which Laing and others had established (and at which Laing was in the process of being booted out!). It was here that I developed my interest in continental philosophy.
This book is less about existential psychotherapists – such as Binswanger, Boss, Frankl, van Deurzen and Spinelli – than it is about revisiting some implications for psychotherapy and counselling of existentialism and phenomenology – stemming from those such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau Ponty and Levinas – in the light of postmodernism. While my students over the years have found Yalom’s (1980) givens of death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness a useful introduction and then ‘progressed’ to Rollo May’s (1961) six characteristics of the existing person, this book tries to avoid such enumeration, because struggling with original texts is regarded as an essential aspect of existentialism. In this way, the book can be seen as one evolution of R. D. Laing’s approach to existentialism – including the influence of psychoanalysis – though this is preceded by according primacy to the existential relationship.
This collection is for those who privilege such notions as meaning and experience in ways of becoming in the world with others that can be astonishing and changing. In some ways this can be seen as an attempt to revisit, for example, Kierkegaard’s ‘becoming’, Heidegger’s ‘in the world with others’, and Laing’s ‘experience’. However,
A part of existentialism’s popular appeal may have been that it provided a way to think through the issues of choice and individual responsibility. But as a theory of the self existentialism remained within Cartesianism. Its psychology tended to portray the individual as a rational, conscious actor who could understand the basis for his or her action. It remained firmly rooted in a philosophy of individual autonomy and rational choice.
(Sarup, 1993: 5–6)
The inherent egocentric narcissism of existentialism is criticised through postmodernism in this book, with the hope of freeing up both existentialism and ourselves. This is regarded as a vitally important opportunity before we are submerged in neoliberalism’s hypermodernity (Attali, 2013). The problem seems to be that a circle gets closed, which destroys the initial vibrancy and potentiality. Sarup’s previous quotation is an example of this; he precedes that with the following:
A few years later, during the May ’68 uprising, it was felt by many students and workers that a liberated politics could only emerge from liberated interpersonal relationships, and there was an explosion of interest in Lacanian psychoanalysis – a movement which seemed to reconcile existentialism and Marxism.
(Sarup, 1993: 5)
But then where is Marxism in existentialism, Lacanian or any other form of psychoanalysis today?
Furthermore, as with the founding authors of humanism and psychoanalysis, such as Rogers and Freud (who, importantly, are not dismissed in this book), founding authors of existentialism have been simplified and are in danger of being sanitised. Thus existential talking therapies have been popularised through the schemas of those such as May and Yalom in the USA and Spinelli, van Deurzen and Cooper in the UK. However, this book is more about the implications of being influenced by existential thinkers for our practice, while (in keeping with these philosophers) minimising the use of a framework to do so. As mentioned, this might be seen as a development of R. D. Laing’s more existential–analytic approach.
Existentialism is thus less helpful ‘with themes of contemporary interest’ because it has become increasingly stuck in a 1950s modernism, in which everything returns to the subject who is not subject to language, an unconscious, writing, the political and so on. It is as if existentialism allows for expressions of good and evil, albeit in a world that is itself influenced by a positive psychology.
I see my being commissioned to write this book about my collected works as a request to write a story revisiting some of the previous stories that I have told. In thinking about this, I do of course privilege certain notions; however, hopefully this cannot be reduced to a simple schema (particularly given my criticism above), which could be more than just an envious attack on others’ greater popularity! I have become clearer (Loewenthal, 2011) that the psychological therapies are better seen as cultural practices (Wittgenstein, 1958; Heaton, 1990). Freud and others first discovered practices, for which they then tried to develop theories; they and we continued to attempt to legitimise using changing notions of research, which can also be seen as cultural practices.
However, I think my assumptions underlying this book are as follows:
1.To start with practice.
2.That existential ideas (and other theories) have implications rather than applications for practice.
3.Existential concerns need not be just narcissistic or ego-centric; we are all ‘subject to’, for example language and hopefully ethics – giving a primacy to heteronomy over autonomy.
4.In listening, it is important to be open to what comes to mind and to be able to wonder how much of this is one’s own associations.
5.To be able to stay with not knowing.
6.That the psychological therapies are cultural practices.
7.That research is another changing cultural practice and does not necessarily have much to do with being thoughtful.
8.That so long as one doesn’t start with them, some psychoanalytic notions and practices can be helpful.
9.That the political/ideological is everywhere.
With regard to the final point above, in planning this book there was the question of where to place the political/ideological. Rather than tacking it on somewhere, it seemed more appropriate to start with questioning where we are coming from politically – though we may not realise it – as psychotherapists and counsellors.
Heidegger, through Husserl, intertwined phenomenology with existentialism. Levinas brought this to France, influencing not only those such as Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre but also a further generation, including Lyotard and Derrida. Indeed, this book could have – perhaps should have – been called Phenomenological Psychotherapy and Counselling after Postmodernism. Another possibility for this book’s title was Some Implications of Post-Existentialism (Existentialism after Postmodernism) for Psychotherapy and Counselling, for in many ways it traces different notions of phenomenology for therapeutic practices. However, there are two other strands in this book, which may be less in evidence in other recent texts on existential psychotherapy and counselling. The first is the presence of psychoanalysis. (Indeed, other titles for this book might have been Existential–Analytic Psychotherapy and Counselling after Postmodernism, Existential Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Counselling.) Thus the term ‘existential–analytic’ will be used, not only to imply a loosening up but also to include some psychoanalytic notions. There is the caveat that existential must come before analytic: ‘being in the world with others’ must precede any psychoanalytic or other technical frame-up. However, early Freud at least can be usefully read phenomenologically; after all, Freud (as well as Husserl) attended Brentano’s lectures on descriptive psychology. Furthermore, in my own practice and in supervising others, I have often considered phenomenology helpful when the client2 has explored founding relationships and discovered that they have repressed what was too difficult to acknowledge, in what might for them have been traumatic situations. With such an existential-analytic approach, which I more often term ‘post-existential’, there are no psychiatric or psycho-analytic formulations. There is no search for such labelling or any attempt at such diagnosis and treatment. Instead, through the client’s descriptions and relationships with the therapist, the way each client and others have constricted his or her own and others lives can become clearer. There is the question here of how far one should consider psychoanalytic concepts. In general, as with any theory, I attempt to minimise using such technical language and reification. This doesn’t mean that an idea (of Jacques Lacan, for example) can’t helpfully come to mind when working with somebody; however, to completely adopt a Lacanian or any other school of therapy is a totalising move that greatly increases the act of doing violence to the client, as will be argued. I think it is also noteworthy that probably the most important phenomenological influence in the talking therapies is through the humanistic tradition of Carl Rogers, who was influenced by Kierkegaard, among others. Indeed, when helping my students to start with practice over the last thirty-plus years, I have introduced them initially to Rogers and subsequently been critical of his theories – and all others!
Hence, the other important development for me is the place of the political in existentialism. Previously – as for those early Lacanian students and existentialists such as Sartre – the political was very much part of practice (indeed, in arguing against psychoanalysis, Sartre was also very knowledgeable about it). It would appear that our current era of late capitalism (now more frequently termed ‘neoliberalism’) has been very successful in removing radicalism in general, including from existentialism. Yet, as Hannah Arendt (whom I previously wrongly ignored, pointed out, it’s how we are in the world with others that is so vitally important. Our alienation is now such that it seems we can’t even see the potential for self-interest in the common good.
I have been very influenced by Levinas – who was very influenced by Heidegger (but also critical of him) – in arguing that the ethical must proceed the ontological: our responsibility to put the other first, before ourselves. So while I suggested previously that existentialism should come before any psychoanalysis, if only ‘being’ is read by this, it too quickly becomes ‘my being’. More recently, I have been interested in how one might operationalise this: not only in terms of our responsibility for the client’s responsibility, but also in terms of our social, economic and ideological responsibility for others’ responsibilities in these spheres. I have previously written of existentialism after postmodernism and attempted to also consider psychoanalysis and the political as ‘post-existentialism’ (see, for example, chapters 4 and 14). With this book, I was tempted to return to calling all of this ‘existentialism’. In so doing, I hoped there would be a greater chance that the term ‘existentialism’ could continue to ‘astonish and change’ (Heaton, 1990) rather than being imprisoned and contorted by modernism. But I decided that this would currently be a step too far.
As mentioned earlier, it would appear that we are now in an era beyond postmodernism – which some call ‘hyper-modern’ (Attali, 2013; Charles and Lipovetsky, 2006) – characterised by an even deeper faith in our ability to understand, control and manipulate every aspect of human experience than was the case in modernism. Such thinking will return us to egocentricism. Conversely, this book attempts to create a space in which, after postmodern ideas, we can lessen our desire to understand, control and manipulate ours and others’ experiences. Instead, it is hoped we can be more open to potential existential registers that would otherwise be muted – if not strangled.
Some questions3
From such a new existential/post-existential perspective, we might ask questions such as the following about all psychological therapies:4
1.Is psychotherapy first and foremost a practice?
2.Are theories more attempts to explain practice?
3.Do changes in this practice have more to do with changes in our culture that lead us to be more interested in diffe...
