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HORIZON 5 (2) 2016 : III. Discussions: T. Georgas, I. Kazakova : 428-439
ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ • STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY • STUDIEN ZUR PHÄNOMENOLOGIE • ÉTUDES PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIQUES
III. ДИСКУССИИ
REPORT ON THE 9th IFDA INTERNATIONAL FORUM OF DASEINSANALYSIS
"WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A DASEINSANALYST?" (24-26/9/2015, ATHENS, GREECE)
THANASIS GEORGAS Psychiatrist-Daseinsanalyst.
President of the Hellenic Society of Daseinsanalysis, 16777 Athens, Greece. E-mail: ageorgas@windowslive.com
IRINA KAZAKOVA
PhD in Clinical Psychology, Psychologist.
European Humanities University, 01114 Vilnius, Lithuania.
E-mail: kairanatan@gmail.com
The report presents an overview of the 9th International Forum of Daseinsanalysis that was held on September 24-26/2015, at the central building of the University of Athens, organized by the International Federation of Daseinsanalysis (IFDA) and the Hellenic Society of Daseinsanalysis (HSDA). The IFDA forums take place every three years, with representatives from all the daseinsanalytic societies and working individual daseinsanalysts from all around the world. The report sketches the central idea of the event, points out the organizational background of the meeting, and shows the structure of the conference schedule.
Key words: Daseinsanalysis, psychotherapy, hermeneutic-phenomenology, Heidegger, Binswanger, Boss, phenomenon, Dasein, being-in-the-world, freedom, Ereignis.
© THANASIS GEORGAS, IRINA KAZAKOVA, 2016
АФАНАСИОС ГЕОРГАС
Психиатр-дазайн-аналитик.
Президент Греческого дазайн-аналитического общеста, 16777 Афины, Греция. E-mail: ageorgas@windowslive.com
ИРИНА КАЗАКОВА
Кандидат психологических наук, психолог.
Европейский гуманитарный университет, 01114 Вильнюс, Литва. E-mail: kairanatan@gmail.com
В данном отчете представлен обзор IX Международного форума по дазайн-анализу, который состоялся 24-26 сентября 2015 года в центральном здании Афинского университета. Форум был организован Международной федерацией дазайн-анализа и Греческим дазайн-аналитическим обществом. Форум проходит каждые три года, в нем принимают участие представители всех дазайн-аналитических сообществ и индивидуально практикующих дазайн-аналитиков со всего мира. Отчет кракто освещает основные идеи этого события, раскрывает организационные вопросы данного мероприятия и основные доклады согласно расписанию конференции.
Ключевые слова: Дазайн-анализ, психотерапия, герменевтическая феноменология, Хайдеггер, Бинсвангер, Босс, феномен, Дазайн, бытие-в-мире, свобода, событие.
THE CENTRAL IDEA
The central idea of the forum was reflected in the topic of the invitation and the announcement of the forum: "Imagine Socrates standing before us and addressing to us the following seemingly simple questions:
What does it mean to be a Daseinsanalyst?
What does a phenomenological-existentialpsychotherapy mean?
It is well-known that the Greek philosopher Socrates, who lived in the ancient Athens of the fifth century BC, spent much of his time in the city, initiating conversations with people. He addressed anyone who claimed to know something about some specific topic and asked them about it. He would start a dialogue with them. The procedure of the Socratic dialogue was very unusual, since it didn't establish anything at all, it had no specific thesis, it did not reach a specific conclusion. The dialogue ended in an aporia, and the result was purely negative. In this sense, Socrates was a thinker of negativity. His goal was not to establish a positive doctrine but merely to call into question what he saw before his own eyes. Socrates was only doing something negative; nonetheless he made other
people reflect on themselves and reconsider their beliefs and certain aspects of their lives.
The focus of the present forum, however, is not on the eternally enigmatic figure of Socrates, but on psychotherapy. It is worth noting that Socrates' communicative stance - despite distinct differences - is comparable to the hermeneutic-phenomenological process of daseinsanalysis: both of them involve a decisive moment, the moment that shakes us out of our established, characteristic positions which do not allow us to call into question what we see before us, that is, "the things themselves" (die Sachen selbst); which means both the ontic facts and their ontological prerequisites. A claim is laid upon us: to find our own answer to the fundamental questions concerning our being. Not only to face up our nothingness, but to respond to it.
Perhaps the question "What does it mean to be a Daseinsanalyst?" is an easy question with an easy answer. Yet it could be seen as a provocation, response to which might be no easy task. It calls for a reflective and authentic reconsideration of our Daseinsanalytic identity. Perhaps, in the light of authentic questions, fixed identities are no longer as secure.
THE SITE
In order to provide a means for the exchange of arguments and views, agreements and disagreements on daseinanalytical topics, a special site was created (www.ifda-athens-forum.webnode.gr) and a discussion forum within it, which would allow a common reflection prior to the 9th IFDA forum.
THE THREE TABLES
A main idea of the conference was the creation of three round tables, in order to focus on special themes regarding daseinsanalysis and provide the possibility of a dialogue between the participants of the forum.
The first of the round tables was that of the Greek Society with the topic "Daseinsanalysis: with Socrates and beyond Socrates". The focus was on the relevance of the Socratic claim: "All I know is that I know nothing" and "aporia" in the therapeutic stance of the daseinsanalyst. The coordinator of discussion was Dr. Thanasis Georgas, the main speakers of the round table - representatives of
Greek Daseinsanalytical Society: MariaKorre, Eleni Kouloutzou, StamatinaRapti, Rozita Christofideli, Hlias Katsamas, Eleni Miggou.
The question discussed in this round table concerned the closeness between the phenomenological method of Daseinsanalysis and the Socratic method: both of them are grounded in the openness of the "not knowing' and the "aporia". Following them, perhaps another kind of thinking and a different kind of access to reality is grounded in the type of listening that lets something be said. It is the silence first that allows things to "speak for themselves"! In a culture more and more dominated by the "positive thinking" of the scientific-technical method, we have lost touch with the inner meaning of silence. We use to speak by directing words at each other, expressing ourselves or asking each other questions, and we think that by doing so we establish contact with another human being and open communication. What if the opposite is true? What if, in the silence of the "not knowing' and the "aporia" we establish true contact with our whole being and the being of the other?
Heidegger understands the human being as that being, which in its being essentially is concerned with this very being: a being, to which its own being is an issue. When Heidegger says "the essence of Dasein lies in its existence", he means the essence lies in the pure facticity of the own being, in the pure "that I am and have to be". That implies that all relating and behaving, all our concerns dealing with current ontic issues always refer to fundamental ontological issues of our being. So, the phenomena of human existence hide and reveal at the same time a meaningfulness which is not obvious at first sight. We have to look for what is hidden in what is manifest. Real insight in one's own being is not possible through introspection: it needs the experience of the silence into the communication with the other and through the other. The silence of the "not knowing' and the "aporia" leads us to the human's main concern with his or her being and shows how he or she is able to cope with it.
Perhaps the basic pathology of our time is exactly the incapacity to listen, to be with others in silence and to bear the obscurity and uncertainty of that silence. If it is true that the method applied determines how we perceive and experience reality, a different openness may come from the dialogue with the Socratic method. It does not mean an infinite openness, something like a contemplation of the absolute and "real light" of the truth, but rather an openness from the hermeneutic-phenomenological perspective, as a movement from what is manifest back to what is not revealed, back to what does not shine: Unconcealment (clearing) comprises
concealment. Perhaps the dialogue with the Socratic method could prepare the ground for a new thinking. In this new thinking, the daseinsanalytic therapy provides an experiential relationship, an existential encounter, which is not subsumed under the scientific-technical method and which is much more than verbal. It is an encounter with the silence of the ontological mystery of our existing in its uniqueness!
The second round table was a dialogue between daseinsanalysts from all over theworld, with the topics: a) What constitutes an "existential" therapy? b) What could be the specificities of Daseinsanalysis? The main lines of the discussion were presented with reports of Alice Holzhey (Swiss), Anthony Stadlen (Britain), Hansjorg Reck (Schweiz), Tamas Fazekas (Austria), Josef Jenewain (Swiss), Thanasis Georgas (Greece), Maria de Fatima de Almeida Prado (Brazil) and coordinator Ado Huygens (Belgium). The engagement with the problem of this round table resulted in a discussion between many of the representatives of the dasein-analytic societies which participated in the forum and, in way, constitutes the overall concern of the forum. An attempt was made to demonstrate the particular physiognomy of Daseinsanalysis, which through the ways of hermeneutic phenomenology emphasizes the ontological parameters of human existence as they are identified primarily in Heidegger's theory. Even though Daseinsanalysis derives from psychoanalysis and is in a constant dialogue with it, it nevertheless distances itself from its metapsychology, as well as from the humanistic-existential models which flourish in the United States to the extent that they - without question - adopt and rely on the anthropological model of the autonomous-volitional subject of modernity.
During the discussion of the 2nd round table, as well as during the whole conference, there was the opportunity to hear the multidimensional concern which exists today in the field of Daseinsanalysis. There were agreements and disagreements, controversies and convergences. Generally, three directions of discussion were observed:
a) the direction based on Hermeneutic Phenomenology (which is engaged in a dialogue with Psychoanalysis);
b) the Humanistic Existential therapy (mainly as counselling-supportive psychotherapy);
c) the direction of the fading of selfhood (Selbstsein) as a means for a fuller openness (Far East, etc.)
A more complete presentation of these specific directions through the conference speeches, their diversity but also highlighting their common ground,
is an ambitious project which might materialize in the near future. It concerns not only the pastor the present, but also the future of Daseinsanalysis.
The third round table was devoted to Heidegger's Zollikon Seminars, with the title "Inner Circle Seminars" meet "Zollikon Seminars". The work was moderated by Anthony Stadlen (Britain). Discussion partners were Dr. Alice Holzhey and Dr. Dimitris Yfantis (the translator of Zollikon Seminars in Greek).
The "Zollikon Seminars" were delivered between 1959 and 1969 by Martin Heidegger at the home of Medard Boss in Zollikon near Zürich. The topic of the seminars was Heidegger's ontology and phenomenology as it pertained to the theory and praxis of medicine, psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy. The protocols of the seminars, along with the correspondence between Heidegger and Boss, were published in German in 1987. The English version of the text was published in 2001.
The "Inner Circle Seminars" were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an existential, phenomenological search in psychotherapy. They have been described by Thomas Szasz as the "Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness".
THEMATIC REPORTS
After the welcoming speech of the president of the organizing committee and the president of the Hellenic Society of Daseinsanalysis Thanasis Georgas, the ensuing lecture of the president of IFDA Ado Huygens was held.
The report of Ado Huygens with the title "Da" as a threefold existential in-between was started with a question "What could it be a Daseinanalyst in 2015?". Starting from Heidegger's ontology of being and nothing proceeding to to the definition of a particular human being as Dasein he comes to the three issues: Who is a human being? Who am I? What is art? The latter manifests itself when we reveal that the concept of "Da" is to be understood as openness (as the balancing, Nothingness, Beings) and a pathway which ponders, unfolds and experiences. There are three questions but one of them is fundamental: it grounds them all: Being. So Daseinsanalyst is more than ever someone who thinks and ponders life's experiences without judgments, who lets the givenness of things unfold itself: "Of course every Daseinsanalyst has his own field of interest but each of us share Heidegger's grounding".
Alice Holzhey (Swiss), with the report A plea for a more rational attitude in contemporary Daseinsanalysis substantiated the necessity a more rational
hermeneutic discourse in Daseinsanalysis. By rational hermeneutic discourse A. Holzhey means "not just 'the capacity for receive-perceive the significance of the things that are given to him' (Zollikon Seminars p. 4), but as someone who knows how to read and to interpret texts, who is actively questioning the texts, who is interested in differing interpretations of the same subject, who is self-reflective, open for criticism of his own interpretations and interested in learning from others. In a rational hermeneutic discourse interpretations are understood as proposals for how to grasp the meaning of a matter at stake, and the interpreter is always aware of the limited and therefore preliminary character of his or her interpretations". And therefore "in a rational hermeneutic discourse every interpretation demands explanations. An interpretation is explained when the arguments given for the interpretation are comprehensible for all who are able and ready to follow the chain of arguments". This thesis is quite clear to understand what is the main reproach Alice Holzhey makes to the contemporary Daseinsanalysis. That it is not a sufficiently rational attitude, in her opinion, is the reason for the lack of integration of daseinsanalysis in the world psychotherapeutic communities and interdisciplinary scholarly discussions. And being a Daseinsanalyst is more demanding than belonging to any other psychotherapeutic movement, as long as it relies on a rational attitude. Alice Holzhey says: "I give two reasons: 1. Daseinsanalysis has its roots in psychoanalysis and at least we in Zürich still understand Daseinsanalysis as a part of the psychoanalytic movement. But psychoanalytic theories are much more complex than any other psychological and psychotherapeutic theories. 2. Daseinsanalysis combines psychoanalytic insights with a concept of the human condition provided by existential philosophy in general and Heidegger in particular".
And it means that whoever wants to be a daseinsanalyst "has a lot of work to do: he or she has not only to study Freud and other relevant psychoanalysts, but also the central works of existential philosophy and especially of Heidegger, and, last but not least, the works of the two founding fathers of Daseinsanalysis, Binswanger and Boss". But in her view the relationship to the philosophy of Heidegger should be a rational one too, the relationship to the history of Daseinsanalysis should be renewed, and finally there should be a renewed interest in Psychoanalysis and in an existential interpretation of its concepts.
Carlos Eduardo Carvalho Freire (Brasil), in his report The Main Commitment of a Daseinsanalist first of all poses a question of the need to deal with the uniformity of the concepts used. We should aim at refining our understanding of Daseinsanalysis in order to ensure that our understanding is as similar as possible.
Even here in Europe, not to mention the other continents, we have different understandings of what constitutes psychotherapy and Daseinsanalysis. And it's not just about the language in this sense. Being and Time or even those other texts representing the phenomenological ontology of Heidegger, as we know, never mention psychotherapy, psychoanalysis. Heidegger's discussion of psychotherapy appears in the Zollikon Seminars, "where after listening to analysts discussing their practice, Heidegger makes comments positioning ontologically what he heard, that is, attempting to show which existential traits of the Being-there (Da-sein) made what happened possible. In other words, Heidegger shows us the ontologic foundation of psychotherapy but this foundation, I stress, is not enough to define what Daseinsanalysis therapy is to become: this task already belongs to the sphere of a regional ontology. The fundamental ontology does not suggest any praxis". But we as psychotherapists and psychoanalists feel the need of a theory of personality "in the molds that Gordon Allport, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers or even S. Freud offered us in the first half of the twentieth century. I only emphasize the risk we, Daseinsanalysts, undergo by practicing very different psychotherapies under the same title". It is necessary, concludes Eduardo Freire, to find out whether these possible differences harm the identity of Daseinsanalytic psychotherapy or relate primarily to how our respective worlds and cultures received and realized Daseinsanalysis.
In the second and third day of the conference reports of Anastasios Dimopoulos (Greece), Hans-Dieter Foerster (Austria), Ales and Sarka Wotruba (Swiss), Josef Jenewein (Swiss), Marina Genova (Brasil), Lucie Vackova (Czech Republic), Charlotte Spitzer (Austria), Roland Strobl (Austria), Uta Jaenicke (Swiss), Kriton Christianopoulos (Greece), Danielle Pisani de Freitas (Brasil), Anna Hogenova (Czech Republic), Mo Mandic (Britain) were held.
Anastasios Dimopoulos, in his report Is there such an entity as a Daseinsanalyst? also raised questions about being a Daseinsanalysis in the context of relations with other institutions and practices, including taking into account the demands of the modern trends. The Zeitgeist we are in is dominated by the so-called evidence-based practices. Movements immensely more widespread and powerful such as psychoanalysis, backed up by influential institutions, feel compelled to come into dialogue with the existing paradigm of evidence-based practice and they do it increasingly frequently with neurosciences. "It is quite obvious," he said, "that ^time-consuming therapies^, not backed up by convincing data regarding their efficacy will become more and more marginal in the panorama of therapeutic options offered by the NHS and as a result will become also marginal to the understanding
of the public". And how should we behave in this situation? He talked about the successful and fruitful experience of the training programs for Daseinsanalysts in the Hellenic Society when through the years and as part of the training program the dialogue with psychoanalysis was always open. And what about evidence-based psychotherapy?
In this report, questions were posed which should be cited: "As Daseinsanalysts what can we do about it? Can we really do something? If yes, what form can this take? Will we try to have a dialogue with evidence-based principles? Will we make research? Can we create our own research methods? It isn't a comfortable discussion and I am fully aware about it but I am not sure that we can dismiss it, especially if we "care". Recently the First World Congress of Existential Psychotherapy took place in London. One of the things addressed was the creation of a European Society for Existential Psychotherapy. Is Daseinsanalysis invited to it? What will our answer be? Frankly I felt at times that we don't have much to dialogue with an existential approach that is immersed in subjectivism. On the other hand, the representative of the EAP said that since logotherapy has been recognized as an evidence-based practice the European Society for Existential Therapies including logotherapy won't need to prove their effectiveness. We would be evidence-based then. What about psychoanalysis? I know that there are proponents, like Alice Holzhey-Kunz, that believe that our place is rightfully there. If so, then how should that be reflected in our training programs? Would psychoanalysis be the hard core of the training and then Daseinsanalysis the softener of it, the one that says "what is not"? I think these are important questions that we can't avoid answering". One of the answers, as we have seen, has been given above by Alice Holzhey.
Further, Hans-Dieter Foerster gave a report Breakthrough to the Essence from the Daseinsanalytic Point of View. An example from practice. In the introduction he gave a small sketch of how to consider the mental illnesses with daseinsanalytical point of view. Mental disorders are understood as disturbances in the Da-sein, in the true, free, living-out of structures (Existenzialien). Basic structures of the human being or Da-sein are for example: Being-in-the-World, Being-with (which means the human being has forever been in relation), being-free, being-open, being-in-body, being attuned and having emotions, being-spatial, being-temporal with the three dimensions of past, present and future, and Being-towards-death. In Daseinsanalysis, the patient's life history concerns the performance of its Dasein-appropriate structures or existentials and how they have been lived as "events" or
"Ereignis". Hans-Dieter Foerster gave several cases from practice with elements of comparative analysis of Freud' and daseinsanalytical interpretations.
Ales and Sarka Wotruba gave a speech Two fundamental stances of a Daseinsanalyst: "vor" and "einspringend Fürsorge" in the psychotherapeutic praxis. It was about the Zürich School of Daseinsanalysis of Boss' times and current developments and trends: "Unfortunately, the discussion of everyday daseinsanalytic praxis has rather stagnated since Boss passed away. In subsequent three decades, the emphasis has been placed rather on philosophical implications, and these are becoming more and more the sole source of our school identity". Speakers take note with regret that in Zürich, "the city of our roots", the daseinsanalytic education has been since decades completely abandoned from the university and substituted by neuropsychology and other strictly scientistic disciplines and the philosophical reflection, that constitutes our professional identity and activities, is no longer welcome.
The report of Josef Jenewein Daseinsanalysis andpsychooncology aimed rather to show what Daseinsanalysts are doing than thinking about what they might be. It further aims to critically discuss the integration of Heidegger's thinking into clinical work, particularly in terms of the "authentic" and "non-authentic" Being-Self ("Eigentlichkeit" and "Un-Eigentlichkeit"), "Being-towards-Death" (Sein-zum-Tode), "the They" ("das Man"), and the "en-owning" ("Ereignis").
The report of Marina Genova Ageing: reflections from the perspective of Daseinsanalysis was devoted to the maturing of the fruit of Dasein, of Dasein's bodihood (Leiblichkeit), which is part of Dasein's existential structure. The report is also based on the analysis of cases from practice as Lucie Vackova with report Daseinanalytical group work with children as a way to awake their potentialities for love, action, and creation.
Charlotte Spitzer' speech was devoted to reflection about Being a Daseinsanalyst as path of life in three aspects: through a personal aspect ("How does Daseinsanalysis influence my life, my Dasein? How is my trainee analysis connected with this influence?"), through describing the working as a Daseinsanalyst with clients and through working and living as an artist, in understanding of art and creativity.
In the heart of the Roland Strobl's report There's no healing without love, built on the basis of the case from practice, was a reflection that there is something in the relationship between analyst and the patient, which is the most important and which promotes healing: "... without continuous and unconditional love no one
can be healed. Because it's after all this very kind of love, which was missing from the earliest phases of many of our patients' lives. The Daseinsanalyst should love human beings in a very deep sense. Only if it's possible for the therapist to allow the unknown to be felt and effect the therapy, can we explore and reach the area of understanding, which seemed sometimes so difficult and incomprehensible at the beginning of therapy".
Uta Jaenicke, in her report What does it mean to listen as a Daseinsanalyst? discussed questions concerning human existence seen from a practical point of view, particularly in regard to the contemporary daseinsanalytic view developed by Alice Holzhey. By using clinical examples, she argued that we, as daseinsanalysts, have to listen to different levels of the concrete experiences. The first level is the concrete experience as such. The second level concerns certain traumatic childhood experiences. In the third level we have to listen to the existential dimension and the philosophical meaning of the first and the second level.
The performance of Kriton Christianopoulos was distinguished by his attention to another philosophical heritage - namely Lyotard. Lyotard expresses his agony for the forceful coming of the new techno-scientific civilization. The new technologies transform all the facts into information, coding them and permit immediate recognition and estimation. The objective for Daseinsanalysis is the effort for someone to conquer a truth akin to himself; authenticity and openness to Being. It tries to help the client discern the choices he may have and realize that certain facts of life are beyond choice. Questioning means that something is arriving, but the cause is still unknown. When we think, we set ourselves free from something defined, we are not sure in advance and we wander in the desert.
Danielle Pisani de Freitas' speech Reflections about the experience of language in Daseinsanalyse was devoted to the most fertile mode of language for the therapeutic encounter. The process of clinical Daseinsanalysis leads us on a path where one lives a peculiar experience of language. It would be through the language of poiesis that patients and therapists seek the significant existential truth revealed as aletheia, a truth that could free the patient for the commitment to the meaning of being that is grounding his existence. The language of therapy, in order to be fertile, must not be a desperate filling of emptiness in the minutes of the session. It must also not be only the anticipated speech of they-self. To this end, the patients' and therapists' speech should have to sprout from an experience of silence, leaving aside the voices of no one, enabling the strength of the very human word of that singular Dasein to manifest. As Daseinsanalysts, we seek the patient's significant
truths during the very movement of its being-put-at-work in the work made out of language, through the language of poiesis that builds the therapeutic encounter.
Anna Hogenova's talk Time andDasein demonstrated that if we are strangers in our own soul, we must find das Er-eignis in order to find our gap to being; care of the soul is a journey to ourselves. A psychotherapist cannot just be a mathematician, he must be a far deeper thinker because his job is to reach the gap of his patients. He needs to enter into the noesis of his patients and here mathematical logic is not enough, here "IT" thinking means insufficiency. Contemporary man has lost what is most important: the recollection of oneself, resulting from intention "yva>0i asavrov". To live from one's own spring is the same as to find one's own gap to being. That is why "das Ereignis" (recollecting) has such a basal significance, it is also the only possibility to be with being. "Alles Seyn ist Da-Seyn"
Mo Mandic, in his report: Formal Indication: The Question of Method in Existential-Phenomenological Psychotherapy looks, first, at something that we might consider as a 'method' that runs throughout Being and Time, and that Heidegger calls formal indication. The idea is that, if phenomenology is attempting to give expression to the lived experience through its careful description of that lived experience, then are the expressions themselves not objectifying that lived experience?
Given this, Heidegger has to develop a methodology that is true, or as close as can be, to the actual lived experience, capturing life as it is lived, and in a way that is true to the spontaneity and 'situatedness' of life. It all really hinges on how we could consider intentionality: if I maintain a contact with the intentional structure of experience, then I am staying true to life. In this way, formal indication might be relevant to, or have a bearing on, the therapeutic context as a ^sradSdq, or way, journey after, or towards, that takes place, in some way or other, in the course of the meetings between patient/client and Daseinsanalyst/therapist.
After the forum, the Greek committee organized a boat trip to Hydra island in the Saronic gulf where the General Assembly of IFDA was held (Sunday 27/9/2015).
The next forum of Daseinsanalysis (the 10th IFDA FORUM) will be held in Brazil in 2018.
