Daseinsanalysis in the time of uncertainties
When a crisis comes upon a culture, when the culture is in danger, shaken by uncertainty and doubt and lost in the vortex of events, it usually turns back to its roots to draw new energy and motivation and shake the dust off the old truths that lie there. It gets down to the work that the new situation challenges it with.
Thanks to the Daseinsanalytic experience of the being-in-the-world, we have long known that uncertainty and threat count among its essential characteristics. This knowledge does not necessarily arise from external cognition. Instead, it comes from our personal experience, individually, faithfully, and truthfully identified in Daseinsanalysis. This truthfulness is not substantiated primarily by verifiable evidence or experimentation; its nature is not scientific. It is based on the truth of one’s own being, on the willingness and courage to exist this way, on individual moral responsibility, and on the readiness to participate with others in renewing the conditions that constitute the culture of the original sources. The caring and nurturing of such an existence gives hope that we can succeed in changing the conditions for the better.
Another source characteristic lies in the certainty (which is, by nature, a personal testimony) that things are just what they are and nothing else. It requires us to be able to stand in an authentic dialogue, resisting materialistic and soulless positivism and technocratic limitations, within the space of being-in-the-world.
Daseinsanalysis has restored to us the importance of genuine personal engagement as an opportunity to return to the truths of our being-in-the-world. One of these is realised through actual civic engagement. Personal attitude of this kind is never self-centred, as it includes being-with as an essential orientation on caring for oneself and others, for one’s own culture and the cultures surrounding it, for the being-in-the-world recognised as culture. Awakening to a comprehension of this destiny comes through personal experience of being-with, which has a genuine collective character, the form of we-ness.
However, there is still another experience in not only the European tradition and its spiritual legacy: one that (although flooded, denied, and almost drowned in the blood of victims who died in its name) ultimately gives meaning and hope to the sacrifice. That experience is love. We see love not only in our work, but it also appears to us as a universal existential not to be forgotten or neglected by any civilisation. Our experience with community group Daseinsanalysis underlines this existential of love and teaches us to discover, cultivate, and live it. Its therapeutic value is obvious, its transcendence inspiring.
What can we expect? We are part of this movement, and thus, the new situation calls upon us to act. To move appropriately, which includes an appropriately realistic nature. We must avoid utopian and naive conclusions, yet listen courageously and conscientiously to every voice through which the situation addresses us.
Do these remarkable European inspirations not encourage us to see in Daseinsanalysis a contribution to specific attitudes towards people? Does it not open up a path of new possibilities before us? Are these facts not worth special attention? Are we not being encouraged, enticed, and attracted by the facts emerging in the current situation? These facts draw our attention and prompt us in our steps based on daseinsanalytic practice, which are not limited to narrowly professional conduct. Is this not a clear sign that Daseinsanalysis, with its theoretical and practical knowledge, belongs not only to psychotherapy but also to different forms and types of care for the soul? Is it not just the right time to also give our attention to these facts in daseinsanalytic education?
Doc. PhDr. Jiří Růžička, PhD.
Head of the Czech Daseinsanalytic Society
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