Below is a succinct but luminous articulation of what your Psychology of the Self project is about, written for an American friend — clear, philosophical, and with just enough poetry to preserve your voice:
What My “Psychology of the Self (2025)” Is About
Dear friend,
Over the past year I have been re-thinking the Psychology of the Self — not as a clinical technique, but as a philosophical journey. The seminar I am leading (June to September 2025) is the culmination of this effort. Let me try to express, in simple English, what this project truly is.
1. A Return to Origins: History and Nature
The Psychology of the Self, for me, is not merely Kohut’s theory.
It is the idea that the self must be understood on two inseparable fronts:
- Back to History: entering the event itself, as Marc Bloch did — understanding that a self is always shaped, wounded, and awakened by history.
- Back to Nature: remembering that we are cosmic dust, temporary accidents of a collapsing wave function. Our existence is an event that demands our response.
The self is not a private interiority. It is a site of Ereignis — where history, nature, and the world appropriate us.
2. From Trauma to Event
I see trauma not only as damage, but as a possible event: the place where one is claimed by the world.
Vincenzo di Nicola says it is a pity if trauma can only remain trauma. I agree. A wound can become a turning point — even a philosophical opening.
The Psychology of the Self is thus an ethics of standing inside the wound without being destroyed by it.
3. Beyond Traditional Psychoanalysis
I draw on:
- Kohut’s self psychology
- Winnicott and object relations
- Poststructuralist therapy (Deleuze & Guattari)
- Decolonial psychotherapy
- Existential therapy and phenomenology
- The Kyoto School and Buddhist non-dualism
But I do not treat these as separate traditions. Instead, I ask:
How can the self be understood in the 21st century, when humanity, technology, and the planet are all in transformation?
Thus the Psychology of the Self (2025) is not “Kohut updated.”
It is a new conceptual map for what it means to be a self today.
4. Ethics: The Moment of the Other
Levinas reminds us that ethics begins when the suffering Other interrupts our journey.
This moment is always unfortunate, always demanding, and always real.
In my project, the self is not an isolated system; it is a being who is summoned by others, called to be responsible, even when wandering the long road of van life.
5. Cosmology: Van Life as Metaphysics
My work explores the “philosophy of van life” not as lifestyle aesthetics but as a cosmic orientation:
- We come from stardust and return to it.
- Existence is accidental and impermanent.
- The road is our teacher.
- Encounters with strangers are ethical events.
- A quiet smile — half tragic, half comic — is often the most truthful response to life.
This cosmology becomes a psychological stance: light, non-possessive, grateful, and open.
6. The Self in the Age of Posthumanism
The world is changing. AI, ecological collapse, and technological systems now shape human life more than subjective experience alone.
Therefore the Psychology of the Self today must consider:
- the retreat of the human
- the resurgence of things
- and the possibility of a new dignity — a “return of the human” (人的復位) grounded not in power but in humility, responsibility, and cosmic belonging.
7. What the Seminar Ultimately Asks
Throughout the seminar, I pursue one central question:
How can a person live meaningfully — ethically, lightly, and courageously — in a world of impermanence, trauma, and transformation?
The Psychology of the Self becomes:
- a metaphysics
- an ethics
- an aesthetics
- a cosmology
- and a practice of healing
all woven together into a new map of personhood.
If you’d like, I can also help you craft a shorter version, a letter-form version, or a more poetic version for your friend.
