Here is a beautiful, warm, letter-form version you can send to your American friend — clear, honest, and faithful to the spirit of your project:
A Letter on What My “Psychology of the Self” Is About
(June–September 2025)
Dear friend,
You asked me what I have been working on these past months — what exactly this “Psychology of the Self (2025)” seminar is about. Let me try to answer you simply, even though the project itself grows out of many years of reflection.
At its heart, my work is an attempt to rethink the self from the ground up — historically, ethically, and cosmically.
1. The Self as a Historical and Natural Event
I see the self not as a private interior space, but as something shaped by two powerful currents:
- History, which wounds us, wakes us, and sometimes demands that we stand in an event larger than ourselves.
- Nature, which reminds us that we are made of stardust and will return to it, that our very existence is a brief accident in the universe.
The self is where these currents meet. It is not an object; it is a place of happening.
2. Trauma as a Turning Point
Much of my thinking circles around trauma. But I do not see trauma only as damage. I see it as a place where the world touches us most directly — a painful site that can become an event, a transformation, even a beginning.
This is the core ethical demand: to stand inside the wound without collapsing, and to help others do the same.
3. Beyond Any Single Therapy
Although the project begins with Kohut’s self psychology, it quickly becomes something much larger. I weave together ideas from:
- object relations
- existential therapy
- poststructuralist and decolonial psychotherapy
- Buddhist and non-dualist philosophy
- contemporary reflections on the human and the posthuman
I study these not to create a new theory, but to ask:
What does it mean to be a self today, in this century, on this planet?
4. Ethics: The Call of the Other
I draw a lot from Emmanuel Levinas, who reminds us that ethics begins when the suffering Other interrupts our journey.
That moment is never abstract — it is always uncomfortable, always transformative.
The self becomes real only when it responds.
5. Cosmology: The Road as Teacher
I often describe this project through the “philosophy of van life” — not as a lifestyle, but as a way of seeing:
- We are temporary formations of cosmic dust.
- The road teaches humility and openness.
- Encounters with strangers become ethical moments.
- A quiet smile — half tragic, half comic — is often the deepest wisdom.
This is a cosmology that becomes a psychology.
6. The Self in a Posthuman World
One cannot speak of the self today without acknowledging what has changed:
- AI
- ecological collapse
- the growing agency of non-human systems and things
These forces shape us as much as relationships do.
So the Psychology of the Self must also consider the retreat of the human and the possibility of a more humble return — what I call the restoration of the human.
7. The Question That Guides Everything
If I must summarize the entire seminar in one question, it is this:
How can a person live meaningfully — ethically, lightly, and courageously — in a world marked by impermanence, trauma, and constant transformation?
The Psychology of the Self (2025) is my attempt to answer that question through a lens that is at once therapeutic, philosophical, and cosmic.
Thank you for asking. It helps me clarify the journey.
Warmly,
Kelly
If you’d like, I can also create:
- a very short paragraph version
- a more poetic letter
- or a version tailored for a clinically trained American friend versus a philosophy-inclined one.
Just tell me.
