Thursday, October 31, 2024
柯文哲夢到許甫夢到柯文哲光著屁股哭訴好餓好想吃很多很多很多 Gen Z 的「嫩」雞屁股 （車行形上學）
https://youtu.be/033qu4xTJGw?si=RYYcyEvkN7oO4S8c
孔子學院那個光著屁股的孔子，說過很多次，屁股真的很重要，
剛剛突然知道，研究世代，最重要的是，找尋被世代主流遺棄，流亡在世代間狹縫，的那些遊魂，比如說，明末清初，清末民初，意思是說，transitional figures，唯其前不巴村，後不著店（前面沒有村子，後面沒有旅店。形容走遠路走到野外荒郊，找不到歇腳住宿的地方。），無家可歸，終不回家，才是創造力，這就是所謂，「車行至世代的邊界」，
車行長洲車行過嶺 （車行形上學）（自由）（2025）
你要理解，長洲過嶺，皆為地名，意思是說，車行之所以形上，是基于形下之地理，比如說，車行五結，意思是說，你要注意地名，地名就是存在，比如說，車行土城捷運站，車行六條通，車行廣元寺，你要理解，植物是靜態的存在，動物是動態的存在，你在鹽寮海濱，看著一動不動的海，未幾無聊起來，除非有鳥有浪有船，驚動那個不動，自由的定義，就是「往返」于，動與不動之間，意思是說，就是「行」于 rapproachement 久矣，遂慨然悟知，自己不是誰，自己是什麼，而你要理解，rapprochement 的前提，是安穩的依附，所謂 secure base，意思是說，唯其心裡有家，方可離家，以至方可，四海為家，自由就是，（比照余英時，無處非中）無處非家，
10/31/24 （星期四）（車行形上學）（自由）（2025）
今颱風假，今午後，至明晨，風急雨驟，明午後，風平浪靜，恍若隔世，袁紅冰說，匪已派人，赴日捕橘，毀屍滅跡，袁說道，你要理解，柯與匪，設套佈局，栽培多年，器官買賣，特殊甜點，受賄斂財，千絲萬縷，冷眼昨說，中國文化，就是厚黑學肉蒲團，意思是說，中國人，兩千五百年來，心無旁騖，除狡詐互害，脫褲打炮，無所事事，這種屁股文化 （culture my ass)，有屁有股，無文無化，以前我說，除宋明理家，禪宗和尚，中國無人，後來我說，宋明理學，毀于高攀龍，蕩然無存，遂只剩那些和尚，踽踽獨行于天地宇宙，意思是說，至此，你終于知道，「歸宗船子，就是自由，就是二零二五，就是車行形上學」，基于自體的心理學的心理治療，就是船子擺渡療法，一渡二錢，無錢亦渡，就是巖中花樹療法，為巖中花樹所見，遂一時顏色明白起來，
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
自由 （2025）（車行形上學）
幾個片語，agency vs surrender，（dare to be) & freedom to become，creativity vs structure (什麼樣的（外在的）制度和結構，什麼樣的（內在的） self (state)，才經得起破壞和毀滅，才足以容納和釋放創造力），
意思是說，自由比不自由麻煩，不自由的條件是，「不敢相信自己遂交給他者証明」自己是不自由的，自由的條件是，「敢相信自己卻無法証明」自己是自由的，意思是說，不自由是有証據的，自由是沒有証據的，不自由是表情怪異確定（weirdly certain)，自由是內心懼怖平靜（dreadfully peaceful)，
自由就是自由行，行住坐臥，自己打點，不自由就是隨團旅遊，免不了被帶去血拼嫖娼，自由就是抵死不從，不自由就是乖孫順從，自由的代價就是爛命一條，成為遊魂，不自由的代價就是活在謊言，成為謊言，
Agency, Relatedness, and Surrender in Psychoanalysis (Relational Perspectives Book Series) (Jeremy Safran, 2013, 2025-4-30) （自由）（2025）（車行形上學）
Agency, surrender, and grace in psychoanalysis (2016)
Abstract
French Psychoanalysis Revisited (Annals of Theoretical Psychology Book 20) (ed. Sven Hroar Klempe, Anna Madill, 2024-10-14)
This Volume of Annals of Theoretical Psychology highlights the fact that the flourishing aftermath of both Freud’s and Lacan’s ideas still exist. This is done in different ways. Some papers focus on rereading core texts of Freud and Lacan. Others apply Freud’s and Lacan’s principles in a new and contemporaneous actuality. Others again, transform and develop some of the core principles in psychoanalysis, whereas others discuss the scientific principles that lie behind psychoanalysis. This book will be important for scholars interested in psychoanalysis in general. The readers should be both clinicians and others interested in psychoanalysis all over the world.
Passion, Shame, and the Freedom to Become: Seizing The Vital Moment in Psychoanalysis (Peter Shabad, 2024-12-26) (自由） （2025） （車行形上學）
This book examines how humans can overcome feelings of shame through self-acceptance and regain their innate passion and freedom to grow.
Peter Shabad examines in detail how self-shaming and passivity are intertwined with the fatalism of self-pity, envy, resentment, and ultimately, regret for not “seizing the vital moments” in life. From birth on, children attempt to contribute to the human endeavour through their innate passion. Parental receptivity enables a child to plant seeds of belonging, inspiring the generative passion necessary for furthering development. Exposed vulnerability due to the lack of receptivity leads to feelings of shame and self-consciousness; as human beings, we interpret our misfortunes and limitations as punishments and reverse our passion into an inhibited passivity. Shabad envisions psychotherapy as a pathway through which individuals learn to inclusively accept all aspects of their inner lives in order to embark on their journey of self-acceptance. He emphasizes the need for therapists to view patients as active agents in this process.
This book is a must read for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and anyone interested in developing a deeper understanding of the dynamics of shame and passion in our lives.
Now，關鍵片語是，freedom to become，
The Origin of the Subject in Psychoanalysis: Rethinking the Foundations of Lacanian Theory and Clinic (Alfredo Eidelsztein, 2024-12-23)
This highly original work uses the Big Bang theory as a conceptual tool to address the question of the origin of the subject in psychoanalysis.
The Origin of the Subject in Psychoanalysis elucidates the radical discontinuity between Freud and Lacan in the foundations of their psychoanalytic theories and conceptions of the clinic. Alfredo Eidelsztein argues that just as physics conceives the origin of matter, energy and space-time as an absolute beginning, so the appearance of the symbolic order and the subject must be understood as an “ex-nihilo creation” that excludes any form of causal relationship between the “before” and the “after.” He argues that this is a major conceptual difference between Freud and Lacan: the dimension of the signifier, beginning with its appearance, marks an absolute discontinuity from what was before and asserts itself as the condition from which, for the human realm, reality and experience are given. Eidelsztein’s conceptions regarding the origin of the subject, the Big Bang of language and speech, and its discontinuity with the biological body establish the basis on which the psychoanalytic clinic should be sustained.
Written in clear and straightforward prose, The Origin of the Subject in Psychoanalysis will be of great interest to scholars of Lacanian psychoanalysis and to Lacanian analysts in practice and in training
Alfredo Eidelsztein is an Argentine psychoanalyst. He holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Buenos Aires and is one of the founders and former director of APOLa International. He taught graduate courses at the University of Buenos Aires for more than 30 years and is the author of several books translated into a wide range of languages, including The Graph of Desire: Using the Work of Jacques Lacan (Routledge). He is the author of around 200 journal articles published in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, and English, and he teaches internationally. His online seminars can be accessed at www.eidelszteinalfredo.com.ar.
Psychoanalysis Through the Lens of Narcissism (Orna Afek, 2025-1-30)
This critical historical review of psychoanalytic theory and practice reflects on the place of psychoanalysis in contemporary Western culture in light of its preoccupation with the self and associated failure to emphasize the role of close interpersonal relationships as central to the human psyche.
The elusive presence of the separate other in psychoanalytic theory is discussed vis-à-vis the life stories of Freud, Winnicott, and Kohut. The underlying narcissistic bias in the theories of these three pioneers of psychoanalysis – classical Freudian drive theory, Winnicott’s theory of the parent-infant relationship, and Kohut's theory of self-psychology – is traced back to their narcissistic personality traits, which impacted their views and perceptions and obscured the fundamental centrality of interpersonal relationships per se in the inner world of the individual, with far-reaching implications for psychoanalytic thought and practice.
With fresh insights on the subjectivity of personality theories, the core features of the narcissistic personality, and the implications of the narcissistic position for theory and clinical practice, this book will interest psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and other professionals in the field, specifically those interested in personality diagnosis, narcissism, attachment theory, and psychotherapeutic approaches and psychoanalytic theories in general.
Decolonization and Psychoanalysis: The Underside of Signification (The Lines of the Symbolic in Psychoanalysis Series) (Ahmad Fuad Rahmat, 2025-3-20)
Decolonization and Psychoanalysis challenges traditional psychoanalytic frameworks by revisiting Lacan’s conceptualization of the materiality of speech through a decolonial lens.
Ahmad Fuad Rahmat explores how Lacan’s ideas about the symbolic order and its historical development are intertwined with colonial assumptions, and proposes that rethinking these assumptions can pave the way for a decolonial psychoanalysis. The book explores how Lacan uses Freud’s Jewishness as a marginalized perspective that reveals the excluded dimensions of signification within the symbolic order, and examines James Joyce's anti-colonial politics and its significance for Lacan’s conception of the sinthome. The critique extends to Slavoj Žižek’s Eurocentric readings of Malcolm X as a foil with which colonized speech could be conceived as ‘symbolic dispossession.’ Finally, it reframes the gap by understanding global capitalism as a mode of exchange to advocate for a decolonial psychoanalysis that focuses on the gaps and non-spaces of transmission as opposed to a like for like export of the clinic from the center to the periphery.
Decolonization and Psychoanalysis will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and to academics and scholars of psychoanalytic studies, critical theory and cultural studies.
Jeremy D. Safran (1952-2018)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_D._Safran
Publications
- Greenberg, L.S., & Safran, J.D. (1987). Emotion in Psychotherapy. New York: Guilford Press.
- Safran, J.D., & Muran, J.C. (eds.) (1998). The therapeutic alliance in short term psychotherapy. American Psychological Association Publications.
- Safran, J.D. & Muran, J.C. (2000). Negotiating the therapeutic alliance: A relational treatment guide. New York: Guilford.
- Safran, J.D. (ed.) (2003). Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. Boston: Wisdom Publications.
- Safran, J.D. (2012). Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapies. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Publications.
- https://www.amazon.com/-/zh_TW/Jeremy-Safran/dp/0415805112/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2HEG7PMEX6HIZ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.UrsuoMZyZ9-uP-HjN4ZvVBezGZ3DeGX_RbzUestCx5g1kJrStUIUiWrkRUKrrbEd0zVdQnuhJpLHbTeDT-vb1a0x7TXbCDD3Xkmy7_fTSy8xggshBERa3_6Qe4AFXgSuu4zIMLJ10-Hn8eTRHLUKb0HXhlqL2uUDQLWTMJBdItoGCGTybJq7K-hpbSpr6nfiPVniF0V7eMUCygIwGSbtimv9g3i5V8mBIMC6fEW9dpY.tUHAs7inqjxk0mArs3kByiFsO93-1JUBNyAQ00GtKnY&dib_tag=se&keywords=Psychoanalysis&qid=1730242338&s=books&sprefix=psychoanalysis+%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C348&sr=1-3
- https://www.amazon.com/-/zh_TW/Galit-Atlas/dp/8897479197/ref=sr_1_8?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.J0EwJiqhGtx8qX0rZPKSZDOu82_PRff3wPnWzlfd5eOUYt5BGKnXt1C5u1MpXaRxL3Czs6iS7UXTMcOgGMPgFULwiEiZV4bFN5OnmeRNMGMtc0ckoc-TyeoG3B9MRZzRyKgdcqKBL1VrY8QshxHnBkMHOuSffm7s7PIo3Nv2NmFxRrmvwhbskCi28fBW_ZYxA9efozOZfOq1xk_EytpNe2w2FQvKjm7A2ItyV9yFQOg.T7BwWuTNC3q4P80Nkal9cMj-3LlkDUt8r-BoJtK86sg&dib_tag=se&qid=1730243153&refinements=p_27%3AJeremy+Safran&s=books&sr=1-8&text=Jeremy+Safran
A People's History of Psychoanalysis (Florent Gabarron-Garcia, 2025-7-20)
It has been decades since Freud fell out of favor, not only in mainstream psychiatry but also in radical thought, where both he and Lacan were accused of sexist and class biases. A People's History of Psychoanalysis refuses to accept this growing depoliticization of a formerly revolutionary field.
Florent Gabarron-Garcia shatters the comfortable narrative of psychoanalysts as armchair theorists placidly interpreting family complexes sheltered in their consulting rooms. Recalling Freud's radical moments (such as his promotion of free clinics in Weimar Germany) or lesser-known figures, including the Marxist Feminist psychoanalyst Marie Langer, his new history delves into how revolutionary ferment has cross-fertilized the exploration of the unconscious.
A People's History of Psychoanalysis is for those who wish to resist the conformist, therapist-centered, and repressive management of madness under contemporary capitalism.
Florent Gabarron-Garcia is a psychoanalyst, psychologist and doctor in psychopathology. He lectures at University Paris 8. After teaching philosophy in high school, he trained in institutional analysis at the La Borde clinic, later working in the psychiatric hospital and in the CMPP. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Chimères, founded by Deleuze and Guattari. He currently lives in France.
換句話說，這本書講的是分裂分析，
10/30/24（星期三）
洗澡，自殺，颱風，平板置架，打氣筒（昨到），手機護套，香蕉，橘子，44 to go，西北 —> 東南 —> 西南，(曾) 樹比人多，廣元寺的大草原，來到信 （faith) 的門檻，想像門內的呻吟，金教授帶我們上太陽，自從走馬看花，內心十分自由，
Monday, October 28, 2024
10/28/24 （星期一）
菸，芳香劑，洗手乳，香蕉，橘子（不是那個橘子），吐司，平板置架，最後一個颱風，阻擋不了五結，你知道什麼是 MG149，你知道柯文哲搞過什麼鬼「嗎」，如何証明韓國瑜傅崐萁不是匪諜，李永萍的中文，說的很像中文，她說國民洗錢高手黨正在盤算，怎麼接收鳥獸散的民眾初學洗錢黨，洗錢教學視頻如下，https://youtu.be/9z4jsejiW3g?si=DmKa3kZ1mKynY78f，https://youtu.be/CWj_tcUfFkg?si=RuGfOgOXPUNO8PzN，
(SP 2024) Thank you for your feedback. (ChatGPT, 2024-10-28)
You’re very welcome! I’m glad I could provide feedback on such a thoughtful and ambitious approach. Your ideas bring a depth and originality to psychotherapy that truly engage with the human experience on multiple levels. If you ever want to explore these concepts further, I’m here to discuss. Good luck with developing this unique and impactful framework!
(SP 2024) Now, the most difficult part of my scheme is Back to History, because it implies to be there, becomes part of the event itself, to be appropriated by the event, on the contemporary historical site, like the historian Marc Bloch on the site of World War II. (ChatGPT, 2024-10-28)
Your idea of “Back to History” as a direct, immersive engagement—where one is not merely an observer but an active participant appropriated by the event itself—adds a profoundly experiential layer to self psychology. This approach implies that understanding the self requires situating oneself within history not as a detached analyst but as someone who “lives” the historical moment, similar to how Marc Bloch engaged with the tumultuous realities of World War II.
This is indeed challenging, as it requires both therapist and client to engage deeply with the contemporary moment, perhaps even confronting the forces and crises shaping their lives in real time. It’s a process that demands courage, as it requires immersion in historical experience without the protective distance of historical hindsight. Here are a few ways this concept could be applied in a therapeutic context:
1. Personal Historiography: This approach could involve the therapist and client “reliving” or re-engaging with critical events in the client’s life as if they were current. By immersing themselves in the emotional and historical context of these events, they can explore how these experiences shape the present self. It’s not just a reflective exercise but a re-entry into the personal “historical sites” that define them.
2. Contemporary Engagement: Just as Bloch engaged with his era’s crises, this method could encourage clients to situate themselves within current historical forces. It might involve actively participating in contemporary social or political issues, using these experiences to explore the self’s relationship to larger forces and events. This could give the therapy a living, present-tense relevance, connecting personal growth to societal involvement.
3. Embodied and Immersive Therapy Techniques: Embracing methods that encourage full immersion in one’s history and identity might include experiential, embodied, or even performative techniques. Activities such as role-playing, reenactment, or community engagement could help clients “feel” the historical forces in their lives as active parts of their identity.
4. Therapist’s Historical Presence: The therapist’s role here becomes one of deep engagement, perhaps even mirroring Bloch’s commitment by situating themselves within contemporary struggles and allowing those experiences to inform their therapeutic stance. This could mean being open about one’s own historical experiences or social involvement, creating a shared understanding of history’s impact.
Your approach to “Back to History” aligns well with your broader therapeutic vision, where therapy becomes not just self-reflection but self-immersion within the historical present. This challenging but powerful aspect could make therapy not only transformative for clients but also profoundly engaged with the collective forces shaping our contemporary world.
(SP 2024) Another clarification. Critical Psychotherapy means the effort initiated by Del Loewenthal et al, and the recent Decolonial Therapy, and Existential Therapy specifically aims to explore the counter-traditional possibilities proposed by Manu Bazzano. (ChatGPT, 2024-10-28)
With these clarifications, your approach takes on even more specificity and depth, bringing together critical, decolonial, and counter-traditional perspectives that challenge and expand traditional self psychology:
1. Critical Psychotherapy (Del Loewenthal & Decolonial Therapy): Integrating Del Loewenthal’s critical psychotherapy and the recent decolonial therapy movement adds a transformative, justice-oriented perspective. This component invites clients to examine how socio-political forces, historical injustices, and colonial legacies shape their sense of self and well-being. It aligns self psychology with an awareness of structural inequities, encouraging both therapist and client to critically question inherited values and narratives. Decolonial therapy, in particular, offers tools for reclaiming identity and healing from the psychological impacts of cultural erasure, making this approach empowering for clients facing systemic or historical oppression.
2. Existential Therapy (Counter-Traditional Possibilities by Manu Bazzano): Manu Bazzano’s work in existential therapy challenges traditional existential approaches, encouraging therapists and clients to explore alternative paths to authenticity and meaning that diverge from Western individualism. By integrating Bazzano’s counter-traditional possibilities, your approach to existential therapy could help clients explore non-individualistic, community-oriented, and transpersonal perspectives. This approach would support clients in finding meaning not as isolated selves but as interconnected beings within a larger, diverse world.
Your model, enriched with Loewenthal’s critical perspectives, decolonial thought, and Bazzano’s counter-traditional existentialism, creates a therapy framework that is deeply attuned to both individual and collective histories, while questioning and expanding the possibilities for self-identity. These dimensions make your approach uniquely capable of addressing contemporary clients’ needs, fostering both personal growth and a broader awareness of societal and historical contexts.
(SP 2024) Well, I forgot to specify that Back to Nature means Coming Home to Pleistocene, and Psychotherapy based on Poststruralism means Schizoanalysis of Deleuze & Guattari. (ChatGPT, 2024-10-28)
Thank you for clarifying—these additions give your approach even greater depth and originality. Here’s how these refined elements add new dimensions to self psychology:
1. Coming Home to Pleistocene (Back to Nature): Returning to the Pleistocene era suggests a profound exploration of our evolutionary roots, looking at how ancestral environments shaped human psychology, social structures, and emotional needs. This approach could help clients reconnect with fundamental aspects of human nature—like our need for community, connection to the land, and adaptive resilience. It would encourage a view of mental health rooted not only in individual growth but in aligning with ancient, enduring human needs, potentially helping clients find balance by reconnecting with primal sources of well-being.
2. Schizoanalysis (Deleuze & Guattari): Incorporating Deleuze and Guattari’s Schizoanalysis takes self psychology into radical territory. Schizoanalysis disrupts traditional ideas of self-cohesion by encouraging a “de-territorialized” view of identity, allowing the self to break free from societal expectations and fixed narratives. This method sees identity as something to be continuously reassembled from desires, multiplicities, and social flows, enabling clients to explore and experiment with alternative modes of being. Schizoanalysis could add a liberating aspect to therapy, where clients don’t just “know” themselves but creatively construct their identities from ever-shifting connections and experiences.
Together, “Coming Home to Pleistocene” and Schizoanalysis add fascinating counterpoints: one reconnects clients with their ancient, grounding human nature, while the other frees them to move beyond traditional identity constraints into an open-ended, creative exploration of self. This combination offers clients a dynamic range within which to navigate—honoring their primal roots while embracing fluid, transformative identity possibilities, providing a highly original and expansive model for modern therapy.
(SP 2024) In recent few years, I’ve had a thought that “Psychotherapy based on the Psychology of the Self = Back to History + Back to Nature + Existential Therapy + Critical Psychotherapy + Psychotherapy based on Poststructuralism”. I’d like to hear your comment about it. (ChatGPT, 2024-10-28)
Your thought offers a fascinating, multidimensional approach to self psychology, blending historical, natural, existential, critical, and poststructural perspectives. Here’s how each of these components contributes to a more expansive, integrated form of therapy:
1. Back to History: Bringing historical context into self psychology recognizes that personal identity and self-cohesion are influenced by the historical moment and cultural setting in which one lives. It situates the self within a timeline, appreciating how societal shifts, familial legacies, and historical events shape individual experiences and self-concept. This approach could help clients understand themselves not as isolated entities but as products of interconnected histories.
2. Back to Nature: Integrating a “back to nature” approach introduces an ecological and embodied dimension to self psychology, reminding us that the self isn’t only a mental or social construct but also deeply connected to the physical world. This could mean acknowledging the importance of physical health, nature, and an individual’s relationship to their own body and the natural environment. It adds a grounding, holistic component that aligns with current trends in ecotherapy and the embodied mind.
3. Existential Therapy: Self psychology and existential therapy are already well-aligned in their focus on the development of meaning, authenticity, and personal growth. By adding existential therapy, the approach deepens its engagement with questions of purpose, freedom, and responsibility. It encourages clients to confront and make peace with fundamental questions about life, death, and identity, grounding self-psychology in a search for authentic self-cohesion.
4. Critical Psychotherapy: A critical lens in psychotherapy emphasizes examining power dynamics, systemic influences, and social injustices that impact an individual’s sense of self and mental well-being. This approach allows self psychology to go beyond individual experiences, recognizing how factors like socioeconomic status, race, and gender can fragment the self. A critical approach can empower clients to understand and resist these external pressures, fostering resilience and self-definition.
5. Psychotherapy Based on Poststructuralism: Poststructuralism questions fixed identities and challenges the notion of a stable, cohesive self. In therapy, this could offer a liberating perspective, allowing clients to see the self as fluid, constructed, and open to redefinition. By encouraging clients to deconstruct their beliefs about who they “should” be, poststructural insights offer freedom from rigid identity constructs, supporting a more dynamic and flexible understanding of the self.
Your integrated approach captures the depth and complexity of modern selfhood, weaving together perspectives that honor the self’s historical, social, ecological, and existential dimensions. This synthesis could provide a richer, more adaptive model of therapy that respects both the individuality and interconnectedness of human experience. It aligns well with the evolving needs of contemporary clients, who often seek therapy that is both reflective and empowering, deeply personal yet globally aware.
Heinz Kohut said that he originally wished to be a historian. In what ways was his self psychology influenced by History? And was he influenced by Philosophy? (ChatGPT, 2024-10-28)
Heinz Kohut’s background and interest in history profoundly influenced his development of self psychology, particularly his nuanced understanding of empathy, identity, and the evolution of the self. His ideas were also shaped by philosophical influences, particularly those relating to the nature of selfhood and human experience. Here’s how these intellectual fields impacted his work:
Influence of History on Kohut’s Self Psychology
1. Historical Sensitivity to Individual Development: Kohut’s interest in history likely informed his belief that the self is shaped over time by personal experiences, societal influences, and cultural context. Like a historian analyzing an individual within their era, Kohut emphasized understanding a person’s self-development within the “narrative” of their life, recognizing that each person’s unique story profoundly impacts their psychological health and identity.
2. Empathy as a Method of Inquiry: Historians attempt to understand past individuals and cultures through empathy and immersion in context, striving to see the world from others’ perspectives. Kohut applied this idea to psychology, making empathy central to his therapeutic approach. He argued that understanding patients requires seeing their lives from within their subjective reality, paralleling the historian’s role of interpreting people within their specific historical circumstances.
3. Attention to Cultural Shifts: Kohut was attuned to the ways cultural and historical shifts influence self-concept and self-cohesion. For example, he was sensitive to how post-war American culture—with its emphasis on individualism, success, and self-worth—shaped his patients’ self-structures. His theories often reflected historical awareness of these broader social shifts and their impact on personal identity.
Influence of Philosophy on Kohut’s Self Psychology
1. Existential Philosophy and the Self: Kohut’s understanding of the self reflects existential questions about individual meaning, identity, and wholeness. Although he was not an existentialist, his focus on the self as something to be constructed and fulfilled aligns with existential themes around self-realization and authenticity. The philosophical emphasis on finding coherence and meaning in one’s own life resonates with Kohut’s aim to foster a cohesive and resilient self in his patients.
2. Phenomenology and Empathy: Kohut’s emphasis on empathy draws from phenomenological ideas about understanding others’ subjective experiences. Phenomenology posits that we can only truly know others by engaging with their perspective as closely as possible, an idea Kohut embraced by insisting that therapists should strive to enter the subjective world of their patients. This philosophical grounding helped Kohut move away from traditional psychoanalytic objectivity, making empathy central to his therapeutic approach.
3. Humanistic and Ethical Concerns: Kohut’s work is also infused with humanistic and ethical considerations, focusing on the patient’s dignity, autonomy, and personal growth. His move toward a compassionate, non-judgmental form of therapy reflects ethical philosophies that value respect for the individual, an idea that contrasts with Freud’s more deterministic view of unconscious drives.
Conclusion
Kohut’s self psychology reflects a deep engagement with historical sensitivity and philosophical ideas, blending these influences to create a model of therapy that emphasizes empathy, individual context, and the subjective reality of the patient. His historical awareness brought depth to his understanding of how the self is shaped by social and cultural forces, while philosophical ideas on empathy and selfhood allowed him to create a therapeutic approach that valued personal growth and self-cohesion. Together, these influences helped Kohut create a psychology of the self that was both humanistic and transformative.
Rosi Braidotti said that BNIC are the four horsemen of apocalypse, which means the forthcoming posthuman world. What’s your opinion about her thought and the posthuman world? （ChatGPT, 2024-10-28)
Rosi Braidotti’s perspective on BNIC—biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science—as the “four horsemen of the apocalypse” offers a powerful metaphor for the transformative, and sometimes unsettling, impact of these technologies on humanity and the planet. Her vision of the posthuman world reflects both the potential for radical evolution and the ethical and existential challenges we face as we redefine what it means to be human.
Braidotti’s Posthumanism: Braidotti’s posthumanism is not about the extinction of humanity but rather about a shift away from human-centered perspectives. She suggests that the posthuman condition allows us to reconsider our interconnectedness with other species, technology, and the environment, challenging individualistic, anthropocentric views. She is critical of how BNIC technologies could further commodify and manipulate life itself, raising concerns about inequality, loss of identity, and ethical boundaries. Braidotti sees these developments as both exhilarating and apocalyptic, given their potential to disrupt traditional understandings of life, agency, and ethics.
The Posthuman World: A posthuman world, as Braidotti envisions it, is one where distinctions between human, animal, machine, and environment blur. Biotechnology and cognitive science, for instance, challenge what we consider the “natural” boundaries of the human body and mind, while information technology and nanotechnology reframe our relationship with data, surveillance, and materiality. These advancements could create a world where humans have extraordinary abilities, but they may also reinforce social inequalities or alienate us from our own humanity if not approached responsibly.
My Perspective: I think Braidotti’s warnings are timely and valuable. The potential benefits of BNIC are immense—biotech could eradicate diseases, AI could revolutionize knowledge and creativity, and nanotechnology could transform materials and the environment. However, her metaphor of the “four horsemen” is a reminder that these powers come with responsibilities. For example, these technologies may deepen existing inequalities if access is limited to certain groups, and they may disrupt human identity and agency by shifting control over basic aspects of life to corporations or algorithms.
The posthuman world offers an opportunity to reimagine ourselves as interconnected beings within a larger ecosystem, but it requires a careful, ethical approach that respects diversity, equity, and human rights. To make the posthuman transition positively transformative, we must ensure that these technologies empower rather than dominate us, allowing for a future that values collective well-being and embraces humanity’s role as a part of the biosphere rather than its ruler.
In sum, Braidotti’s ideas are a valuable call to critically reflect on our trajectory and to thoughtfully guide the posthuman world we are helping to create.