Emmy's thoughts about the well being and happiness, and the contribution of psychotherapy to it. A presentation given to the Worcester Therapeutic Training Network in February 2010

1. Emmy van Deurzen
Worcester
6 February 2010

2. Director:
New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling
London
• Honorary Professor University of Sheffield
• Visiting Professor Middlesex University
• Professor Schiller International University
• Director Dilemma Consultancy Ltd.
and The Existential Academy Ltd.

4. • Edited by Emmy van
Deurzen and Sarah Young

6. • Emotional Well Being and Health, with
Digby Tantam, London: Sage, 2010

12. • ‘perhaps the relationship between the
modern psychotherapist and his patient is a
beacon that ever-increasing numbers of
men will find themselves forced to follow,
lest they become spiritually enslaved or
physically destroyed’ (Szasz 1962:272).

14. • Enable clients to tell the truth about their
lives and themselves.
• Help them live passionately and to the full.
• Facilitate their greater understanding of
the human condition.
• Recognize strengths and weaknesses and
make the most of both.

15. • It is a worldview which allows to integrate
a variety of methods
• Addresses universal problems
• Provides philosophical questioning and
logic tools
• Non prescriptive

16. • What are the life issues this client is preoccupied
with?
• What understanding of these does the therapist
have?
• What are the client’s values and project?
• How can
I enhance
my own
engagement
with these
issues, values and projects?

17. Existential approach: related to, but not the same as positive
psychology and well-being research: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Ed Diener, Ruut Veenhoven, Martin Seligman. The tragic depth
of being human is as important as human potential and joy.

18. • What does it mean to be alive? Who am I?
What is the purpose of my existence? How
should we live? What can I hope to achieve?
Is happiness possible? What is expected of
me? How should I act and be in relation to
other people? Is there fairness in the world?
Can I make a change for the better? Is it
possible to understand life and get a grip on
it? Can I find ways of overcoming my
troubles? Is it necessary to suffer this much?
How can I be a better person and live a
worthwhile life?

19. • The unspoken yearning for happiness is often
what drives a person to therapy.
• Sometimes this is made explicit.
• Sometimes it is implied.
• Sometimes it is taboo and unknown.
• What we want, at some level, is to live a better
life but we have no idea what that means.
• Wishful thinking for happiness and perfection

20. • There is but one truly serious philosophical
problem and that is … whether life is or is
not worth living. (Camus: The Myth of
Sisyphus)
• Is rolling the stone up the hill sufficient to
fill a human heart?

21. • Many people believe that it is ultimately
happiness that makes a life worth living, i.e. that
the good life is identical with the happy life.
• On this view, things like love, friendship,
meaningful activity, freedom, human
development, or the appreciation of true beauty
are ‘‘merely’’ instrumentally valuable for us, i.e.
they are not good as ends but merely as means
to the only thing that is good as an end, namely
happiness. Bengt Brulde 2006.

22. • Happiness is a prolonged or
lasting emotional or affective
state that feels good or pleasing.
• Experiences associated with happiness
include wellbeing, joy, pleasure, delight,
health, safety and love, while contrasting
ones include suffering, sadness, grief and
pain. (Wikipedia 06)

23. • Positive emotion: feeling good
• Life satisfaction: an evaluation of overall
picture of one’s life
• Absence of problems: having a good time
• Contentment or state of harmony
• Elation or bliss and ecstasy
• An aim which is always elusive

24. • Hedonism: Pursuit of Pleasure.
(drugs, alcohol, sex, consumerism, the painless
civilisation). Object: Finding the holy grail: the
promise of something that will save us and stop
suffering. (Epicureanism, Utilitarianism: greatest
happiness for the greatest number)
• Eudaimonia: living in tune with one’s power,
one’s daimon: the good force. Object: learning to
live a good life. (Aristotle, virtue ethics:
happiness is an activity)

25. • There are at least four conceptions of happiness, namely
• (1) the cognitive (or attitudinal) view: evaluating life
favorably
• (2) the hedonistic view: having pleasure
• (3) the mood view (or emotional state theory): feeling
happy
• (4) the hybrid view, according to which happiness is a
complex mental state consisting both of an affective and
a cognitive component : life satisfaction depends on how
good life seems and feels. (Brulde,06)

26. • If bliss is the objective positive evaluation should be
given to situations where it does not apply: Nagel’s post
accident situation of not having a care in the world, yet
being pitied: happy fool (view from nowhere 1986).
• If pleasure is the goal, then what of Nozick’s ‘experience
machine’ (1974) which is not favoured by most people
for more than a couple of hours.
• Need for pleasure is addictive and undermines
happiness
• Pure happiness is unrealistic: not true to life.

27. • Gorgias:493d. ‘Tell me now whether a
man who has an itch and can scratch to
his heart’s content, scratch his whole life
long, can also live happily.’
• Callicles replies that no, in order to be
happy some impulses need to be curbed.
• The question is which, how and to what
extent.

28. • Walhalla, Utopia, el Dorado, Garden of
Eden, Nirvana, Land of the Lotus eaters

29. • Kierkegaard: Even though the Fall was a
tragedy, it was also both necessary and
beneficial.
• Man rejected the wholeness and
happiness of Eden in order to explore his
destiny to its inmost depths.
• Return to Eden is not the objective. To
understand the contrast of good and evil is
to live with consciousness.

30. 1. Try your best
2. Be true to yourself
3. Enjoy life
4. Appreciate what you have
5. Respect your parents
6. Protect your family
7. Never be violent.
8. Look after the vulnerable.
9. Protect the environment
10. Protect and nurture children.
11. Do not steal
12. Be honest
13. Do not kill
14. Take responsibility for your actions
15. Treat others as you would want them to treat you.

31. • Nothing about love
• No mention of God or transcendence
• No struggle
• No self-reflection
• Prescriptive mode
• All about action
• What happens to aspiration and
inspiration?

32. • Psychologists came up with a formula for
happiness.
• Pleasure + engagement + meaning =
happiness.
• Yet: pleasure can take us over and have
opposite effect. Engagement can make us lose
track of other things and meaning can change.
• It may be formulae themselves that are
dangerous. Trying to be happy may also be
wrong.

33. • 1. Get physical Exercise for half an hour three times a week
• 2. Count your blessings End of each day, reflect on five things you're grateful for.
• 3. Talk time Hour-long uninterrupted conversation with partner or friend each week.
• 4. Plant something Even if it’s a window box or pot plant. Keep it alive!
• 5. Cut your TV viewing by half
• 6. Smile at and/or say hello to a stranger At least once each day.
• 7. Phone a friend Make contact with at least one lost friend or relation.
• 8. Have a good laugh at least once a day.
• 9. Every day make sure you give yourself a treat Take time to really enjoy this.
• 10. Daily kindness Do an extra good turn for someone each day.

34. • Concrete actions which give the illusion of
self-improvement : aspirational
• Useful but not conducive to dealing with
the ups and downs of life : no inspiration
• No attention to personal loss, conflict,
difficulty, tragedy, suffering.
• Assumption is: if I am happier everything
will be alright.

35. • Economical factors have an impact (some countries
more happy than others)
• We can measure how an increase in salary gives less
benefit than a cut in salary takes happiness away.
• Above poverty line extra money does not increase
happiness
• But ultimately happiness is a psychological
phenomenon: attitude has a lot to do with it
• Two big problems in society decrease it: chronic pain
and mental illness
• People need to learn to live better lives: counselling has
a role to play in this
• Mechanical and prescriptive theory of counselling

36. • Renewal of human potential movement: build
on positives rather than looking at pathology,
akin to humanistic psychology
• Seligman: authentic happiness
• Diener: subjective well being
• Veenhoven, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Science of happiness also espoused by Lord
Layard and the proposal for more counselling
(CBT) in the IAPT programme.

37. • positive emotions (like comfort)
• positive activities (like absorption).
• Signature strengths.
• Virtues
• Authenticity is the derivation of positive
emotions in exercising signature strengths.

38. • About 500 people soon volunteered and each person
received a battery of tests, one simple week-long web
exercise (no human hands) and then was tested about
their well-being repeatedly for the next six months.
• Three exercises proved to be placebos and three worked
well, producing lasting reductions in depression and
lasting increases in happiness.
• The three that worked were "three blessings" - writing
down three things that went well today and why; "the
gratitude visit" - writing a gratitude testimonial and
delivering it personally; and "using your signature
strength in a new way" - taking the signature strength
test and using your highest strength in a new way.

39. • People were happier in modern industrial society
than people in underdeveloped countries.
• Income only matters if you are poor.
• People in the country were no more satisfied
with life than people in towns
• Bond with a spouse was one of the most
essential conditions of happiness in modern
western society.
• Friendships could not compensate for its
absence completely.
• Having children makes it harder to feel happy
though they bring happiness too.

40. • Most people around the world, except those
living in dire circumstances, report being happy
the majority of the time, but very few report
being consistently elated or extremely happy.
Thus, slight to moderate happiness is the rule
not the exception.
• This is something he calls subjective well
being: life satisfaction, pleasant emotions.
• Life satisfaction differs from the affective
components of happiness in that it is based on
a reflective judgment.

41. • DIRECTIONS: Below are five statements with which you may agree
or disagree. Using the 1-7 scale below, indicate your agreement with
each item by placing the appropriate number in the line preceding
that item. Please be open and honest in your responding.
• 1 = Strongly Disagree;2 = Disagree;3 = Slightly Disagree
• 4 = Neither Agree or Disagree;5 = Slightly Agree;6 = Agree
• 7 = Strongly Agree.
• ______1. In most ways my life is close to my ideal.
• ______2. The conditions of my life are excellent.
• ______3. I am satisfied with life.
• ______4. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.
• ______5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.

42. • Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience. He defined and explored the
concept of "flow"—as in "in the flow"—as
our experience of optimal fulfillment and
engagement. Flow, whether in creative
arts, athletic competition, engaging work,
or spiritual practice, is a deep and uniquely
human motivation to excel, exceed, and
triumph over limitation.

43. • 1. Clear goals: challenge level and skill level should both
be high.
• 2. Concentrating and focusing
• 3. A loss of the feeling of self consciousness
• 4. Distorted sense of time, altered subjective experience
• 5. Direct and immediate feedback : immediate response
• 6. Balance between ability level and challenge
• 7. A sense of personal control over the situation or
activity.
• 8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding: effortlessness of
action.
• 9. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of
awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action
awareness

44. Existential approach similar yet different to positive
psychology and well-being research: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Ed Diener, Ruut Veenhoven, Martin Seligman. The existential
tradition in philosophy includes the tragic depth of being
human as well as human potential and joy. Not just positives,
not just negatives: but all of life.

45. • Happiness and unhappiness are twins that
grow up together. (Nietzsche, 1882: 270)

47. • How do people overcome obstacles?
• How do they survive difficulties, crises, trauma?
• Are there personal qualities that enable a person
to be resilient?
• Are there certain ways of being that are more
conducive to survival and learning from
traumatic experience?
• Role of creative use of trauma.
• Happiness is a genetic given for 50% of our
happiness quotient.
• How do we live well?

48. • Are we after happiness or meaning?
• Is the ultimate objective something else,
like intensity or contact with reality?
• Are we perhaps just after life itself?
• What does it mean to live a good life?
• Does a good life include suffering?
• Does a good life include a good death?

49. • Crystallization of discontent may be the
beginning of insight into what is wrong.
• Conflict, dilemmas and problems are an
intrinsic part of being alive
• Being cured of difficulties is the death of
possibility and creativity
• Are constant problems and troubles
necessary to a well lived life?
• What about truth?

51. • For some it is all darkness; for me too,
it is dark. But there are hands
there I can take, voices to hear
solider than the echoes
without. And sometimes a strange light
shines, purer than the moon,
casting no shadow, that is
the halo upon the bones
of the pioneers who died for truth.
R.S. Thomas, Groping:99.

53. • Kierkegaard Nietzsche Husserl Jaspers
Heidegger Sartre de Beauvoir Buber
Camus Merleau Ponty Foucault

54. • Binswanger Boss Frankl
• Tillich May Laing

55. • Courage is the universal self-
affirmation of one’s Being in the
presence of the threat of non-Being
(Tillich 1952:163).

56. • A neurotic person can take on board only
a little bit of non-being
• The average person can take on a limited
amount of non-being
• The creative person can accommodate a
large amount of non-being
• God can tolerate an infinite amount of non-
being.

57. • Existential therapists have shown that anxiety far
from being something to shun and treat as a
symptom to eliminate is the source of energy
that makes us come to life.
• Equally our capacity for despair is what makes
us deep and capable of feeling and empathy and
ultimately creativity.
• Without suffering our lives would have less
meaning.
• To be human is to be conscious and be aware of
lack, trouble and strife.

59. • The essential components of life dynamics
consist of:
• Paradoxes, conflicts, dilemmas, contradictions,
alternatives, dialectics, and experiments in living.
• Most people are in some trouble or other most of
the time. People are rarely without some
preoccupation or problem. The body often has
sore spots or pains or discomforts. The ego is
often bruised or fearful. The self is often lacking
in identity or strength. The soul is often confused
or distracted and wary.

60. • What does it mean to be alive? Who am I?
What is the purpose of my existence? How
should we live? What can I hope to achieve?
Is happiness possible? What is expected of
me? How should I act and be in relation to
other people? Is there fairness in the world?
Can I make a change for the better? Is it
possible to understand life and get a grip on
it? Can I find ways of overcoming my
troubles? Is it necessary to suffer this much?
How can I be a better person and live a
worthwhile life?

61. • Happiness as a high is doomed: every high is
followed by a low. Constant pleasure leads to
addiction and misery.
• Happiness as contentment may be more
feasible, but could easily lead to an existence of
mediocrity and lack of awareness.
• We need to go beyond happiness towards an
ability of dealing with both the happy and the
sad, the pleasure and the pain of life.

62. • Man’s task is simple: he should cease
letting his existence be a thoughtless
accident.
(Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science).

63. • Any idiot can face a crisis –
• it’s day to day living
that wears you out

64. • It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear
never beginning to live
• The paradox is that death, troubles, labour, failures, pain
and sorrow are unavoidable and necessary
• They are the things that wake you up to awareness and
that open you to life.

65. • When I speak to Rita, who is grieving over
her husband and small son who have
perished in a car accident, the words that I
say to her at first hardly reach her.
• She is in a place of relative safety deep
inside of herself, in a state of suspended
animation behind the façade that she turns
to the world. She barely engages with
people at all.

66. • At first it is not my words that make the link
to her world, but the consistency that I can
offer in being attentive and careful to not
hurt her further or push her too hard.
• I spend nearly half an hour in relative
silence with Rita, at times formulating her
fear on her behalf, gently, tentatively,
checking for verification by noting her
response.

67. • Mostly the work consists of me letting myself be
touched by her suffering and learning to tolerate
her pain with her, so that I can offer reactions
and words that soothe and move her forward to
a place where she can begin to face what has
happened to her so shockingly out of the blue. In
this process she guides me and exposes more
and more of her nightmarish universe to me as
she perceives me as capable of venturing further
into it with her.

68. • Understand the Lebenswelt:
the world in which we live.
How do we co-constitute the world?

69. ‘ …The restoration of an unlived
dimension of life, whether this is
described as forgotten, denied,
repressed or abandoned’
(Cohn, 2004: 384)

70. • Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
• Human evolution proceeds with constant
conflict and forward movement in
overcoming a previous state.
• Paradoxes and dilemmas
can be integrated
and gone beyond.

71. Transcendence
Synthesis
Thesis Antithesis

73. Physical space
Spiritual space Social space
Personal space

79. • Things are structures – frameworks – the stars
of our life: they gravitate around us. Yet there is
a secret bond between
us and them –
through perception
we enter into the
essence of the flesh
(Visible and Invisible: 220)

83. • Corona, chromosphere, photosphere,
convection zone, and core.

84. 1.Spiritual: Uberwelt
2.Personal: Eigenwelt
3.Social: Mitwelt
4.Physical: Umwelt

85. • The soul is the hollow of the body, the
body is the distension of the soul. The soul
adheres to the body as their signification
adheres to the cultural things, whose
reverse or other side it is. (233)

86. 1.Spiritual: Uberwelt
2.Personal: Eigenwelt
3.Social: Mitwelt
4.Physical: Umwelt

87. Spiritual:
Good/Evil
Intuitions, values, beliefs, purpose, meaning.
Worldview/Ideas.
Personal:
Strength/Weakness
Thoughts, memories, identity, freedom.
Selfhood/Me.
Social:
Love/Hate
Feelings, relations, belonging, acknowledgement.
Communication/Others.
Physical:
Life/Death
Sensations, actions, environment, body, things.
Survival/World.

88. • Emotions like the weather: never none.
• They are the way we relate to the world.
• They define the mood of the moment.
• They are our atmosphere and modality.
• They tell us where we are in relation to
what matters to us.
• We can learn to understand our emotions
by tuning in, using the emotional compass.
• Not suppression, not expression, but
understanding.

89. • Our world always seems personal and yet
is universal for the way we see the world
determines our view on how things are.

90. • Recognize your clients’ values and
differentiate them from your own.
• Learn to read and understand the text of the
client’s life, find the narrative point of
gravity, the subtext and the context.
• Take into account the social, cultural and
political dimension of the client’s life. Put
this in context with your own worldview and
beliefs.

91. • Depending on where we stand light
refracts differently through the prism of life.

92. • They create different atmospheres at
different times.

93. • Emotions are like the weather: never none.
• They are the way we relate to the world.
• They define the mood of the moment.
• They are our atmosphere and modality.
• They tell us where we are.
• Learn to tune in rather than tune out.
• Use the emotional compass.

94. • When we master a mood, we do so by way of a counter-
mood; we are never free of moods. Ontologically, we thus
obtain as the first essential characteristic of states-of-mind
that they disclose Dasein in its thrownness, and –
proximally and for the most part - in the manner of an
evasive turning-away.’ (Heidegger 1927:136)

105. • Above the clouds the weather is steady
even when it rains below.
• Transcending our own situation and
emotions allows us to understand our own
response.

106. Desires Fears
Physical Life Death
pleasure pain
Social Love Hate
belonging isolation
Personal Identity Freedom
integrity disintegration
Spiritual Good Evil
purpose futility

107. • Baumeister concluded that there are four
basic needs for meaning:
1. Need for purpose (spiritual)
2. Need for value (social)
3. Need for efficacy (physical)
4. Need for self-worth (personal)
• It is the process of going in the general
direction of these four objectives that
makes for a good life.

108. • Happiness is when ‘reality lives up to your
desires’.
• Long-term goals offer a sense of direction,
but it is necessary to have short-term
goals in order to derive daily meaning.
• In fact it is having short term achievable
goals that allow us to feel efficient and
purposeful that gives us most of a sense
of self worth and value of life.

109. • To live a meaningful life and have goals
and values is not enough: you must also
feel you are capable of achieving these
things.
• ‘It is necessary to find moderately difficult
tasks to maintain that middle ground
between boredom (too easy) and anxiety
(too hard).’ (41)

110. • Freedom is not strictly the exercise of the
will, but rather the experience of accurate
vision which, when this becomes
appropriate, occasions action (Murdoch
1970:67).

111. • Find out what the inner landscape of a
person is: what is meaningful to them.
• Find out what their purpose in life is.

112. • ‘Man is characterised above all by his
going beyond a situation and by what he
succeeds in making of what he has been
made. This is what we call the project.
(Sartre, Search for a Method: 91).
• We define project by praxis. Action,
passion and reflection. Constant
transcendence and dialectical progression.

113. DESIRES FEARS VALUES
PHYSICAL life death vitality
SOCIAL love hate reciprocity
PERSONAL identity freedom integrity
SPIRITUAL good evil transparency

114. • Helping clients to live deliberately rather than by
default.
• Recognize particular life situation and its
advantages and disadvantages.
• Understand the what, the why, the how, the
where and when of the client’s position in the
world and connect to the what for.
• Make room for new choices and for liberation.
• Problematize, don’t solve the issues. Question,
query, encourage creativity.

116. • Experience is not the be all and end all
• Life is more complex than state of mind
and bliss is not the objective
• Conflict, paradox, dilemma and struggle
are all part of the everyday
• Perhaps there is the more satisfaction in
living as we take more of this in our stride.
• Greater values than happiness: love, truth,
beauty, loyalty, honour, courage, freedom.

117. • An ability to creatively encounter
challenges and crises.
• Capacity for re-establishing equilibrium
through strong, dynamic centre of
narrative gravity.
• Enhanced enjoyment of life, appreciation
of physical world, others, self-worth and
meaning.

119. Learning to live with paradox and the tensions of life

121. • Personhood is a synthesis of
possibility and necessity. Its
continued existence is like breathing
(respiration), which is an inhaling and
exhaling.
• (Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death: 40)

122. People have to accept the
unspoken givens of life:
We have to accept those
things that remain true
whatever may come
We can rise above our
condition, by dialectical
transformation, evolution
and understanding

123. • Is learning about life, each other and
ourselves; we learn to be, by living and
overcoming our mistakes.

125. 1. Earning your keep with your own labour
2. Understanding others
3. Pondering your own motivations
4. Reflecting on your life
5. Living true to your own values
6. Living in line with the purpose and truth of human existence.
7. Contributing more to the world than you take from it.
8. Respecting nature and the universe
9. Making your life matter
10. Loving as much as you can.
11. Being prepared for change and transformation.
12. Knowing when to be resolute and when to let go.
13. Having rules to live by and change them when necessary.

126. • to be healthy and look after your body the best way possible.
• to enjoy what is free in the world and be close to nature
• to be loving with others and care for someone deeply.
• to respect and esteem yourself and make sure others do too.
• to find concrete goals worth putting your whole energy into.
• to learn to question things and not take anything for granted
• to find life interesting and relish every minute
• to be prepared to let things go and be ready to die
• to strive for wisdom and excellence
• to be content and find routines that satisfy you
• to achieve something, whatever, and leave the world a better place
than you found it.

127. All living things are struggling for existence, even unwittingly
and unwillingly. They struggle passively just to exist, to be left
in what seems to be peace and quiet; and they struggle
actively to grow and to expand. (Jaspers,1951:204)

128. • My conclusion is similar to that of Camus: happiness is
simply to live in harmony with your own life and to love it
in all its manifestations (Nietzsche’s Amor Fati)
• Challenges and difficulties are not the enemy, nor to be
avoided but rather to be welcomed as grist for the mill
and par for the course: life as an adventure.
• We determine how we want to live: we can increase our
capacity for feeling or decrease it.
• If we increase it we will also suffer more. The price for
less suffering is to care less and be less sensitive.
• Do we want to live for real and to the full, or do we want
to hide in fear and pretend to be happy and contented?
• The choice is yours. Your life belongs to you.

129. www.existentialpsychotherapy.net
www.dilemmas.org
www.nspc.org.uk
www.psychotherapytraining.net
www.septimus.info

130. • The interhuman: das
Zwischenmenschlichen; the in-
between is where real communication
takes place.
• (Buber, Between Man and Man, 1929).
• All actual life is encounter (ibid: 62)
• This is where truth is found.

131. • There is no such thing as a separate
human being, in the same way in which as
Winnicott suggested there is no such thing
as a baby.
• We are only what we are in as much as
we are connected to a world.

132. • Physical: relationships to nature, world of
things and bodies around us
• Social: relationships to other people
• Personal: relationship to ourselves, our
thoughts, dreams, memories and fantasies
• Spiritual: relationships to ideas, beliefs,
transcendence and eternity

133. • Umwelt: understand physical context and embodiment:
person’s relation to the world around them.
• Mitwelt: describe and take into account the social,
cultural and political dimension of the client’s life.
• Eigenwelt: read and understand the text of the client’s
life, find the narrative point of gravity. Who do they
think they are?
• Uberwelt: recognize worldview and values: what is the
purpose of the person’s life?

136. • Phenomenology
• Wesenschau: to things themselves.
• Intentionality (Franz Brentano).
• Intuition:question natural attitude.
• Knowledge begins with experience.
• Bracketing assumptions.

138. I. Phenomenological reduction
• Noesis
II. Eidetic reduction
• Noema
III. Transcendental reduction
• Cogito

140. • Cogito(subject):transcendental reduction
• Noesis(process):phenomenological reduction
• Noema(object):eidetic reduction

141. 1. Noesis.
2. Epoche: suspend assumptions.
3. Description.
4. Horizontalization.
5. Equalization.
6. Verification.

142. 1. Noema.
2. Abschattungen:profiles.
3. Wesenschau: looking for essences.
4. Genetic constitution (vs. static).
5. Universals beyond the properties.

143. – 1. Cogito.
– 2. Transcendental ego.
– 3. Solipsism overcome.
– 4. Horizon of intentionality.
– 5. Self as point zero.
– 4. Transcendental intersubjectivity.

144. • Become aware of your own bias: outlook,
assumptions, beliefs, prejudice, blind spots.
• Locate and articulate the client’s worldview and
life space.
• No judgements. Understanding rather than
interpretation.

145. • Attitude: based on aptitude, genetic predisposition, constitution,
temperament, previous experiences
• Orientation: based on worldview, beliefs and theoretical framework,
perspective, cultural bias
• State of Mind: current situation, basic orientation in the world, point
of view, emotional state, mood
• Reaction: response to this particular client, situation, interaction,
provocation

146. • Attitude: based on aptitude, genetic predisposition, constitution,
temperament, previous experiences
• Orientation: based on worldview, beliefs and theoretical belief
system, perspective, cultural bias
• State of Mind: current situation, basic orientation in the world, point
of view, emotional state, mood, disposition
• Reaction: response to this particular person, situation,
interaction, provocation