Existenzanalyse 1/2020

ACCOMPANYING CLIENTS RECOVERING FROM TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURIES:
AN EXISTENTIAL-ANALYTICAL APPROACH

DERRICK KLAASSEN
This paper explores an existential-analytical (EA) approach to accompaniment within the context of recovery following a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The paper begins with a selective review of the TBI literature. This is followed by the case presentation of a patient who was accompanied in 48 sessions over nearly 4 years. This case serves the focus for a discussion of EA accompaniment and highlights common issues that may emerge in the course of recovery. In contrast to much of the extant literature on psychotherapy with TBI clients, which highlights functional limitations and psychopathological dimensions, EA accompaniment focuses assisting the client in finding inner consent through a personal, phenomenological process. The accompaniment maps relatively well onto the EA structural model. TBI clients frequently face challenges in all four fundamental motivations and are challenged to find a felt ‘yes’ in relation to the facticity of their situation, to life itself, to themselves in their uniqueness, and to a meaningful future. The paper aims to demonstrate the possibility and necessity of an EA approach to accompaniment as a crucial and often omitted dimension of TBI recovery.
KEYWORDS: Traumatic Brain Injury, accompaniment, rehabilitation, case study

UNDERSTANDING HUMANS
Notes on hermeneutic phenomenology

HELMUT DORRA
Understanding humans is central concern and endeavor of a hermeneutic phenomenology. It seeks to see and understand the individual in the context of his/her subjective experience, in how it gains in significance in connection with a current happening and with specific personal history and in how it becomes effective here and now. A hermeneutic attitude has the reservation of unavailability, in order to remain open for the new, the unexpected, the unique and singular, and to become free for what is encountering in the other which withstands our self-willed views and intentions. This fundamental attitude of serenity allows seeing and speaking. A hermeneutic endeavor strives to comprehend the relevance of what is being meant, grasping in content-related manner the human in his/her mineness and historical and life-world context, what moves him/her and what he/she relates to. What is understood as to being significant and existentially moving at the same time relates to our Dasein in the world, which encompasses our manner of experience and behavior as a common horizon of understanding. Here it becomes obvious in which manner an ontic existential understanding is ontologically established in the essence of Dasein itself and its fundamental structures. Understanding humans. With this guiding theme and concern I would like to contribute to phenomenological hermeneutics and to point out a few stations of the path of phenomenology.
Keywords: hermeneutics, phenomenology, understanding

ETHICS IN LOGOTHERAPY AND EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS

JULIA WERNER
According to existential analytical understanding personal openness is the basis of every professional help.
Reflected self-understanding allows successfully encountering the other person – in analytical counselling, accompaniment or therapy. Self-identity also includes ethical orientation.
The article invites to an open and updated discourse about ethical topics and their derivation.
KEYWORDS: ethical foundations, emotional access to values, rational reasoning, moral plurality, phenomenological perspective, reflected ethical self-understanding

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

ALFRIED LÄNGLE
Psychotherapy serves the purpose of assisting the human being in their time. Naturally, psychotherapy is engaged with current sociocultural developments as such. As a scientific discipline it strives to meet the changes in needs and problems of the actual time. The paper firstly sheds light on the sociocultural background with its current changes, and then proceeds in pointing out the major lines of development of psychotherapy in the recent past. Therein, a central aspect of development focuses on the human ambition to be oneself even more, to live life personally and in freedom. This sets a counterpoint to an increasingly digitalized and functionalized world.
Keywords: sociology, psychotherapy, culture, being a person

EXISTENTIAL-NARRATIVE DREAM WORK (ENTA)
The efficacy of dreams in existential analytical consultation practice

BEATRIX ALTHEN-SCHNIPPENKOETTER
Existential-narrative dream work (ENTA) has its roots in the anthropology of Frankl. It was developed by Susanne Jaeger-Gerlach, head of the institute in Berlin of the Academy of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis (GLE-D), on the basis of Logotherapy and further developed Existential Analysis. ENTA differs from other methods of dream processing by working completely without interpretation. Its special effectiveness is to be found within its personal understanding of dreams. With its phenomenological focus of what is essential, it provides direct access to inner experiencing and the spiritual unconscious, requesting personal positioning from the dreamer.
Keywords: anthropology, phenomenology, person, spiritual unconscious, feelings, position statement

PSYCHOTRAUMA – DENTAL TRAUMA
Existential analytical counseling and accompaniment of children after acute dental trauma

GERLINDE EBELESEDER, KURT ALOIS EBELESEDER
Aim of this paper is to merge the fields Logotherapy – Existential Analysis and dental trauma for the first time, and to simultaneously describe an individual as physically and psychologically traumatized. Special attention will be paid to the protection mechanisms (coping mechanisms) within the respective basic motivation. Phenomenological considerations should allow the dental practitioner to recognize deficits or copings in one of the basic motivations, and respond to them promptly. Finally, self reflective questions allow the practitioner to understand his/her own reactions, to perceive his/her own resources and to possibly modify his/her approach.
KEYWORDS: trauma, fundamental motivations, copings

schlÜsselWÖrter: Berufung, Sinn, Wert, Gewissen, Grundmotivationen
“THERE SURELY MUST BE SOMETHING THAT I WAS BORN FOR!”

IRINA EFIMOVA, MSC
An analysis of the phenomenon of “vocation” by means of existential analytical anthropology is presented through the description of work steps of a psychologist, and the origin of a double direction of calling is described in the terminology of Existential Analysis: The dynamics correspond the 4th fundamental motivation which combine the depths to spirituality in a person and the ontological horizon of the universe.
It is shown how a single intention is born between these poles, due to the participation of conscience. The contribution of the fundamental motivations is underlined, which define the force of the vocation as well as its extent. On the basis of this proposed mechanism, recommendations for psychotherapy and consultation concerning various themes in connection to vocation and questions for the deepening of self-experience are given.
Keywords: vocation, meaning, value, conscience, fundamental motivations

„HELP ME ENDURE MY SITUATION“
A case study

LIDIJA KUSTURICA
Disorder patterns from the spectrum of autism describe deficits in the area of impairments of social interaction, of the reaction towards emotions of other people, of emotional reciprocity, communication and language. The following lines describe accompaniment of a client in his great loneliness through the mourning process. The challenges of forming relationship, of interaction are outlined and person to person encounters reviewed.
Keywords: mourning, accompaniment, spectrum of autism

CONVERSION OF THE ATTITUDE TIED TO SHAME

MICHAEL TITZE
Seen intentionally, shame is a security tendency meant to protect personal integrity. Its origin is to be found in an affective inhibition stemming from the painful experience of one’s own ridiculousness. But in contrast to similar fear, shame does not pursue the purpose of physical self-preservation but rather prevents damage to self-esteem. Many symptoms patients bring forth in therapy can be traced back to hidden feelings of shame. By accepting or reinforcing these symptoms in a paradoxical manner, this attitude which is tied to shame, can gradually be converted.
Keywords: shame, feelings of guilt, Gelotophobia, Paradoxical Intention, therapeutic humor

VIOLATED SHAME
Three kinds of shaming-oneself seen from an existential analytical perspective

BARBARA GAWEL
The article deals with shame: with the protection of the person which delimitates us from the distressing feeling of shaming-oneself and with shameful speaking in the therapeutic relationship.
Shameful speaking is essential for the therapeutic conversation and the therapeutic relationship. The personal shame of the client is a value which must be protected in its intimacy and preciousness. In practice, it is important to keep this in mind because the theme of shame sometimes noticeably steps into the foreground. This article deals with such situations by means of three case representations. It pursues the aim to carefully and shamefully situate the protecting human feeling of shame at a place where it very reluctantly wants to be found, namely at the center of concern.
Keywords: Existential Analysis, person, shame, shaming-oneself, shameful speaking

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