Subjectivity in Existential Psychotherapy
[Subjectivity in Psychotherapy, 03]
I. Introduction
The topic of existentialism is vast, and the problem of how it represents the subject is no less complicated. For our purposes, we will be looking at how subjectivity — that is, the theory/model of the human being — is situated specifically within the strain of existential psychotherapy developed by Irvin Yalom.
Yalom establishes his theoretical and practical orientation within the field of existential psychotherapy with his text, Existential Psychotherapy, in 1980. In this text, he thinks about human suffering and healing drawing upon various threads and conversations, including Freud, Buber, Frankl, Sartre, and many other thinkers. The subject, for Yalom, is defined by four basic horizons, or ‘givens’ of existence: death, freedom, isolation, and meaning. Subjective experience is the nexus at which these elements are dealt with in the individual. Thus, subject is also fundamentally conflict — not of Freudian psychodynamics, but of “a conflict that flows from the individual’s confrontation with the givens of existence” (1980, p. 8). We will look at each of these givens of existence and see what it has to reveal to us about our subjective experience.
II. Death
Yalom positions the fact of death and our awareness of it at the center of his ontology of subject. Everything we do, from building skyscrapers to worshipping gods to writing books is an attempt to transcend one’s finiteness and mortality. The fact of death is constitutive of life, something philosophers have known, Yalom tells us, since the pre-Socratic Greeks. Death is part of life, and yet we tend to separate them so violently we are hardly ever concerned with death. In the documentary Free Solo, the free-solo rock climber Alex Honnold is asked why he climbs big walls without rope. He responds that death is conceivable in every action we do (car accidents, terminal illness, heart attack), but we never think about it. When he climbs without rope, he is much closer to this immanent boundary of existence, and only then can he live fully.
Honnold is grasping the lesson of Yalom. We live, only partially, when we do not confront the finality and inevitability of death. The rest of our lives, what subject crowds up its consciousness with, is the idle chatter and talk of the “they” (quote Davis?).
Death is prior to and outside of language and representation. This is why we cannot exactly articulate what death is or why we are so afraid of it. The category of death is transcendental for subjectivity: it is always out of its reach, yet it is constitutive of the possibility of subject.
III. Freedom
There is no overarching meaning to take refuge in to escape the fact of death and finality. Clearly, this is an atheist-materialist sentiment; and it is one that Yalom fully embraces.
Responsibility and authorship are the necessary implications of existential freedom. Responsibility takes on an interesting constituting factor in Yalom’s thinking. Subject does not just confront contingent facts and things in the world. It engages in a world filled with meaning and prescribed possibility. Things are always already overlayed with meanings and uses. Categories such as beauty, harmful, useful, valuable, lovely, and so on, are additives: they are the ‘theological niceties’ in the everyday experience of the subject. But there are certain moments where this is suddenly or gradually torn away from us. What does it reveal?
That none of these meanings are inherent in the things we interact with. That there is a groundless to being in the world, and that we are responsibility of the world we are constantly reproducing in every interaction we have:
Responsibility means authorship. To be aware of responsibility is to be aware of creating one’s own self, destiny, life predicament, feelings, and if such be the case, one’s own suffering. (1980, p. 218)
There is a constitutive aspect to subjectivity and its ontological freedom. There are no givens, other than that of death. There is ‘reality’, and then there is that extra added bit we contribute on top of it that fills the basic structure with meanings. This is an act originating in the subject, which is why Yalom links freedom, responsibility, and authorship. Because of the basic groundlessness of subjectivity, it has the responsibility for the authorship of the world it inhabits.
This is evident in Sartre’s Nauseau, wherein the ‘protagonist’, Roquentin, suddenly is awakened to the absolute contingent aspects of existence. He looks into the mirror and sees a monkey; he looks at a tree and sees random shapes and organisms which happen to exist near each other. Who does the ‘putting together’? How does monkey get to person, or random shapes into tree? It is the subject who does this; and thus it is the subject who is responsible for the world they inhabit: it is the author.
IV. Isolation
There are many modes of isolation that we feel on a regular basis. Loneliness (relational isolation), alienation/dissociation (personal isolation), and so on. Existential isolation, however, is the fundamental ground for all modes of isolation: it provides the structure that allows the others to exist. Simply put, “Existential isolation refers to an unbridgeable gulf between oneself and any other being” (1980, p. 355).
From the moment we are thrust into the world, we are torn from the omnipresent relation to some (m)Other, and the clinical-psychological conversations on separation-attachment, fusion-isolation, etc., are all representations of the basic existential task of development: coming into awareness that there is no complete or whole relation to any other. Everything we do is felt through “the other”, we really only exist insofar as we are registered in and for the other, some third party. It is only when we confront the fact that through an authentic realization of my death (i.e., that I must die myself; no one can die ‘for me’), I am irretrievably alone.
Linked to our awareness of isolation is responsibility, an element Yalom refers to as “being one’s own parent” (1980, p. 357). This statement strikes a chord deep into our infantile insecurities. The existential subject has no one to turn towards to take away their pain, consequences for their choices, or the scary monsters under the bed. There is no longer a warm and welcoming point of reference to orient oneself in the world.
V. Meaning(lessness)
There is a paradox situated deep within subjectivity: it longs for meaning, but (because of existential freedom) cannot find any. Yalom identifies two different modes of ‘meaning’ we find: cosmic (coming from “out there”; transcendent to us; religious; spiritual; etc.) and terrestrial (personal; secular). Yalom rejects the first as a viable option for the existential subject. Regarding the second, following Camus and Sartre, he claims
What is important … is that human beings recognize that one must invent one’s own meaning (rather than discover God’s or nature’s meaning) and then commit oneself fully to fulfilling that meaning… [It] is good and right to immerse oneself in the stream of life. (1980, p. 431)
The existential subject’s meaning is its very project, a process it must live out in life and towards itself. There are many things that Yalom has observed that seem to fulfill the void of the paradox mentioned above: altruism, dedication to a cause, hedonism, self-actualization, and self-transcendence. This is not the final say, however. These can shift over time and will look different for each person who engages in their “stream of life” according to these purposes they have set for themselves. But this is always reflexive: full commitment, and yet always critical — cautiously committed to a potentially dogmatic situation.
This aspect of the existential subject refers back to a statement made by Walter A. Davis: “The subject is that being whose very being is at issue” (1989, p. 107). Meaning is a process, an application of a lived philosophy. This is quite different from religious or spiritual meaning. This interpretation of meaning and purpose brings us back to concrete life and the various ways in which we will (a) fail to fulfill the meaning we have invented, or (b) failed to invent a meaning which is actually fulfilling for us or others. Ultimately, there is no guideline for this. And we cannot turn to others to ask, “What is it that I should be doing?” This life lived half-heartedly.
VI. Becoming a full subject
Why, if the givens of existence are so painful to confront, should we address them? Wouldn’t it be much easier to move throughout life without the awareness of death or isolation?
Yalom would argue that it might be easier for a little while. But his model of pathology articulates the consequence of not living existentially: we will construct elaborate and rigid defenses against awareness of the facticity of our subjective experience until they become walls to a deeper and fuller experience of life. By denying death, we never learn to live; by avoiding responsibility, we stay a child forever, always relying on others for direction; by rejecting isolation, we never learn to really encounter another subject as a full human being, but rather use them as objects to prop up our own existential lacks and insecurities.
References
Yalom, I. (1980). Existential Psychotherapy.
Davis, W. A. (1989). Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity In/And Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud.
