../../Экзистенциальное измерение в консультировании и психотерапии. Summary

Об авторах

Иева Бите (Рига, Латвия) - клинический психолог, экзистенциальный психотерапевт, доктор психологии, доцент Латвийского Университета, руководитель программы магистратуры по психологии, супервизор Института гуманистической и экзистенциальной психологии. Вице-президент Восточно-Европейской ассоциации экзистенциальной терапии.

Татьяна Драган (Вильнюс, Литва) - студентка магистратуры Вильнюсского университета, кафедра клинической и организационной психологии.

Татьяна Иванова (Иваново, Россия) - экзистенциальный психотерапевт, психолог Центра психологической помощи семье и детям, частная практика консультирования и психотерапии.

Римантас Кочюнас (Бирштонас, Литва) - психолог, экзистенциальный психотерапевт, доктор психологии, профессор кафедры клинической и организационной психологии Вильнюсского Университета, директор Института гуманистической и экзистенциальной психологии. Президент Восточно-Европейской ассоциации экзистенциальной терапии.

Аэлита Кукульскиене (Мажейкяй, Литва) - экзистенциальный психотерапевт, психолог поликлиники.

Дмитрий Леонтьев (Москва, Россия) - доктор психологии, профессор Московского Государственного Университета им. М.В.Ломоносова, директор Института экзистенциальной психологии и жизнетворчества.

Гинтаре Лешкявичене (Швекшна, Литва) - врач-психиатр, экзистенциальный психотерапевт, заведующая отделением острых психозов психиатрической больницы г. Швекшна.

Олег Лукьянов (Томск, Россия) - психолог, экзистенциальный психотерапевт, доктор психологии, доцент кафедры социальной и гуманистической психологии Томского Государственного Университета.

Вита Пошкуте (Каунас, Литва) - медицинский психолог Жегждряйской психиатрической больницы, докторант кафедры клинической психологии Вильнюсского Университета.

Геновайте Пятронене (Вильнюс, Литва) - медицинский психолог поликлиники, экзистенциальный психотерапевт, супервизор Института гуманистической и экзистенциальной психологии.

Бо Якобсен (Копенгаген, Дания) - психолог, доктор философии, профессор Копенгагенского Университета.

Бируте Якубкайте (Вильнюс, Литва) - экзистенциальный психотерапевт, медицинский психолог Вильнюсской психиатрической больницы.

Summary

Dmitry Leontiev. The Phenomenon of Responsibility: Between Incontinence and Hypercontrol.

The paper gives the phenomenological and theoretical analysis of responsibility treated as the capacity of personal causation (taking the role of the cause of one's actions) based upon conscious awareness and self-detachment from the immediate stream of one's living. The manifestations of the lack of responsibility are the failure in managing one's actions in the face of multiple force majeures, incontinence of immediate wishes and impulses, or rigid hypercontrol over these impulses. Special sections are devoted to interrelations between responsibility and freedom, especially in the developmental aspect, and responsibility for another person.

Bo Jacobsen. The Life Crisis in Existential Perspective: Can Trauma and Crisis Be Seen as an Aid in Personal Development?

Do ordinary people see a crisis as something negative or as something potentially positive?
In traditional psychiatric and cognitive-psychological practice, the effects of a trauma are diagnosed as "PTSD", and the condition is generally seen as a negative phenomenon that needs to be repaired.
In the existential-humanistic traditions, however, a crisis is also seen as a turning point, an opening and an opportunity for new development.
Otto Bollnow, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmy van Deurzen, Ernesto Spinelli and Medard Boss have all made important theoretical contributions to this conception of crisis. These contributions are considered in the article. In addition, the theoretical aspects are illustrated by empirical examples of crises as life-opening phenomena, taken from the author's interview studies of cancer patients and other groups.

Ieva Bite. Existential Approach in Psychotherapy with Survivors of Violence and Abuse.

The central theme in the article is the process of coping with acute or chronic adversity brought by violence and/or abuse experiences either in childhood or adult age. The existential phenomenological approach is used to understand anxiety, shame, anger, guilt, dissociation, neglect, despair, and grief experienced by clients. Meeting with these feelings, giving up issues that give false safety, help in finding power for encounter with one's self and other people are the key features in the therapeutic process with clients. Relationship between client and therapist, working through traumatic experiences, emotional expression, cognitive restructuring, awareness of feelings in the process of therapy, as well as obstacles in therapy are the most important components of the therapy described. Experience of meeting with clients in the process of choosing freedom instead of the victim's role, choosing life instead of death, challenging sedimentations and dissociations of the being-in-the-world were lived through this article.

Birutė Jakubkaitė. Faith and Religiousness in Existential Psychotherapy

The article attempts a glance into one of most complicated issues in our life, the phenomenon of faith. Author presents and analyses different aspects of faith, reviews the manifestations of various difficulties when dealing with faith as well as its relation to religiousness, despair, doubt, responsibility and submissiveness. The role of faith in psychotherapeutic relationship and practical insights emerging in personal psychotherapy practice are also described.

Vita Poškutė. Positive Aspects in the Experience of Meaninglessness among Young People.

The purpose of this research is to show and describe positive aspects in the experience of meaninglessness. Phenomenological analysis of 14 students' (age 19-28) experience of meaninglessness carried out according to the phenomenological psychological research method described by Amedeo Giorgi.

The research demonstrates that young people find quite a few positive aspects in the considerably difficult experience of meaninglessness and regard this experience as changing their life in some positive way. Young men and women do not vary significantly in their experience of meaninglessness and see positive aspects of this experience. The main positive points in the experience of meaninglessness are changes in the values system, choice of life and acceptance of life as a value when thinking about death or suicide; feeling of one's and others' freedom to choose; changing relationships, feeling more attentive and sensitive to others; also the openness to the world and the feeling of beauty of life and world; the value of present experiences and the importance of time, partial answers to the question of meaning and strong quest for meaning; reconciliation with meaninglessness and its acceptance as an existential fact, the relation of this experience to other actual facts or characteristics of existence (such as anxiety, loneliness, suffering and other) and their acceptance; searching of Self or finding real Self; faith, the doubts and questions of faith.

Rimantas Kočiūnas. The Process of Supervision: The Existential Perspective.

Existential supervision is understood basing on the Hawkins and Shohet (1989) model of supervision process and also considered in relation with the 6 Focuses Model proposed by Williams (1995).

Up to now there is no clear view on what is making supervision existential. Some authors (Pett, 1995; du Plock, 2004) suppose that the main existential focus in supervision is found within the specific interactions between the supervisor and the supervisee. Altogether, such a shift towards a specific "supervision system" embracing the supervisor and the supervisee seems well too radical. In existential supervision, efforts of participants may concentrate on the processes going on both in the "therapeutic system" and "supervision system". It is important, though, that the most attention would be given not to discussing a client with the aim to explain and change him/her or therapeutic methods used; instead, all efforts should be aimed at understanding what is going on between the therapist and his client in the "therapeutic system", and between the supervisor and supervisee in the "supervision system", in what ways these processes are connected and reflect the therapist's style of relations which inevitably influence the character of his/her therapeutic practice.

Tatyana Ivanova. Understanding Client's Wishes: Difficulties and Possibilities.

Reality is introduced to therapeutic relations by the therapist's understanding of a client and by the client's wishes. A client often comes to therapy in a state of chaos: without clear comprehension of his wishes, without understanding himself. In the course of discussion of the clients wishes eventually emerges the therapeutic aim, or the direction, in which therapy may go. The work with the clients wishes is necessary on the first stage of the therapy and remains important for defining the space of the whole process. A client can be helped by making his wishes clear through comprehension of his feelings, meaning of behavior, and his resistance. It is these directions that Fritz Perls suggested by his famous questions: What do you want? What do you do? What do you feel? What are your hopes? What do you avoid? Difficulties in understanding and in realization of the clients wishes contain potential opportunities in therapy. The following situations are analysed basing on several psychotherapeutic cases: a client makes it another persons duty to realize his wishes; wishes seem completely absent; wishes are hidden behind strong feelings; the client's will and actions are separated from his wishes; wishes are contradictory.

Gintarė Leškevičienė. Acceptance of Restrictions by Patients Under Treatment in Psychiatric Hospital.

Referring to the field of existential psychology, the article discusses restrictions related to hospitalisation of patients in the psychosis department under the conditions of isolation. In the theoretical section of the article, the notions of being, freedom, anxiety, responsibility, destiny and their dynamics are analysed in connection with the conditions of isolation at the psychosis department. In the practical part, three typical cases are presented. In conclusion, the article draws attention to the process of stigmas formation.

Aelita Kukulskienė. Vitality and Apathy Dynamics Ratio in Depression Psychotherapy.

The soil for depression is formed by a human being's ability to grieve. The course of depression is dominated with apathy. Slight apathy signifies recession after a defeat, going deep down into oneself. In case the state persists, it may be followed by the loss of one's essence, one's own nature.

A contrary to apathy is vitality, or life-force, which is associated with such kind of life that has inherent both force and basis for decisions to be made and actions to be taken.

Depression therapy has certain characteristic qualities. One of the major aspects regarding the beginning of therapy is the inner resolution of a therapist, his/her intention, concern about a particular client and the belief in a possibility to find meaning in proceeding with this client. The essence of therapy is the perception of real desires and more profound intentions, which is only possible through realization. A better realization of oneself leads to perception of relation and desires as well as recovery of one's nature. All these procedures ruin apathy and increase vitality; however, it is just the beginning of therapy.

Oleg Lukyanov. Existential Sociotherapy And The Problem of Rescue in Loneliness.

In the contemporary conditions where a person is intensively involved in communication and relations with the material world, the tradition of existential therapy continues to pay attention to the problem of ever increasing loneliness of people. Getting more and more out into the communication world continuously enlarges horizons of loneliness. Loneliness of a person grows in accord with enlarging spheres of experience. Inspite of prior hopes, enlarging spheres of experience doesn't increase the scope of existence but instead increases the loneliness of a person. A problem of rescue from loneliness poses a need to construct a concept of existential social therapy. It is understood as a form of professional help through a dialog of wider horizons than it has already been in traditional existential psychotherapy. Principles of existential social therapy are based on the need to expand existential practice from a context of work with personal problems to a context of responsibility of a person for fulfilling his/her own existential duties.

Genovaitė Petronienė. Meditation and Psychotherapy.

The Buddhist Wipassana meditation is compared with existential psychology. Oriental movements and meditation have not been researched in Lithuania from the viewpoint of psychology. Lithuanian psychotherapists and meditation teachers do not collaborate. Common features of psychotherapy and meditation are the importance of awareness, discipline, and the importance of "here and now". However, psychotherapy differs from meditation in its contents and in the scale of purposes sought. The practice of meditation without the change of world outlook remains facile, while changing the world outlook causes adaptation problems. The attitudes of psychotherapy and meditation towards mental health are also different: meditation is intended for mentally stable people. In the case of mental disease, psychotherapy is more adequate. On the other hand, an individually chosen meditation technique can help solving psychological problems.

Tatyana Dragan. The Experience Of The I-We In Intimate Relationships.

The experience of the I-We in intimate relationships is analyzed in this article. It is paradoxical but the existential dimensions of individuality and commonality make up an indivisible quality of intimacy, which is called the I-We phenomenon. The I-We phenomenon is approached from both the philosophical and psychological points of view. Antanas Maceina and Martin Buber represent the philosophical perspective: according to these authors, the I-We phenomenon can be understood out as the continuum with two opposite poles - the one of solitude or the I-It attitude, and the other of sociality or the I-Thou relationship. The psychological standpoint is represented by Rollo May, Erich Fromm and Victor Frankl. Rollo May proposes the notion of Eros, its integrative force could prevail over the schizoid position and enable the I-We relationship. It is in accordance with Fromm's theory that the I-We phenomenon is based on love, on the pleasure of sharing, and on meaningful and productive rather than wasteful activity. According to Frankl, the I-We experience is a creative one because it values the uniqueness of other and expands the borders of our self.