Towards an anthropological psychiatry

The situation of present day psychiatry is described as being dominated by an empiricist perspective. The limitations of this perspective are analyzed and a rough sketch of the hermeneutical approach in psychiatry is offered. It is argued that a fully developed hermeneutical psychiatry implies a reference towards anthropological themes. Three of them, time, historicity and corporality, are investigated.     

Some Aspects of Developmental Guidance Within an Existential Context

In this paper developmental guidance and existentialism are viewed as parallel but relatively independent modes of thought. The major theoretical dimensions of developmental guidance are summarized and a brief comparison between developmental guidance and existentialism is made. Certain aspects of existential thought are related to some principles of developmental guidance. Existentialism can provide an idiographic dimension to the fundamentally nomothetic theoretical orientation of developmental guidance by complementing an objective understanding of the individual with a subjective understanding.     

Existential and psychopathological evaluation of group psychotherapy of neurotic and psychotic patients

General problems in researching group psychotherapy are reviewed, especially for those with similar theoretical and methodological approaches. The sample consisted of 100 subjects, 26 of whom were neurotic and 24 of whom were psychotic. They were treated in small groups, headed by the author (the experimental group). An equal number and the same categories of patient attended control psychiatric sessions (the control group). All subjects were tested twice. With three instruments: the semantic differential (with twelve existential categories, five general therapy, and three ego psychology categories), the Kotchen test, and MMPI (midiform). A discriminative analysis of tests and the repeated test data, statistically significant, revealed experiential changes in existential categories, such as "Freedom," "Sex," and "Love" amongst psychotics; and in the case of both psychotic and neurotic patients, treated in groups and compared with the controls, such categories as "Understanding among people." With the help of MMPI, a statistically significant reduction of hysteria in neurotic subjects was established, as well as the preventive effects of group psychotherapy regarding the emergence of psychopathy in psychotic patients. Correlation calculations indicated a greater discrimination in the perception of changes using existential categories in the experiencing of psychotic and depressive patients. Finally, the results obtained are discussed from the viewpoints of clinical experience, results obtained in similar research studies, and unanswered questions resulting from such research.     

Pragmatic Existential Therapy

A pragmatic model of existential therapy is offered to support the thesis that brief, solution focused therapy is a clinical application of existential psychology. Superseding pioneering existential therapies more concerned with insight than with clinical technique, pragmatic existential therapy is a dynamic clinical intervention facilitating in patients, decision, choice, self-commitment, and concrete action, the goal of which is movement toward the future and fulfillment of patients' latent potentials. In addition to clarifying the model's theoretical focus on (a) lived experience, (b) self-creation, and (c) existential anxiety, practical guides to brief existential treatment are offered. Sources from existential philosophy and psychology, as well as brief solution focused treatment, are used to evidence core elements of an existential therapy that is not contemplative and insight-focused, but pragmatic and action-based.     

Existential Family Trauma Therapy

In this article the process of existential family trauma therapy is outlined and described. This process includes the treatment elements of holding, telling, mastering and honoring the family's trauma experiences and trauma pain. Case illustrations are provided and previous research is reviewed.     

Existential Confrontation and Religiosity

Recent research suggests that religious intrinsicness should predict a failure to confront existential problems whereas an interactional orientation should promote the opposite influence. This study, however, demonstrated that intrinsicness is associated only with traditional religious resolutions of such difficulties and that the interactional approach is essentially unrelated to confrontation with existential realities. These data therefore failed to support claims that orthodox, intrinsic individuals are rigid in their approach to the basic existential questions of life; the data also illustrated the importance of differentiating thought content from thought process in analyzing religious influences on psychological functioning.     

Existential perspectives on death anxiety

Construct validity is the hallmark of Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (1970), which has generated a healthy stream of research of paramount importance in the USA and all over the world. This paper contends that scores on this scale provide valuable scientific knowledge on group norms. To expand the concept of death anxiety it is necessary to supplement empirical with qualitative research. Persons with the same scores may show qualitatively different fears of death, and vice versa. Total reliance on empirical scales may not disclose the depth of bipolar meaning in a "life-death anxiety." Templer's scale is a mixture of fears, phobias, and obsessions with thoughts of illness, cancer, heart disease, and wars. A bipolar "life-death anxiety" continuum requires phenomenology to reach beyond the 15 items to the process of "experiencing." The scale addresses "thoughts" about the death of others even though its items are cast in the first person singular. This provides group norms of a "cognitive-affective" construct, with limited generality cross-culturally. Means do not disclose fully meaningful comparisons between persons or cultures. Death Anxiety as an existential anticipatory mode of "being-in-the-world" is embedded in a personal/genetic/cultural matrix that may vary individually and culturally.     

皮尔士存在图研究

存在图是现代逻辑草创时期皮尔士在其关系演算和谓词逻辑的基础上发展起来的、表示逻辑句子和推理的图式系统,是皮尔士用来证明其形而上学的工具,它的重要性直到计算机表示的图示推理得到发展后才得以确认。本文首先以经典逻辑为背景研究存在图的各个部分,然后讨论存在图在当代许多学科领域的回应和应用以及它在逻辑史上的地位,最后考察存在图对于皮尔士形而上学的意义。     

Existential faith and biblical philosophy

In this article, I present a case for a kind of existential theology which would be philosophical and metaphysical, though not broadly Platonic and classical, and biblical though not illogical. What I present will be an attempt to clarify and justify what I call ??existential hayatological theism??. In so doing I will draw on insights from what Edmond La B Cherbonnier and Claude Tresmontant designated as ??biblical philosophy?? and ??biblical metaphysics?? as well as from the neo-classical philosophies of Charles Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead, especially that of Whitehead.