A Phenomenological Reflection on the Experience of Hope

Abstract

Many theologians and philosophers, but few psychologists, have reflected on the experience of hope. It is not my intention, then, to reinvent the wheel or to belabor the obvious. What I intend to do is to elaborate a select number of themes often discussed in the hope literature and to examine them in the concrete context of the actively addicted alcoholic's pilgrimage from hopelessness to a sober life of hope. On this pilgrimage we shall explore the theme of the human necessity to hope, the phenomenon of despair, the embodied quality of hope vividly expressed in the human upright posture, body temporality and relaxation, imaginative thinking's central role in hoping, and finally the ersatz hope of optimism. The interpersonal profile of hoping is highlighted and its foundational power in therapeutic transformation explicated.