[Xmca-l] Re: CoExperiencing as a Philosophy of Practice.

[mike cole]

Hi Larry--

Thanks for your continuing explication of your reading of Vasiliuk. Putting
aside psychoanalysis and psychotherapy for a moment, I am totally behind
the delaration
that  *cultural mediation OF experience* which is a KEY ELEMENT", plus
co-experiencing as the necessary condition for that cultural mediation.

mike

On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 4:17 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Vasilyuk is developing the *philosophy of Practice* as a psychotechnical
> *system*.
> He says in his historical outline of the different *basic foundations* on
> which psychology has relied [from suggestibility to *becoming aware* to
> *emancipation* to reliance on learning  to reliance on experiencing to the
> current reliance on experiencing [as existential/humanistic] which is
> intersecting with todays reliance on productively producing internal
> psychological transformations oriented to enriching the meaning of being.
>
> Vasilyuk says the task exploring the changing reliances of psychology as a
> practice is not to describe the *factual* history of psychology and the
> reliances of psychotherapy but to elicit the logic of history. In other
> words to *listen* to the evolving IMPLICIT plot that gives meaning and
> direction to the subsequent acts of the development of psychology. (page
> 11)
>
> One of the key elements Vasilyuk identifies is the concept of *cultural
> mediation of experiences*. He says:
> Historically cumulative experiencings with standard situations crystallize
> in various SYMBOLIC FORMS; when a person experiences crises, his
> consciousness might get connected to these symbolic forms, an so the
> process of experiencing, without losing its personality-oriented
> uniqueness, gains ADDITIONAL DEPTH AND PRODUCTIVITY. (page 18).
>
> It is this additional depth and productivity as symbolic that Vasilyuk is
> generating within his evolving implicit *plot* oriented to transforming
> psychology in order to enrich the meaning of being.  This is also the theme
> Vasilyuk is relying on in his other article *Prayer, Silence, and
> Psychotherapy*. This is the living symbol of prayer on the boundary of
> experiencing and silence/stillness.
>
> Here is Vygotsky exploring the *depth* of symbolism in his own words:
>
> Ophelia's tragedy [a personification] is exactly LIKE a lyrical
> accompaniment, that towers over the entire play, which is full of the
> dreadful torment of INEXPRESSIBILITY, of the most profound dark,
> mysterious, and SACRED melodies that in some incomprehensible and
> miraculous way REVEAL AND EMBODY what is most exciting, most allusive, and
> touchingly important, what is DEEPEST AND DARKEST, but what is most tragic
> that is OVERCOME and enlightened, and what IS MOST MYSTICAL in the entire
> play. Thus tragedy turns into PRAYER .... as though with an oblational and
> expiatory and PRAYERFUL light, it gives religious illumination to the
> tragedy." (page 61 of Vasilyuk's article.)
>
> Vasiliuk then comments: "No matter how much the devotees of Marxist
> materialism try to conceal Vygotsky's religiosity from themselves and us,
> it is perfectly obvious that THESE words [LP -1st order words]  could only
> have been written by a person with deep personal EXPERIENCE with prayer."
> (page 61).
>
> To sum up, I am MARKING [for orientation purposes]  the concept of
> *cultural mediation OF experience* which is a KEY ELEMENT of coexperiencing
> psychotherapy AS philosophy of practice. I believe that the same *symbolic
> gravity* can be expressed through changing images. The plot of "falling
> away from* and *returning to* can be expressed in multiple symbols such
> as turning away from God, turning away from the natural sublime, turning
> away from one's true authentic self, These images are expressing different
> *reliances* but are sharing the same symbolic plot as the cultural
> mediation of experiencing. The IMPLICIT deepening of coexperience that is
> now emerging in Russia since the 1980's that Vasilyuk is plotting may be
> implicitly enveloped in this same mytheme of falling away from *the source*
> and then the return to this *source.
>
> The book *The Religious and Romantic Roots of Psychoanalysis* by Suzanne
> Kirschner has plotted this particular myth flowing through Western ways of
> experiencing the meaning of being. She is tracing the roots of the
> emergence of Freudian psychoanalysis but it is the more general philosophy
> of practice as including this KEY ELEMENT of cultural mediation as
> deepening coexperiences that I am highlighting.
> As Vasilyuk says: the task is to LISTEN FOR *the evolving IMPLICIT
> plot that gives meaning and direction to the subsequent acts of the
> *development* of psychology [including the KEY symbolic element that
> *deepens* experience beyond the personal existential.
>
> Larry
>



-- 

It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
object that creates history. Ernst Boesch