Psychological Perspectives

Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course One Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

26-02-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

ESSAYOPGAVE BACHELOR FAGMODULKURSUS 2

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course One Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

26-02-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

FORÅR 2014

Studerende: Christopher Macias Escalona

Studienummer: 52265

Vejleder:

Klyngenummer:

Marian Jensen

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course One Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

26-02-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

Psychological Perspectives – Theory and Course Introduction The intention of this paper shall be to uncover the conceptualization of the terms ‘meaning’ and ‘existential anxiety’ within Bjarne Jacobsen’s text – Det Eksistentielle Perspektiv (2012). Furthermore it shall seek to understand how the naive belief in the world’s purposefulness guards us against said existential anxiety. For the second part of the analysis, there will be drawn comparisons and dissimilarities between different schools of thought on the concepts ‘meaning’ and ‘self-realization’. More specifically the schools of thought that shall be presented for said comparative study will be critical theory and poststructuralism using the texts of Axel Honneth, Michel Foucault, Bronwyn Davies and Rom Harré. My intention shall be to display the subtle differences behind the epistemological understanding of individualization in social constructionism within poststructuralism, and the Frankfurt inspired critical theory, and how the criticism of social constructionism within existential psychology is to somewhat extent, misplaced.

Meaning & Existential Anxiety What is meaning? According to Bjarne Jacobsen, the concept of meaning is that of which gives worth to life. However, Jacobsen refrains from putting it so bluntly. Within his textual phrasing, he exemplifies it much more detailed – letting the emotional sphere captivate the reader. As so, Jacobsen displays, by referring to Heidegger, that humans are in-being entities (Jacobsen 2012). Said differently, our physical existence is undoubtedly rooted in a material being. We cannot deny that we do exist, that we have bodies that are composed of matter, that the external world in fact is real, and that we are a part of it. Understanding this is fundamental to comprehend what and how meaning is created thereof and within Jacobsen’s thought pattern. The second important aspect for Jacobsen, is establishing the fact that human life consists of routines. All routines do differ for every individual, but our lives are nevertheless, always comprised by them; hence they are what structures and gives worth and meaning to our everyday lived lives (Jacobsen 2012: 215). Conversely, it is important to denote, that the world we inherit, in all its spheres – being physical, social, cultural, and economic possesses the power to 3

Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course One Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

26-02-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

disrupt our constructed routine orientated lives - a power that it often and implicitly yields. This disruption can force our psychological existence, sense of being and inherent word-life view; our conceptualization of our life as phenomena, to shift so significantly that the attached meaning of our routine-dominated lifestyle is lost – meanwhile the external wold keeps moving vastly forward. In Jacobsen’s words this is exemplified as such: “Tilværelsen strømmer stadig i sin massivitet mod ens samlede sanseapparat, men den bærer ikke sin vante betydning med sig længere, betydningen er væk ” (Jacobsen 2012: 215). It becomes clear, that our values imbedded and practiced within our everyday life, are the dominant factors of which let meaning arise. When our values are challenged to the unbearable – distrust in life arises. Existential discomfort would henceforth be an adequate conceptualization to enlighten said process of a lived dilemma. What I mean with existential discomfort is the process, were individuals are made aware of the absurdity of their lived lives, including their constructed meanings attached to their routines. In other words, it is the distinct moment of clarity that hits you, when you realize that meaning is arbitrary; hence the first step to develop what Jacobsen categorises as existential anxiety. ‘Meaning’ is for Jacobsen therefore nothing more, than specific conceptualizations of our lived lives that are shaped by our routines and coincidences inherent to the world. It is essentially arbitrary and holds therefore no definitive ‘truth’. Still, meaning cannot be explained as a single standing entity, thus it is closely related to the second concept Jacobsen refers to as existential anxiety. They engage in a dialectic relationship; hence one cannot exist without the other. Existential anxiety is the continuous and delicate questioning of meaning, raised by existential discomfort. Some might argue that these two concepts are one and the same, but bear in mind that, were anxiety is ascribed to an emotional and irrational domain, discomfort is reversely ascribed to rationality, because it can be explained. Existential anxiety is the emotional indifference between the coincidences that dictate our lives and the proclaimed meaning they bear (Jacobsen 2012). Said differently, existential anxiety is the delicate, yet powerful feeling experienced through the thought patterns that describe our lives as seemingly coincidental and therefore unimportant. It is the emotional distress that arises from the constant questioning of life’s meaning which by definition is fragile (Jacobsen 2021: 217). In other words, it is the emotional offspring of the rational understanding that our conceptualizations of the world and of our lives are capricious and ostensibly governed by coincidence. In Jacobsen’s words it is the emotional mind-set that arises when

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course One Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

26-02-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

“det eksistentielle perspektiv trænger igennem; (…) for at finde sig selv placeret i en verden, som forståelsen ikke magter” (Jacobsen 2012: 217). To combat the emotional agony, put forth by the existential viewpoint, people make-believe that they live in a comprehendible, linear and uniform world. It gives them closure, stability, but more importantly it gives their lives importance. This mechanism, portrayed as a process of psychological self-protection, is derived from the antagonizing uncertainty that our world and our lives are not purposeful, in a metaphysical sense. We protect ourselves from the crushing waves of the existential perspective; acknowledging its existence, we simultaneously acknowledge the anxiety it by definition puts forth. As so, the existential outlook renders visible the unescapable possibility of always seeing the meaningless in the meaning (Jacobsen 2012: 219) and by doing so, positions the individual in an unwavering process of creating meaning from the contextual world it inhabits, if it wishes to minimize the terrorizing anxiety of existence, thus to realise itself. According to Jacobsen (2012), it is due to said inexorable anxiety that is an inherent part of the existential life-world view, which gives rise to the naive belief in the world’s purposefulness. It is important to understand that it is not the world in itself that gives rise to this existential anxiety; it is the process of questioning the significance of our lives, inherent to human thought and the likelihood of seeing the un-being in the being that creates the anxious and perplexing state of mind, of what we call the existential perspective.

Differences and similarities within ‘meaning’ and ‘self-realization’ There are several schools of thought that shed epistemological light on the concept of meaning and self-realization. One of them is critical theory which was founded by the Frankfurt School. I shall engage primarily with Axel Honneth’s text to illustrate the ontological assumptions that characterise critical theory’s approach to meaning and self-realization. Critical theory seeks to understand the present contextual relationship between society and the individual on three different parameters – subjectivity, social interaction and cultural/economic developments. Because they engage in a dialectic relationship the importance of all three aspects must be taken into account to understand processes of individualization, hence it cannot be explained without knowledge of the cultural, social and economic flux the individual is inherently a part of (Honneth 2004). More importantly is it to understand that critical theory, in the way portrayed in Honneth’s text, seeks to criticise and deconstruct the current

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course One Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

26-02-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

flow of development and put it in relation to historical and institutionalized processes. It can be tricky to see the differences in the ontological assumptions of critical theory and poststructuralism as they both strive to deconstruct taken-for-granted knowledge and therefore fall into the same category of critique. However, if we read between the lines in Foucault’s subject & power (1982) it becomes indisputably clear that they go about this in two different ways. Firstly, critical theory roots the individual to the institutionalized aspects it moves around and within, making it impossible to escape the discursive practices it puts forth. The individual is within this relationship always affected in a given way, which makes it structural in essence, for the reason that the societal framework determines a specific position and gives rise to a specific and implicit self-understanding. This is shown in Honneth’s analysis of self-realization and individualization. He proclaims that such process is intrinsically attached to the “productive force of an economic system” Furthermore constituting that it has “developed into an ideology” of its own (Honneth 2014: 474). Relating back to Foucault, poststructuralism as mentioned above, does not deny that there are certain societal, cultural and economic structures that uphold and execute power on the individual, but there is nevertheless a whole spectrum that goes unquestioned within critical theory, that poststructuralism highlights, and that is the micro-patterns of negotiation between individuals that gives rise to a whole new multitude of powerrelations, meaning construction and self-realization that are, probably influenced by societal processes, but not only limited to said processes (Foucault 1982: 203). As so, both critical theory and poststructuralism agree that the process of self-realization and thereby meaning is undeniably attached to cultural, social and economic discourse, whereas the difference between them happens to fall upon the subjective elbowroom that poststructuralism entails within interaction. Said differently, subjectivity, self-realization and meaning is within poststructuralism created in the making of it, so within social interaction (Davies & Harré 1990), whereas subjectivity, self-realization and meaning within early critical theory is constructed through institutionalized powerrelations (Honneth 2004). The difference between poststructuralism and existential psychology resembles the difference between critical theory and poststructuralism, in the sense that both critical theory and existential psychology acknowledge the existence of the external world as an important aspect of inquiry, for understanding the self. Honneth does this by ascribing ample meaning to the economic system that permeates the

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course One Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

26-02-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

ideology of self-realization as a historical and institutionalized process and Jacobsen equally when acknowledging the resolute in-being of human existence. The social constructionist paradigm within poststructuralism is criticised, from an existential psychological perspective, in the sense that reality can only exist as a construction; hence interaction is therefore an indispensable feature. An existential psychologist would henceforward not deny the existence of the world. Interaction or not, it stands firmly (Jacobsen 2012). Yet, the social constructionist paradigm does not deny the existence of the external world. It is an implicit understanding that it exist within its ontological framework. What it seeks to question, is that talking about the external world, as detached from the individual is meaningless since meaning is only created through the interaction between the objective world and the intersubjective nature of human consciousness. It acknowledges that there are things called mountains, rivers, humans, societies but they hold no legitimacy for our lived understanding as long as we do not interact with said objects or subjects. They exist ‘out there’ but as long as they have no relevancy for our individual everyday lives, there is no point in discussing such issues. The criticism put forth by Jacobsen is to somewhat degree therefore, misplaced; social constructionism does not deny the existence of the external world, it just critically questions its relevancy for subjectivity.

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course One Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

26-02-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

References 

Jacobsen, B. (2012). “det eksistentielle perspektiv” – eksistentiel psykologi – mellem himmel og jord. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur: p.26-42. P.213-221.

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Honneth, A. (2004). “Organized self – Realization; Some Paradoxes of Individualization” – European Journal of Social Theory 7(4): p.463-478. P.53-67.

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Foucault, M. (1982). “The Subject and Power” – Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics: p.195-204. P.83-92.

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Davies, B. & Harré, R. (1990). “Positioning, The Discursive Production of Selves” – Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour 20:10021-8308: p.43-62. P.124-143.

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Held, D. (1980). “Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas” – University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles: P.13-21.

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