Experiencing a Break-up: Phenomenology of a Critical Situation and the Means of Psychological Help

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the study of the phenomenology of experiencing a break- up. It is suggested to view the break-up as a type of loss and a crisis in the dialogical reality of the person’s life. As a model for the analysis, Fyodor Vasilyuk’s model of “addressed experiencing” is used. The author brings forward the hypothesis that the dynamics of the relations between the different structural elements of the model, namely the “narrator” and the “character”, the “addressee” and the “subject” of the experience, serves as the key dynamics in experiencing a break-up. The article contains a study of the break-up narrative in scientific and common speech, sug- gests a periodization of the break-up experience, gives a structured description of the phenomenology of a critical situation at its every stage, and formulates elements of a psychotherapeutic strategy with account of the revealed specifics. It is concluded that the productivity of experiencing a break-up is connected with restoring an author’s position towards one’s own experiencing and restoring person’s dialogical openness.

Keywords

• break-up
• grief experiencing
• critical situation
• crisis
• addressedness
• relationships
• dialog