SELF IN THE PATH(O)S OF THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT: TOWARDS A NEW CLINICAL THEORY

Abstract

Starting from the New Enlightenment, announced by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka to be emerging in the post-postmodern era, a conflict is possible to manifest between the positive spirit in the name and the awareness of today’s societal and cultural problems. The paper focuses to resolving this conflict. The idea of New Enlightenment comes out of Tymieniecka’s phenomenological analysis of the logoic networks of life with identification of logoic unification of reason and intuition, and the insight into the ontological self-poiesis of life, i.e. ontopoiesis. Scientific progress takes place due to the ontopoietic self-disclosure of life. Understanding the ontopoiesis refocuses attention from trauma to the growing loci of the self, and creates an emergent alternative to existential pessimism of postmodern therapies. The paper examines healing aspects of ontopoietic direct intuition that mediate living engagement with the real. Human subject is not thrown into existence against the will, but is integrated into the flow of life and posesses selfreflective freedom of choice. This reframing of existential yearning invokes new clinical theory. The expanded interpretation of self and other, of health and disease calls for transformation of the mind towards the rise of ontopoietic intuition and direct perception of logoic ontopoiesis.

Keywords

• Tymieniecka
• phenomenology
• self
• postmodernism
• clinical theory