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New Existentialists

The Future of Existential Psychology: Upgrading Existential Psychology

03/14/2013

It is not uncommon for a person in distress to decide that he would like some help with what’s ailing him: a certain malaise, a certain sort of sadness, and a certain inability or unwillingness to go on. In his search for help, he might turn to spiritual and religious practices, to traditional psychotherapy and psychopharmacology, to filling his day with activities that he hopes will prove meaningful. Then one day he stumbles on something that has a familiar, comforting and even exciting ring to it: existential psychology. He reads about it. It sounds more like philosophy than...

Posted at 11:00 AM

Rethinking Complexity

Family Business as a Model for Sustainability and Social Responsibility

03/14/2013

I have been interviewing family owners of large global family enterprises that have sustained the family wealth and positive connections over several generations. One member of the 4th generation of a family--now numbering more than 100 family owners--reflected on her experience of going to annual family business meetings for nearly a half century! At first the meetings were information sessions, where the paternalistic family leader presented the news of the business to passive family owners. Over time, while family members were always proud of the values and long-term commitment to...

Posted at 09:00 AM

New Existentialists

The Madonna and the Whore

03/13/2013

Women and sexual behavior is a topic that greatly fascinates many in our society. In the last 50 years, we have been witnessing an ongoing sexual revolution for women. Women have increasingly rejected the roles that have been cast on them by society and have taken a much more liberated stance to their sexuality. In the 80's, Madonna shocked people with her music, on-stage behavior, and clothing. Now, what Madonna did in the 80's would be considered mild. However, the cultural constructs that have been placed on women have not changed much and women are still often categorized in two...

Posted at 11:00 AM

Rethinking Complexity

The Future of Learning

03/13/2013

Today's organizations tend to focus on getting better and better at what made them successful. This can be problematic, according to Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma. “The problem is that this leaves companies vulnerable to the disruptive innovations that emerge in the murky, low-margin bottom of the market," Christensen explained in a recent interview with Wired magazine. Christensen noted that journalism, publishing (more broadly), and anything supported by advertising are the next industries that, he believes, are ripe for disruption. And, he said...

Posted at 07:58 AM

New Existentialists

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Experiment in Love

03/12/2013

Paul Ricoeur famously identified Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud as the “masters of suspicion.” They saw what most held sacred, and looked for the man behind the curtain. But there are other ways to disclose the man behind the curtain, and perhaps better ways—such as through a hermeneutics of love. Love is a way to be with a person that does not coerce the hidden truth to the surface, but rather cultivates a trusting openness by which the other comes to reveal him- or herself on his or her own terms. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Servant of a Hermeneutics of Love. He believed...

Posted at 11:00 AM

New Existentialists

Corporate Culture’s Snake Oil Salesmanship

03/11/2013

As existential practitioners, most of us are probably in favor of more direct, face-to-face relating and interactions than modern technology encourages. I can’t imagine that there are many existential practitioners who would prefer a room full of people all texting other people to a room full of people actually engaging in meaningful dialogue with people in that same room. So why does a recent report in The New York Times announcing that Yahoo want more of their workers to stop working from home and telecommuting and instead, return to desks in the office. And Yahoo is not alone—...

Posted at 11:00 AM

Rethinking Complexity

Evolutionary Enlightenment

03/11/2013

It does not take much analysis to conclude that we are at the threshold of much needed change. We live in a world in crisis: economic, social, and environmental. Our nations are trapped in an economic model that no longer works. We believe that more technology, higher consumerism, and fewer regulations will fix our economies and life will be better again. Socially, we have come to accept the disparities between those that have plenty and those that do not have much at all. We excuse our indolence about this struggle by stating that the poor must not really want to improve their situation....

Posted at 09:15 AM

New Existentialists

Themes in Phenomenology: Jitendranath Mohanty on Intentionality

03/08/2013

Reading J. N. Mohanty's essay "Husserl's Concept of Intentionality" in Analecta Husserliana I (1971), the following passage, discussing the Logische Untersuchungen, stood out to me: The static analysis lays bare the structure of what is called an intentional act whereby the word 'act' has to be taken not in its ordinary usage as meaning an activity or a process, but simply standing for all intentional mental states. Intentionality is not a kind of activity, but the ordinary concept of action is itself an intentional concept. (p. 106) Now, this kind of understated...

Posted at 11:00 AM

New Existentialists

The Future of Existential Psychology: Existential Practice in Singapore

03/07/2013

A brief introduction about myself I am a social worker from Singapore—a young one. My career in this field is barely five years old. Prior to my current work as a school guidance counselor, I have previously worked in community-based family services and mental health services. The mental health services field in Singapore In Singapore, provisions of staffing for family and mental health services are largely government-funded. It is also a field that has been chronically understaffed. For a long time, it had also been widely acknowledged as a field that underpaid its staff due to...

Posted at 11:00 AM

Rethinking Complexity

The Cashier and the Envelope: A Tale of Mindful Awareness

03/07/2013

Once upon a time (this week on Wednesday to be exact), in a city among the hills (Atlanta), a part-time cashier spotted an envelope just off the curb of the park-and-ride deck at the international terminal of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Puzzled, the cashier picked up the envelope and found it stuffed with $7,000 in cold hard cash (that's 70 $100 bills to be exact). Unbeknownst to her, the money belonged to a foot doctor about to board a flight to an exotic land known as Costa Rica. The good doctor, who hailed from a neighboring territory called Alabama, was completely...

Posted at 08:42 AM