SEVEN PAPERS ON EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS ... - Wagner College

I would like to characterize the existential therapist as a specialist in lived time who tries to
understand the lived time of his patient nevertheless experiences pain of various kinds.17The
body I have has from his perspective, as an outsider, on his patient's existence. The existential
therapist attempts to coordinate his lived time with the patient’s lived time, which is to say, to his
existence. He is then in a position to begin to understand the patient’s world. Asa therapist, the
congruence that results is an opportunity for the validation of the patient.
An Instance of the Human Kind of Be-ing Both Is and Exists
In general, from the point of view of his lived body, a person both is and exists. As indicated
earlier, to admit this does not, however, entail claiming that a person is divided into his :being”
and his “existence.” The distinction is only virtual and does not introduce a new dualism. It
merely allows for two perspectives on the real person: his own perspective and the perspective
of an other. The distinction between the body I have and the body I am, which was made
earlier, allows me to develop Heidegger’s view that existence is always coexistence and apply it
to existential therapy.
Applying the distinctions made, we say that both patient and therapist have access to
the body the patient has, but only the therapist (and here he is no different from an other
“outsider”) has access to the body the patient is. All that I am is marked upon the body I have,
and there is no denying that the body I have allows people to identify me as something and
someone. But I exist, and my existence and what I am calling the body I am are the same. The
human organism is the site of this dual perspective of what I am and my existence. As
Heidegger explains, this duality makes the human body different from the animal body. The
body I have is the physical body studied by natural science, but I do not experience it as
something different or separate from my existence, simply because I cannot experience my
existence at all. Only an other can do this.
The existential therapist helps the patient understand this double perspective of the
human body, which is the site of the ambiguity about what he is and his existence. It is well
known among therapists that nearly all complaints that bring someone to a therapist of any kind
concern how the patient experiences his body, in the terminology of this paper, the body he
has. For example, he says he feels shaky or nervous, he is fatigued, paraesthesias haunt his limbs,
he feels palpitations in his chest, he feels crawling sensations on his scalp, he has vague
abdominal aches, and so on. As such, his body has been reduced to something, what I have
termed the body he has, and in the absence of any lesions (which also reduce the lived body to
the body one has), he nevertheless experiences “physical” pains of various kinds. The body I
have has a past. It openly reveals its genetic heritage including it sex. It also exemplifies how the
person sees himself, since the body he has has come to represent how he has cared or failed to
care for his lived body. The way he carries himself, the way he sits, the ways he dresses himself,
what he chooses to expose or hide – all reveal how the patient sees the body he has. The body
he has shows the scars left from minor or horrible injuries. Changes in hair style and clothing, loss
or gain of weight, change in his shape and proportions, all of which changes in the body one
has, signal changes in the person's existence, as we will see.
The body one has is, however, an illusory thing, in that the lived body itself, which is in
constant interaction with its environment, sometimes in very noticeable ways (for example, by
accidents). The persistent illusion that the body one has is a fixed item has come to overshadow
the changing nature of the body one is, the lived (existing) body. This has happened under the
dominance of the Cartesian view of the body as a res extensa, and it is a habit of conception
that is hard to modify.
When we says that a child has little sense of his body, we mean simply that he has little
sense of the body he has. An infant's body or a young child's body is entirely a lived body. He
has not yet been convinced that he has anything like a Cartesian body. This body becomes the
focus of what Erik Erikson has termed the child's psychosocial identity. By contrast, the body one