Maurice Friedman

The philosophy of Martin Buber

Part of a series of studies of contemporary philosophers, this volume focuses on Martin Buber.

Martin Buber and Dialogical Psychotherapy

This article has a quadruple thrust: first, to present Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue; second, to give a full account of Maurice Friedman’s 10 elements of Dialogical Psychotherapy; third, to portray Martin Buber’s influence on the theory and practice of several psychotherapists and psychoanalysts; and thus to depict the growing range of what the author calls the Dialogical Psychotherapy Movement. Accordingly, the article is divided into the following sections: an introduction; Buber’s “Life of Dialogue”; a definition of Dialogical Psychotherapy; a presentation of the elements of Dialogical Psychotherapy; two illustrations of Dialogical Psychotherapy in practice; a brief discussion of “Therapists of Dialogue,” who use some of the elements of Dialogical Psychotherapy without making “healing through meeting” central; three sections on therapists who do make healing through meeting central, namely, Dialogical Psychotherapists proper, Relational Psychoanalysts, and Contextual (intergenerational family) Therapists; and a conclusion that briefly summarizes the article and the significance of the Dialogical Psychotherapy Movement.

Buber and Dialogical Therapy: Healing Through Meeting

All depth psychotherapies rely on the effectiveness of human conversation to bring about therapeutic change that benefits the patient. However, many approaches to therapeutic conversation focus on techniques of listening and interpretation. In this article, the author, an internationally known scholar on the life and work of Martin Buber, grounds his understanding of therapeutic dialogue in an ontological understanding of what he calls the interhuman, an understanding within which the essence and meaning of the self is interrelatedness. Beginning with this radically interhuman ontology, the author goes on to delineate 10 central elements of an approach to existential depth psychotherapy that he calls healing through meeting or dialogical psychotherapy. Following his elucidation of each of these 10 elements, he illustrates his approach to dialogical psychotherapy with a description and analysis of his work with a woman who suffered with a deep sense of inferiority, which stood in stark contrast to her outw...

Buber's Philosophy as the Basis for Dialogical Psychotherapy and Contextual Therapy

This article is divided into three sections. The first is an overview of Bubers philosophy of dialogue and his philosophical anthropology. The middle section spells this out in terms of the movement of dialogical psychotherapy in general, including contextual therapy, and discusses books by associated psychotherapists. The third section gives a somewhat detailed overview of contextual therapy as it has developed on the foundations of Bubers common order of human existence and his existential guilt and as it recapitulates such Buberian emphases as meeting others and holding ones ground when one meets them, the normative limitation of mutuality in therapy, imagining the real, and repairing the injured order of existence. It also adds to the discussion of the books of Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, the founder of contextual therapy (by himself and with Geraldine Spark and Barbara Krasner, respectively), a discussion of the growing edge of contextual therapy as it is set forth in Barbara Krasner and Austin Joyces 1995 book Catalyzing TRuth and Trust: The Contextualization of Direct Address.

Constructivism, psychotherapy, and the dialogue of touchstones

Abstract Beginning with the question of why the social constructivist approach to psychotherapy excludes uniqueness, whereas the dialogical approach, which is also a social construct, includes it, I reject the eitherlor of a substantive, essential self on the one hand and mere role playing on the other. I also demonstrate that Gergens “dialogue”, which is really the dialectic interplay of minds, cannot lead to harmony unless it is embodied in a real, caring community that confirms concrete otherness. As a third alternative to the social constructivists eitherlor, I put forward the “dialogue of touchstones” with its integral relation between dialogue and uniqueness and the tension between personal calling and social role that follows from it.

The Outreach of Dialogue

This talk, which is a lightly edited transcription of an award address, summarizes the author’s latest thinking about the value and practical application of Buber’s dialogical approach to relationships, both for individuals and society at large.

Dialogue and the Unique in Humanistic Psychology

ing of characteristics and resemblances can do. In the opaque particular the human is manifested in the umque. William James and John Dewey are two central figures in the stream of American pragmatism; yet their attitudes toward the unique are diametrically opposed. James (1949) says of pragmatism that she is willing &dquo;to count the humblest and most personal experiences. She will count mystical experiences if they have practical consequences. She will take a God who lives in the very dirt of private fact-if that should seem a likely

Buber, Heschel, and Heidegger: Two Jewish Existentialists Confront a Great German Existentialist

This article briefly explores the relationships of existential-theological philosophers Martin Buber and Abraham Heschel with the existential philosopher Martin Heidegger. In particular, the article focuses on the sensitive subject as to how Buber and Heschel related to Heidegger in the aftermath of his affiliation with National Socialism. The author, who knew both Buber and Heschel quite intimately, concludes that although Buber and Heschel had modestly differing responses to Heidegger in the aftermath of World War II, they both converged with respect to his egregious past, and the questions it raised for his philosophy.

Visions of the Self

Friedmans concept of self seems to stand midway between that of self as structure in modern object relations theory and the postmodern focus on meaning within dialogue and discourse. Friedman, leaning upon the work of Buber, describes a dialogical view of the self that both allows for a central core that is unique and ongoing, yet that requires the I-Thou dialogue to come into realization.