The living, unlike the dead, can always be different, said the outstanding existential psychotherapist James Bugental. This idea is developed by psychologist Dmitry Leontiev in his lecture “The Challenge to Be Alive: On the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of James Bugenthal.”
“When I first heard Bugenthal, I was struck by the way he spoke. It was in 1993, at the Saybrook Institute (San Francisco, USA), where the 78-year-old Bugental gave a lecture and where I came at the invitation of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. At that time, I already had a lot of experience with another outstanding scientist and psychotherapist, Viktor Frankl, and I was struck by what made them different. When Frankl spoke, it seemed that he already had a ready-made recording built from beginning to end, and he reproduced it brilliantly and without hesitation. It looked very impressive – the text seemed to unfold before his eyes. With Bugental it was exactly the opposite – one got the impression that he was completely improvising, saying what he just now came to mind. And in the same way, absolutely spontaneously, he communicated with the audience.
James Bugental (James Bugental, 1915–2008) is the largest theorist and unique therapist, one of the leaders of the humanistic trend in psychology, an associate of Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Rollo May. In 1963 he was elected as the first president of the Humanistic Psychology Association. The editor of the famous book, a kind of “humanistic manifesto” – “The Challenges of Humanistic Psychology” (“The Challenges of Humanistic Psychology”, 1967), the author of several books, one of which is “The Science of Being Alive” (Klass, 1998).
Of course, his impromptu were prepared. But all the same, his desire to improvise was well combined with the key words for him “life”, “movement”, “path”. Bugental has repeatedly contrasted in his books real life, authentic life, and life, as if recorded on a tape, which we scroll through without thinking. According to Bugenthal, this is the most important question of psychotherapy and the most important task that we solve: am I alive at the moment or on film?
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- Fit extreme experiences into the picture of life
After all, what is “living”? It’s something to do with movement. And the fact that at any moment can be different. And the dead is only what it is, and it cannot be otherwise. (By the way, Merab Mamardashvili gave this definition in parallel with Bugental.) The dead is our experience, events and attitudes recorded in our memory. The main feature of such an automatic life is the reproduction of exactly what is already “recorded”, and the impossibility of changing, moving. But there is something else in us besides films – this is what is alive. We can act based on habitual patterns, or we can act based on our ability to be aware of ourselves and the world around us and take responsibility for our choices.
Develop sensitivity to everything
Bugental was born in 1915 to an ordinary American family. He went to college, worked in the public service, and in 1948 received his PhD in psychology from Ohio State University under the guidance of George Kelly, the author of personality construct theory. This theory suggests that we are constantly building a picture of the world, imposing certain patterns and scales on the world. Moreover, this is an individual matter: we can describe the same things in different ways, through a different system of scales. And we always have a choice: if something goes wrong, everyone is able to change the design system. Bugental borrowed from Kelly the idea of global constructs. He was sure that the form of life that is authentic and the one that is “recorded” on “tapes” can be separated. To do this, it is necessary to develop sensitivity to what is happening in us.
Pass the tests
- Can you live in the present?
Where does the search process begin? Here is an example of an instruction he gives to his patient: “Lie down on the couch, take some time to get comfortable, think about what is bothering you. Pay special attention to how this theme resonates in your body and sensations. Describe, as openly as possible, your thoughts and experiences. Tell us what it makes you think about. How do you feel while you are talking about it? What was your life like before and how would you like to see your future? As you do this, keep your attention on the feelings you feel in your body. Uncovering what’s going on in your mind while you’re here is the most important thing.”
Actually, James Bugental himself was attracted by his highest degree of sensitivity and attentiveness to the environment, literally to everything. He caught the smallest details in the conversation and in the behavior of the interlocutor, spontaneously and accurately reacted to them. That is, what he wrote coincided with how he lived, for me this is very important.
Dmitry Leontiev, Doctor of Psychology, Head of the International Laboratory for Positive Psychology of Personality and Motivation at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Professor at the Department of Psychology at Lomonosov Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov and National Research University Higher School of Economics, Winner of the Viktor Frankl Foundation Prize (Vienna) for achievements in the field of meaning-oriented humanistic psychotherapy, Honorary member of the International Association of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis.
His open lecture on Bugental took place on September 24, 2015 at the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis.