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Hegel, Dostoyevsky and Carl Rogers: between humanism and spirit

Center for Distance Learning, SUNY, Empire State College, 111 West Avenue, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, USA, Ronnie.Mather{at}esc.edu

There has been a heated debate within psychotherapeutic counseling of the role that can be afforded to spirituality within the counseling setting. If one single factor can be accorded primacy, then it might be reckoned the late Carl Rogers turned to spirituality in the last decade of his life. The following examines this debate in relation to the supposed, and, it might be argued, demonstrated, ineffable nature of alterity in relation to intersubjectivity in general. Many of the protagonists in this debate have highlighted the inadequacy of discursive language in conveying the essential moment of connectedness in Rogerian therapy between two individuals. This gap, perceived or real, has been filled by rendering the relationship between therapist and client as spiritual. It is argued that this move has already been rehearsed in at least two classical texts, G. W. F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Both authors at quite crucial junctures in these texts turn to spirituality within the context of a very specific self—other relation. There is very little discernible difference between these described relationships, in either substance or form, and those described by Rogers and others as being their most successful therapeutic encounters. All of them can be regarded as a therapeutic relationship between two specific individuals that derives benefits for both irreducible to, and irreplaceable by, the psycho-social benefits of wider group membership.

Key Words: Fyodor Dostoyevsky • G. W. F. Hegel • intersubjectivity • Carl Rogers • spirit

History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 21, No. 1, 33-48 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0952695107086151


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