Martin Buber on Psychology and Psychotherapy: Essays, Letters, and Dialogue (Martin Buber Library)

This is a ‘must’ for any person engaging or already engaged in a profession associated with the idea of changing people or helping people (e.g., doctors, psychotherapists, nurses, clinical psychologists/social workers/criminologists, …) and I would dare to say even journalists and attorneys. The book is an insight into a backyard of the psychotherapy world that was developing at that time via the experiencing of a renown philosopher, Prof. Buber. The book reports Buber’s theory and understanding on human relationships and healing through relationships as well as Buber disagreements with other theories developed by leading figures such as Freud, Jung, Trub, Binswanger, and Rogers.Buber did not hide his dissent from Freud’s theories. The author reports on Buber’s attempts to approach Freud. Two men, one a renown philosopher (Buber) and one a renown psychotherapist and more specifically a renown psycho-analyst (Freud), both showing interest looking at man’s mental health, the latter emphasizing a deterministic approach and the former emphasizing the in-between of relationships, had apparently never been able to communicate ever.I will refer to Buber’s approach on the unconscious to illustrate one of his disagreements about Freud’s theories. Buber wrote ‘We cannot say anything about the unconscious in itself. It is never given to us. But we can deduce from certain conscious states that there must be certain things. The radical mistake of Freud was to think that he could have it and not have it. The psychoanalyst cannot understand the unconscious of the other, but he can understand the conscious of the other as a primary thing - there is immediate understanding between man and man.’ (p.230).It is also interesting to critically approach, Buber’s views on guilt reported in the essay ‘Guilt and Guilt Feeling’ he wrote in the 1950’s, (that is, about nearly 70 years ago). As the author reported, Buber’s ’Guilt and Guilt Feeling’ was Buber's major critique of Freud. This essay is still highly relevant today. Approaching guilt within therapeutic settings is a complex issue, either when looked through the eyes of the one who has been injured, the one who injured another or the therapist/professional who took on himself the task of providing help. Buber wrote on existential guilt ’Existential guilt occurs when someone injures an order of the human world whose foundations he knows and recognises as those of his own existence and of all common human existence’ (p. 116), and this might be kept in mind and further explored. [Note: For getting a slight illustration of this, I would recommend the recent movie of Francois Ozon, ‘Frantz’ (2016), a masterpiece looking at associations between guilt and, death and life, disguised relationships and genuine relationships. Adrien, a young soldier survived WWI but was devoured by his guilt feeling for having kill an unknown soldier in the battlefield. His guilt feelings devoured him till madness. He needed forgiveness. His need moved him in that direction, drawing in his enterprise the family members of this unknown soldier, Frantz ]The dialogue between Rogers and Buber is unique. Rogers, the father of the client-centered therapy tried to approach and understand Buber’s knowledge on his understanding of people and of relationships. And I suppose he tried also to understand the similarities and the differences between his approach and Buber’s approach. I’ll let the reader be touched by the encounter and not be influenced by my own experiencing of this unique interview.I was quite surprised to discover that there was no report of any encounter or written exchange with either Fritz Perls or Laura Perls, or their followers. Laura and Fritz Perls are the founders of Gestalt Therapy which has been and is still influenced by Buber’s work on I-Thou. This was missing.This extraordinary book reopens an important debate on therapeutic interventions as responsible interventions. Professing as a doctor, psychotherapist, clinician (e.g., psychologist, social worker, criminologist, nurse), journalist or lawyer is choosing to intervene. A few old, basic and classic implicit questions invite to reflection:Why does one show interest in wanting to change or help people?What is a therapeutic intervention and who really needs that?What is a therapeutic intervention and who really does not need that?How is a therapeutic intervention really able to help people in need of help?What does the person in need of help, either personally requested or ordered by a third party, really need?