In memory of Susan Sontag
(1933-2004)*
By Shlomit C. Schuster
When I finished in
1994 the first draft of my book, Philosophy Practice;
An Alternative to Counseling and Psychotherapy, I sent it to Ms. Susan
Sontag.
In response to my dedication of the book to her, and my letter, she
sent me a card from New
York with the words:
14 December 1994
Dear Ms. Schuster,
I was touched by your kind words and the
dedication.
With my warm wishes for your projects,
present and future.
Cordially,
Susan Sontag
I
finished the first draft of Philosophy Practice:
An Alternative to Counseling and Psychotherapy, but the book still evolved
and changed, and only after a couple of years was it really ready to be published.
During those years Ms. Sontag’s reply was, and ever will remain, a
treasure and moral encouragement to me. I met Sontag twice, once in
Jerusalem and
once in Frankfurt. Both were occasions
when she received prize awards for her works. After each of these
ceremonies she gladly chatted with old and new friends, gave away autographs,
posed for press photographers, and talked with journalists and enthusiasts
waiting to speak to her. Alas, our last “arrivederci” to Ms.
Sontag came too soon. How sorry I still am, that on the 28th
of December 2004, I received the news that Sontag had died in the early morning
of that day. Though it was no public secret that she again had received
treatment against cancer, her death seemed sudden and unexpected.
A
change in my philosophical practice is that I see Sontag’s works now as
having more importance then before; her writings are the remaining relics of
her highly moral and aesthetic way of being. Before philosophical
practice came in my life, Sontag appeared in
it with a message that touched me: she called for people to
experience art immediately, instead of seeing art objects through the glasses
of art historians and critics. Yes, more so, life itself had to be
experienced to the fullest, and a way to that is through the experience of
art. The shadow world of meanings that deplete immediate experience and
communication had to be broken down, and this not only in the art world.
Truth is the actual experiencing of life in all its aspects: of suffering,
ecstasy, and all else there is. Such intimate knowledge of truth is a
first necessity for a writer, but other professionals would
also benefit from it.
In 2002, Ms. Sontag visited the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia
University and gave there
a reading from Regarding the Pain of Others. Additionally Sontag
attended the seminar discussion at the Columbia
Presbyterian Hospital
on Illness as Metaphor. As an introduction to Sontag’s
performance, Dr. Rita Charon emphasized that Sontag’s work and the
discussion thereof in a multi-disciplinary forum demonstrates that
“witnessing suffering and responding with empathy are larger than any one
discipline.” The study of Sontag’s work at medical school can teach
physicians the art of listening to their patients. The Sontag classics
such as Illness as Metaphor, Aids and Its Metaphors, The Way We Live
Now, and Alice in Bed, are tools for demystifying the experience of
suffering. Such demystification seems also to be needed in the professional
fields that focus on mental distress and emotional suffering!
The life and writings of Susan Sontag have been and remain a source of
inspiration to me. I hope that other philosophical practitioners may find
as well a source of strength and guidance in Sontag’s legacy. Philosophy
Practice: An Alternative to Counseling and Psychotherapy
has several references to Sontag’s oeuvre which will further show the
interrelatedness of her thought with philosophical
counseling.
From
the onset of philosophical practice in 1981 it was clear that Dr.
Gerd B. Achenbach’s approach would be attractive to
people from all over the world. Achenbach’s approach is based on
reflecting on everyday life and the experiences of each person. It is not limited
to any particular philosophy. Philosophical practice is a free philosophical
dialogue! Through its openness, philosophical counseling can indeed embrace all
traditions and disciplines, while not overwhelming these by its embrace, nor
does it becomes enslaved by schools and methods. Socrates, the so-called
father of Western philosophy, has often been considered the ancient
philosophical practitioner par excellence. Yet, as I point out in the
historical sketch in Chapter 2, long before Socrates, other men and women in
possession of practical wisdom and a
philosophy of life were helping themselves and others through
philosophizing. Over the last two decades, Achenbach's idea about
philosophical counseling has inspired philosophers worldwide, and philosophical
counseling has become a global practice. There is evidence of a steadily
growing international movement with individual philosophical practitioners in
many European countries, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South-America, and Africa.
Also, societies for philosophical practice flourish. In addition to the
International Society for Philosophical Practice, there are national societies
in many countries worldwide: e.g., in Germany,
the Netherlands, Britain, Norway,
Finland, Italy, Spain,
India, Israel, Australia,
Canada, and the USA. The
eighth international conference on Philosophical Practice has been in Seville,
Spain, in April
2006.
With the
success of Achenbach’s initial practice, other so-called philosophical
counseling perspectives have emerged. Some of these new forms challenge
the critical and humanistic principles of the original perspective. To
regard the actual as the real, and vice versa is essential in philosophical
counseling. However, the new kinds of philosophical counseling are often
merely shadows of the original idea; their concerns are just with theories and
methods of counseling and do not relate at all to the free encounter with the
thoughts and experiences of individuals or groups.
Often these other types of philosophical counseling practices have not
developed within the original, critical Achenbach approach, and are often only
poor attempts to imitate it, or are pseudo therapies and alternative new age
practices. And this cannot be otherwise: Everything under the sun,
everything that has the radiance of uniqueness, has its shadows. These shadow
approaches have their own charms and purposes, and can be beneficial sometimes
as well. One need not be worried or intimidated by the success of these new
practices. There is hope that in due time, those who search for truth,
goodness, and wisdom will
recognize which philosophical counseling approaches made a real contribution to
humanity, and which are substantial and of value to the philosophical
discipline.
At present, the aim
of many young philosophical counselors is to quickly invent another thought
system, mostly deriving from the desire to produce something fashionable,
something new, something different, as if that were philosophical
counseling. It is not practice and life experiences that are the basis
for these new practices, but philosophical and psychological imagination;
merely gross speculations. In the light of these developments Philosophy
Practice: An Alternative to Counseling and Psychotherapy
remains highly relevant: I challenge philosophers in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Australia to reexamine the root
ideas of the philosophical counseling movement and to stay with these, since
this is the real force for a sound development of philosophical counseling.
An aspect of
philosophical practice that has been little explored so far by the majority of
philosophical counselors is philosophical psychoanalysis. Yet, several case
studies in this
book show that people want to come to terms with their past, their childhood,
and with their dream life. In spite of the fact that these issues are the
main subjects of investigation in classical psychoanalysis, some people prefer
to investigate these topics in philosophical counseling sessions.
In my book The Philosopher’s Autobiography: A Qualitative Study I
present in detail a theoretical justification for philosophical psychoanalysis
as a suitable approach for philosophical
counseling.
August
2005
Shlomit
Schuster, Jerusalem
* Section of the foreword to the Italian (2006) and Chinese
(2007) translation of
Philosophy Practice: An Alternative to Counseling
and Psychotherapy, (1999) by Shlomit
C. Schuster.
(Copyright Shlomit
C. Schuster, 2005, 2006, 2007. All rights reserved. This internet publication includes minor changes from the
original forewords. For information on the English, Dutch, Italian and Chinese editions of Philosophy Practice: An Alternative to Counseling and Psychotherapy see http://www.geocities.com/centersophon/cv1.html.)