Wie Konnen Wir Werden, Die Wir Sind?: Bildung, Person Und Psychotherapie (Hardcover)

Katharina Kaminski examines the relationship of self-formation (Bildung) and psychotherapy, which played a prominent role during the formative years of psychoanalysis and depth psychology, also stimulating a variety of developmental processes in both patients and practitioners. With economic factors, medical practice and instruction manuals becoming ever more significant, the focus on such concerns is being increasingly lost today. The author recurs to the original exchange relationship between self-formation and psychotherapy, and researches the cultural-historical origins of a concept of self-formation of relevance to psychotherapy. Plato, Humboldt and Nietzsche are presented as seminal thinkers formulating a personalist understanding of self-formation. The aim of the present study is to reflect on the value of the person in the psychotherapeutic context. This is enhanced by self-knowledge and a multi-faceted process of self-formation involving both patient and therapist. Hence, the practice of psychotherapy becomes emancipatory and is not reduced to the status of the purely medical treatment of patients.