Die waarde van literêre teater in die bewussyns-opvoeding van psigoterapiestudente

Abstract

The value of literary theatre in the consciousness education of psychotherapy students The capacity to comprehend experiences in a coherent way and attribute meaning to existence is unique to human beings. Through Dasein, being consciously concerned with the onto-phenomenological experience, thus interpreting what it means to exist amid that which is and is still becoming, human beings strive to connect with their Lebenswelt (a lived world). Only when individuals are consciously receptive to and involved in their own ontological being and becoming can they empathise with the very nature of another. Woven into this larger disposition characterised by continuous onto-phenomenological self-making-in-a-situation (Bildung) – the Nietzschean call – is the empathic attitude. In the context of psychology, in particular psychotherapy, the empathic attitude – that is, being sensitively aware of how we understand ourselves, others and the world we share – is undeniably part of the repertoire of qualities that a therapist ought to possess. Often, however, the attitude of novice therapists towards what is happening between them and their clients here and now involves inflated self-awareness that is devoid of ontological considerations . Frequently, this results in a clichéd form of empathy based primarily on sentimental emotionality. It seems to be true that, in a ubiquitous cyberculture characterised by self-absorption and the mere accumulation of simplistic explanations, the ability to be ontologically receptive – as the sine qua non of an empathetic attitude – is gradually becoming undervalued.