INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND EMBODIMENT IN THE FIELD OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai. Philosophia August 1, 2025 Kata Dóra Kiss 1 citation
Intersubjectivity, a core concept in phenomenology, posits that human existence is fundamentally relational. While psychology broadly agrees that the self is shaped by relations, disagreement persists over the relative influence of biological versus social factors. The natural-scientific paradigm currently dominates the psy-sciences, prioritizing biological explanations. This paper argues that the mind-body dualism inherited from classical philosophy underlies this paradigm. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, it proposes that the concept of body-mind-world unity dissolves this dualism. The author illustrates this phenomenological approach through Ben Rumble's embodiment-based therapeutic practice and connects it to the psychoanalytic theory of Sándor Ferenczi.