International Journal of Existential Psychology & Psychotherapy
An Existentialism of Hope: A Response to the Editorial by Paul Wong Alan Parry1
I
was immensely encouraged by Paul’s (2004) editorial for the inaugural issue of the Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy. Existential philosophy, psychology or psychotherapy have suffered a certain eclipse in their cultural impact reaching all the way back to the mid-sixties. The origins of this eclipse stem from several factors, but the greatest of these may be the premature optimism that exploded upon the Western world somewhere around 1965. Both politically and culturally, an exceedingly strong conviction arose amongst what has come to be known as the baby boomer generation, then notoriously under 30, that ‘the times they are a’changin’ and a new world was coming into being. The angst-ridden outlook that, in the eyes of many, had come to be associated with all things existential seemed to have little to say in the face of the political activism and cultural revolution that seemed to be sweeping before it. What there remained of self-examination during this outward looking time tended to be seen through the smoke and ‘magic’ of mind-altering drugs. “Better living through chemistry” was a mocking slogan that I remember from those heady days. The expectation that the world was going to be changed in much better ways by marches, music and mind-expansion proved to be short-lived. Change was still afoot into the next decade, but it was very much a sail1
Alan Parry is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Therapy in the School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. Correspondence regarding this article should be directed to parry@ucalgary.ca.
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Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2004
trimming kind of change, more focused on oneself than on the world and those who held power. It was still change of a rather exotic nature, if not through drugs then through such means as various forms of meditation and what amounted to neognostic practices. The sobriety of existential thought continued to have little appeal. Out of the sweeping cultural challenges to virtually all things conventional and traditional of the 60s and even the 70s emerged an attitude to change that came to be known as postmodern. Rather than the predicament of the self, it emphasized its deconstruction, along with that of every cultural institution or practice that had traditionally given life meaning or purpose. The postmodernists were also dogmatically insistent that there was no such thing as human nature, but rather that we are all social constructs. Where modernism, that cultural force which confidently sought meaning in life, emphasized what could be done, postmodernism insisted on what could not be done. We could no longer think big, we could not know ourselves nor could we find meaning in life. There was none to be found. Perhaps such skepticism was a necessary and inevitable corrective in the face of the collapse of the exuberant optimism of modernism. Nonetheless it is, in the end, a counsel of despair. Are we back where we started? With the old existential courage in the face of despair? That is certainly not what we need as the challenges of the 21st century already mount up before us. We need the confidence of the old modernism, not so much to tell us this time what can be done, but to challenge us with what must be done. In short this is the time for the emergence of what I am calling a new modernism. Paul’s (2004) editorial, which amounts to a manifesto for an existentialism of hope, seems to me to exemplify the kind of thinking that a new
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International Journal of Existential Psychology & Psychotherapy
Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2004
modernism requires. There are so many challenges that the 21st century demands of us. We simply must take much better care of our planet ecologically than we have done. We simply must find alternatives to war as a means of stopping not only the atrocities of tyrants, but all those cancerous outgrowths of modernity which insist that none are innocent and that any one who is in their way is unquestionably deserving of death. And, as Paul so forcefully and systematically reminds us, we must address once again all those questions that pertain to what it means to be human - its givens, its possibilities and all those forces that shape it. Unless we address this challenge, do it thoroughly and with hope, we are bound to fail at all the others. Let us resolve, that we will rise to the challenge of those things that must be done. Reference Wong, P. T. P (2004). Editorial: Existential psychology for the 21st century. International Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy, 1, 1–2.
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