Discussion

It is my pleasure and privilege to discuss Dr. Weigert's scholarly and informative paper. It is considered a function of a discussant to find at least some areas of disagreement. This is difficult for me to do, for the spirit and views expressed in the paper correspond with my own. However, if we consider the clinical aspects separately from the philosophic views, then provocative instances do occur.

The concept of psychotherapy as a creative

art irks those of pure scientific bent and those who are inclined to be more poetic and artistic; therapy is too dehumanized, and so we have the proper ingredient for conflict—opposition.

Dr. Weigert's paper indicates her direction toward viewing the individual in terms of existential phenomenology. Existentialism is not primarily a new contribution to the content of psychotherapy. Its origin was as a protest against a prevailing trend toward reducing the human individual to an impersonal cog in the social machinery. In such a society the uniqueness of the individual is useless, and the emphasis is on utility and adjustment, the polar opposite of creativity. To be creative means to produce something which is not yet in existence. Adjustment means to accept and to conform to what is already there.

Psychotherapy is a natural medium for absorbing the existential outlook. The way was prepared by psychoanalysis which views a human being as a unique person who must be understood in his own unique world. From this point of view, one must welcome the existential emphasis as a counterbalance to any trend of practice and teaching that loses sight of the distance between theory and the individual patient and forces the patient into a bed.

I suggest there are instances in Dr. Weigert's paper that indicate some conflict. In her enthusiasm to apply creatively the findings of Freud, Rado, Portmann, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Boss, and a host of others, she attempts to unite concepts which fit neatly in their own particular context and frame of refe