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Martin Buber in this volume amplifies some of the implications of his famous contribution to the contemporary philosophical and religious consciousness—namely the “I-Thou” philosophy. For him “true existence” is found by him who “stands in the dual basic attitude that is destined to him as a man: carrying being in his person, wishing to complete it, and ever again going forth to meet worldy and above-worldly being over against him”. These essays were written between the years 1909 and 1954. Their style is magisterial, full of imagination and the poetry of prophetism. Eight essays are of a religio-philosophical nature; fourteen deal with problems of politics and peace; the other seven deal with such problems as the theatre, education, Goethe's concept of humanity, and Bergson's concept of intuition.
One essay entitled “Healing through meeting” will be of special interest to analytical psychologists, for it represents his introduction to the posthumous book by Hans Trub entitled Heilung aus der Beregnung. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Psychologie C. G. Jungs (1952). In it they will find an eloquent description of the demand made upon the psychotherapist by certain cases—“something incompatible with the economics of his profession, dangerously threatening, indeed, to his regulated practice of it. What is demanded of him is that he draw the particular case out of the correct methodological objectification and himself step forth out of the role of professional superiority, achieved and guaranteed by long training and practice, into the elementary situation between one who calls and one who is called” (p. 94). And later Buber writes “The psychotherapist … will return from the crisis to his habitual method, but as a changed person in a changed situation” (p. 95). It is interesting to note that Buber is 80 years old and wrote these words in 1951. Indeed they compel attention as coming from a man of his stature. And yet it was as long ago as 1929 in “Die Probleme der Modern