The Affect of Living in a Dream World from a Nietzschean Perspective is a chapter I contributed to this book. It describes two encounters, one was a road-rage incident I was deeply affected by, the other was an eexperience described by Friedrich Nietzsche. Both highlight the pre-personal nature of affect. The significance of this for psychotherapy is that pre-personal relating creates an intimacy not possible with personal or impersonal ways of relating, and as such, it allows the work to go in a more interesting direction.
The chapter touches on, among other things, how the affect of the road-rage incident affected a client when I shared it with them, the defensive quality of empathy, how best to distrust yourself, the distinction between and value of ‘open curiosity’ over ‘closed curiosity’, how knowledge can become a defence against affect, affect as an alternative to truth, and the joy of hugging a strange man.
The book is published by Routledge and can be ordered here: The Primacy of Affect: Psychotherapy. Culture, Philosophy
‘I never dreamt, in my dream, I'm Dalai Lama.’
Dalai Lama
Learn to Forget: a Nietzschean Revaluation of Forgetting in Psychotherapy is a chapter I contributed a chapter to this book.
The chapter demonstrates the value of cultivating 'active forgetting', and it's use as an intervention in psychotherapy.
In contrast to the gravity and pathology of more mainstream psychoanalytic and psychodynamic ideas about forgetting, active forgetting is lightness; it is integral to happiness, play, creativity and the possession of power.
The editor described the chapter as, "Unassumingly formidable."
The book is published by Routledge and can be ordered here: Re-visioning Existential Therapy: Counter-traditional Perspectives
‘As its power increases, the subjective fades into complete forgetfulness of self.’
Friedrich Nietzsche