Note: These excursions in thought are for those of us who enjoy thinking about the structure and dynamics of psychology.  T

I recommend the book "Eclipse of the Self: The Development of Heidegger’s Concept of Authenticity" by Michael Zimmerman. This is a very interesting and easy to read book, and I think it is an important one.

What is authenticity…how can we know it when we see it…and so on. The root of the word eigenlich (authentic) is "own" (eigen). To be authentic (in the Heideggerian sense) is to be one’s own-most. But own-most as opposed to what? Well, own-most as opposed to what Heidegger calls the "inauthentic They".

For the most part, we are defined by an impersonal "They" – as with "They do things this way or that way" or "One should do this". The "One" or the "They" represent a "levelled-down-to-a-common-demoninator" way of being. This might be analogous to Jung’s Collective, but it is important to know that with Heidegger there is no "object" apart from a "subject" – so there really cannot be an "Objective" Psyche that exists apart from a subjective psyche. The anonymous "They" –which is precisely no one because it is everyone—is still me. It is my way of being as the "They". But here again it is tempting to fall into the notion that because there is no object… we must mean that the They is subjective. That would be the other side of the subject/object mistake. This is where trying to understand Heidegger’s view from a traditional metaphysics is a loosing battle…you always fall back into the subject/object split, one way or another. Buber’s pronouncement that Heidegger was solipsistic and knew nothing of real encounter went too far. While it may be true that Heidegger did not give enough attention to encounter in his work, it is also true that solipsism is basically impossible in an understanding of being-in-the-world that has no isolated subject.

Authenticity refers to the "author" of experience while inauthenticity refers to the "They" which in a way is still bound up with my own authorship. The inauthentic is not totally "other." This would introduce the subject/object split again. But what you could say is that the inauthentic way of being  has certain features about it that are identifiable. Zimmerman equates authenticity to "releasement" or what Heidegger calls Gelassenheit, which refers to a way of being that is open to appropriation by Being. Authenticity is not so much self-possessedness (not ‘doing your own thing’) as much as being appropriated by the disclosive event of which we are always a part.

We (i.e., we human beings) are this disclosiveness…we are this openness or "clearing" in the forrest of Being. In this sense, we are also nothing, in the sense of  "no-thing". When we usually think of ourselves, of who we are,  we usually think of ourselves as a "something", like an ego, or a subject, or a personality…some-"thing", generally placed among the other things of the world. But we are not this. We are, according to Heidegger, the blank openness or clearing in which the things of Being are lighted up. We are world-disclosivness itself which, as it turns out, is basically equivalent to temporality (time), but that’s another story.

By this count, we might say that what we know as ego belongs largly to the inauthentic -- as a kind of thing defined by the They. Jung comes close to this thought when he juxtaposes ego to what he calls the greater Self. Indeed, he tries to do this without loosing sight of the notion that the ego is still part of the Self, while at the same attempting to demonstrate the influence of the They on the ego (persona).
 

Goals and Interpretations
 

What would it be like to be in the service of authentic self? Perhaps it would be like open disclosiveness. It would be opening to and disclosive of the phenomena of the world. It would require a hermeneutic phenomenology for its method, which recognizes that we are at root interpretation (note: the readers should bare in mind the difference between interpretation and an interpretation. The former is how we do as human beings understand Being. It describes a web of meanings that have no particular objective bedrock of finality. The latter is an objective statement that freezes meaning and phenomena into a thing.) Being disclosive would be uncovering phenomena in a way that lights up the things that are by illuminating the web of associated meanings into which they emerge.

From Dreyfus: "In conflicts of interpretation…the question is not which view of what is important corresponds to the way things are in themselves, but rather, which is the better account of our condition, i.e., which allows a deeper appreciation of the [phenomenon]...the better interpretation is one which focuses and makes sense of more of what is at issue in a current…self-interpretation."

The makes sense of this better interpretation brings, cannot be just any old makes sense of. If this were the case, then theoretical holism’s account would "make sense of" at least as well as any other interpretation -- and that would mean, again, that one interpretation was just as good as any other (not the case). Instead, this special case of makes sense of refers to making sense of with respect to "truth". And "truth" here means disclosive truth in the Heideggerian sense.

From a psychotherapeutic standpoint, someone goes into a Therapist's office and presents an issue causing him/her pain. The Therapist does not necessarily have to buy into the notion of a psychotherapeutic goal as focusing on "I want to take this hurt away", or anything analogous. The position the Therapist might take is one of exploring the phenomenon (the issue) which is part of the self-interpretation of the client that informs and directs his(her) actions. The exploration would employ a phenomenological methodology to hold open the clearing for the truth of the issue to manifest – with whatever results may come with it. It may be the case that seeing past the pursuit of inauthentic "goals" (i.e., goals defined outside the phenomena themselves -- by, for instance, the psychiatric community concerned with ‘functionality’ and ‘health’) we might open ourselves to the "authentic" goal – which is no goal at all.

A "Goal" defined in cartesian terms is a cause effect relationship leading to some definable end-point. If you say that you have "functionality" as a goal or "pain relief" as a goal, then this sort of goal (defined by Aristotle) actually causes you to do/act/think in certain ways to achieve the goal. If, for instance, your goal is to drive from San Francisco to New York, this goal will "cause" you to point yourself toward the East as opposed to driving into the Pacific Ocean. An inauthentic goal would be a goal defined by the "They", which admittedly often covers many of the persuits of psychotherapy (and perhaps all of the goals of Managed Care). An authentic goal might be viewed as no goal at all in the sense of a defining end-product governing our do/act-think.

But aren't there many schools of psychotherapy out there that profess to have no goal? Perhaps, but at best these therapists may have no goal at first. But each, it often seems, attaches itself to one as soon as possible. At worst, they simply don’t recognize the goals they have (e.g., to return a client to functionality, normalcy). Take for example a situation where a client tells a therapist that he is going to commit suicide. The phenomenon of suicide has now entered the room. One initial, inauthentic goal would then be to attempt to stop the suicide in order to follow a set of pre-prescribed guidelines (indicating a need for the inauthentic as well as the authentic). But why is this inauthentic? Well, technically speaking, the goal itself is neither authentic nor inauthentic. What is inauthentic is the way of being toward (the comportment toward) the goal. Similarly, what of the therapists’ reaction to the possibility of suicide? Is this authentic or inauthentic? But perhaps this question is improper, for it is not the reaction to the possibility that is authentic or inauthentic…it is how you open to the possibility (Gelasenheit) that is authentic or inauthentic. If you are open in a way that illuminates the internecine web of background contexts, then we call this authentic. If not…then inauthentic.

We are inauthentic because we live in a world where authenticity has become nearly impossible. Inauthenticity has become a destiny, not something elected. In the modern industrial world where everything is understood to be a commodity, individuals treat themselves and others as objects. Heidegger maintained that western civilization has developed in this way because Being has concealed itself from us. As Being has become hidden, we have been led to forget that we are the openness for the Being of beings. Western man now understands himself (self-interpretation) as the self-willed subject who regards everything as an object for economic exploitation. This is egoism on a planetary scale. Time itself is interpreted as a property of man, when in fact man is a property of temporality. If I understand Being to mean "objectivity," it is hard for me to avoid thinking of myself as an object, too -- an ego.

It strikes me how close thinkers like Christopher Bollas, James Hillman, and C.G. Jung come to these ideas of Heideggers. All attempt to make room for phenomena…to let the phenomena speak. All treat their own reactions (horror, anxiety, delight, amusement…whatever) the same way --i.e., as a presenting phenomenon now revealed through the connections of meaning, to be further illuminated. Jung and Heidegger often seem to agree on "method", as methodologically phenomenological. Where their similarities break down is with the interpretive understanding behind this methodology goes. All three of these essentially Kantian thinkers who understand phenomena as "signs" and "symbols" pointing to some-"thing"…other than the phenomenon itself (Hillman less so than the other two at times, more so than the other two at other times).

Important ideas here include the "Background Context," "Truth," "Interpretation," and "Understanding." The notion of an "unconscious" is called into question, not because there isn’t something going on outside of or in spite of our immediate  awareness (if that is what consiousness is), but because the entire subject of consciousness itself, and therefore unconsciousness, is a theory for describing a phenomenon which becomes objectified in its description. If you think about what you mean when you say something like, "I am aware of…" or "I know that…", or "I am conscious of…" you will see that you quickly become part of a cartesian framework. When I look at the picture hanging on my wall and see that it is crooked, for instance, I become aware of its crookedness, I become conscious of its crookedness, I know that it is crooked. But how does this awareness/consciousness/knowing occur? The traditional explanation is that I "have" (i.e., have acquired and now somehow hold as my own subjective possession) some sort of "image" of what crookedness means (or I ask someone else for their image). I perceive the picture on my wall. Then I compare what I perceive with my internal "image," and deduce from their correspondence that the picture is crooked. You can see the components of this sort of thinking, which are a subjective knowledge of crookedness, some objective perception of the world, and the "meaning" derived from the correspondence of the two. Truth in this scenario relates this correspondence. My knowledge of truth is a knowledge of correspondence. Heidegger would disagree, saying that the meaning of "crooked picture on wall" is perceived directly. Truth, then, is what reveals this meaning of the phenomena not as a correspondence to an inner image, but as a direct disclosure of being-in-the-world. We "know" what crooked is. The picture is crooked. Is "crooked" an interpretation of the world? Yes…but the world itself is interpretation because we are interpretation – all the way down. Disclosing the meaning of crookedness is like disclosing the meaning of music – which is given directly.
 

 References

Michael Staples