Freud’s famous motto ‘Where it was, there I shall be’ arguably set off the entire therapy enterprise on the wrong foot, establishing the primacy of the self over and above the profound influences of concrete others in our life, whether alive or dead. It led us to believe that the unknown can be known, that the enigma of psychic life can be translated, and that what is other can be reduced to the same. Despite their protestations, all therapeutic approaches followed suit, via appeals to ‘evidence-based’ claims, the wild-goose chase for ‘authenticity’, or the fashionable delusions of integration and regulation. We will explore whether a different trajectory is possible, a reorientation from the self to affect and experiencing, a move from self-centering to decentering and from self-boundedness to infinity and otherness.

Manu Bazzano is a psychotherapist, supervisor, author and internationally recognized lecturer, author and facilitator. His latest books are Nietzsche and Psychotherapy and Re-Visioning Existential Therapy: Counter-traditional Perspectives