Humanising Forces: Phenomenology in Science; Psychotherapy in Technological Culture

Abstract

One of the concerns of the existential-phenomenological tradition has been to examine the human implications of living in a world of proliferating technology. The pressure to become more specialised and efficient has become a powerful value and quest. Both contemporary culture and science enables a view of human identity which focuses on our ‘parts’ and the compartmentalisation of our lives into specialised ‘bits’. This is a kind of abstraction which Psychology has also, at times, taken in its concern to mimic the Natural Sciences. As such it may unconsciously collude with a cultural trend to view humans as objects like other objects and so, fit ‘normatively’ into the emerging world of specialised and efficient systems.