From an Epistemology of Faith to Everyday Understanding

Abstract

Practitioners of psychotherapy often find themselves in clinical situations that challenge their ability to maintain both empathy and "charitable skepticism" toward clients' narratives. The author approaches this question of clinical credulity through a comparison of the religious philosophies of Søren Kierkegaard and Franz Rosenzweig. Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments is read as advocating a necessary and provisional "leap of faith" when confronting such clinical aporias. This reading of Kierkegaard is then contrasted to Rosenzweig's recommendations in his clinical allegory, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, which suggests a model of empathic reflection that balances affirmation with skepticism. The author concludes from this comparison that (a) the initial exploration of material provided by the psychotherapy client must proceed from a tentative "willful suspension of disbelief" on the part of the therapist and (b) this epistemology of faith must be tempered with the particular concept of "everyday philosophy" proposed by Rosenzweig.