Post humanism, ‘e’ and other psychological therapies

Is ‘post humanism’, sometimes shortened to ‘post human’, a useful concept when examining developments in the psychological therapies? The concern put forward in this editorial is that our very being is at risk when ‘post humanism’ becomes the overarching quality assurance basis for evaluating technological appendages to our lives and, indeed, the psychological therapies in general.

In the USA the National Institute for Mental Health (2017) between 2007 and 2015 awarded 404 grants totalling £445 million for studies of computer-based interventions designed to prevent or treat mental health disorders. Amongst the hopes of such developments in England are that they will ‘empower young people to self-care through increased availability of new quality enhanced apps and digital tools’ (Department of Health, 2015, p. 16). However, simultaneously there is growing concern as to how our digital era is causing mental health problems (see for example McCosker, 2017). How then can a mental health app be evaluated as to whether it is beneficial or detrimental? Will for example post humanism reveal or conceal such concerns as that the exponential growth for the need for therapy, particularly for young people, has been brought about by austerity and changing employment conditions (Coughlan, 2016) together with the decreasing emotional foundations of young people (House & Loewenthal, 2009; Unicef, 2013)?

Is ‘post humanism’ a concept that may be useful for some in the short term but dangerous for others? According to Ferrando (2013) Post humanism has at least seven meanings. These vary from being critical of traditional humanism, to being critical of imposing human subjectivity beyond the human species, to a post human future that through trans-humanism’ makes use of available technologies to enhance human capacities, to the ‘IA takeover’ where we are replaced by artificial intelligences, through to seeking ‘voluntary human extinction’. The term ‘post human’ is also open to various definitions from critical therapists criticisms of the philosophy of humanism to a trans-human feature being where are capacities far exceed human ones (For further developments see The Journal of Posthuman Studies, http://www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_JPHS.html).

There has for some time been a fundamental concern that the psychological therapies are brought into place once the horse has bolted: once the social and economic conditions that impoverish mental health have settled in. The danger is that this helps obscure as a society our abilities to focus on, and change, these social and economic factors. It could be seen that the psychological therapies have always been about attempting to alleviate distress rather than prevent it, even more so if this might mean a redistribution of wealth. Thus, for example, it can be seen that the humanism of Carl Rogers came out of the era of Roosevelt’s New Deal, with the emphasis on ‘hand up’ rather than ‘hand out’. Yet Neo- liberalism in further promoting individualism has taken our state of alienation to a further level with this confused notion of post-humanism enabling evaluations of mental health apps and e therapies, no longer from a human perspective to our detriment, if not our demise.

A parallel argument can be said to have developed with the grave concern expressed by Elon Musk, the Chief of SpaceX and Tesla regarding the use of AI to determine when and how to go to war (Hearn, 2017). The history of near misses regarding nuclear Armageddon would seem to suggest we are only alive today because of human intervention (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2015). That is not to say that we won’t blow all ourselves up through human fallibility, as we have been indeed warned from Plato onwards. However, the overarching criteria for so called ‘quality assurance’ must, despite all its imperfections, be exclusively human.

For a few there is a recognition of this (for example see Hendry, Robards, & Stanford, 2017) and interestingly how digital technologies lead to both privileging the medicalisation of mental health and obscuring the social conditions that impoverish it (Maturo, Mori, & Moretti, 2016). These authors also talk of the ‘quantified self’ so apparent in mental health apps and less obviously in underlying most qualitative research. Where post humanism can perhaps help is in showing us how violent and obscuring our psychological therapies are becoming. If one accepts that the origins of psychology come from the Greek ‘phusis’ then this is the natural, it is what comes out of itself; however, instead what we have has become increasingly forced. Our theories and in particular our research have become technologies where increasingly therapy is designed so that it can be researched and then these further mangled findings become wrongly seen as essential for future practice together with the other great misappropriation which is led to our post human condition: ‘evidence based practice’. As Heidegger has said we get caught up in the technology that is there in the name of everything functioning – a technicity that separates us from the world (Heidegger, 1976).

I would like to end quoting a man who contacted me recently on learning about my interest in ‘Post existentialism versus post humanism’. He wrote: ‘I have been struggling with finding meaning for most of my life and believe that the existential dilemma can be solved by becoming post human. Any person who claims to have found meaning has their logic limited by their biological brain, and so cannot be said to be objective and correct…. Although I am working towards my goal of achieving post human state I have started feeling empty and hopeless, like perhaps there is another solution…. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind having a chat with me about it…?’.

Our first paper for this general issue is ‘Broken Mirror: The intertwining of therapist and client stories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA)’ by Reena Shah. In this paper, Shah draws on a narrative study of therapists with a history of abuse. Overall this article is a sensitive and moving account of the author’s personal experience, and how she believes that being in touch with personal history can help rather than hinder the therapeutic relationship.

In our second paper, ‘”That boy needs therapy”: Constructions of psychotherapy in popular song lyrics’, Miltiades Hadjiosif, and Adrian Coyle undertake a study of the resource of popular songs, to examine how these materials reflect contemporary beliefs about the role, function, and value, of psychotherapy. This is a fascinating and thought provoking paper exploring how psychotherapy is mostly negatively constructed within song-culture.

In the next paper, ‘Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Eating Disorders with Co-morbid Depression: a pilot study’, Malin Bäck, Sanna Gustafsson and Rolf Holmqvist evaluate a treatment trial for eating disorders and co-morbid depression principally targeting depression. The findings are of interest and highlight the usefulness of interpersonal psychotherapy to reduce symptoms for converging depression and eating disorders with bingeing/purging characteristics.

Our fourth paper entitled ‘Psychoanalytic Inpatient Psychotherapy of Depression – two naturalistic samples throughout the course of a decade’ is by Dorotea Huber, Ella Fizke and Axel Mueller. The authors present their study which focuses on the investigation of depressed inpatients within treatment. This is an interesting naturalistic study of depressed inpatients, an aspect that has been overlooked in previous studies of psychodynamic inpatient psychotherapy.

Our final paper is ‘Body language and metaphors revealed through applications of Movement Psychotherapy in a hospice: a clinical case of refractory pruritus’. The authors, Cristina Endrizzi, Elena Duglio and Maria Rosa present a psychoanalytically oriented approach to applying movement psychotherapy within hospice care, with the goal of improving the patient’s dignity and uncovering possibilities for finding meaning in the last stages of life. The authors brings into discussion how movement work enables alleviation of suffering not only for the patients and their families, but also for the health care staff in hospice care. So, possibilities here for safeguarding against a post human environment!

Del Loewenthal
Department of Psychology, University of Roehampton, London, UK
[email protected]