Building personal history

A study by a PUC-SP researcher presents the philosophical foundation of the therapeutic education method. The author uses this method in both individual and group counseling.

By José Tadeu Arantes

Agência FAPESP – “Who am I? What is the meaning of life, and what is my role in it?” Pressed by the demands of life or fascinated by the distractions the world offers, people tend to put such questions aside in their busy day-to-day lives, waiting until “later,” which often never comes.

These are the questions that have driven philosophy since the age of the Greeks. In the face of a crisis or unexpected change of course in one’s life path, the same questions burst through the screen of personal consciousness, demanding the attention they deserve.

Such questions are also the starting point of the book História pessoal e sentido da vida [Personal History and the Meaning of Life] by Dulce Critelli, professor of philosophy at Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC) in São Paulo. Published with FAPESP funding, the short, densely elaborated book is a smooth read that presents the philosophical foundations of the therapeutic education method developed by the author, called “historiobiography.”

Critelli uses the method in both individual and group counseling sessions, where participants are coached and provided with tools to reflect on and understand their autobiographies.

“I discovered that many of our problems are less the result of psychological factors than philosophical ones. They don’t originate from traumas but from a misunderstanding of the meaning of life,” Critelli affirmed.

“From this perspective, philosophy can be a fundamental tool. We think and transform our beliefs and, consequently, our way of living. Philosophy isn’t clinical, but it has unequivocal therapeutic power intrinsic to its basic characteristic: a reflective structure. All reflection is an exercise in understanding that extracts events from places where they may be hidden (ranging from mere unfamiliarity to reckless interpretation) and sheds light upon them,” she said.

This reflective structure is the common thread running through philosophy. The author follows a specific school, the existential philosophy developed by Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). Critelli’s book is strongly rooted in Heidegger’s thinking and even more so in the philosophy of Arendt, who is quoted profusely throughout the text.

According to Arendt, life events must be arranged in a story for people to be able to relate to them. As Arendt affirmed, quoting a phrase by Dutch author Karen Blixen (who wrote under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen), “All wounds are bearable when we make them into a story or tell a story about them.”

This is the idea upon which historiobiography is based and that constitutes the leitmotif of História pessoal e sentido da vida. “Our personal existence isn’t a set of unconnected events,” argued the author.

“Its logic is connected to stories that we tell ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously. When we can see the thread that runs through our existence, we become much more open to transformation. When we discover the pattern, we also discover the potential for action,” she said.

According to Critelli, the existential standard rests on phrases that people hear from others or that they uncritically tell themselves. She calls these phrases “narrations.” They are short, fragmented affirmations that are often learned during childhood and repeated throughout life. Perpetuated by repetition, they also perpetuate a certain way of being as if it were fated.

Individuals often feel that they are prisoners to these standards, which they themselves helped to create. When such “narratives” are brought to the light of consciousness and put through a critical filter, people begin to free themselves from the paralyzing power of these narratives. They are then able to set their lives in motion, again or for the first time.

“We live under the illusion that the world holds meaning in and of itself. But the world itself is merely composed of things. It is our language that transforms it into a world. Inhabiting the world is inhabiting language,” emphasized Critelli.

This means substituting uncritical, fragmented narratives that fill vernacular language with a personal story built from reflection. The expectation is that as a person empowers his/her story, the self is simultaneously empowered. The person stops being a victim of an imaginary fatality and becomes her/his own master.