Can the integral man be the remedy for the disease of our time? Edith Stein’s contribution to psychotherapeutic practice with the example of Personal Integration Therapy ADI/TIP

Abstract

It seems that the 21st century urgently demands a return to Edith Stein’s anthropology, as we are facing a profound anthropological crisis, that is, a lack of meaning in life, distortion of the meaning of values that guide human life and philosophical reductionism, which turns human beings into a two-dimensional psycho-physical unit and invalidates a fully human (that is, spiritual) dimension. It was surprisingly the same diagnosis that Edith Stein gave in the lecture “Value of Femininity and Its Importance in the Life of the People” in 1928, describing human’s internal disintegration and how the integral man (who, according to her, is the remedy for the disease of our time) can be a way out of the contemporary crisis. It seems that internal disintegration means a weakening of a human being’s spiritual dimension that makes one’s behavioural and mental reactions more dependent on psychological impulses and diminishes one’s capacity for discerning values and decision-making process. The objective of this paper is to present Edith Stein’s diagnosis of the contemporary anthropological crisis and then to present the psychotherapeutic practises of Personal Integration Therapy through the ADI/TIP method, which, through the Stenian theoretical foundation, can no longer fragment man but reconstitute integrity.