ABSTRACT
Historically, Phenomenology developed as a philosophical school centered on being in the early to mid-20th century. The phenomenological self has significant properties that go far beyond the usual psychoanalytic conception of self as a psychological construct residing in mind. The self and its being are constantly being changed by the world in which it is embedded and are also constantly changing that world. The major focus of psychoanalysis and, in particular, clinical psychoanalysis has been on how patients change and are changed as a result of a therapeutic encounter. The therapeutic situation is a description of the nature of a joyful and meaningful life characterized by subjective well-being and a capacity to experience and act on desire. If the search for and co-construction of meaning and narrative lie at the focal point of a psychoanalytic therapy, then the path for attaining them is primarily a cognitive and conceptual one.
