ABSTRACT
Mitchel Becker begins this trialogue with a fresh look at Martin Buber's I-You link, proposing that the I-You encounter is a non-possessive and non-experiential phenomenon. Is it therefore too unformulated and dissociated to be possible? This I-You non-experience is realized in the meeting of pure soul heart and truth.
Michal Barnea-Astrog responds by elucidating three modes of meeting experience and the other through which one may alternately pass: a “conventional-confined” mode, a “streaming” mode and a “temporarily selfless” mode. Truly meeting involves non-conventional self-states and perception, but this should not imply regression nor dissociation.
A poem by Paul R. Fleischman delves into “the love of all things” and “the laud static” of hatred and impassivity. The poem invokes further discussion between all three writers, touching subjects such as “savage receptivity,” “natural fusion” and the ability to “ride the waves of experience” in the therapy room. When “love of all things” comes our way – either as a spontaneous emergent or as a laborious yet precious task – we are simultaneously overwhelmed with the fear of loss and change. Our basic survival need calls us to grasp an I-It relation, but even in those moments of existential angst, the call for a True Other may still be heard.
