As we are well into the second year of this calamitous presidency I cannot avoid reflecting on some of my memories as well as my experiences as a psychotherapist. I grew up in Germany during the immediate post-World War II period. These days the new political “climate” in the US has some features similar to the years immediately before Hitler’s election as Germany’s new chancellor in 1933.1 The new US administration that started 15 months ago strikes me as proto-fascistic, profoundly racist, capitalistic with few restraints, and led by groups of extremely wealthy white supremacists. Clearly, there are also many profound differences between the Weimar Republic’s ending and the current administration with its impact on the US. I maintain, however, that an alternative to the currently dominant “objectivistic” or “scientific” epistemology may be enlightening not only to perceive “other realities” within our health system, but also within our current society in the US and abroad.
My reflections are rooted in my work as clinician and teacher of relationship-oriented and context-sensitive individual, couples, and family therapy. They have to do with what I have learned and experienced while listening to the people I see and teach, who are diverse in race and culture, in socioeconomic status, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious faith, immigration status and the memories of their families’ histories.
I would like to expand on several aspects of the relationship-oriented epistemological paradigm and then give examples of how the application of this alternative thinking paradigm highlights a diverse and profoundly interconnected “world” that is not visible to the mind that is focused exclusively on an “objective” reality. The application of this epistemology has powerful consequences for our human social universe. (See my previous blogs on this topic, in parts one and two.)
[For more on this story by Norbert A. Wetzel, ThD, MFT, go to https://www.madinamerica.com/2...native-epistemology/]
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