An "I" for an Elusive I
Layman Pascal and Bruce Alderman offer some riffs and reflections on John Vervaeke, Gregg Henriques, and Christopher Mastropietro's excellent 12-part dialogos on the nature and function of the self, "The Elusive I." What kind of language can mediate between objective models and subjective experiences of the self, between science and clinical practice? What is the dance between the elusiveness of the I and anatman, or the emptiness of the self? How does the model of the self in The Elusive I relate to the models developed in transpersonal, integral, and esoteric psychologies? What can Kierkegaard teach us about the nonduality of the self, and what are its farther reaches of development? What is the role of the centaur in developing character? Under the pressure of so many conditioning forces in culture, how might we be served by practices of self-transgression as well as self-transcendence? Layman and Bruce consider these questions and more in developing a model of the self as a self-approximating hypersubject, a prepositional wild knot, an autopoietic living system, modulated dialogically, and described in a manner that is open both to naturalistic psychology and deep participatory spirituality...