Into the Wild Woods: Existential Responses to Turbulent Times

With , on Friday 27 & 28 September 2024

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Each of us is currently confronted with the very serious existential challenges of the climate emergency, social division and unrest, and the pervasive threat of global war. This crisis reverberates in our personal lives in many profound ways, and it can feel a bit like being lost in the Wild Woods as we are confronted with previously hidden threats and fears and lose our usual sources of solace and sanctuary.

This conference will bring together ideas and insights from philosophers and therapists whose work can illuminate our quest for clarity and directionality, to safely get through these turbulent times.

Four keynote speakers and four invited speakers, as well as many other presenters from all over the world, will dazzle you with new ideas, sizzling discussions and debates and many wise thoughts that will light your way.

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The phrase ‘the Wild Woods’ is likely to resonate with many of you. It will be familiar if you were introduced as a child to ‘The Wind in the Willows’, the classic novel by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908 and based on bedtime stories Grahame told his son Alastair. In this book we meet four woodland characters, Mole, Ratty, Toad and Badger, who are confronted by the perils and challenges of what we existential therapists would today term ‘problems of living’. Ostensibly a children’s book, the reason why it has endured and has appealed to a wider audience for more than a century is largely because, like all great literature, its central concern – conveyed anthropomorphically – is what it means to be human.

You are probably aware of the phrase littérature engagée, coined by Sartre after the Second World War to describe literature intended to promote social and political change through direct engagement with contemporary issues. ‘The Wind in the Willows’ conveys our own struggles and search for meaning indirectly, but no less powerfully, through the travails and experiences of its small cast of animal friends. We may empathise with Mole’s introversion, Ratty’s pragmatism, Toad’s pursuit of novelty and technological innovation, or Badger’s hermit-like but hospitable self-sufficiency, and we come to understand how each strategy enables them to create meaningful lives.

While these individual worlds appear bucolic and idyllic, they are boundaried and overshadowed by the ominously named ‘the Wild Wood’ and its malevolent denizens, the weasels, stoats and ferrets, who pose a constant threat. Only by collaborating with each other can the friends find the strength and courage to resist and prevail. Viewed through an existential lens, we might say that the lessons of ‘The Wind in the Willows’ are as relevant to us today than they have ever been. The early years of the twentieth century were marked by cultural insecurity and political turmoil which led to the First World War. Now, in the foothills of the twenty-first century, we are beset by numerous challenges, including climate emergency, social division and unrest, and the pervasive threat of global war.

We might wonder whether literature can provide any comfort or guidance at such a time; I want to suggest that ‘The Wind in the Willows’ does offer an interesting perspective on how we can respond to these turbulent times. The operative term in our conference title is ‘Into’: the band of animal friends make the difficult decision to go into the Wild Wood. It is in making this active choice that they discover their courage and their resilience. Existence precedes essence – they create themselves, as we existentialists term it, in action.

Choosing to act can, though, feel daunting. This is particularly the case when we despair or feel overwhelmed. It often seems easier to deny our freedom to choose ourselves. Instead we can ‘choose not to choose’, we can follow the herd. How, then, inspired by this novel, can we confront rather than attempt to evade these turbulent times – how can we venture into the Wild Woods?

Each of us is currently confronted with the very serious existential challenges of the climate emergency, social division and unrest, and the pervasive threat of global war. This crisis reverberates in our personal lives in many profound ways, and it can feel a bit like being lost in the Wild Woods as we are confronted with previously hidden threats and fears and lose our usual sources of solace and sanctuary.

This conference will bring together ideas and insights from philosophers and therapists whose work can illuminate our quest for clarity and directionality, to safely get through these turbulent times.

Four keynote speakers and four invited speakers, as well as many other presenters from all over the world, will dazzle you with new ideas, sizzling discussions and debates and many wise thoughts that will light your way.

You can choose your ticket price £25.00 / £37.50 / £50.00

All tickets will give you access to recordings from the conference.

This workshop will be hosted on the Zoom meeting platform where we will use our cameras and microphones to interact with each other as a group.

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All the colleagues at ONLINEVENTS and the presenters we collaborate with are committed to working in a manner consistent with the BACP Ethical Framework, which can be accessed on the link below. When registering for this event you are agreeing to be present and interact in a manner that is consistent with this Framework.

https://www.bacp.co.uk/events-and-resources/ethics-and-standards/ethical-framework-for-the-counselling-professions/

One way in which existential therapy has always stood out from other forms of therapy is by breaking the taboo on mortality and directly addressing finitude and death.

The Athenian philosophers, especially Socrates and Plato spoke clearly about death and how important it was to face our fears in relation to death. Stoics, especially the Roman branch, exemplified by Marcus Aurelius provided many concrete ways of dealing with the dread of death.

From Kierkegaard and Nietzsche onwards existential philosophers returned to this challenge, and Heidegger’s and Sartre’s work was groundbreaking in speaking so centrally about death and nothingness. When Becker wrote his book ‘the denial of death’ he addressed the deep-seated human tendency to fear death. Frankl’s work grew directly from his personal confrontation with death. Yalom’s ‘Existential Psychotherapy’ argued that death anxiety was at the root of most emotional problems.

Faced with new threats and darkness in the world it has become vital for existential therapists to give a clear lead in addressing life and death issues, especially in relation to wars, violence, the threat of climate emergency and the depletion of biodiversity. How can we work with atavistic fears, when they present themselves to us in new guises? How can we face these challenges and refuse to give in to the banality of evil that Hannah Arendt spoke of. Sinking into nihilism and wiping away the entire horizon, as Nietzsche put it so poetically in his Zarathustra is not the way to tame the dangers of the wild woods. This talk will consider how existential therapists can help human beings around the world in being more brave and more aware in the way we address our contemporary predicaments.

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In a phenomenological view aggression is not understood as a drive that needs to be abreacted and searches for objects. Instead, aggression is seen as a psychodynamic capacity to defend oneself if needed, i.e. when a situation is overdemanding oneself and cannot be resolved or regulated by decided acts to remove the cause. Aggression appears as a reaction to a stimulus which has the quality of bringing me/you into the danger of destruction of something existentially important. According to the four dimensions of existence the aggressive reactions have different aims and are therefore different in structure. This will be exposed in this presentation which should help to understand and accept aggression better, as well as to deal with it accordingly to the specific existential theme involved and detectable by the type of aggression.

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Attitudes to ‘the Wild’ have evolved to the extent that the malignant ‘Wild Wood’ found in literature in which we can be lost has been superseded by more benign notions such as ‘Forest Bathing’ in which we find ourselves. How has our attitude to the wild changed; what might the therapeutic gains of walking in untamed nature be now?

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What is our relationship with the material world? Can we meet the challenges it presents us with? This presentation will examine the existential meaning of how do we grow to understand our place in the material world and how we can engage with it to enrich how we are, how we can be and how we can effect change.

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The topic of psychedelics is increasingly present in social, scientific, and therapeutic conversations. More and more therapists hear from people who have had, or are planning to attend, an experience with psychedelics, whether recreationally, ceremonially, therapeutic or simply by curiosity. References to these substances appear more and more in journals and various publications, including the field of existential therapy. What we can observe as well, is that most of our colleagues feel confused about how to approach these kinds of experiences. After all, many of us were trained under the idea that drugs (regardless of what type of drugs they are referring to) are the devil himself. There are several perspectives where Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy and phenomenological Existential Therapy share fundamental aspects and can learn from each other. And there are also certain challenges that each perspective places on the other. During this presentation, I would like to share some reflections about this emergent field.

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As long as our society is dominated by the ideas of Enlightenment, it will inevitably by inherently racist and antisemitic. As long as western philosophy rules our way of thinking - from the ideas of Plato until and including Heidegger's ontology - we will be committing violence unto the other - and ourselves. Emmanuel Levinas suggest that the only way to exist, is to submit to the Other. What does he mean by that?

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My favorite fairy tale as a child is a prime example of existential courage. This presentation will explore the possible roots of existential courage and will power so vital for facing life's challenges. It is based on an existential-developmental understanding of human existence.

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Event Venue

Online