#ExistentialEncounters
A series of online #lectures, #webinars, #workshops and #events organized by #FETE, inviting existential therapists from around Europe to share their experience and expertise!
Welcome to our fourth #existentialencounter on Wednesday 17th April 2024 at 19.00BST, 20.00CEST, 21.00 EEST with Devang Vaidya, person-centred and existential therapist who will be talking about “The spillage of affect: Utterances of the unspoken”.
Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not-I’ is an unusual piece of theatre. It is at once disconcerting and affirming, tragic and comic, haunting and illuminating. It is all of human experience rolled into a short performance by one character: the Mouth. Try to listen to the words for meaning and we miss the plot, which arguably isn’t even there. Try to experience the whole thing as a soundscape and we miss the flow of impressions prompted by the words. There is no way to get the meaning of this play right - or wrong. Yet, we are being urgently addressed by the Mouth, whose utterly incomprehensible utterances somehow resonate with our own uncanny Otherness.
Taking ‘Not-I’ as a paradigm case, I want to suggest that all speech at its core remains burdened with unspoken affect. Our words are like cracked earthen vessels from which this affect is always spilling out. What if the affective spillage is the part of the self – the ‘Not-I’ – that is weighing upon us, and waiting upon us? Do we as therapists get too hung up on the meaning of verbal communication and leave out the ‘Not-I’, which may simply be, ‘Not-yet-I’?
Drawing upon the intuitions from Aquinas and Kierkegaard, Winnicott and Rogers, I will invite considering an existence-oriented response to all the ‘Not-I’s we encounter each day.
Devang Vaidya is a person-centred existential therapist, supervisor, and lecturer based in London. His research interests include elaborating Roger’s theory in the context of Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy, psychoanalysis, the arts, and contemporary critical thought.
Note: A weblink is sent out for viewing the performance of ‘Not-I’ introduced by the actress, Billy Whitelaw who first played the Mouth in 1973. (Total duration: 15:14 minutes) Watching it before the lecture will be helpful to the discussion. Weblink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LDwfKxr-M&t=79s
This lecture is π³πΏπ²π² and will be held via zoom! Please register at [email protected] themed: Existential Encounters - Devang Vaidya
You can watch the lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-hTbjnGf1I