The Value of Longing. Jörg Marxen
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Joerg Marxen
The Value of Longing
Toward a mature perspective
Lecture given on February 8, 2020 at the symposium "Alexa – still’ meine Sehnsucht" [Alexa – still my longing] held from February 7 – 9, 2020 in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany
Copyright: © 2020 Joerg Marxen
Editing: Erik Kinting - www.buchlektorat.net
Cover and typesetting: Erik Kinting
Cover photo: © Joerg Marxen
Translator: Alison Mally – www.mally-fachuebersetzungen.de
Publisher: tredition GmbH, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg
978-3-347-14839-0 (paperback)
978-3-347-14840-6 (hardcover)
978-3-347-14841-3 (eBook)
ISBNs of the German edition:
978-3-347-14836-9 (paperback)
978-3-347-14837-6 (hardcover)
978-3-347-14838-3 (eBook)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be re-produced, translated, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher and author.
The symposium entitled Alexa – still’ meine Sehnsucht [Alexa – still my longing] was organized by Median Klinik am Park Bad Oeynhausen in conjunction with the Weiterbildungskreis Psychosomatische Medizin und Analytische Psychotherapie e. V. and the Psychotherapeutisches Lehrinstitut ZAP GmbH, a state-approved training center for psychological psychotherapists and child and youth psychotherapists.
Joerg Marxen is a registered psychological psychotherapist and coach (depth psychology, hypnotherapy, value system analysis and corporate development theory).
Author:
Joerg Marxen
Am Neuen Petritore 7
38100 Braunschweig
Germany
Foreword
In 2011, the American Psychological Association published an article entitled "Is Longing Only for Germans? A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Sehnsucht in Germany and the United States". The authors (Scheibe, Blanchard-Fields, Wiest & Freund, 2011) emphasize that despite all the differences longing is of importance in both cultures and can have functional and dysfunctional effects in both cultures.
I have repeatedly witnessed the phenomenon that longing can be an existential blessing for one person and a devastating catastrophe for another. This made me look at the factors that make the difference, that allow us to make beneficial use of phenomena from the field of longing.
Joerg Marxen
Table of Contents
Foreword
Table of Contents
The field of longing
The compass function of longing
The unattainability of longing
The struggle for maturity
The value of longing
Using the value of longing maturely
Maturity and respect for what we do not understand
A surprising patient concern
Outlook
Bibliography
Sources:
Additional literature:
Appendix
Excerpt from the lecture on Counter-transference on October 24, 2001
The field of longing
Longing has a function.
Longing springs from a source.
Longing has an effect.
Longing can have a very destructive effect.
Longing can, however, also have an exceptionally
constructive effect.
Longing and how we deal with it are in play as an effect but also as a cause, for example when relationships fall apart or when relationships, our attitude to life, our capacity for pleasure and our performance capability develop more favorably or less favorably. They are in play when a happy couple is expecting a child and then during the pregnancy or after the birth of the child the partner falls in love with another woman, or at least begins a sexual relationship with someone else. Longing can lead us into new situations against, through or even despite great reservations, in which we encounter new people and new challenges and in which we first have to reorient ourselves.
In the field of religiosity, spirituality and transcendence, too, it is usually very much about longing and how we deal it.
Longing constantly affects our lives in many areas.
The German dictionary of the Brothers Grimm (1971) devotes a long paragraph to the phenomenon of longing [German: Sehnsucht] and its facets with numerous statements, one of which is that we can understand longing as being …
… a high degree of intense and often painful desire for something, particularly if there is no hope of attaining what is desired, or when its attainment is uncertain, still far away.
Dictionary of the Brothers Grimm (Grimm, J. & Grimm, W., 1971)
This quote is also used by the Sehnsucht researchers surrounding Paul Baltes, Alexandra Freund and Susanne Scheibe (Scheibe et al., 2007), who start from a developmental perspective of the entire life span and whose definition and characterization I essentially follow.
They characterize the phenomenon of life longings with the aid of six criteria:
1. their unrealizability
2. a sense of incompleteness and imperfection in one’s own life
3. a tritime focus
4. the accompanying phenomenon of bittersweet or sweet-bitter feelings
5. the observation that life longings invite one to look back and evaluate life and life options
6. and their symbolic character and symbolic richness.
They define their understanding as follows:
The first two characteristics go hand in hand; on the one side, the thoughts, desires and emotions associated with personal utopias or the search for an optimal life and on the other hand, the accompanying sense of incompleteness and imperfection in life. Together, these two aspects generate the bitter sweetness or sweet bitterness of life longings, the combination of desire and disappointment and the search for ways to deal with this conflict.
Longing can help us to develop vision. In the feelings of well-being that arise when we imagine our dreams materializing, its quality of sweetness becomes apparent.
By contrast, it can be bitter when we realize that what we long for, what seems like the fulfilment of our dreams, is not fully attainable, is not attainable in the foreseeable future, or indeed at all, and turns out to be permanently unattainable.
A tritime focus does not mean that the entire life span from childhood to the present and into old age is necessarily always considered and borne in mind. However, it is assumed that the feeling of longing always extends from the present moment back