Attestation and Psychotherapy: Ricoeur and Kaufmann on Attestation

with reference to the work of Judith Herman and Viktor Frankl.

Edward. S. Gardner
Heaton Hypnosis and Psychotherapy Practice, Newcastle upon Tyne, United
Kingdom.
ipnoetic@gmail.com

Keywords: Attestation, Testimony, Psychotherapy, Trauma, Post Traumatic

Stress, Paul Ricoeur, Sebastian Kaufmann, Judith. L. Herman, Viktor. E.
Frankl. Logotherapy, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics.

'By relating a life of which I am not the author as to existence, I make myself its coauthor as to it meaning.' Ricoeur. 1992:162)

In this brief paper I would like to draw attention to the concept of attestation
or testimony as developed in modern European philosophy and its
significance for the theory and practice of psychotherapy.

Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was an existential phenomenological philosopher

with a vast range of philosophical interests. In his later work he elaborated a
phenomenological and narrative account of self identity and meaning. In his

Gifford Lectures published in 1992 as Oneself as Another Ricoeur elaborates

the notion of attestation or testimony as an aspect of self identity. In these
brief reflections I wish to relate the philosophical notion of attestation to the
practice of psychotherapy. Apart from the work of Ricoeur I have found
instructive the work of Sebastian Kaufmann (2010) The Attestation of the Self as
a Bridge between Hermeneutics and Ontology in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.

To attest means to bear witness or to testify. In this sense the word attestation
is commonly used as a juridical term in jurisprudence and in matters of trial
and judgement. However, Ricoeur broadens the use of the term and applies it
in a phenomenological manner to describe an essential aspect which denotes
the human experience of selfhood, of being and having a self in the world.
Since Descartes there have been two extremes which have been used to
describe self identity. On the one hand the Cartesian tradition attempted to
ground the self as an absolute certainty founded on the thinking Cogito as the
basis of being and knowledge. On the other hand and at the other extreme is
the Nietzschean scepticism which denies any ground or stability to personal
identity and selfhood. Ricoeur through the application of phenomenological
description situates the self between these two philosophical extremes.

For Ricoeur selfhood is intimately related to the capacity and activity of

attestation in which the self bears witness and testimony to itself in the world.
It is through attestation that the self is constituted and disclosed in living. The
self ipseity is a phenomenal reality where by the attesting self is the power to
say, to do, to have a self identity and to be a subject who is responsible for

action in the world. Attestation also reveals itself in the experience of

credence, trust and 'the assurance of being oneself (as) acting and suffering.'
(Ricoeur:1992:22) The experience of the self given in attestation is the self
assurance and confidence in the self's way of existing in the world.

Attestation, on bearing self witness and testimony is properly understood in

terms of an hermeneutic of testimony. Testimony or witness presumes that
the attesting subject has a privileged access to the experience of the world. As
Kaufmann states, 'the self becomes a self only through the attestation of its
own self.' (2010:6) For Ricoeur the demonstration of the existing self is not
simply a matter of empirical verification. This empirical verification would be
an example of what Ricoeur calls idem identity as in the continuity of the
same self through time. Ipseity or selfhood is manifest in testimony and
attestation. On giving witness of oneself to another the self interprets its place
in the world by the meaningful participation in action and events. In
attestation we are not simply dealing with an epistemological operation since
the attesting self involves a practical engagement with the world, the self
becomes a matter akin to practical reason.

As Kaufmann highlights Ricoeur links attestation to the sense of assurance, of

being affirmed and assured as an acting and suffering person in the world.
Here acting denotes the voluntary and engaged decisional capacities of the
self whereas the suffering self denotes the involuntary or passive aspects of
existence, of the world, the body as operating upon the self as an objective
power. Kaufmann points out that in the Ricoeurian analysis the assurance of

the self allows a relation to otherness whether it be the identity of others as

persons, as the body as ones own or even the experience of conscience as
other than oneself. Here testimony has moved well beyond the account that is
developed as a concept in jurisprudence. The attesting self is to be found in
the words, works, actions, speech and engagement in which the self can
elaborate itself in the world and in relation to others.

It is important to note as Kaufmann points out that in the testimony or

attestation of the self this does not mean that the attesting self can not also be
subject to uncertainty, question, error, suspicion or inaccuracy. Yet we are not
dealing with doubt in the Cartesian sense, the radical doubt of Descartes
which secures the absolute claim of the Cogito. Rather, Ricoeur speaks of
doubt and uncertainty in relation to a lack of the sense of assurance in self
attestation which can be disclosive of a crisis in identity. Attestation is not
simply the witnessing of facts, events and instances but has a broader
connotation of the encounter with the meaning of human experience in a
global sense.

Kaufmann further elaborates on the hermeneutical situation in which

attestation occurs. In giving an account of a philosophical anthropology it is
clear attestation or witness occurs within a phenomenology of human
capability or capacity. A phenomenology of capability entails a descriptive
account of the person who as a self is capable of speaking, doing, acting,
telling a story and being imputed as the originator of action by others but to
name a few aspects of human capability. The human person is capable of

witness and testimony. In attestation the self exhibits credence, trust,

assurance and affirmation which is the self which exists in self esteem and
regard, a self existing in relation to others in their own attestation, a solicitude
between oneself and another.

Two Phenomenological Forms of Attestation in Psychotherapy: Judith. L.

Herman and Viktor. E. Frankl

Judith. L. Herman on Testimony in Recovery from Trauma.

In an historical perspective work on the therapeutic uses of testimony derives

from the experience of political repression, torture and trauma in particular
the political violence which occurred in the totalitarian regimes of Latin
America during the 1970's. Cienfuegos and Monelli (1983) were among the
first to describe the use of testimony in therapy in the light of the violent
repression which was widespread under the the dictatorship of General
Pinochet in Chile.

The American psychiatrist Judith L Herman has in her research promoted the
use of testimony and attestation as a method which can be used with those
recovering from traumatic experience. Herman outlines three stages in
working therapeutically with those who have being subject to trauma and the
subsequent psychological sequalae. I will briefly outline the first two stages
and offer a more detailed account of the third stage in trauma recovery.

The first stage of recovery involves establishing a safe space for the survivor
which is of an absolute priority in order to establish the effectiveness of any
other therapeutic work which is to follow. This stage may take days to weeks
even years due to the nature, chronicity, duration and early onset of abuse.
Issues such as a persons environment, lifestyle and current personal safety
may well be of issue at the primary stage. Here an adequate assessment of a
persons social situation including financial security, physical security and
integrity need to be addressed. For example persons subject to political
repression may have lost their homes,

countries and families thus such

situations need to be addressed in order for recovery to be promoted. If basic

human needs such as housing, a secure income, clothing and food are an
issue then these needs to be worked with in the first instance.

Having established a basic form of psycho-social stability, security and a

therapeutic alliance therapeutic work can move on to the second stage of
recovery. The client then can move on to the telling of the traumatic narrative
in detail if the client so wishes. The traumatic narrative can be reconstructed
in the context of the survivors life story. Here the empowerment of the client
becomes a focus of the therapeutic work and 'the therapist plays a role of a
witness and ally, in whose presence the survivor can speak of the
unspeakable.'

Moreover, the therapist does not occupy a neutral or non-judgemental

position in relation to the client but is rather a witness and ally to the clients
suffering and trauma. From this account of self witness or attestation the

client can move beyond the fragmentation of traumatic memories. In the

process of truth telling and witness the client can occupy a safe space which
aids recovery. Clearly, this process is much more detailed and complex in
terms of the clients experience and in the therapeutic work of the therapist.

For our purposes the third stage in the recovery and transformation of trauma
becomes more relevant in the discussion of bearing witness and being an
agent, the person who acts in self witness and attestation. The resolutions
which occur in the recovery from trauma involve according to Herman a
capability of the survivor to regain an 'appropriate sense of trust', trust in
others, to be able to withhold trust where not warranted, to experience
autonomy in relation to self and others, an understanding of personal
boundaries, a renewed capability for appropriate intimacy with friends and a
lover and so on. Basically, there occurs a new relationship and self identity
which recovers a fundamental trust and assurance that life is purposeful and
meaningful. For instance, Herman describes a more creative capability to
engage with a partner, children, friends or the wider social community.

Herman is clear to state that persons who have reached a stage whereby they
have achieved some form of resolution to their traumatic experience are
motivated to pursue their lives having achieved a peaceful and safe way of
living in the world. However, it is relevant to our discussion of witness,
testimony and attestation that Herman points to those survivors who as part
of their recovery from trauma move to the arena of social activism and public
witness outside of the therapeutic dialogue between therapist and client.

Herman does stress that those who move into this area of social attestation
are a 'significant minority,' who choose to engage in a wider societal context.
As Herman says 'these survivors recognize a political or religious dimension
in their misfortune, and discover that they can transform the meaning of their
personal tragedy by making it the basis of social action.'

Moreover, Herman movingly points out that eventhough 'there is no way to

compensate for an atrocity, there is a way to transcend it, by giving it as a gift
to others. The trauma is redeemed only when it becomes the source of a
survivor mission.'

Here the notion of a phenomenology of human capabilities becomes

significant in that an engagement with social action as a form of attestation
involves the survivor as an empowered actor which entails initiative, energy
and resourcefulness which enhances the person in their own capabilities. As
Herman states 'participation in organized, demanding social efforts calls
upon the survivor's most mature and adaptive coping strategies of patience,
anticipation, altruism and humour. It brings out the best in her; in return the
survivor gains a sense of connection with the best in other people. In this
sense of reciprocal connection, the survivor can transcend the boundaries of
her

particular

time

and

place.'

This

description

parallels

the

phenomenological description of attestation by Ricoeur and Kaufmann in the

sense that credence and assurance of the attesting self relates to the solicitude
of other human persons in the context of the wider human social community.

The solicitude found in social attestation and witness can have a diversity of
forms whether it be in reaching out to individuals, intellectual pursuits, and
legal or political work related to preventing future injustices. 'Survivors
understand that the natural human response to horrible events is to put them
out of mind. They also understand that those who forget the past are often
condemned to repeat it. It is for this reason that public truth-telling is the
common denominator of all social action.'

The process of social attestation is not a simple one, public action and
engagement by survivors involves a struggle to promote social justice, the
rule of law against the rule of force. In bearing witness Herman states that the
survivor 'must be secure in the knowledge that simply in her willingness to
tell the truth in public, she has taken the action that perpetrators fear the
most. Her recovery is not based on the illusion that evil has been overcome,
but rather on the knowledge that it has not prevailed, and on the hope that
restorative love may still be found in the world.'

So here Herman acknowledges that recovery from trauma can exist on both a
personal plane in the sense of the recovery of the individual person who can
move on from trauma to re-engage with the day to day living of ordinary life.
On the other plane, for some survivors recovery moves beyond personal
attestation and witness which occurs in the therapeutic relationship to a
public and social form of attestation in the public arena. The social arena
where testimony and attestation is utilised by the survivor for the benefit of
other victims and for the wider civic community. In both cases of private

therapeutic attestation and then for some a more public form of attestation
there is the common experience of transcendence, of moving beyond being a
victim of trauma towards rediscovering what it is to be a flourishing human
being, perhaps albeit with healing scars. Recovery for the survivor can mean
that no matter what the degrading power of evil had in the past that the
survivor is a witness, one who gives attestation in both protest and in attest to
the human hope and trust that life is worth living or as Herman describes it
'that restorative love may still be found in the world.'

The Logotherapy of Viktor Frankl as a Form of Attestation.

It can be said that Logotherapy as developed by the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl

is an example of the significance of the concept of attestation both in terms of
a recounting of Frankl's own personal life experience and the application of
his experience and thinking in the context of the therapeutic practice of
Logotherapy. Although Frankl does not explicitly use the notion of
attestation, witness or testimony as a category in his elaboration of
psychotherapy attestation could be described as central to the promotion of
meaning for healthy human existence and human flourishing. It is to be borne
in mind that the work Man's Search for Meaning was originally published in
the German as an account of a psychologist's experience of the concentration
camps. This is clear from the original German title of the publication which
was entitled Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager. (1946) In this sense the
work becomes a powerful form of attestation and witness to the horror and
human suffering which occurred in the concentration camps. Moreover, the

work becomes a form of attestation or witness to the purpose of therapeutic

meaning in the context of man-made mass death. (Wyschogrod) A
biographical account as testimony in the context of the death camps also
becomes a locus for a description of purpose, resistance, protest and meaning.

An understanding of the concept of attestation could offer a valuable and

significant elaboration for Logotherapeutic ideas and therapeutic practice.
Much work could be done to explicate in detail some of the therapeutic
notions which were elaborated by Frankl. It is significant that many of the
anthropological themes in Franklian thought also are present in philosophical
anthropology and here the phenomenology of human capabilities is of
significance. The acting, the suffering, the thinking, story telling person as
described by Ricoeur and Kaufmann could be fruitfully developed with an
interdisciplinary

benefit

for

both

philosophy,

Logotherapy

and

in

psychotherapy.

Rather than develop more theoretical considerations between Logotherapy

and the phenomenology of attestation I refer to a published speech by Frankl
where testimony is precisely personal and a matter of remembrance in the
public arena. In March of 1949 Frankl gave an address to the Viennese Society
of Physicians entitled In Memoriam. The purpose of this address before a
learned medical society was to remember those physicians who were victims
of the Second World War. Here Frankl attests to those physicians who
perished. Frankl names those who died as is befitting of an occasion of
remembrance.

Frankl is well aware that witness and attestation is personal. He begins with a
quotation from the Psalms of David.....'What is man that you are mindful of
him.' as a question which the Psalmist asks of God. Then he proceeds to give
'testimony to true physicians who could not see others suffer, who could not
let others suffer but knew how to suffer themselves, who knew how to
achieve the right kind of suffering courageous suffering.' (1967:107)

Frankl himself who was a victim gives attestation to his friend Dr. Gisa Gerbel
who died shortly after entering the camp from typhoid infection, to Dr
Plautus, a doctor to the homeless and indigent from the 16th District of
Vienna, whom he calls the 'the Angel of Ottakring.' who was dispatched to
his death on his arrival and selection at the camp. Also is remembered Dr.
Lamberg a man 'of the old world' who even during the hardest of slave work
was interested in discussing philosophy and religion. Frankl mentions these
physicians irrespective of their scientific status as he says:
'...I speak of individuals, but I included all who died there. The few stand for
the many, because about the many one cannot write a personal chronicle.
However, they need no chronicle; they need no monument. Each deed is it
own monument, and more imperishable than a monument that is merely the
work of human hands. Because the deeds of a man cannot be removed from
the world; although past, it is not irrecoverably lost in the past, but therein is
irrevocably preserved..' (1967:109)

Here Frankl considers the irrecoverable nature of the the past which cannot

be recovered nor removed from the world. However, the past can be
irrevocably preserved, that is preserved we may say in testimony, attestation
and in naming the past in the attestations of the present. In this sense
memorial becomes witness and attestation to the other.

Frankl is quite clear that there were doctors in the camps who 'desecrated'
their commitment to medical ethics by experimenting on human persons.
However, he as a survivor of the camps uses an interesting description that
living through the camps 'was one big experiment a crucial experiment'
(1967: 110) In this respect I shall quote Frankl more extensively:
'Our dead colleagues passed the test with honors. They proved to us that
even under the most deprived, the most humiliating conditions, man can
remain man and true physician. What was honor to them who gave this
proof, should be a lesson to us. It should teach us what man is, and what
man can become.' (1967: 110)

Here Frankl gives testimony to the experience of the sufferings of the dead
but also his own suffering.
'What then is man? We have learned to know him.....We have learned to know
him in the camps, where everything unessential had been stripped from man,
where every thing which a person had money, power, fame, luck
disappeared: while only that remained which a man does not have but
which he must be. What remained was man himself, who in the white heat
of suffering and pain was melted down to the essential, to the human
himself.' (1967:110)

In asking the anthropological question Frankl states ' he is a being who

continually decides what he is....thinking, this consciousness, this (is)'the
dignity of each individual human being.' (1967:110)

Conclusion:
In this brief paper the relation between the philosophical notion of attestation
in Ricoeur and Kaufmann has been related to psychotherapy, in particular in
relation to the work of Judith Herman and Viktor Frankl. It highlights that the
concept of attestation can be fruitful concept in the context of therapy and
could be considered for further detailed elaboration in future research and
practice.
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Edward S Gardner
Heaton Hypnosis and Psychotherapy Practice
Email: ipnoetic@gmail.com