Counselors in Existential Personalistic Anthropology ,
Masters in the Art of Living
By Dr. Bruno Bonvecchi, Director of the Institute of Existential Personalistic Anthropology in Cosenza, Italy
If it is true that human beings are the result of a continual evolution of a life form within our Universe, I think that they truly exist only as far as they evolve during “their” own lives.
In the current evolutionary process, humanity’s artistic and spiritual dimension is emerging, which is connected to our ability to become Persons and Artists of our lives. A Person is someone who manages to achieve an autonomous, free and responsible identity, while consistently adhering to a code of ethics. An Artist is someone who transforms their traumas and painful memories of even a far away past into something new, something that is vital and beautiful. An Artist does not complain about life, even when presented with harsh challenges during adulthood, but rather he or she makes such trials into opportunities to create further transformative beauty.
When training our Counselors we draw particularly on the teachings of three great teachers and experts of the human experience.
Viktor von Weizsacker: this scholar, with his theory on RELATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY and PATHOSOPHIA, reminds us that a true relationship between people is a very difficult thing to accomplish. Such a goal always requires that each of the people involved renounces something of themselves so they can make room for and embrace the other. By drawing upon the research he did in the fields of medicine, biology and neurophysiology, he offers us an original way of interpreting the “living phenomenon” that is the human being. His is an in fieri anthropology, that no longer looks at the subject as a simple object of medical-philosophical-scientific study, but that instead includes what the subject is BECOMING, and looks for the origins of this becoming by studying what the subject is expressing as pathic. For this scholar, everything that pertains to the experience of pain is pathic, as well as everything that helps to penetrate into its meaning, and stimulates an openness to the inter-subjectivity of relationship. “We are not just (BE)-INGS, we are MOV-ING, FLOW-ING, BECOM-ING, and only then are we LIV-ING”, is an important affirmation he made in 1926.
Ludwig Binswanger: In a conversation with S. Freud in 1927, Binswanger affirmed: “A person is transformed when they choose to follow their spiritual spark for guidance, or rather when they make a decision after they reach awareness”. Freud’s first comment in response to this was: “Yes, the spirit is everything”. Binswanger created Anthropoanalysis, which is an analysis of the ways of be-ing of the individual and of its real and actualized presence in every moment.
Antonio Mercurio: His departure point was Analytical Psychotherapy, and in 1970 he founded in Rome the first School of psychotherapeutic training in Italy. He then moved on to Analytical Existential Psychotherapy and developed the theory of “Existential Anthropology and Personalistic Metapsychology”. Within this theory he offered a historical definition of the Person, which, in my opinion, is still today an important point of reference for all those interested in the phenomenology of human beings. Later, his Existential Analytical Psychotherapy became Sophia-Analysis, which was no longer the analysis of only the psyche, but included an analysis of the wisdom present within every phase of human evolution as well as within each human being. Still later he further developed Existential Personalistic Anthropology by creating two distinct methods:
a) Sophia-Art, which is the art of unifying the opposites and the split off parts within us, such as love and hate, creativity and destructivity, beauty and ugliness.
b) Cosmo-Art, which instead is an artistic Movement as well as a method. It is inspired by a new and original way of looking at the myth of Ulysses, which is seen as a metaphor for human existence from prenatal life onward and as an attempt to offer an evolutionary and artistic answer to the existence and function of pain in human life.
Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art are two fields of research where Counselors within our Association are encouraged to carry out experiments regarding their own life experience.
More recently, Antonio Mercurio has proposed a fusion between his thought and the positive thinking proposed by the Metaphysical Counselor Louise Hay. By doing so he reminds us that human beings exist as long as they are continually becoming Persons, or rather if they continually evolve towards new levels of identity that are superior to the preceding ones. He began doing this by evolving his own thought through the recognition of all the wealth contained in Hay’s approach. Mercurio writes: “Human beings that exist but are not becoming, or rather that never change and never transform themselves because they remain rigidly fixated in the ways of thinking they were born with and in the behaviors they have always identified with, are not living beings, even though they may believe to be so. They are shadows; they are not truly alive” (From the Sixth Theorem in A. Mercurio’s Cosmo-Art Theorems and Axioms, 2010 Solaris Institute of the Sophia University of Rome).
As we can see, Existential Anthropological Counseling looks at single individuals with a global, holistic approach, and it especially concentrates on their artistic, spiritual dimensions, where their individual life purpose, their freedom and their ability to make responsible decisions lie.
An Existential Anthropological Counselor is a PERSON who has a direct experience of everything I described above within their course of training. He or she acquires specific tools to learn, step by step, to act wisely and to apply such wisdom to their own existential becoming, so they can then transmit this to others. This in turn helps the beauty of their own lives and the lives of others to emerge, through the discovery of new ways of transforming suffering, of harmonizing conflicts and of removing obstacles, which are all seen as precious opportunities to grow, evolve and be healthily transformed. Our Counselors do not operate within the context of behavioral disorders or with every type of pathology. They do not work on structurally changing the personality or in all those situations that are instead the specific competence of other professions. It is important that our Counselors do not consider themselves neither healers nor saviors of just anyone.
Counselors trained in this method always keep in mind that times of crisis, obstacles, conflicts and suffering are signals that Life sends us to stimulate us and help us decide to make those transformations necessary to become Persons who are increasingly free and creative and are moving towards “more being”. It is important to live to experience the joy of living, besides just the pleasure of living. The joy of living requires acknowledging and accepting that pain is a useful source of energy that helps accomplish one’s own original existential purpose.
Counselors in Existential Personalistic Anthropology are professionals and guides who are experts in the “art of living”. This is an art which is governed by the Laws of Life that are written within humanity’s deep individual and collective wisdom. It is an art which teaches how to flow with life by working on one’s awareness, on one’s responsible freedom, on one’s knowledge of oneself and one’s own existential goals. It is an art that encourages us to renounce believing we are helpless victims of events and situations, so we can recover unknown personal resources and unexpressed creative potential. It is an art that trains us to be able to act to create Beauty in our own lives and in the lives of those who are close to us.
“An Artist of one’s own life and of the life of the universe is someone capable of making their lives a work of art and who, together with others, works to transform a group of people who are complete strangers into a single living organism capable of creating truth and beauty, following the laws of life. To forgive oneself and others, for example, is one of the laws of life ….”This is what Antonio Mercurio writes in his Invitation to Existential Personalistic Anthropology, and I would like to add that forgiveness does not mean agreeing with or justifying anything!
“I affirm that just as Ulysses conquered his own monsters and poisons, I, too, can conquer my own monsters and poisons and make my life into a work of art that is a fusion of truth, freedom, beauty and love, and I can do this without expecting that I will accomplish this over night”. (Antonio Mercurio).
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A brief introduction to Existential Personalistic Anthropology*
Existential Personalistic Anthropology is a science of human beings (Anthropology) , seen as Persons¸ as active and creative subjects (Personalistic) that are completely open and connected to the existence of all of reality (Existential). Formulated by Prof. Antonio Mercurio and developed along with his students and associates in the Institutes affiliated to the Sophia University of Rome (SUR), it has been an inspiration to many throughout Italy and other European countries since the SUR's founding in 1970 , and has more recently been introduced in Russia, Asia and the United States.
Existential Personalistic Anthropology proposes to fuse the four perspectives that humanity has always used to observe reality: Religion, Philosophy, Science and Art.
Existential Personalistic Anthropology encourages the creation of a dialectical relationship between these disciplines, to produce, through reciprocal enrichment and mutual correction, the truth-wisdom-joy that humanity needs to live.
Its goal is to use each of these forces as partial and complimentary elements to produce the super-force of unified thinking. In fact, linear thinking, that pertains to the principle of non-contradiction (either something is true or it is false), which Western civilization is founded upon, no longer seems sufficient to allow for a complete understanding of humanity. To the contrary, it can easily transform itself into a schizophrenic way of thinking.
The entire body of Existential Personalistic Anthropology has been absorbed and enriched by Sophia-Analysis, Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art, through a succession of stages. Today Antonio Mercurio refers to the wealth of the whole journey as “Cosmoartistic Anthropology”.
* Excerpted from Antonio Mercurio's Cosmoartistic Anthropology, by Emanuele Chimienti, director of The Ulysseans Institute in Lecce, Italy, whose English edition is available for free download on this site.
Sophia-Analysis is a school of life based on wisdom. The word Sophia means wisdom in Greek. Sophia-Analysis, therefore, means analysis of wisdom; the wisdom behind the art of thinking and the art of living.
Sophia-Analysis is also an experiential laboratory, whose goal is to attempt to unify in a single energy field the four fundamental forces that have been important throughout human history: religion, art, philosophy and science. The origins of this attempt can be found in Renaissance thinking and it corresponds to the current historical effort of nuclear physicists to unify the four fundamental forces found in nature: the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, the electromagnetic force and gravity. A unified energy field is not created in our imagination and our thoughts, it is created in concrete reality, with well defined spaces and times.
Sophia-Analysis is an individual and group method that helps human beings to be born and to grow as Persons. According to Existential Personalistic Anthropology, the science behind Sophia-Analysis, a Person is someone who is capable of freely loving him or herself, of loving others and of receiving love. Persons at the highest level are those who have become capable of being artists of their life and of making their life a work of art that creates joy and beauty for themselves and others.
Group Sophia-Analysis is an existential and choral group project that aims at reproducing in a group of human beings, through the years, the same processes (in both a figurative and a real sense) that occur during the birth of a star: condensation, collapse, thermonuclear reaction and transformation of one element of matter into another, with the consequential production of atomic energy and the creation of a star. In the beginning, a star is only a chaotic and shapeless cloud; once it has formed, it is a work of art that emanates light and beauty.
How can we accomplish a harmonious synthesis between life and death in our daily lives? There are three historical ways we have defended ourselves from the fear of death: meditating on death, giving death to others, denying death. Anyone who uses these ways will never become an artist of their life. Anyone who is too worried about death will never be able to truly deal with their life.
Sophia-Art proposes to study death like a bull fighter studies a bull, first to tame it and then to defeat it artistically before the applause and enthusiasm of the crowd. The bull stands before the bull fighter, but death does not stand before us: it is within us, and it threatens every instant of our life. Here I am not speaking of biological death, but rather of death that is a castration of life.
Death that is a refusal to love oneself, a refusal to transform oneself, a refusal to give of oneself, a refusal to forgive oneself, a refusal to free oneself and to take flight beyond any type of trauma, any type of conditioning or any type of narcissistic wound, which carries with it a drive for revenge. Humanity’s main problem is not biological death, it is existential death. It is life that is consumed by death without generating any type of perennial life, perennial like any work of art is.
Every artist studies death and faces it, so as to overcome it.
Sophiartists train to do the same thing, taking as their medium not a canvas or marble etc., but the daily experiences that are a part of their own lives in their relationships with themselves, with others, and with life. No one expects us to become a bull fighter, but Life asks us to become artists of our own lives. Not to escape hell nor to escape death, but to bend death and pull out of it the energy it holds within, and with it create new life.
Everything is energy: life is energy, and we all know this. Matter is also energy, and before Einstein we didn’t know this. Death, too, is energy, and artists have known this forever; now, however, Sophia-Art has understood their secret and can teach it to anyone.
Cosmo-Art
Sophia-Art could not stop at the destiny of humanity without asking about the meaning of the universe, which generated it and continues to nourishes it. With Cosmo-Art, the former Artistic I in Sophia-Art realizes that it is called to create a work of art not only of its own life, but also of the life of the entire universe.
This goal can be glimpsed and accomplished only if human beings begin to truly face the two major opposites that they encounter along their journey: pain and death. These are two realities that collide with the concepts of wellbeing and vitality, but if they are faced with art and wisdom, they cease to appear as elements that are anti-life and they begin to reveal themselves as portions of life itself.
Pain and death in this context no longer appear as two realities that are external to and inimical to life, the first one something to be fought against and the second to endure. Instead, they are seen as two parts of life itself.
Cosmo-Art considers the journey of humanity as a part of a greater whole, which is the global purpose of the universe itself. Just like in an orchestra, where a violin is an instrument that is already complete, while it is also a partial element of the orchestra, human beings are both a unified whole in themselves, and an essential part of the universe. With Cosmo-Art, humanity discovers that its ability to create beauty is not only useful to its own life, but is useful to the life of the entire universe, and that such beauty cannot be produced without the cooperative action of the universe as well.
In this viewpoint, human beings are not only artists of their own lives, but they are artists of the life of the universe. Together they intend to create a new type of beauty that is superior to all other types of existing beauty, both in terms of content and of strength. Antonio Mercurio has given the name immortal secondary beauty to this type of beauty, to distinguish it from primary beauty, which is mortal.
All texts were translated from the Italian and adapted by Martha S. Bache-Wiig, Existential Personalistic Anthropologist and founder of the Center for the Development of the Person LLC in Waukesha, WI , USA.
We often believe that Art and Creativity only have to do with people who are “artists”.
Instead, we can all learn to become Artists of our Lives, where we can integrate all our experiences, good and bad, to make our very life a Work of Art, capable of resonating love, truth, beauty and freedom within ourselves and out towards others.
We all long to feel such wholeness and fulfillment, and to be able to love and care for ourselves, to love others and to receive love. It is a continual journey that we are all making in every moment of our lives.
When we are faced with problems and suffering, these are actually moments of great potential, when we can choose to set aside “victim mode” and learn to become Artists of our lives. We can awaken to our deepest creativity—our ability to tune into our True, Deep Self and to begin to follow its call.
For many, it is very challenging to find the way, due to our past experiences, our fears and guilt, and the simple fact that we have never been taught how to do it!
Sometimes what we most need is someone who can listen deeply and help us hear ourselves. All of our answers lie within, but we must learn how to listen and we need support to act on them.
The purpose of the Center for the Development of the Person LLC is to offer those who so desire a safe place where they can begin to learn how to become Artists of their lives by exploring the various theories and methods proposed by Existential Personalistic Anthropology and Cosmoartistic Anthropology.
Martha S. Bache-Wiig obtained her diploma as an Existential Personalistic Anthropologist in 1998, was licensed as a psychologist in Italy in 2000 and licensed as a Counselor in 2002. Along the way, she has also explored other techniques and tools for understanding and improving individual and collective human reality, such as Astrology, Meditation and Pranic Healing, which she integrates in her practice. She has worked with numerous people in both individual and group settings, and continues on her own journey of making her life a Work of Art through her practice and also through her continuing relationship with the Sophia University of Rome and its affiliated Institutes and Centers throughout Italy, Europe and Russia.
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Existential Personalistic Anthropology proposes to fuse the four perspectives that humanity has always used to observe reality: Religion, Philosophy, Science and Art.
Existential Personalistic Anthropology encourages the creation of a dialectical relationship between these disciplines, to produce, through reciprocal enrichment and mutual correction, the truth-wisdom-joy that humanity needs to live.
Its goal is to use each of these forces as partial and complimentary elements to produce the super-force of unified thinking. In fact, linear thinking, that pertains to the principle of non-contradiction (either something is true or it is false), which Western civilization is founded upon, no longer seems sufficient to allow for a complete understanding of humanity. To the contrary, it can easily transform itself into a schizophrenic way of thinking.
The entire body of Existential Personalistic Anthropology has been absorbed and enriched by Sophia-Analysis, Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art, through a succession of stages. Today Antonio Mercurio refers to the wealth of the whole journey as “Cosmoartistic Anthropology”.
* Excerpted from Antonio Mercurio's Cosmoartistic Anthropology, by Emanuele Chimienti, director of The Ulysseans Institute in Lecce, Italy, whose English edition is available for free download on this site.
Sophia-Analysis
By Prof. Antonio Mercurio
Sophia-Analysis is a school of life based on wisdom. The word Sophia means wisdom in Greek. Sophia-Analysis, therefore, means analysis of wisdom; the wisdom behind the art of thinking and the art of living.
Sophia-Analysis is also an experiential laboratory, whose goal is to attempt to unify in a single energy field the four fundamental forces that have been important throughout human history: religion, art, philosophy and science. The origins of this attempt can be found in Renaissance thinking and it corresponds to the current historical effort of nuclear physicists to unify the four fundamental forces found in nature: the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, the electromagnetic force and gravity. A unified energy field is not created in our imagination and our thoughts, it is created in concrete reality, with well defined spaces and times.
Sophia-Analysis is an individual and group method that helps human beings to be born and to grow as Persons. According to Existential Personalistic Anthropology, the science behind Sophia-Analysis, a Person is someone who is capable of freely loving him or herself, of loving others and of receiving love. Persons at the highest level are those who have become capable of being artists of their life and of making their life a work of art that creates joy and beauty for themselves and others.
Group Sophia-Analysis is an existential and choral group project that aims at reproducing in a group of human beings, through the years, the same processes (in both a figurative and a real sense) that occur during the birth of a star: condensation, collapse, thermonuclear reaction and transformation of one element of matter into another, with the consequential production of atomic energy and the creation of a star. In the beginning, a star is only a chaotic and shapeless cloud; once it has formed, it is a work of art that emanates light and beauty.
Sophia-Art
By Prof. Antonio Mercurio
How can we accomplish a harmonious synthesis between life and death in our daily lives? There are three historical ways we have defended ourselves from the fear of death: meditating on death, giving death to others, denying death. Anyone who uses these ways will never become an artist of their life. Anyone who is too worried about death will never be able to truly deal with their life.
Sophia-Art proposes to study death like a bull fighter studies a bull, first to tame it and then to defeat it artistically before the applause and enthusiasm of the crowd. The bull stands before the bull fighter, but death does not stand before us: it is within us, and it threatens every instant of our life. Here I am not speaking of biological death, but rather of death that is a castration of life.
Death that is a refusal to love oneself, a refusal to transform oneself, a refusal to give of oneself, a refusal to forgive oneself, a refusal to free oneself and to take flight beyond any type of trauma, any type of conditioning or any type of narcissistic wound, which carries with it a drive for revenge. Humanity’s main problem is not biological death, it is existential death. It is life that is consumed by death without generating any type of perennial life, perennial like any work of art is.
Every artist studies death and faces it, so as to overcome it.
Sophiartists train to do the same thing, taking as their medium not a canvas or marble etc., but the daily experiences that are a part of their own lives in their relationships with themselves, with others, and with life. No one expects us to become a bull fighter, but Life asks us to become artists of our own lives. Not to escape hell nor to escape death, but to bend death and pull out of it the energy it holds within, and with it create new life.
Everything is energy: life is energy, and we all know this. Matter is also energy, and before Einstein we didn’t know this. Death, too, is energy, and artists have known this forever; now, however, Sophia-Art has understood their secret and can teach it to anyone.
Cosmo-Art
By Emanuele Chimienti
Sophia-Art could not stop at the destiny of humanity without asking about the meaning of the universe, which generated it and continues to nourishes it. With Cosmo-Art, the former Artistic I in Sophia-Art realizes that it is called to create a work of art not only of its own life, but also of the life of the entire universe.
This goal can be glimpsed and accomplished only if human beings begin to truly face the two major opposites that they encounter along their journey: pain and death. These are two realities that collide with the concepts of wellbeing and vitality, but if they are faced with art and wisdom, they cease to appear as elements that are anti-life and they begin to reveal themselves as portions of life itself.
Pain and death in this context no longer appear as two realities that are external to and inimical to life, the first one something to be fought against and the second to endure. Instead, they are seen as two parts of life itself.
Cosmo-Art considers the journey of humanity as a part of a greater whole, which is the global purpose of the universe itself. Just like in an orchestra, where a violin is an instrument that is already complete, while it is also a partial element of the orchestra, human beings are both a unified whole in themselves, and an essential part of the universe. With Cosmo-Art, humanity discovers that its ability to create beauty is not only useful to its own life, but is useful to the life of the entire universe, and that such beauty cannot be produced without the cooperative action of the universe as well.
In this viewpoint, human beings are not only artists of their own lives, but they are artists of the life of the universe. Together they intend to create a new type of beauty that is superior to all other types of existing beauty, both in terms of content and of strength. Antonio Mercurio has given the name immortal secondary beauty to this type of beauty, to distinguish it from primary beauty, which is mortal.
All texts were translated from the Italian and adapted by Martha S. Bache-Wiig, Existential Personalistic Anthropologist and founder of the Center for the Development of the Person LLC in Waukesha, WI , USA.
Meet the Artist Within
Martha S. Bache-Wiig
Martha S. Bache-Wiig
We often believe that Art and Creativity only have to do with people who are “artists”.
Instead, we can all learn to become Artists of our Lives, where we can integrate all our experiences, good and bad, to make our very life a Work of Art, capable of resonating love, truth, beauty and freedom within ourselves and out towards others.
We all long to feel such wholeness and fulfillment, and to be able to love and care for ourselves, to love others and to receive love. It is a continual journey that we are all making in every moment of our lives.
When we are faced with problems and suffering, these are actually moments of great potential, when we can choose to set aside “victim mode” and learn to become Artists of our lives. We can awaken to our deepest creativity—our ability to tune into our True, Deep Self and to begin to follow its call.
For many, it is very challenging to find the way, due to our past experiences, our fears and guilt, and the simple fact that we have never been taught how to do it!
Sometimes what we most need is someone who can listen deeply and help us hear ourselves. All of our answers lie within, but we must learn how to listen and we need support to act on them.
The purpose of the Center for the Development of the Person LLC is to offer those who so desire a safe place where they can begin to learn how to become Artists of their lives by exploring the various theories and methods proposed by Existential Personalistic Anthropology and Cosmoartistic Anthropology.
Martha S. Bache-Wiig obtained her diploma as an Existential Personalistic Anthropologist in 1998, was licensed as a psychologist in Italy in 2000 and licensed as a Counselor in 2002. Along the way, she has also explored other techniques and tools for understanding and improving individual and collective human reality, such as Astrology, Meditation and Pranic Healing, which she integrates in her practice. She has worked with numerous people in both individual and group settings, and continues on her own journey of making her life a Work of Art through her practice and also through her continuing relationship with the Sophia University of Rome and its affiliated Institutes and Centers throughout Italy, Europe and Russia.
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