Medium and mediate in psychotherapy and psychotherapy science

Abstract

The text compares a rigid and a dynamic approach to reality using the two terms mediate and medium. Media are not understood as beings or identities, but as self-differences or relations of connection and separation in an ontological sense. According to this medialist view, our reality(ies) only arise due the fact that self-differentiated media permanently mediatize each other. Starting from consciousness as a medium of realizing self-difference, it is shown how cognition comes about in the process. Examples from psychotherapy illustrate how the change process encompasses the interand intrapsychic. The idea that the concept of medium can serve as a bracket for all forms of psychotherapy is continued in the direction of psychotherapy science. This will be outlined in its main features.