Individual therapy is never an individual matter. The state of society and the world are inextricably linked and essential elements of the context of therapy. These elements can generate both a creative – as well as a crippling impulse. In the following concept of Havel, he poetically states that the vision of ourselves can play a decisive role in the position and actions we (can) take.
Václav Havel was a Czech writer, philosopher, dissident, and statesman. From 1989 to 1992 he was the first democratically elected president of Czechoslovakia in 41 years. After that, he was the first president of the Czech Republic (1993-2003) after the Czechoslovak division. Within Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs.
If I imagined what this world makes out of me,
then I really am incapable of anything.
The destruction of the globe
I won’t be able to stop it, of course.
But do I think about what each of us
originally is
or could become
– independent of the state of the world –
an autonomous human being,
capable of taking responsibility for the world
then, of course, there’s a lot I can do.
Wenceslas square (Václavské náměstí) Prague.