Buber Martin

Martin Buber enters the depth-psychology corpus not as a psychologist but as a philosophical interlocutor whose dialogical ontology — most concentrated in the I-Thou / I-It distinction of his 1922 work — exerts persistent pressure on clinical and theoretical practice. The corpus registers Buber across several distinct registers. In Jungian literature, the decisive encounter is adversarial: Buber’s 1952 Mercury article charges Jung with Gnosticism and with collapsing the transcendent God into psychic immanence, to which Jung replied directly; Edinger’s commentary preserves this exchange as a paradigm case for understanding Jung’s epistemological premises. In object-relational and group-therapeutic writing, Buber’s I-Thou framework is enlisted constructively, particularly by Jacoby and Flores, who ground authentic analytic encounter and therapeutic dialogue in the ontology of the ‘between.’ Existential psychotherapists — above all Yalom — invoke Buber on the structure of isolation and the relational buttress against it. Motivational interviewing literature cites the Buber-Rogers dialogue as a precedent for the compassionate, non-expert therapeutic stance. Across these contexts the tensions are consistent: psyche versus transcendence, technique versus meeting, I-It instrumentality versus I-Thou mutuality. Buber thus functions in the corpus simultaneously as critic, foundation, and heuristic for what genuine human relationship demands of clinical encounter.

In the library 11 passages

In February 1952, the Jewish religious philosopher Martin Buber published an article entitled ‘Religion and Modern Thinking’ in the European journal Mercury… Buber discusses three modern thinkers: Sartre, Heidegger, and Jung — all of whom, according to Buber, although reaching somewhat different conclusions, based their work on Nietzsche’s announcement

This passage identifies Buber’s 1952 polemical article as the locus of his critique of Jung, situating it within Jung’s broader epistemological controversy over the relation between psychology and religion.

Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung’s Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996thesis

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To support his diagnosis Buber even resorts to a sin of my youth, committed nearly forty years ago, which consists in my once having perpetrated a poem.

Jung’s direct rebuttal to Buber’s accusation of Gnosticism defends his identity as an empirical psychiatrist rather than a metaphysician, framing the controversy as a category error on Buber’s part.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976thesis

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I want to offer some possible answers to this question based on the ideas of Martin Buber, particularly those expressed in his early book I and Thou (1922). Buber’s views are neatly summarized by J. MacQuarrie in Twentieth-Century Religious Thought: There are two primary attitudes which man may take up to the world

Jacoby deploys Buber’s I-Thou / I-It distinction as the conceptual foundation for distinguishing genuine human relationship from projective or instrumental encounter within the analytic dyad.

Jacoby, Mario, The Analytic Encounter: Transference and Human Relationship, 1984thesis

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Buber’s principle is that the development of this self is merely preparatory for true dialogic existence. We become what we are in order to be able to develop authentic real relationships with others. We therefore remain inauthentic or false until we are able to engage another in true dialogue.

Flores presents Buber’s dialogical philosophy as the theoretical ground for understanding authentic selfhood and relational healing in group psychotherapy with addicted populations.

Flores, Philip J, Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations An, 1997thesis

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“The waves of the ether,” as Martin Buber says, “roar on always, but for most of the time we have turned off our receivers.”

Yalom invokes Buber’s image of the ever-present relational field to argue that existential isolation persists not because connection is unavailable but because individuals defensively close themselves off from it.

Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting

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Buber, M. (1971). I and thou. New York: Free Press. Buber, M., Rogers, C. R., Anderson, R., & Cissna, K. N. (1997). The Martin Buber–Carl Rogers dialogue: A new transcript with commentary.

The citation of both I and Thou and the Buber-Rogers dialogue in MI’s bibliography signals that Buber’s dialogical philosophy is treated as a formal predecessor to the compassionate, person-centred stance of motivational interviewing.

Miller, William R., Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013supporting

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Buber, Dr. Martin, 91-93, 94, 181

Campbell’s index references indicate that Buber is engaged substantively across multiple pages of mythological and theological argument, suggesting dialogue with his religious philosophy in the context of myth and the God-concept.

Campbell, Joseph, Myths to Live By, 1972supporting

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Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters by Martin Buber, translated by Olga Marx… Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters by Martin Buber, translated by Olga Marx.

Kurtz and Ketcham draw on Buber’s Hasidic compilations as narrative sources for the spirituality of imperfection, positioning Buber’s storytelling legacy as consonant with the AA tradition of spiritual humility.

Kurtz, Ernest, Ketcham, Katherine, The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the, 1994supporting

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