IJSP Number 5, 2023

95 Self-centeredness seems to be a very good and desirable thing for the individualisation we all must undergo, but since it is basically a social alienation and a family de-focusing, it doesn’t hit the mark because it is, in fact, a de- personalization. Although on the surface the individual can personalise every item of their life (covers for the phone, tattoos or piercings for the body, colours for the car etc.), the only thing that should remain untouched by the personalisation mania is one’s own personality. Intolerance, lack of interest for everything that does not concern oneself and a general unconcern regarding humanness, as the bases for our “new” neo-liberal morals, are the key words for our modern isolationist attitude perpetuated in a shiny snow globe. If back then (meaning at least the XX-eth century) tolerance and compromise were key components of family life – crammed in little more than two/three rooms and a kitchen – what we have today, under the pressure of the marketplace and urban development, is a disaggregation of family life and alienation from home – understood as the family nest – in other words, what Maslow considered as the needs for security and safety, but also the needs for warmth, love and carrying are out, obsolete and useless. 2. EXPLORING THE FIELD OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY As in so many aspects of contemporary life, in the field of psychotherapy, we have a similar picture; a colourful multitude and variety of therapies offered by a very large range of psychological branches in order to satisfy every particular demand or need. For a layman such a diversity is probably hard to comprehend and rather impossible to grasp; it is difficult to understand even for first year psychology students. What they cannot see is why psychology, and subsequently psychotherapy, has no unified, all-encompassing idea of how humans “work”, express their attitudes and behave in their environment. How is it that nobody has yet found a general concept to bring all the fragments and parts of different psychological orientations and schools under one single existential or anthropological umbrella? In other words, the variety of orientations and visions offered by the field of psychology and psychotherapy is more than dizzying for the great majority of those who approach this domain. What they actually search for and would like to know for certain is, from a philosophical point of view, the idea of a “cosmos” – meaning an ordered and internally structured body that has the power to banish, once and for all, chaos, disorder, dissolution and everything scary that comes additionally such as the feeling of anxiety that appears once we left our web of meanings or beliefs that is so homelike and comforting. Still, as the number of cases and psychological problems, and the associated ailing increases, it is hard, for a particular person, to make head or tail in a very diverse and confusing market (in which increased diversity is one of the promises kept by today’s globalization). But, given such a diversity and rich offer, it is very easy for charlatans, intellectual “halflings” or “last-in-promotions” to find a decent stand – particularly for those very poised and unscrupulous or the more unconscious