Abstract

SOUSA, Elisabete Marques Jesus de. When the Good Judge of Souls Becomes an Experimenting Psychologist. Estud. pesqui. psicol. [online]. 2020, vol.20, n.spe, pp. 1020-1033. ISSN 1808-4281.  http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/epp.2020.56648.

The main objective of this chapter is to analyze and comment on what the eclectic Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) understands by a good judge of souls (sjelekyndig), a term that this peculiar philosopher and poet makes equivalent to psychologist in the work For Self-Examination. In agreement with this objective, the modus operandi of the experimenting psychologist (experimenterende) is analyzed and commented on as it is carried out by several of its narrating authors, namely, Johannes Climacus (in Postscript), Johannes de silentio (in Fear and Tremor) and Frater Taciturnus (in Stadiums on the Way of Life). Experimenterende (that is to say, the one that can be defined by putting in practice his ability to experiment) is indeed the adjective that is most frequently used to qualify the term "psychologist". Special emphasis is given to the role of imagination in the author and in the reader and the way imagination joins the faculty of judgment in the interaction between reader-text-author. Special attention is given to the role of the poetic and the literary within the whole process.

Keywords : Kierkegaard; experimenting psychologist; imagination; poetic and literary re-creation; good judge of souls (sjelekyndig).

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