Reflection to freedom: Return of a fundamental discourse in Contemporary Psychology

Abstract

In the following article, we take a look into the contribution of Ernö and Birk (2024), “Rethinking Freedom for Contemporary Psychology”. During that process, the central statements of their article are first highlighted and then challenged/re-elaborated. The goal is to underline the importance of their contribution to our current scientific stances and the context that we retrace in ourselves as researchers while questioning and extending certain stances. A crucial point of the following commentary is the exploration of a diverse potential behind the construct of freedom that is much more complex than being simply reduced to only social or individual layers. We may not be able to find that swiftly an answer to what freedom means, but we can gain with our current understanding central insights into how we use our daily life the vision of freedom, in its temporary and fluid characteristics.

“As is a frequent refrain in much thinking, human beings are born weak and vulnerable”

(Ernö & Birk, 2024, p.17)

… at the same time, it is this vulnerability and weakness that give us so much potential in our diverse growth.

Throughout history, individuals have proclaimed that they fight in the name of humankind for freedom. Meanwhile, philosophers and later scientists as well have tried to capture what this freedom we are striving for could be. Yes, it is a construct and so in its shape an individual object that in its pure meaning can only be understood by the individual introducing it into the dialogue at the same time it still has a certain common ground that we try to capture. Doing so may be impossible, but striving to capture it restlessly during the development of humankind may be essential for us to understand what our current perspectives and values are -for the moment.

Rethinking freedom

The authors Ernö and Birk (2024) reintroduce in their current contribution of “Rethinking Freedom for Contemporary Psychology” exactly this specific construct; freedom. A contribution that on the one side introduces the positions of the keyperson in social sciences toward the meaning behind freedom, on the other hand, it aims to go beyond these known positions capturing a diverse perspective towards its roots and meaning. The authors chose a more social focus in their elaboration where they underline that oneself can only be seen as being free when integrated into a process of socialization. Children are shaped by the social context they are brought into and educated by their interplay with others as teachers and parents. For Ernö and Birk, the experience of freedom becomes in a certain way a “beautiful” illusion that sooner or later at a higher age will then be taken away from us through dependency on others as by physical restriction. This also leads them to a certain conclusion that:

“Action entails binding oneself to certain paths, people, and institutions, which causes a necessary rejection of former possibilities.” (Ernö & Birk, 2024, p.17)

A position that leans to the situated freedom in focus, as it is bonded to the developmental context. Nevertheless, it is also elementary to underline as the previous quotation indirectly emphasized that decisions are powerful as they lead to actions and so to a materialized change of the environment that in itself becomes impossible to take back/to return from –irreversible time (Valsiner, 2016). So, the freedom of taking initiative -to act- is bonded to the notion of transforming the Gestalt of the former possibility nexus.

Extending wires

This does not mean that the human is a canvas that is only contributing a free will and a screen to be colored by caregivers, socialization, and culture. We need in today’s perspective to go even further in our discourse about freedom. Leaving the concept of freedom as definition and diving into pleromatic spheres and so the experience of freedom itself.

We need to explore both the notions of Freedom as a schematized construct that we can work within our current infrastructure of society while extending our understanding of its actual meaning for an individual. For example, laws and guidelines need to be elaborated for our current infrastructures as enterprises and nations. At the same time, we need to explore the phenomenological notion of freedom and learn how to use guidelines and laws to guarantee our freedom instead of subordinating our own action freedom under generalized constructions -tools-. Experiencing freedom does not mean that it has to fit a specific definition of freedom. Freedom needs to be perceived, experienced, and felt while the definition only needs to fit as a projection into the moment. Therefore we need to understand that the self as perceiving unity may not be simply one unity looking to another, but one looking through one own construction spheres to another Gegenstand ¹ (Meinong, 1899) and its construction-shell (A gestalt that we as observers interpret based on our experiences and reflections towards).

Society forms or influences fundamentally our schematization process and so our ability to construct, reflect, and perceive our surroundings. Still, there is more to find in a newborn than free will, the pleromatic, the sensation beyond generalization that is omnipresent while it is also fragmental structured by the compression of meaning into meaning blocks -generalizations and schemes-. Ironically by compressing exactly these further we then end up in the Hypergeneralised sign field (Valsiner, 2007) and return in a certain way into a pleromatic setting of sense. Borders ² maintain and the Hypergeneralised pleromatic field becomes bordered by the general pleromatic space unit that interacts constantly with one another.

In other words, we need to consider the complex self as a pleromatic substance of meaning that becomes through experiences with the environment and oneself through a mixture of schematized and pleromatic meanings that then create through us the concept of self. A sphere that then interacts as a “solid” shell we can cultivate further but meanwhile allow us to structure and stabilize our experience of the overwhelming information fluid we leave truth during our everyday life. A context that then results in the spheres where other complex meaning constructs such as freedom, culture, or dreams can be shaped and reflected on.

For the notion of freedom, this means, that the perception and our feeling of freedom are creating meaning and so in itself, freedom becomes a neutral concept that represents the experience of seeing through the -subjective- lens of the moment and the potential to move into certain directions, to grow into certain shapes, while even feeling the potential “to go into a completely different direction” or “to go maybe even further as planned” can emerge. A process that in the action potential of society is possible to strongly be influenced by constructing social structures that allow for the individual to grow (or not) as desired based on the currently remaining infrastructure cultivated by the current reining society of the born into the environment.

Freedom that needs to be preserved and that can be preserved is consequently bonded to its context of from what perspective and for what perspective it has been generated for...

More than a paradox

Returning to a statement of Ernö and Birk (2024) that freedom is a paradox. Freedom has conditions, but? why should that make freedom a paradox? ³ Suppose we see freedom as absolute in all context-related constructs. In that case, we may call it a paradox as then the experience of being free would declare being free in every way and manner while the conditions needed to be fulfilled still exist and underline that complete freedom is not possible. The inescapable dependency of Sartre (Sartre & Matthews, 1972), for example, is a single directive that can be crystalized through deduction and generalization from the perceived phenomena of “experience of freedom”, while it is also centralized around a paradoxical essence of freedom that only exists in mechanically focused and linearised constructions of the concept of it. Dependency may be an omnipresent factor or even an existential law for our perceived reality, as nothing emerges without context, but this does not mean that dependencies and obligations are mandatory for us to experience.

Freedom in thoughts

The experience of freedom is intensive, even pure, and it feels like an endless horizon (oxymoron), while the experience is bonded to both the perspective context and the temporality of the experience. This also explains how the concepts of negative freedom and positive freedom can occur. In other words, the elaborated perspective of situated freedom is what creates in a time-excluded context a paradox in meaning.

“Freedom is achieved and realized through obligation and dependency on others.”

(Ernö & Birk, 2024, p.17)

Making this statement not invalid but context-specific. Freedom as a feeling is distorted from freedom as a construct and does not need to be archived through others. It is achieved always in a context with the other that can result or can be triggered by certain dependencies, while it is irrelevant for the emergence of such an experience – crucial for its specific context bonded experiences.

We are bonded to the others as we are bonded to ourselves, as both only exist in contrast to the other one. So freedom also has negative impacts on our experiences as freedom in a certain context can also result in a waste of choices and information that we are not used to handling as individuals and force us into the impossible attempt to choose the best for us not knowing what in nuances may have been better. Nevertheless, this may not be freedom that we experience in such a moment. When freedom is bonded to the experience of moving freely, then also the ability set of self counts as a relevant factor to achieve freedom. We may for example say to a child “You can become everything you want” while it may not feel for the child as real as possible to become everything it wants to be -not knowing what it could want or not knowing what becoming means. At that moment the child is free to answer whatever it wants, as it feels like a free choice for you as asking an individual, while the child could experience no freedom at all as it does not understand what you want from him or how to verbalize what it would like to say. Freedom is a construct that is primarily rooted out of the individual’s feelings, while in social layers we may be able to become freer in movement but freedom cannot be guaranteed -but can become more or less likely to be approached.

Freedom is an experience that is still a mystery for our schematized methods in contemporary sciences, which needs to be brought back into discussion. New perspectives and new social subcultures have been and are being cultivated and may lead us to a challenging rethinking of the basics and classics. So,

“… that giving up on potential require that one can manage and navigate these complex feelings that accompanies freedom of action.” (Ernö & Birk, 2024, p.17)

Outlook

1. Freedom needs to be understood as a complex construction that tries to temporarily frame a hypercomplex experience that resonates with the fundamental experience of being aware of the ability to act as desired and experiencing the ability of self-realization (that we experience at a certain moment as such).

2. At the same time, this also means that a socially recognized construction of the phenomena of freedom is needed as well. It would be a central dialogical connection point -common ground- for decision-making in social practice as it will influence our current understanding of the fundaments of laws, rights, and social guidelines.

3. Erné and Birk initialized with their article the rethinking of freedom that in the future allows us to approach the in-the-moment (era) perspectives and the needs of the people living right now instead of following echoes of the past that may be related to but do not resonate sufficiently with the ideologies we are constructing -fundamental notions change consequently over time.

4. Freedom needs to be cultivated individually, while the potential to approach it can be improved by guidance through social structures. Nevertheless, this can only work as long as we stay reflective towards the meaning of freedom and see laws and guidelines as the tools they are ⁴ .