8-9th of June, 2026
University of Southern Denmark, Odense.
Maieutic Immersions: Deep Listening and Participatory Atmospheres
To train as a psychotherapist is to train in a mode of participatory sense-making: a relational craft that recognizes that the sense in a therapeutic exchange is not found inside an individual in isolation, but rather something emergent in-between and all-around. In bringing attention to this shared field of co-emergent meaning, a specific listening stance develops. Listening is oriented towards the other, oneself, the relationship in-between and the atmosphere all-around. In this presentation, we focus on the quality of the all-around in deep listening. We argue that the all-around is not the same as the in-between. The atmospheric all-around is prior and extends the individuals involved. This does not mean that it is independent from the individuals, rather it unfolds by taking part to it, from within, as participants. We claim that its specific quality is of maieutic immersion, i.e., giving birth to meaning by going deeper in with the other. Deep listening, as we articulate it here, is a mode of being with the other as well as a bodily relational practice. It draws upon the instruments of the full sensorium of the listener, and its innate therapeutic power relates, according to Peter Wilberg (2003, 2004), to its maieutic character. In this sense, deep listening in the pregnancy of silence is the midwife of speech. From a therapeutic point of view, this maieutic immersion enables the participants to connect to a broader source of meaning, what Jung named the anima mundi. It serves not only the individuation of the person, but also the ongoing expressive articulation of the symbolic field.
Laura Candiotto
University of Pardubice
Laura Candiotto in as Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Cagliari (Italy) and the University of Pardubice (Czech Republic). Her main research field is philosophy of emotions, at the crisscross of enactive ethics and social epistemology and with a key focus on the dialogical method of inquiry and participatory sense-making. Since a few years, she is focusing on environmental emotions, especially the intertwining of love, grief and hope in inhabiting a place that is dying. She is very much interested in the potential transformative power of the affective experience under the weight of oppression. Publications: The Philosophy of Environmental Emotions (Routledge 2025, ed.); (2024) “Eros in-between and all-around”, Human Studies. 47, 185–203; (2023) “What I cannot do without you. Towards a truly embedded and embodied account of the socially extended mind”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 22: 907-929; (2023, with M. Weichold). “Ethics of Sense-Making”. Frontiers in Psychology, 14; (2021, with H. De Jaegher), “Love in-between”, The Journal of Ethics, 25 (4): 501-524; Emotions in Plato (Brill 2020, ed.); The value of emotions for knowledge (Palgrave 2019, ed.).
Julien Tempone-Wiltshire
ACAP University College
Julien Tempone-Wiltshire is an Associate Professor of Counselling and Psychotherapy and Course Coordinator of the Master of Counselling and Psychotherapy at ACAP University College (Melbourne). His research and clinical work integrate existential philosophy, psychoanalysis, contemplative traditions, and ecological psychology, with particular attention to grief, relational sense-making, and the role of ritual and group process in psychological and ecological transformation. His work draws on process philosophy, embodied cognition, and Indigenous relational knowledge systems, including research on Aboriginal Australian memory technologies and songlines. Publications: (2025, with T. Yunkaporta). Contributions From Aboriginal Australian Psychology: Songlines, Memory, and Relational Knowledge Systems. Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia; (2025, with F. Matthews) Embodied minds: An embodied cognitivist understanding of mindfulness in public health. Mindfulness, 1-13; (2024, with T. Dowie) The Role of Embodied Cognition in Understanding Mindfulness in Third-Wave Cognitive Behavioural Therapies. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 31(11-12), 228-252; (2024) Seeking the neural correlates of awakening. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 31(1–2), 173–203.