‘With his thesis Fabian enters widely uncharted areas – namely the field of human relatedness in politics. As banal as it seems, as fundamentally lacking in political theory and practice is the recognition of the fact that politics, to the better or the worse, is done by humans for humans. It still is extremely uncommon to concretely include factors such as psychology, Mayr P. Fabian individual and collective unconscious dynamics, or personal and large group trauma in political theory and praxeology, while overestimating and thus overstretching the importance of function, role, power and rational conflict management, as valuable as these elements are in themselves. ellations. The reason in politics for excluding the human factor is located, to put it very simply, in unfamiliarity. In spite of big steps in psychological understanding since the 1900s, the beginning of psychoanalysis, the bridges from the personal to the societal, from individual emotion to community, from personal intuition to intelligent collective action, or “from tribal brotherhood to universal otherhood” (Benjamin Nelson) – in summa, from unconscious to conscious, are still reliably to be built. At the very beginning of psychoanalysis we find the foundation of healing in both its individual and societal sense in Freud’s statement “where Id was, I shall be”, i.e. where unconsciousness has prevailed consciousness shall dominate. That fundamental process is indeed underlying any positive personal and collective change and it is the definition of what “consciousising” means. Fabian’s thesis is an important theoretical and practice-oriented contribution to the field of conflict transformation approaches.’ Dr. Albrecht Mahr, Chairman of iFPA ‘The reader is taken on a journey into a number of fields of various scientific disciplines – a journey which at times becomes a tour de force – visiting, among other Consciousising Relatedness. places of thought and theory, positivistic science, phenomenology, quantum theory, morphic fields, social psychology, peace and conflict studies and of course political constellations. During these visits, the reader is not only given carefully researched and valuable information on the main theoretical assumptions and methodological Systemic Conflict Transformation SystemicConflict Transformation inPolitical Const specificities of each of these fields of scientific inquiry, but is also made aware of the differences among them. in Political Constellations. Reading this dissertation, the reviewer remains impressed by the massive amount of material the author of the dissertation was able to incorporate in a coherent and well structured manner. Even more impressive is the originality of the train of thought which has led the author to his conclusion: consciousising . In all this, the author’s reflections are multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and even Fabian Patrick Mayr transdisciplinary, in an attempt to spell out what is commonly called, in philosophical parlance, the unity of science.’ Dr. Peter Praxmarer, University of Lugano European PhD Dissertation International Studies in Peace, Conflict and Development Consciousising Relatedness – Relatedness Consciousising Supervisors: Martina Kaller-Dietrich Eloísa Nos Aldás Consciousising Relatedness. Systemic Conflict Transformation in Political Constellations. Fabian Patrick Mayr European PhD Dissertation International Studies in Peace, Conflict and Development Interuniversity Institute on Social Development and Peace (IDP) UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace University Jaume I Castellón de la Plana, July 2010 II Peace is the quality and nature of people’s relationships. John Paul Lederach III IV For my mother, for Manuel… and for myself. V VI Table of Contents Acknowledgement ..................................................................................................................XI Resumen (Castellano) .........................................................................................................XIII Abstract (English) ..............................................................................................................XXV 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Personal and thematic opening ..................................................................................... 2 1.2 Hypothesis, objectives and structure ............................................................................ 8 2. Towards political constellations........................................................................................ 13 2.1 On science and being scientific .................................................................................... 15 2.2 The pillars of transcendence ........................................................................................ 20 2.3 The systemic approach ................................................................................................. 30 2.4 Synthesis ........................................................................................................................ 36 3. What are political constellations?..................................................................................... 39 3.1 Elements of systemic constellations in political environments ................................. 43 3.2 Political constellation types according to the iFPA ................................................... 53 3.3 The state of the art in current research ...................................................................... 63 3.4 The systemic therapy models ...................................................................................... 66 3.5 Synthesis ........................................................................................................................ 71 4. On representative perception – The process of consciousation ..................................... 73 4.1 Building bridges between classical and modern natural sciences ............................ 76 4.2 Morphic fields – The presence of the past. ................................................................. 83 4.2.1 Some experiments with morphic fields ................................................................ 85 4.2.2 From examples to theory ...................................................................................... 89 4.2.3 System(at)ics of morphic field theory .................................................................. 97 4.2.4 Morphic resonance and the collective unconscious .......................................... 103 4.2.5 On Being scientific in science (again) ................................................................ 110 4.3 Synthesis ...................................................................................................................... 114 5. Quantum all and sundry – New science, its possibilities and limits of analogy........... 117 5.1 Concepts of consciousness ......................................................................................... 118 5.1.1 We must look in order to see – Is perception direct or representative? ........ 120 5.1.2 Forms of consciousness – From reductionist hierarchies to wholeness. ......... 128 5.1.3 Quantum consciousnesses – Context accounts for content. ............................. 136 5.1.4 The death of locality – Towards quantum physics. .......................................... 141 5.2 Weak quantum theory for systemic constellations. ................................................. 143 5.3 Synthesis ...................................................................................................................... 153 VII 6. Conflict studies ................................................................................................................. 157 6.1 Definitions and aspects of the notion of conflict ...................................................... 158 6.2 Causes of conflict ........................................................................................................ 162 6.3 Realist theories in conflict research .......................................................................... 163 6.4 Idealist theories in conflict research ......................................................................... 172 6.5 Synthesis ...................................................................................................................... 174 7. Conflict conclusion – Conflict is a phenomenon............................................................ 177 7.1 Phenomenology is the method to study phenomena. .............................................. 178 7.2 What is phenomenology and what are phenomena? ............................................... 179 7.3 Differences and communalities in phenomenology ................................................. 184 7.4 Heidegger’s systemic phenomenology ...................................................................... 187 7.5 Synthesis ...................................................................................................................... 200 8. From conflict resolution over conflict management to conflict transformation ........ 205 8.1 Conflict handling ........................................................................................................ 206 8.2 Conflict transformation after John Paul Lederach ................................................ 210 8.3 The Civilizational Hexagon ......................................................................................