Paper presentation: Enhancing individual resilience through philosophical consultations
Abstract: Resilience is one of the most traditional attributes to mental health that are used both for diagnosis and for the evaluation of success of psychotherapy. In addition, resilience is a traditional measure of personal maturity, where the person’s ability to withstand stress, frustration or less are seen as critical markers of one’s personal maturity. However, in psychotherapy resilience is often seen in a narrow context, without paying sufficient attention to the social and group dynamics that both give rise to resilience and influence it. This paper is about resilience as a valuable concept in steering and controlling the effectiveness of philosophical consultancy on various levels, including individual, group and broader social and policy issues with which philosophical consultancy also ought to concern itself.
Biography: Aleksandra Bulatović is Associate Research Professor at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, and a fellow of the Institute for Practical Humanities in Belgrade. Her primary academic expertise is the relationship between philosophical practice and collective well–being. She has also worked on applied ethics, especially on the development of ethics for the security sector. Her most special interest is in human security as it relates to the achievement of optimum life quality, e.g. in the theories of human rights and the relationship between philosophical practice and collective well–being. She is also currently involved in several research projects including: virtue as a motivating factor and the ultimate goal of everything that people do and think, within the concept of human development; the roles of moral normativity in the constitution of subjectivity; and, the role that processes of apology and forgiveness have in advancing both individual and community resilience.