Beyond the Fragmented Self: Theory and Practice of Deconstructive Inquiry
July 16, 2025 Arie Todd Greenleaf preprint
Most psychotherapies assume a stable “observer-self” whose task is to mend a fragmented psyche. Deconstructive Inquiry (DI) challenges that premise, arguing that the observer is not a faculty to cultivate but a moment-to-moment construction that generates the very fragmentation it then tries to repair. Drawing on phenomenology and neuroscience, DI proposes that distress arises when thought...