Husserl, the father of phenomenology, suggested the study of our lived
worlds, our experience, a return to the study of "the thing itself."
Looking at the lived worlds of nurses one is confronted with conflicts
and multiple {57} values. In their nursing worlds nurses often risk
themselves in their commitment to good for their patients. They come to
know aspects of their own and others' unique natures. These are often
different from and frequently in conflict with generally accepted
cultural values and/or institutional policies and rules. If
confidentiality is an issue, does this dictate a suppression of nurses'
complete knowing? Or does this call for a recognition of as complete a
knowing as possible followed by responsible selection and revelation of
that knowing which will advance knowledge and understanding of man?
Understanding of man can change a person's way of being with other man
and his way of existing in and responding to his world. I suggest the
latter, as complete knowing as possible followed by responsible
selection and revelation, with occasional risk taking to deepen the
level of accepted cultural knowledge of man. Always, the nurse would
protect an individual other man. This dispersion of knowledge, then,
requires not only responsible being in the nursing situation but also
mulling, pondering, assessing, and judging prior to disclosure.
As complete a knowing as possible, in humanistic nursing refers to its
axiom, authenticity with the self. When I, nurse, respond in the arena
of my lived nursing world, I respond to a particular person in this
"here and now" with all my background and all my anticipation of the
future. By respond, I do not mean to indicate that I overtly
deliberately communicate or verbalize my total response. Rather I mean
that I strive for _awareness_ of my total response within myself to a
particular person in a particular "here and now" viewed through my
particular past and anticipated future. It is a struggle to grasp how I
perceive and respond within all my capacity of human beingness. To
attain the highest possible level of authenticity with the self requires
later recollection of ongoing perceptions of the other and reciprocal
responses, selected communications, and actions by the self. These
recollections now become raw data available for analyzing, questioning,
relating, synthesizing, hypothetically considering, and ongoing
correcting. Sometimes sharing such recollections with a trustworthy
confidant (clinical specialist, consultant) for purposes of reality
testing is helpful. Often this can broaden the professional meaning base
I attribute to both my perceptions and my responses. On return to the
arena of my nursing world I then verify my perceptions. I can let the
other know how I perceived his actions and be open to his further
expression of how this world is for him. In professional nursing this
kind of experiencing, searching, validating, utilizing of one's human
potential capacity must be based in the ideals on which nursing rests.
Primarily for me, I see myself, nurse, as comforter or being nurse in
such a way that my other is helped to be all that he can humanly be in
this particular "here and now" considering his unique potential.
So, being authentic with the self, is not an acting out of a nonthought
through response or merely a doing of what one feels like doing. Rather
it is the very opposite of this. It is a thought through responsible
choosing of overt response based in knowledge and on nursing values. It
must correspond positively with one's belief that searching and sharing
in one's nursing world will promote both the nursed and the nurse to be
more. If it is merely a {58} peeking in on, an exploitation of the
other, for selfish learning purposes, it desecrates the very concept of
nursing. One has the broad human potential of feeling like doing many
things, all-at-once, that extend into all kinds of living. And this is
true in, as well as outside, a nurse world. In recollecting and
reflecting on perceptions and responses in all these extremes one
becomes freer to select from within one's self the values to be chosen,
actualized, and potentiated in one's nursing practice. Authenticity with
the self calls forth confrontation of the self with one's motivations
and alternatives. This permits a purposeful selection and an aware
actualized overt response based on one's nursing value criteria artfully
tailored to a particular situation.
I consider each nurse a scientific-artist: classical, modern, primitive,
cubic, or interpretive. My inference here is that we express artfully in
accordance with our uniqueness. Many nurses given the same data would
accomplish with the same or a similar degree of adequacy through use of
their particular distinct selves. Therefore, though the function called
for might be the same, each nurse would approach the function and the
patient differently. How one actualizes the result of thinking, and
being authentic with one's self recalls what Jung said about art.
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and
makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed
with free will that seeks his own ends, but one who allows art
to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may
have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is
"man" in a higher sense--he is "collective man"--one who
carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of
mankind."[2]
Through the years, over and over, I have met nurses so driven,
motivated, and expressive in their nursing worlds.
I called this section "authenticity with the self: for actualization of
nursing's potential." In it I have been trying to say, the more of
ourselves we are able to awarely include, the more of the other we can
be open to and with. A capacity for presence with others allows us to
share ourselves. Through this sharing others become more. They are able
to internalize us as "Thou." This happening occurs in the reverse, too,
and we become more.
In a nursing situation the quality of being authentic with the self is
to be striven for. It is a taking advantage of and appreciating of our
human ability and spirit. It fosters our pursuit of inquiry, improves
our caring for others, the contributing of our unique knowing, and it
allows us to shape ever further a scientific-artistic profession of
nursing.