“Towards Participatory Thinking with David Bohm: How to Manifest Creative Forms of Being and New Shared Realities” Speaker: Sara Ekenstierna
This talk will be offered ONLINE via WebEx throughout the Psychology and the Other Conference
Boston College September 19 – September 21, 2025.
This presentation examines the dialectics of agency and participation as an ongoing process of co-creating meaning, where humans contribute to the development of the manifest world. The concept of participation is traced through philosophical traditions, including Lévy-Bruhl’s “participation mystique”, a phenomenological “realm between”, and modern physics’ relationality and quantum concepts. Philosopher and physicist David Bohm observed that fragmentary thinking, which dualistically separates mind and matter, often undermines our intrinsic urge towards wholeness. This reductionistic view, where thought is mistakenly equated with objective reality, leads to conflict and crisis. But below the manifest reality – consisting of separate fragments – there is an “ineffable”, unified domain. Otto Rank, William James, and Carl Gustav Jung, made similar acknowledgements in their study of myth, literature and early, participatory cultures. Via attunement of this unified domain, Bohm advocated for a path toward renewed mystical participation through creative dialogue, which fosters new emergences and shared meanings within communities.