Excerpt: Sincerity and ethics are two elusive and multifaceted constructs. As people and contexts change, ethical questions look similar, whereas answers do not. From my point of view, talking about ethics means asking oneself why lying or conflicting, for example, could be the preferable choices for someone. It means bringing both one’s own and other people’s assumptions into question, and to recognise that doubt is perhaps the path toward otherness. The goal of the present chapter is to explore the role of epistemological doubt in dealing with different people and political dissent.

The present paper is devoted to the description of a model that may support the theoretical integration and the clinical advance of current psychotherapy. On one hand, it reports a narrative review of the common trends of the so-called Third Wave of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and other modern approaches. On the other hand, it defines epistemological tools that may help therapists in understanding such trends. The model comprises five main principles that are explained in terms of theoretical and clinical implications. Further studies are needed in order to prove its clinical effectiveness and extensively report the subsumed therapeutic mechanisms.

Excerpt: During the brief history of Constructivism, many authors (Foerster & Glasersfeld, 2000; Glasersfeld, 1985, 1992, 2007; Hermans, 2003; Mahoney, 1988; Mancuso, 2000) have claimed the Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) as a forerunner of constructivist epistemology. ’Verum est ipsum factum’ (to be true is one and the same as to be made) has a high level of commonality with Kellian epistemology through two statements: (i) science is the knowledge of how things are construed; (ii) man knows only what is construed by himself (Glasersfeld, 1985). These assumptions subsume a circular constructive process (Foerster, 2003) and a metaphor of man as a system organizing himself and his world (Maturana & Varela, 1972; Piaget, 1937). In Vico’s words (Vico, 1744/1783) we are our poetics (etym. Greek’poiéin’: to make), we embody and stage this so-called world.