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Do ACCELERATION AND BOUNDLESS WORK LEAD TO
ACCELERATED AND BOUNDLESS COACHING?
Self-knowledge (awareness) is subordinate to self-care practiced. How do I take
care of myself? Foucault summarises the care for oneself as follows:
“Epimeleia heautou is an attitude, an attitude toward oneself, toward others
and toward the world... The care for oneself encompasses a certain kind of
taking heed of what I think, say and of what happens in my mind. [...] Epimeleia
invariably also characterises a number of activities, that is those which are
addressed to oneself, activities through which you take care of yourself, through
which you change, cleanse and purify yourself.”'?
This form of self-observation encompasses manifold practices. These include
mediations as well as measures to promote one’s health, consultation and
reflecting activities, i.e the keeping of a diary in which I take down interactions
of professional everyday life and think about whether they have been successful
or not and what the reasons might have been for that.
By no means is the care for oneself egotistical self-fulfilment. Epimeleia
heautou is rather understood as a necessary and sufficient condition for the
care for others. Those who take care of themselves in this manner are bound to
care for others along the same lines. This is an eminently social, and if you like,
political side of the care for oneself. For taking care of oneself is never restricted
to oneself but social reality is looked at altogether. How does his concept of
care for oneself relate to coaching? Against this background coaching could
be understood as an “appeal to take care of oneself”'? similarily to the concept
of “help for self-help”.
It is not the coach who takes over another person’s responsibility, but coaching
motivates and challenges us to take ourselves seriously as subjects, and this
implies to assume responsibility for oneself. Self-awareness and autonomy form
the targets of coaching shaped by the care for oneself.
The practice of freedom within the meaning of the care for oneself promotes
mindful interaction with oneself and with others. A basic criterion for
interaction is practiced mindfulness. However, freedom within the meaning
of the care for oneself not only implies mindfulness but also the courage for
the truth, according to Foucault.
2 Michel Foucault, Die Hermeneutik des Subjekts, Frankfurt am Main, 2009, 26.
2 Hermann Steinkamp, Seelsorge als Anstiftung zur Selbstsorge, Münster, 2005.
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