On the other hand, if a nurse denies her own struggling humanness, she self-righteously will be apt to accuse either self or her other. This way of being denies, suppresses, and represses one's own and the other's ability to be, to be as much as potentially possible. Understanding man through this conception of him is important to the possibility of augmenting the implementation of humanistic nursing practice theory.
Authenticity With The Self: For Actualization of Nursing's Potential
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.