Wisdom can be understood as the capacity to cope with difficult and unsolvable life problems.
Everyone needs this capacity daily. So it is an ultimately unsolvable problem whether one stays at home with a sick child or goes to work, whether one buys expensive organic products or invests the money saved on cheap products for other things, whether one should get married with all the risks of a partnership or rather stay single, with all the problems associated with living alone. In none of the cases there is “the right solution”, in every case you do something wrong. These are dilemmas everyone is confronted with daily by life. Some people suffer from these life problems, others can cope with them productively. This depends largely on the degree of individual wisdom. Wisdom is therefore a resilience factor in coping with life problems and burdens.
From a clinical point of view, it is obvious that in patients with stress and especially bitterness wisdom can be used therapeutically. It can help patients to recover their problem-solving capacities. Wisdom can be understood, analogous to self-confidence, as a multidimensional psychological capacity with the dimensions change of perspective, self-distance, empathy, emotional perception and acceptance, emotional serenity and humour, knowledge of facts and problem solving, contextualism, value relativism, self-relativisation, tolerance of uncertainty, sustainability, relativisation of problems and demands.
In a first therapy study, indications were found that patients who cannot acquit themselves from negative life experiences have problems in activating wisdom competencies. A behaviour therapy method was developed, the Wisdom Therapy, which is supposed to help patients to cope with irreversible, difficult life situations. Our research group is further dedicated to the investigation of bitterness experiences and wisdom competencies in the field of work.
Project management: Prof. Dr Beate Muschalla
Research assistant: Anne Meier-Credner (Dipl.-Psych.)
Selected literature:
Muschalla, B., & Linden, M. (2011). Embitterment and the workplace. In M. Linden & A. Maercker (Eds.), Embitterment (pp. 154–167). Springer.
Muschalla, B., & Linden, M. (2017). Embitterment and the workplace. In: K. G. Kahl & L. Winter (Eds.). Workplace-related psychotherapy (pp. 91-98). Kohlhammer.