Introduction:

The basics of the RISFLECTING approach – the strengthening of competence when dealing with ecstatic situations in the widest possible way as well as the therefore needed social and emotional tools, including reflexion – will be part of this position paper.

The author defines ecstasy is a fairly wide one and states that ecstasy is a process of continual change of sensual and social perceptions regarding impressions, emotions, limits and conventions.

Risk is defined as the connection of the uncertain with the significant which always comes in hand in hand when something is about to happen as well as the demand to deal with the consequences that occurred.

Getting started or a brief glimpse into our society…

There is nothing more ambiguous in today’s society than the use of the two terms ecstasy and risk. One the one hand they are used to point at potential dangers threatening our mental and physical wellbeing and are therefore condemned on a moral basis but on the other hand they are seen as motivating criteria and are therefore happily picked up by politically, economically and socially relevant factors when staging events.

An increase in risk readiness is widely demanded by philosophers and teaching psychologists - arguing that this is the key to learning and development as well as the global economy who expects this competence to be of vital importance for today’s and tomorrows working spirit.

… and its pedagogical consequences

Be it as it may. The need for ecstasy is anchored in the human being who therefore is longing to fulfil this needs which he/she is constantly doing. That is a fact that needs to be dealt with in a positive way. This demand leads the preventive youth work, which is supposed to eradicate the negative sides of these longings, into a dilemma that exists for a mere 200 years and most of the times does not only fight the negative side-effects (which by no means are about to occur) but tries to condemn and annihilate the needs which hide behind these longings. The attempt of minimizing risk and ecstasy situations causes prevention to ivory tower and become ridiculous. A pedagogical approach that only associates danger and death with risk and ecstasy becomes obsolete when it comes to bridging ordinary life and extraordinary longings and experiences and enabling communication about these. It no longer becomes obsolete, it also leads to a split of consciousness onto two parts, one being the control-moral-driven “über-ich” and the other the libidinous “ich”, which is always experienced with shame as no responsibility is taken for it (e.g. I can’t remember what I said yesterday – I was drunk).

Taking these principles into account, measures in children- and youth work can only be successful if they are planed and conducted in an environment suitable for those groups. That is why more and more experts in this field of work demand that the phenomena described above need to be dissolved from this problem based approach and have to be treated as a human behaviour and experimental ground. There is an utter need to distinguish between the phenomena ecstasy and the self-consuming, dependence-orientated phenomena addiction. Combining these two is of no use, neither for the scientific discourse nor for the implementation in everyday life.

A new pedagogical model of communication

As can be seen in the international discourse a new modus operandi – aiming no longer at minimizing risk- and ecstasy situations but to enable an ideal handling of the behaviour – is evolving.
This can be reached by developing:

1. personal competence
2. social forms of communication
3. social mechanisms of integration

The scientific approach as well as its implementation of this model are called RISFLECTING and are increasingly applied to in Austria.