140 Journal of HUMANISTIC COUNSELING  July 2015  Volume 54 © 2015 by the American Counseling Association. All rights reserved. Received 12/10/14 Revised 12/12/14 Accepted 12/16/14 DOI: 10.1002/johc.12008 Supplements of the Self: Tracing a Deconstructive Humanism Joel Givens and Matthew E. Lemberger    Influenced by the philosophy of Derrida, the authors present deconstructive humanism as a postmodern lens for humanistic counseling. In this article, the authors describe the basic elements of this perspective and offer initial implications for counseling practice.    At first blush, humanistic counseling has little to do with postmodernist philosophy. Heidegger’s (1947/2008) reproach of humanism, Derrida’s (1981) challenge of the self as the locus of meaning, and Foucault’s (1994) observation that man is a recent creation and will soon “disappear again” each render the role of human experience untenable. Indeed, postmodern philosophy often entails an antihumanistic posture and a shift toward broader social and cultural contexts. Human feelings, thoughts, and experi- ences seem lost in the discursive shuffle, swept up in a system of signs and meanings that restrict the range of personal possibilities. Alternatively, postmodern philosophy offers diverse and fragmented stories concerning the nature of the self and the role of human experience. An antihuman- ist version of postmodernism, although certainly evident in select philosophical texts (see Foucault, 1994), does not represent the last word on the subject of the self. Indeed, Derrida’s (1967/2011) deconstructive philosophy exhibits traces of Husserl’s (1913/1999) phenomenological explorations of the self. Despite the prefix “post” designating a break or divergence from the modern emphasis on a human essence, the self does not wholly disappear from the postmodern narra- tive. Human experience, within specific postmodern writings, remains present, yet opened up to others, social practices, cultural contexts, and the environment. The term postmodern has been used to describe advances in art or ar- chitecture, an anything-goes caricature of human subjectivity, or French avant-garde intellectualism. To prevent misunderstandings and to curtail the scope of the current endeavor, we chose to formulate our thesis for a postmodern humanism in the oft-referenced yet sorely misunderstood Editor’s Note. Colette T. Dollarhide and Megan Speciale served as external reviewers for this article. —M. L. Joel Givens, Department of Counselor Education, Adams State University; Matthew E. Lemberger, De- partment of Individual, Family, and Community Education, University of New Mexico. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joel Givens, Department of Counselor Education, Adams State University, 208 Edgemont Boulevard, Suite 3160, Alamosa, CO 81101 (e-mail: joelgivens@adams.edu).