Existential psychotherapy

1. Existential Psychotherapy

2. Introduction
 Existential therapy is grounded on the assumption that we are free and
therefore responsible for our choices and actions. We are the authors of our
lives, and we design the pathways we follow.
 Existential therapy can best be described as a philosophical approach that
influences a counselor’s therapeutic practice
 Existential therapy is more a way of thinking than any particular style of
practicing psychotherapy (Russell, 2007). It is neither an independent nor
separate school of therapy, nor is it a neatly defined model with specific
techniques

3. Some Philosophers
Søren Kierkegaard
He advocated learning from anxiety (Angst) and despair and he valued subjective truth over given truth. He
believed all have to learn to live aesthetically first, then ethically, but that in order to learn to think for ourselves
we need to dare to doubt, until we are able to make a leap of faith to find our own personal sense of and
relationship to God.
Friedrich Nietzsche
He is famous for stating that ‘God is dead’. He said that each person must relentlessly question in order to
aspire to a sense of truth and reality which goes beyond established values. We have to re-evaluate right and
wrong and aspire to become what he called the Übermensch: the autonomous superhuman who creates his or
her own values and morality, and lives a life of passion and personal affirmative power.
Edmund Husserl
He emphasized that human existence was fundamentally relational. He proposed a distinction between ‘I–Thou’
and ‘I–It’ modes of relating, with the latter being more like our everyday relating to objects which is
characterized by distance, partiality and exploitation. The former was based on a full and open appraisal and
contact with the totality of the other. He described the importance of the space in between two people as it is
co-created by them and so changes the quality of their interaction.

4. Karl Jaspers
He emphasized the permanent dilemma of the need for a ‘worldview’ in order not to despair at its
absence, and the redemptive power of communication. He argued that it is in the unavoidable ‘limit
situations’ like death, guilt, condemnation, doubt and failure that we are reminded of our existence.
Paul Tillich
He emphasized the basic mystery of existence, and the importance of openness to others, as well as the
belief that to live properly requires one to have faith in the harmony for which human existence strives.
Martin Heidegger
His work emphasized the human capacity for resolute awareness, through engagement with the anxiety
that is prompted by our awareness of our inevitable death. He also placed emphasis on what he called
the ground of being and argued that human beings had to be the guardians, or shepherds of being.

5. Jean-Paul Sartre
He is the person who coined the term ‘existentialism’ . He emphasized the nothingness at the core of
existence that gives us freedom. He argued that most people try to escape this freedom and live in
bad faith.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
He highlighted the notion of inter-subjectivity, which is the idea that there is no real separation
between the self and the other.
Albert Camus
He emphasized that what makes life worthwhile is the struggle against what he called the absurdity,
the basic meaninglessness of human existence. He argued that it is this engaged struggle itself that
creates meaning.

6. The four dimensions of existence

7.  Existential Approach
Developed as a reaction against
– Psychoanalysis
– Behaviorism
Goes against use of “techniques”;
Instead focus is on
– “understanding what it means to be
human”
 Key Concepts
Human is a constant state of transition:
– Emerging, evolving and “becoming”
We pose questions:
– “Who Am I”
– “What can I know”
– “Where Am I Going”
– “What ought I do”
– “What can I hope for”

8. BASIC DIMENSIONS – OF THE HUMAN
(6 Propositions)
– Capacity for self-awareness
– Tension between freedom & responsibility
– Creating one’s identity & establishing meaningful relationships
– Search for meaning, purpose, values, & goals
– Accepting anxiety as a condition of living
– Awareness of death and nonbeing

9. Rollo May
 Born April 21, 1909, in Ada, Ohio. (died in 1994)
 Childhood was not particularly pleasant
 His parents didn’t get along and eventually divorced
 His sister had a psychotic breakdown
 Went to Michigan State (asked to leave because of involvement with a radical student
magazine). Received B.A. from Oberlin College in Ohio.
 After graduation, went to Greece
 Taught English at Anatolia College for three years
 Worked as an itinerant artist
 Studied briefly with Alfred Adler
 Returned to U.S. and entered Seminary (received B.D. in 1938)
 Suffered from tuberculosis (spent three years in a sanatorium). Facing the possibility of death was
probably the turning point of his life
 Studied psychoanalysis at White Institute. Met Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm.
 Went to Columbia University in New York, where in 1949 he received the first PhD in clinical
psychology that institution ever awarded.
 Taught at a variety of top schools. In 1958, he edited the book Existence, which introduced
existential psychology to the U.S.

10. Existential Principles (Rollo May)
 Wish: To be in touch with what one really wants
 Indecisiveness (lack of firmness of character or purpose)
 Impulsivity? (without forethought)
 Will: To organize oneself in order to achieve one’s goals (roughly
“ego”) or “the ability to make wishes come true.”
 Neo-puritan: All will, but no love. Amazing self-discipline, can “make
things happen”... but no wishes to act upon. So they become “anal” and
perfectionistic, but empty and “dried-up.” (archetype?)
 Infantile: All wishes but no will. Filled with dreams and desires, lack self-
discipline to make anything of their dreams and desires, and so become
dependent and conformist. They love, but their love means
little. (archetype?)
 Creative: A balance of these two: “Man’s task is to unite love and will.”

11. The impact of anxiety and fear
 How are our lives safer because of fear?
 Fear and anxiety are signals of problems
 They help us recognize the problem
 They motivate us to cope with the problem
 Normal anxiety is good
 How are our lives poorer because of fear?
 Avoid responsibility for our acts
 Avoid recognizing we have choices
 Avoid anxiety and play it safe
 Avoid real intimacy
 Stay busy so we don’t become aware of our fundamental aloneness
 Stay busy so we don’t become aware of the finiteness of life

12. Anxiety and fear (continued)
 Neurotic anxiety is not good.
Choices are opportunities, not problems
 Sometimes “life happens” Deaths, accidents and traumas can:
 Force us to become aware of a problem
 Force us to reconsider how we live life
 Cause us to accept responsibility for the direction of our life
 Existential anxiety
 Makes us aware of the “big issues.”
 Helps us steer an effective path through life
 Helps us become aware of separations from:
 Self
 Others
 World
 Cannot be lived with constantly but should be revisited time to time

13. The gift of death
 Death: It kills us but without it we would not know we were alive
“As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence.
– Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
THE PROBLEM:
 BUFFY (opening scene of “Intervention”, 5-18):
“I mean, I can beat up the demons, until the cows come home. And then, I can beat up the cows. But I'm not sure I
like what it's doing to me. Maybe being the perfect Slayer means being too hard to love at all. I already feel like I can
hardly say the words.”
THE INTERVENTION
 FIRST SLAYER: Death is your gift.
 BUFFY: Death . . .
 FIRST SLAYER: Is your gift.
 BUFFY: Okay, no. Death is not a gift. My mother just died. I know this. If I have to kill demons because it makes the
world a better place, then I kill demons, but it's not a gift to anybody (“Intervention”).
 FIRST SLAYER: Your question has been answered [disappears]

14. May’s stages of development
(age-salient, not age-dependent)
 Innocence -- the pre-egoic, pre-self-conscious stage of the infant. The innocent is pre-moral (i.e., is neither
bad nor good). Like a wild animal that kills to eat, the innocent is only doing what he or she must. But
innocents do have a degree of will in the form of a drive to fulfill their needs!
 Rebellion -- the childhood and adolescent stage of ego development or self-consciousness. It is
characterized primarily through contrast with adults, from the “no” of the two year old to the “no way” of
the teenager. The rebellious person wants freedom, but does not yet understand the responsibility that
goes with it. The teenager may want to spend her allowance in any way she chooses -- yet still expect the
parents to provide the money, and complain about unfairness if she doesn't get it!
 Ordinary -- the normal adult ego: conventional and a little boring. This person has learned responsibility,
but finds it too demanding, and so seeks refuge in conformity and traditional values.
 Creative -- the authentic adult, the existential stage, beyond ego and self-actualizing. This is the person
who, accepting destiny, faces anxiety with courage!

15. Advantages of Existential
Therapy
 Contemporary developments have made it more flexible and
easier to use
 It has been adapted to briefer systems of intervention
 It provides a theoretical framework from which to be eclectic
 It is conducive to collaboration with the client to find a
unique way of working together
 It is emotionally powerful and fulfilling for client

16. Disadvantages of Existential
Therapy
 It is dense, complex and difficult to master.
 There is very little guidance for the practitioner.
 You can be an existentialist but you cannot do it. It is
not about technique but your own personal stance.