Existential Psychotherapy (original) (raw)
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A Philosophical Critique of Existential Psychotherapy
2008
While existential psychotherapy is in its ascendancy, there is a lack of philosophical critiques of existential psychotherapeutic thinking. This thesis is an attempt to examine whether there is conceptual confusion embedded within this thinking and, if so, to tease out what it is. My examination has shown that contemporary existential psychotherapists are confused about what existential psychotherapy is, while on the surfac. e, they seem to be clear about what it is. While existential psychotherapy has increasingly been, integrated with other forms of ...
A Review of Existential Therapy
This paper looks at the beginnings of existential therapy and some of the founders of it. Some of their early ideas will be seen. Also looked at are a couple of more modern existentialists, one still with us today. It will be seen that existential therapy is not a set of techniques used in every situation, but more a way of thinking, an attitude of thought. A major reason people seek therapy is because they have lost their way in their lives, forgotten the track they need to be on to experience joy and energy once more. How does one get back on that track? Can we as therapists help them find that joy once more?
The Case for Existential (Spiritual) Psychotherapy
Springer eBooks, 2016
As I conceive it, existential psychotherapy has deep spiritual roots. Following in the tradition of existential-spiritual philosophy, I describe the nature of these roots, the implications of them for existential-integrative therapy, and a case vignette to illustrate their application. I conclude with a reflection on the importance of contextualizing and integrating existential themes into general therapeutic practice.
A Critical Evaluation of the Theories and Practices in Existential Psychotherapy
2019
The paper highlights a few issues that have emerged over the years in the understanding and practice of existential psychotherapy. It starts out by tracing the existential and phenomenological traditions of the early 20 th century which led to the emergence of existential psychotherapy. Next, it highlights the relationship between existential philosophy and the practice of existential psychotherapy. The article also summarizes problems associated with existential psychotherapy, particularly the difficulties in its empirical testing and defining its theoretical boundaries. It also summarizes popular misconceptions about existential psychotherapy and its connection to other schools of psychotherapy. Finally, the article also talks about issues of religion in practice of existential psychotherapy.
Existential Psychotherapy: An International Survey of the Key Authors and Texts Influencing Practice
Springer eBooks, 2016
Existential psychotherapy is one of the longestestablished forms of psychological intervention, but the scope and nature of the intervention remains unclear. To deepen an understanding of the nature of existential psychotherapy, an international survey was conducted of existential practitioners, asking them to identify the authors and texts that had most influenced their practice. Responses were received from practitioners in 48 different countries, with 1,085 identifying the authors that had most influenced their practice, and 853 identifying the most influential texts. The six authors identified as most influential were Frankl (16.6 %), Yalom (15.5 %), Spinelli (10.6 %), van Deurzen (10.0 %), Längle (8.7 %), and May (5.9 %). The first four authors were also responsible for the six most influential texts: Man's search for meaning (Frankl, 9.4 %), Existential psychotherapy (Yalom, 9.2 %), Practising existential psychotherapy (Spinelli, 3.5 %), The doctor and the soul (Frankl, 3.5 %), Everyday mysteries (van Deurzen, 3.4 %), and Existential Counselling & Psychotherapy in Practice (van Deurzen, 3.2 %). These findings help to develop a greater understanding of the theoretical and practical influences on existential psychotherapy today.
The Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy, 2019
This essay considers psychotherapy as creative endeavor amid multiple points along the therapeutic dialectic. It recalls both a Nietzschean adage (“self-creation, the most difficult art”) and the injunction he adapted ever-soslightly from the Greek poet Pindar: “How one becomes what one is.” The presuppositions and potentials underwriting this piece tap into bedrock existential themes of ephemerality and ultimate insignificance on one hand while holding out for possibility, some semblance of significance within the void, on the other. These ongoing tensions elicit the apprehension and novelty that inhere in genuine exchange and the fashioning of character out of fragment, chance, and hard work. “Life,” Nietzsche observed, “is only justified as an aesthetic experience.” It is this feeling for the intrinsic, albeit difficult, place of novelty (a beckoning of, and striving for, a Jamesean “more” or “ever not quite”) that serves as both touchstone and beacon in this reverie on psychotherapy and art.
PhD: The Recovery of a Spiritual Dimension of Existential Psychotherapy
DCU School of Human Development, 2022
Storying the Self: Recovering a Spiritual Dimension to Existential Psychotherapy by Timothy Quinlan Acknowledging that storying the self is a more powerful and wholistic way of describing personal identity than the more theoretical and structural approaches offered by mainline therapies from psychodynamic and behaviourist to the more humanistic schools of thought and practice, this dissertation sets out to establish that there is a far deeper reality underpinning the Self. That deeper reality, I argue in these pages is an enlivening spiritual foundation which is all too often unacknowledged and cursorily dismissed. Existential Therapy, I contend, is by far the most profound therapy as it faces head-on the presence of evil in the world at large and in the lives of both therapist and client as well as the more common presenting problems encountered in therapy. Focussing on the clinical work and existential theory of the American psychiatrist Irvin Yalom, this dissertation presents the case that, while his approach is at the cutting edge of existential therapy, his work is lacking in its acknowledgement that to do therapy in the most healing way possible involves a spiritual dimension or foundation that can be best approximated through story. It is here that I engage with an analysis of what I argue is the more powerful and effective storying of the Self offered by the nineteenth century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. The storying used by Irvin Yalom is immanent and bounded within the human concerns of the patient while the storying employed by Fyodor Dostoevsky is unbounded, open-ended and open to the transcendent. My argument is that this latter unbounded and transcendent-focused writing therapy effects a greater healing than that offered by the immanent therapy provided by Yalom. This dissertation is a detailed examination, then, of the shared existential space between Talk (Yalom) and Text (Dostoevsky) which will result in the fullest healing of the client when at last a spiritual foundation has been acknowledged. viii 8 Such interaction with others in community evokes Socrates' crucial question, "How should one live?" See Higgins, C. (2011), pp. 22-25. 9 I have avoided a lot of very loose definitions, which water spirituality down to little more than a psychological impulse. Gaffney (2012), an experienced psychologist of standing, offers "having a coherent set of beliefs about the higher purpose of life; knowing where you fit in within the larger scheme of things…" as one such watery definition, while Ó Murchú (1997), a social psychologist and pastor, offers "an ancient and primal search for meaning that is as old as humanity itself." (p. vii) as his
Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling after Postmodernism: The selected works of Del Loewenthal
2016
This chapter has been written specifically to introduce this book of my collected works. I am interested in phenomenology and existentialism, as David Cooper has written, 'existentialism is worth revisiting at intervals for the help it may offer with themes of contemporary interest' (1990: vii). But what happened to phenomenology with the advent of postmodernism; and, what are the potential implications of this for existential psychotherapy and counselling (and psychotherapy and counselling more generally) in the twenty-first century? Are we now in a neoliberal world where '…we are all-like it or not-post-modern existentialists, searching for connections and meanings, trying to find our way' (Margulies, 1999:704 1)? This book, comprising a collection of my work, can be seen as an exploration of these questions. Like so many young people of the 1960s, I was influenced by the existential-analytic psychiatrist R. D. Laing (1960, 1969, 1972, 1990), and in my case particularly his book 'The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise' (1967). For example, '…the really decisive moments in psychotherapy, as every patient or therapist who has experienced them knows, are unpredictable, unique, unforgettable, always unrepeatable and often indescribable' (Laing, 1967:34). In 1980, after having been involved in counselling, including being personally introduced to existentialism by Emmy van Deurzen, I started my training at the Philadelphia Association in London, which Laing and others had established (and where Laing was in the process of being booted out!). It was here that I developed my interest in continental philosophy. This book is less about existential psychotherapists, such as Binswanger, Boss, Frankl, van Deurzen, Spinelli, and more about revisiting some implications for psychotherapy and counselling of the existentialism and phenomenology 1 Quoted by Donna Orange in Frie and Orange (2009), Beyond Postmodernism, p. 120
Applications of existentialism in psychotherapy and counseling
2022
This study tackles one of the contributions and applications of existentialism in the domain of existential therapy and counseling which is a human orientation that looks for the meaning of the human existence in a philosophical way. It is one the main important modern orientations in psycho-therapy and counseling and counseling psychology in the human phenomenal orientation that was shaped by Rolo May, Paul Tillich, Irvin D. Yalom, and Victor Emil Frankl. The meaning of life for these existential therapists exceeds self-esteem, achievement, and understanding into moving up above and getting the self higher. In this paper, we shall give a scientific reading of the nature of existentialism and the domains of its application in the psycho-therapy and counseling, mainly in the existential psycho-therapy. This is to be done through giving a historical background on the phases of its development, its pioneers, definition, bases, applications, and therapeutic and counseling techniques Keywords: Existentialism; theory in counseling psychology; existential psychotherapy.