Existential Therapy

EXISTENTIAL  THERAPY

Existential therapy can best be described as a philosophical approach that influences a counsellor’s therapeutic practice. Existential therapy focuses on exploring themes such as mortality, meaning, freedom, responsibility, anxiety, and aloneness as these relate to a person’s current struggle.

The goal of existential therapy is to assist clients in their exploration of

the existential “givens of life,” how these are sometimes ignored or denied, and how addressing them can ultimately lead to a deeper, more reflective and meaningful existence.

The existential approach rejects the deterministic view of human nature espoused by traditional psychoanalysis and radical behaviourism

Although deterministic forces affect us and we sometimes cannot control external events thrust upon us, existential therapists believe we retain the freedom to choose how we respond to such events. Existential therapy is grounded on the assumption that we are free and therefore responsible for our choices and actions.

A basic existential premise is that we are not victims of circumstance because, to a large extent, we are what we choose to be. Once clients begin the process of recognizing the ways in which they have passively accepted circumstances and surrendered control, they can start down a path of consciously shaping their own lives.

Rather than prescribing techniques and methods, existential psychotherapy is an attitudinal approach to issues of living. Because individuals do not exist in isolation from others, developing honest and intimate relationships with others is a theme throughout existential therapy.

Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, has been called the grandfather of Existentialism.

Phenomenology, as it was developed by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), has been part of the evolution of existential psychotherapy.

                       Existential personality theory

Being-in-the-World -The ability to be consciously aware of themselves and others separates human beings from other species. Boss (1963) and Binswanger (1975) used the term Dasein, or being-in-the-world, which refers to the ability of individuals to be able to think about and reflect on events and to attribute meaning to them.

Four Ways of Being- Existentialists identify four ways of being-in-the-world. Human beings exist in the Umwelt, Mitwelt, Eigenwelt, and Überwelt simultaneously. The first three were introduced by Binswanger; the last has been recently added by van Deurzen.

Umwelt is what we generally think of as the world, objects, the environment,and living beings. All animals and humans have an Umwelt that includes drives, instincts, and natural laws and cycles such as sleeping and waking, living and dying.

Mitwelt refers to interrelationships that only human beings may have

Überwelt  emphasize the importance of beliefs about the world. Often these beliefs are religious or spiritual in nature.

Eigenwelt, one’s “own world,” is more than a subjective, inner experience; it is a self-awareness from which we see the world.

Anxiety -Anxiety is viewed more broadly than by most other psychotherapy theorists, and it is separated into two major types normal anxiety and neurotic anxiety. A significant subsetof normal anxiety—and the focus of attention by existential psychotherapists—is existential anxiety

Freedom, Responsibility, and Choice-

Responsibility refers to owning one’s own choices and dealing honestly with freedom.

Freedom, May (1969) uses the concept willing as the process by which responsibility is turned into action. There are two aspects of willing: wishing and deciding. When people have expressed their wishes or desires, they must also choose.

This process can lead to panic or to the desire to have someone else make the

choice. When people make choices, they must also live with the other side of the choice.

Isolation and Loving

In discussing isolation, Yalom (1980) differentiates three types of isolation: interpersonal, intrapersonal, and existential.

Interpersonal isolation refers to distance from others—geographical, psychological, or social

Intrapersonal isolation occurs when one separates parts of oneself by using defense mechanisms or other methods to be unaware of one’s own wishes.

Existential isolation  It refers to being separated from the world. There is a sense of aloneness and isolation that is profound.

Meaning and Meaninglessness

Human beings need a sense of meaningfulness in their lives. A sense of meaning provides a way of interpreting events that occur to the individual and in the world, and it furnishes a means for the development of values as to how people live and wish to live.

                                                        

Self-Transcendence

It is the existential nature of human beings to transcend their immediate situation and their self-interest to strive toward something above themselves

Striving for Authenticity

The journey toward authenticity is often a focus of existential therapy (Craig, 2009). Authenticity refers to a “central genuineness and awareness of being” that includes a willingness to face up to the limitations

of human existence. Issues related to being authentic relate to moral choices, the meaning of life, and being human.

View of Human Nature

The existential movement stands for respect for the person, for exploring new aspects of human behavior, and for divergent methods of understanding people.

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The existential tradition seeks a balance between recognizing the limits and tragic dimensions of human existence on one hand and the possibilities and opportunities of human life on the other hand.

The basic dimensions of the human condition, according to the existential

approach, include :

(1) the capacity for self-awareness;

(2) freedom and responsibility;

(3) creating one’s identity and establishing meaningful relationships with others;

(4) the search for meaning, purpose, values, and goals;

(5) anxiety as a condition of living; and

(6) awareness of death and nonbeing.

Proposition 1: The Capacity for Self-Awareness

Freedom, choice, and responsibility constitute the foundation of self-awareness . The core existential position is that we are both free (willful, creative, and expressive) and limited

Increasing self-awareness—which includes awareness of alternatives, motivations, factors influencing the person, and personal goals—is an aim of all counselling.

Proposition 2: Freedom and Responsibility

A characteristic existential theme is that people are free to choose among alternatives

and therefore play a large role in shaping their own destiny.

Existential therapy embraces three values:

(1) the freedom to become within the context of natural and self-imposed limitations;

 (2) the capacity to reflect on the meaning of our choices; and

 (3) the capacity to act on the choices we make

A central existential concept is that although we long for freedom, we often try to escape from our freedom by defining ourselves as a fixed or static entity.

Inauthenticity - is not accepting personal responsibility. An inauthentic mode of existence consists of lacking awareness of personal responsibility for our lives and passively assuming that our existence is largely controlled by external forces

Freedom implies that we are responsible for our lives, for our actions, and

for our failures to take action

Existential guilt is being aware of having evaded a commitment, or having chosen not to choose. This guilt is a condition that grows out of a sense of incompleteness, or a realization

that we are not what we might have become.

Authenticity implies that we are living by being true to our own evaluation of what is a valuable existence for ourselves; it is the courage to be who we are.

Proposition 3: Striving for Identity and Relationship to Others

Courage to be - Courage entails the will to move forward in spite of anxiety producing situations, such as facing our death (May, 1975).

The experience of aloneness - The existentialists postulate that part of the human condition is the experience of aloneness .Before we can have any solid relationship with another, we must have a relationship with ourselves.

Paradox is that that humans are existentially both alone and related, but this very paradox describes the human condition.

The experience of relatedness - Humans depend on relationships with others. We want to be significant in another’s world, only when we are able to stand alone and tap into our own strength, our relationships with others will truly be fulfilled

Perhaps one of the functions of therapy is to help clients distinguish between a

neurotically dependent attachment to another and a life-affirming relationship in which both  persons are developed.

Proposition 4: The Search for Meaning

A distinctly human characteristic is the struggle for a sense of significance and

purpose in life.

The problem of discarding old values - Problem arise when clients may discard old (and imposed) values without creating other, suitable ones to replace them. One of the tasks of the therapeutic process is to help clients create a value system based on a way of living that is consistent with their way of being.

The therapist’s trust is important in helping clients to trust their own capacity to create a new source of values.

Meaninglessness - When the world they live in seems meaningless, clients may wonder whether it is worth it to continue struggling or even living such a feeling of meaninglessness is the major existential neurosis of modern life.

Meaninglessness in life can lead to emptiness and hollowness, or a condition

that Frankl calls the existential vacuum. This condition is often experienced when people do not busy themselves with routine or with work .

Experiencing meaninglessness and establishing values that are part of a meaningful life are issues that become the heart of counsellling.

Creating new meaning -  Logotherapy is designed to help clients findmeaning in life.

This view holds that human suffering (the tragic and negative aspects of life) can be turned into human achievement by the stand an individual takes when faced with it.

Proposition 5: Anxiety as a Condition of Living

Anxiety arises from one’s personal strivings to survive and to maintain and assert one’s being, and the feelings anxiety generates are an inevitable aspect of the human condition.

Existential anxiety is the unavoidable result of being confronted with the “givens of existence”—death, freedom, choice, isolation, and meaninglessness

Existential anxiety arises as we recognize the realities of our mortality, our confrontation with pain and suffering, our need to struggle for survival, and our basic fallibility.

Normal anxiety is an appropriate response to an event being faced. Because we could not survive without some anxiety, it is not a therapeutic goal to eliminate normal anxiety. at the root of our normal (or ontic) anxiety, is a more fundamental existential (or ontological) anxiety.

Neurotic anxiety, in contrast, is anxiety about concrete things that is out of proportion to the situation. Neurotic anxiety is typically out of awareness, and it tends to immobilize the person.

Proposition 6: Awareness of Death

Existentialist holds that awareness of death as a basic human condition gives significance to living.  A distinguishing human characteristic is the ability to grasp the reality of the future and the inevitability of death.

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