Existential Therapy

1. Existential Therapy

2. Existential Therapy - philisophical approach that influences a therapist's therapeutic practice. - grounded on the assumption that we are free and therefore responsible for our choices and actions; we are the author of our lives, and we design the pathways we follow. - .

3. - rejects the deterministic view of human nature. - basic existential premise: we are not victims of circumstance, because, to a large extent, we are what we choose to be.

4. Figures in ET     Soren Kierkegaard     Friedrich Nietzsche     Martin Heidegger     Jean-Paul Sartre     Martin Buber

5. Key Figures in ET Viktor Frankl Rollo May James Bugental Irvin Yalom

6. Key Concepts VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE The significance of our existence is never fixed once and for all; rather, we continually recreate ourselves through pur projects. Humans are in constant state of transition, emerging, evolving, and becoming.

7. Basic dimensions of human condition 1. the capacity for self-awareness 2. freedom and responsibility   >  inauthenticity (bad faith) - not accepting personal responsibility    > freedom- we are responsible for our lives, for our actions, and for our failures totake actions     > existential guilt - being aware of having evaded a commitment, or having chosen not to choose.     authenticity - we are living by being true to our evaluation of what is a valuable existence to ourselves; the courage to be who we are

8. 3. striving for identity and relationship to others > the courage to be > the experience of aloneness > the experience of relatedness > struggling with our identity

9. 4. the search for meaning > the problem of discarding old values > meaninglessness > creating new meaning 5. anxiety as a condition of living 6. awareness of death and non-being

10. The Therapeutic Process Therapeutic goals > to assist clients in moving toward authenticity and learning to recognize when they are deceiving themselves 3 main tasks (Bugental, 1990) 1. assist clients in recognizing that they are not fully present in the therapy process itself and in seeing how this patteren may limit them outside of therapy 2. support clients in confronting the anxieties that they have so long sought to avoid. 3. help clients redefine themselves and their world in ways that foster greater genuineness of contact with life

11. Clients experience in therapy > encouraged to take seriously their own subjective experience of their world > challenged to take responsibility for thow they now choose to be in their world > encouraged to take action on the basis of insights they develop through the therapeutic process > actively decide what fears, guilt feelings, and anxieties they will explore > confronting ultimate concerns rather than coping with immediate problems

12. Application: Therapeutic techniques and procedures *Practitioners prefer description, understanding, and exploration of the client's subjective reality, as opposed to diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. *They are free to draw from techniques that flow from many other orientations. *They have a set of assumptions and attitudes that guide their interventions with clients. Deurzen (1997) - openness of the client, creativity of the client and the therapist - practitioners chould clarify their views on life and living

13. Phases of ET Initial phase : ET assists clients in identifying and clarifying their assumptions about the world. ET teaches them how to reflect on their own existence and to examine their role in creating their problems in living. Middle phase: ET encourages clients to more fully examine the source and authority of their present value system. Final phase: ET focuses on helping clients to take what theyare learning about themselves and put it into action.

14. Clients appropriate for ET > people coping with developmental crises, experiencing grief and loss, confronting death, or facing a major life decision