Existential Therapy

Abstract

There are existential philosophies which investigate what is fundamental, what constitutes an essence, but they are not reductionist, and the search by Heidegger for the nature of Being is not an attempt to reject complex explanations of human living. On the other hand, in the works of Nietzsche, the notion of will to power is a reduction, for it seeks to explain the complex by means of what is simple. As with all reduction, the question stands whether it has sufficient explanatory power. Generally, existential psychotherapists object to reductionistic explanations of human behavior such as are found in cognitive or behavioral approaches to psychology. For instance, R.D. Laing fought against the kind of reductionist explanations generated by the medical model, which he complained attempted to explain rather than understand human experience and motivation. In this paper, we try to focus on the Existential Therapy. The paper defines Existential Therapy. The paper also explains Existential Therapy basis and theory. In last paper conclude with the situations Existential Therapy would be most effective in.

Existential Therapy

Introduction

Existential psychology is an approach to psychology and psychotherapy that is based on several premises, including: understanding that a "whole" person is more than the sum of his or her parts; understanding people by examining their interpersonal relationships, understanding that people have many levels of self-awareness that can be neither ignored nor put into an abstract context, understanding that people have free will and are participants rather than observers in their own lives, and understanding that people's lives have purpose, values, and meaning. Therapists who practice existential psychology treat their clients by submerging themselves in the client's world. For the therapist, therapy is a process in which they, too, are participating. This is a process that seeks meaning within the whole of the person's existence, including the client's personal history.

Existential Therapy basis and theory

"Existential psychoanalysis" is a trend in psychology and psychiatry best understood as a reaction against the theoretical and philosophical presuppositions of the psychologies based on natural science in general and of Freudian psychology in particular. The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and the existentialism of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Martin Buber, rather than the mechanistic worldview of natural science, are seen by existential psychoanalysts as providing the proper philosophical and methodological route to a more complete understanding of man.

The pioneer of existential psychoanalysis, Ludwig Binswanger, sought to describe the experiential world of his patients with the help of the conceptual scheme of Heidegger's ontology of man's being. However, his work contained few major differences from Freud in therapeutic technique. Indeed, another existential analyst, Medard Boss, has claimed that existential analysis "enables psychotherapists to understand the meaning of Freud's recommendations for psychoanalytic treatment better than does his own theory". The implication is, of course, that a fuller understanding of the patient will result in more efficacious treatment, but that the methods of treatment will not differ fundamentally from Freud's. The result is to separate Freud's dealings with his patients from the mechanistic scientific ...