ABSTRACT
Existential Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis address problems unique to the Being of Human Beings: problems having to do with the search for personal Meaning in the face of Meaninglessness, Loneliness, and Despair, and giving rise to symptoms of anxiety and depression as they play out in a world of irreducible subjectivity. An area of Existentialist thought that has failed to make the leap from Philosophy to Psychology and its clinical applications, has to do with the idea that the Self dwells in an Absurd World and is overwhelmed by it. Metapsychologically based treatments also fail to address the Absurd. Prospect Theory offers us tools powerful enough to understand Existential choices that lead to outcomes of either Meaning or Absurdity. Development, from an Existentialist perspective, exists across the life cycle as a series of customized cycles of Absurdity and Meaning. The replacement of Absurdity with Meaning is a contemporary restatement of the psychoanalytic premise of replacing neurotic misery with everyday unhappiness.
