ABSTRACT
If an object is described as authentic, it is taken to be genuine and real. In different places and under differing circumstances, every child will act and behave differently. When considering the role of authenticity in psychotherapy from an existential position, it becomes important to hold in mind that we are always active in the world. The child has the opportunity to experience, without any confusion of history and previous familiarity, a new relationship, from which their self-awareness may grow. Anxiety is a precondition for the choices we have, and, while it by no means remains necessary for all, or, indeed, many of our choices, it holds within it the possibility of freedom. The possibility of freedom appears to offer profound choices as to how it is that we exist. Anxiety is the state that precedes an awareness choice; it approaches it, but does not explain it.
