ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the influences operating on the therapist as a person which tend to increase or decrease his authenticity and focuses on the relation between the therapist and his patient. It also discusses a therapy which seeks to change the life orientation of the person–that is, an existential therapy. Therapeutic doctrine is generally clear that the withheld secret part is very apt to be at the nucleus of the neurosis–or in more existential terms, to be integral to the main resistances to authentic being in the world. Many therapists and patients have seen empirically that such therapy is possible and that true basic changes can and do occur in some people in the therapeutic situation. The chapter suggests a variety of influences which operate on the therapist who seeks to aid his patients at the most fundamental or existential levels.
