ABSTRACT
It is time to summarise what existential therapists actually do, once the philosophies and contributions of past practitioners have been mastered. It goes without saying that different therapists practise in different ways, since the range of possibilities is so great. With existential therapy, even more than with other approaches to therapy the individuality of the therapist really matters and comes into play. Existential therapists allow themselves to be fully present in their work and to draw on their most profoundly personal understanding of human existence. What existential therapists do is therefore different from therapist to therapist and also very different with different clients or with the same client at different times. Each existential therapist plays to his or her personal strength and draws much of their therapeutic capacity from the learning they have taken from the struggles they have been through in their own lives. But of course such learning has to be fully assimilated, processed and digested for it to be useful to our clients. A continued process of philosophical contemplation and dialogue with others is a necessity if the existential therapist is to remain alert and awake. Of course such vitality is aided enormously by a continued study of existential philosophers. Elements of each philosophy studied will become an intrinsic part of the way an existential therapist works. But this is no excuse for lecturing clients about life. The philosophical insight should be used only when this is to the client’s benefit, always only in order that clients are enabled to face their lives with more courage and vitality and with a greater sense of meaning, understanding and aliveness. The existential project is ontological rather than ontic. We do not try to mend the practical aspects and problems of a person’s life, but give them a wider perspective from which to handle them for themselves, now
and in future. We focus on the person’s struggle with human existence and elucidate the parameters of the human condition that the person is trying to come to terms with. We help them to get better at reflecting on their situation, deal with their dilemma, face their predicament and think for themselves. Of course we do not deal with mere abstractions and ontological universals. We also pay attention to ontic, everyday concerns and deal with personal, psychological or interpersonal, relational aspects of existence. But each time we do this we set such specific concerns against the horizon of the wider concerns of a person’s life, enabling them to reconnect with the deeper, broader and more universal elements that profoundly underpin their world. Existential psychotherapy aims at a full description of the essential givens and challenges of human living rather than merely analysing the internal workings of the psyche. Its objective is to help people to uncover the everyday mysteries in which they are enfolded and by which they are often mystified, as if blindfolded. Existential therapy is a process of truth finding. It aims to help people to disentangle their lives and generate clarity. It addresses all important issues directly and encourages a person to reconnect with a strong sense of personal direction. Careful attention is paid to both the universal and the particular aspects of a person’s existence in order to understand the relationship and tensions between them. The process of therapy is intended to lead clients to greater awareness of where they find themselves in their lives, how they got there and where they might want to go to next. It pays equal attention to past, present and future, since these are intimately interconnected and equally relevant to a person’s orientation in the world. At the same time the whole landscape of the life world is taken into account so that a particular problem is seen within the overall perspective of the tasks and challenges of human living. This makes it easier for a person to recognise or reorganise their life project and fully re-engage with it. This enhances the capacity for taking charge of one’s own life again. People learn to live deliberately rather than by default.
