11. May (Existential Psychology)

Question 1

Basic Tenets of Existentialism (2)

Answer 1

What people do is more important than what they are

People are thinking and acting beings

Question 2

Dasein (Being-in-the-World)

Answer 2

The unity between people and their phenomenological world

Question 3

Umwelt

Answer 3

One’s relationship with the world of things

Question 4

Mitwelt

Answer 4

One’s relationship with the world of people

Question 5

Eigenwelt

Answer 5

One’s relationship with oneself

Question 6

Nonbeing

Answer 6

An awareness of the possibility of one’s not being (through death or loss of awareness)

Question 7

Source of Anxiety

Answer 7

Awareness of nonbeing or a threat to some value essential to existence

Question 8

Normal Anxiety

Answer 8

Experienced by everyone

Proportionate to the threat

Question 9

Neurotic Anxiety

Answer 9

Disproportionate to the threat

Involves repression and self-defeat

Question 10

Source of Guilt (3)

Answer 10

(i) Separation from the natural world

(ii) Inability to judge the needs of others

(iii) Denial of their own potentials

Question 11

Intentionality

Answer 11

The underlying structure that gives meaning to experience and allows people to make decisions about the future

Question 12

Care

Answer 12

To actively recognize that someone is a fellow human and identify with their emotions

Question 13

Love

Answer 13

Taking delight in the presence of another person and affirming that person’s value as much as one’s own

Question 14

Will

Answer 14

Capacity to organize oneself to move towards a goal

Question 15

Wish

Answer 15

Warm, rich desire for an outcome

Question 16

Sex

Answer 16

A biological function that seeks satisfaction through release of sexual tension

A basic form of love

Question 17

Eros

Answer 17

A higher form of love that seeks an enduring union with a loved one

Question 18

Philia

Answer 18

A form of love that seeks a nonsexual friendship with another person

Question 19

Agape

Answer 19

The highest form of love –> altruistic and seeks nothing from the other person

Question 20

Freedom

Answer 20

Gained through confrontation with one’s destiny and an understanding that death or nonbeing is a possibility at any moment

Question 21

Existential Freedom

Answer 21

Freedom of action / to move about / to pursue tangible goals

Question 22

Essential Freedom

Answer 22

Freedom of being / to think/ to plan / to hope

Question 23

Basic Tenet of Existential Psychology

Answer 23

People are responsible for their own destiny, but often lack courage to face it and, in trying to run away, give up freedom, lose sight of self and develop sense of insignificance and alienation

Question 24

Modes of Being-in-the-World

Answer 24

Umwelt (environment), Mitwelt (others), Eigenwelt (self)

Question 25

Love and Will

Answer 25

Unhealthily divided in society due to parents stifling infant assertion of self –> must be united

Question 26

Forms of Love (4)

Answer 26

Sex, Eros, Philia, Agape

Question 27

Freedom and Destiny

Answer 27

Inseparable –> destiny gives vitality to freedom and freedom gives significance to destiny

Question 28

The Power of Myth

Answer 28

Cultural myths are belief systems, both conscious and unconscious, that provide explanations for personal and social problems

Question 29

Principal Ingredients of Psychopathology (3)

Answer 29

Alienation, apathy (due to feeling of insignificance), emptiness