11. May (Existential Psychology) Flashcards
Basic Tenets of Existentialism (2)
What people do is more important than what they are
People are thinking and acting beings
Dasein (Being-in-the-World)
The unity between people and their phenomenological world
Umwelt
One’s relationship with the world of things
Mitwelt
One’s relationship with the world of people
Eigenwelt
One’s relationship with oneself
Nonbeing
An awareness of the possibility of one’s not being (through death or loss of awareness)
Source of Anxiety
Awareness of nonbeing or a threat to some value essential to existence
Normal Anxiety
Experienced by everyone
Proportionate to the threat
Neurotic Anxiety
Disproportionate to the threat
Involves repression and self-defeat
Source of Guilt (3)
(i) Separation from the natural world
(ii) Inability to judge the needs of others
(iii) Denial of their own potentials
Intentionality
The underlying structure that gives meaning to experience and allows people to make decisions about the future
Care
To actively recognize that someone is a fellow human and identify with their emotions
Love
Taking delight in the presence of another person and affirming that person’s value as much as one’s own
Will
Capacity to organize oneself to move towards a goal
Wish
Warm, rich desire for an outcome
Sex
A biological function that seeks satisfaction through release of sexual tension
A basic form of love
Eros
A higher form of love that seeks an enduring union with a loved one
Philia
A form of love that seeks a nonsexual friendship with another person
Agape
The highest form of love –> altruistic and seeks nothing from the other person
Freedom
Gained through confrontation with one’s destiny and an understanding that death or nonbeing is a possibility at any moment
Existential Freedom
Freedom of action / to move about / to pursue tangible goals
Essential Freedom
Freedom of being / to think/ to plan / to hope
Basic Tenet of Existential Psychology
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
Modes of Being-in-the-World
Umwelt (environment), Mitwelt (others), Eigenwelt (self)
Love and Will
Unhealthily divided in society due to parents stifling infant assertion of self –> must be united
Forms of Love (4)
Sex, Eros, Philia, Agape
Freedom and Destiny
Inseparable –> destiny gives vitality to freedom and freedom gives significance to destiny
The Power of Myth
Cultural myths are belief systems, both conscious and unconscious, that provide explanations for personal and social problems
Principal Ingredients of Psychopathology (3)
Alienation, apathy (due to feeling of insignificance), emptiness
