Existential Psychotherapy Flashcards
What is the existential approach to personality?
Personality is not a fixed set of traits.
- existence is an emerging, becoming process.
- being-in-the-world
- to understand a human is to understand the world as the person sees it.
Humans exist in 3 relations to the world:
- Umwelt: our relation to biological/physical aspects to being-in-nature.
- Mitwelt: the social world. Being-with-others.
- Eigenwelt: own-world; the way we reflect on and evaluate ourselves. Being-for-oneself
The goal of existential therapy is to be
authentic. Openness to nature, ourselves, & evaluate others.
The defining characteristic of finiteness is
finiteness
What things cause us to not be authentic?
Existential anxiety: acute awareness that we will die.
The threat of meaninglessness.
Isolation/fundamental aloneness: brings anxiety. Creating meaning in our lives may cause others to reject us, and bring forth the idea of us being literally alone.
How do we avoid existential anxiety?
Lying enables us to avoid existential anxiety. Lying enables us to flee the fear of non-being.
Symptoms of psychopathology
We experience objectification of ourselves. In pathology, we experience ourselves as objects without choice or will.
How to dissolve symptoms
Courageous honesty is the solution. Increase awareness of areas of life where they have been lying to themselves. Draws heavily on psychoanalysis during early stages.
What methods does the therapist use?
The phenomenological method, focuses on immediacy, perception, and meaning of experience. Clarification and empathy. Different kinds of confrontation.
Anxiety is rooted in
The threat of non-being
The one defense against existential anxiety
conscious lying
To lie/conform makes us responsible for missing an opportunity to be ourselves, otherwise, we are faced with
Existential guilt
Existential confrontation
Existential reveals their own experience of the patient, not just reflecting patient’s experience. Therapist’s honest feedback is what helps break the patient out of a closed world
What is kairos?
Critical choice points for the client in which they risk to change a fundamental aspect of existence such as entering the anxiety of authenticity.
The aim of existential analysis is
To help the person to live with inner consent for what they are doing.
