Lecture 7B: May

Question 1

What is existential psychology?

Answer 1

• Existence rather than essence
• people are subjective and objective beings that must search for truth in living authentic lives
• people search for meaning in their lives
• existentialists hold that ultimately each of us is responsible for who we are and what we become (cannot blame others; in the end we are alone)
• Existentialists are antitheoretical (authentic experience > artifical explanations)

Question 2

What is a short biography of Rollo May?

Answer 2

• Oldest of 6 children. Not very close to his parents. Experienced neglect early on.
• Lonely childhood; spent in nature
• Interested in art and literature. After university, spent time travelling in Europe and teaching English in Greece
• Nervous breakdown and depression
• Pursuit of goals and meaning
• Studied psychoanalysis and opened his own practice, PhD from Columbia university
• Contracted tuberculosis: changed him profoundly. Insights about illness.
• At the time there was not treatment, so he thought was going to die. He was helpless.
• He had an epiphany, he reframed his illness as him developing it rather than it capturing him. He wrote a book.

Question 3

What do people have and seek in existentialism?

Answer 3

• People have freedom
• Seeking to live authentic lives
• People search for meaning
• Personal accountability·
• Seeking Authentic experience

Question 4

What are the basic concepts of existentialism?

Answer 4

• Being in the world: togetherness in the same space (in order to feel connected with other people we first need to feel connected with ourselves)
• Alienation: out of touch with oneself and/or the world
• • Alienation from nature
• • Alienation from people
• • Alienation from oneself

Question 5

What are the three parts of conscious experience?

Answer 5

• Biological experience- umwelt: is the world of objects and things and would exist even if people had no awareness. It is the world of nature and natural law and includes biological drives, such as hunger and sleep, and such natural phenomena as birth and death. Basically, feeling that you are part of a biological system (pleasure, pain, hunger, thirst)
• Social experience- Mitwelt: Live in a world with people, and relating to others. Includes having respect for other poeple.
• Psychological experience-Eigenwelt: Experience of experiencing oneself, the relationship with one’s self (i.e., mediation), what is your reaction to noticing your thoughts racing in your head?

-healthy people live in all three simultaneously

Question 6

What are the 4 ultimate concerns in existential psychotherapy?

Answer 6

1. Freedom: choice and responsibility (even if you don’t know what the outcome will be; take on responsibility of choice whether its negative or positive. Existentialists think its better for you to make the choice, otherwise someone else is making the choice for you)
2. Isolation: making peace with fact that were alone (enter world alone and exit this world alone. Tension between the awareness of being alive and fear of being alone, make peace with that)
3. Meaning: express yourself and find purpose
4. Death: live mindfully. Embrace fear of non existence.

Question 7

What is the therapeutic relationship in existential psychotherapy?

Answer 7

• Establishing ‘togetherness’
• We are all affected by these changes
• Embracing existential angst
• Empathy (Caring about the pain inflicted by fear.Provides avenue to connect. Guide and live in present.)

Question 8

Who was Victor Frankl?

Answer 8

• Very famous psychotherapist
• In a concentration camp during the holocaust
• Wrote a book called man’s search for meaning
• “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”