Week 5- Existential therapy Flashcards
Existential therapist thoughts
Regard people as meaning-making beings who are both subjects of experience and objects of self reflection
Are sensitive to the ways in which theories may dehumanise people and render them as objects
Authentic experience takes place over artificial explanations
Say that when experiences are moulded into some preexisting theoretical model, they lose their authenticity and become disconnected from the individual who experienced them
Existential psychotherapists focus on the subjectivity of experience
Ancient perspectives of existentialism
We are surrounded by the unknown
- Need for a meaningful world to inhabit
Want to be connected with reality
- Motivation to have a meaningful world with depth (Authenticity)
- See things that are not real as real
What is authenticity
Your subjective experience
It is difficult to access
Intuition plays a role in authenticity
Intuition
When things present themselves you do not subject them to deep analysis
Existentialist on meaning
-Thing that provokes most anxiety in clients is not knowing what is happening
-Bringing presence to their current experience and helping them make coherent sense of it helps to relieve anxiety
-Most meaningful to clients is making sense of their experience in ways that give their existence in the moment a transformative quality
Humans as meaning-making animals (3D meaning scale)
- Coherence (comprehension): Sense of comprehensibility and one’s life making sense
- Cognitive component
- Can understand the world around me - Purpose: Sense of core goals, aims and direction in life which help you move forward and make sense of the world
- Motivational component
- I have a set of core goals that give my life direction - Significance (mattering): Sense of life’s inherent value and having a life worth living
- Evaluative component
Coherence and purpose have most research
Coherence: Humans as pattern filling animals
-We fill in patterns in objects to make something we know (seeing a collection of dots as a drawing of a panda)
- Predictive processing/ coding perspective
existentialism focuses on
Ultimate concerns we have to confront- Death, freedom, isolation and meaning (Yaloms 4 categories)
The existential dilemma
A dilemma that results from the existential reality that although humans crave to persist in being, we are finite creatures
Definition of freedom in extistentialism
The idea/ belief that we live in a universe without inherent design, and that in this universe we are the authors of our own lives
Fear of freedom that drives people to believe in god
Lust for submission
Erich Fromm’s term for the feeling that accompanies ones efforts to escape existential freedom
Sartre- Uncontested authors
Our most cherished ideas, truths, convictions and experiences are all determined by ourselves
Sartre “bad faith”
Living inauthentically as a result of denying the responsibility you have for what you choose to do
Isolation
Seen by Fromm as the primary source of anxiety
3 types:
Interpersonal isolation: Isolation from other
Intrapersonal isolation: Isolation from other parts of the self
Existential isolation: Sense of aloneness in the universe that cannot be extinguished fully, even is it is lessened by connection with others
Hegel conceptualised the fear of death as
Fear of the impossibility of further possibility
How existential therapy manifests itself in other therapies
-Increasing interest in the here and now- gestalt, expressive, dynamic, systemic therapies
-Other therapies that are phenomenological, holistic and goal directed- Adlerian, Rogerian, neo-Freudian, relational psychoanalytical psychotherapies (Encourages work with dreams)
-Cognitive therapies (Encourages reflection on belief systems and examination of meaning making with an aim of taking responsibility for ones choices)
Epicurus and existentialism
-Anticipated the concept of the unconscious
-Believed that concerns about death are unconscious to the individual, yet still manifest themselves in various ways
Believed in idea of symmetry (Our state of nonbeing after death is the same as it was before birth)
Vladimir Nabokov- Existentialism
Life is a crack of light between two eternities of darkness
St Augustine- Existentialism
The self is only born when we face death
Credit for existentialism as a modern term
Sartre and marcel
Foundational psychologists with reference to the emergence of existentialism as a psychotherpy
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard
Ludwig Binswanger- existentialism
First psychiatrist to officially combine psychotherapy with existentialism
Central goal of contemporary existential psychotherapy
To rediscover the living person existing in a dehumanizing modern culture
Personality from an existential perspective
Whether people are living their lives as authentically and meaningfully as possible
psychodynamics of an individual- existential
Individuals conflicting conscious and unconscious motives and fears
Dynamic psychotherapy
Psychotherapies based on the psychodynamic internal conflict model of personality structure
What is conflict in existential model of personality
It is between the individual and the “givens”, the ultimate concerns of existence
Awareness of ultimate concern- Anxiety- Defence mechanism
Full understanding of a person in existentialism
Knowledge of the persons circumstances (objective part)
Knowledge of how that person subjectively structures and values those circumstances (subjective part)
Rollo may defines anxiety as
The fundamental clash between being and the threat of nonbeing
rollo may defines destiny as
The pattern of limits and talents that constitutes the ‘givens’ in life
willing definition
The aspect of freedom in which an individual moves from being aware of their responsibility for their life to acting on that awareness
A move from wishing to deciding
- wishing is a subcomponent of it
impulsivity definition
Avoiding wishes by failing to discriminate between wishes and other thoughts
Wishing can be avoided using impulsivity
compulsivity definition
individuals avoid wishes by succumbing to unconscious inner demands that are often in violation of their consciously held desires
fusion definition- existentialism
The softening of ego boundaries to become part of another individual (and avoid the experience of isolation/ personal growth)
promiscuity/ compulsive sexuality
Defence where sexual relations are used as a temporary relief for a lonely individual
psychopathology in existentialism
The result of a failed death transendence
Primary defences against fear of death
- Specialness: Irrational belief that their specialness will somehow enable them to escape their inevitable end
- Belief in the existence as an ultimate rescuer: Creating a belief in a saviour (God) that protects them
- An excess of this can result in someone who is passive and dependent
Basic approach to practicing existential psychotherapy
-Understanding the Clients unconscious conflicts
-Identifying their maladaptive defence mechanisms
Highlighting the destructive Influence of their defences
Correcting the old way of coping with primary anxiety and developing new ones
Deciding in existentialism
- Subcomponent of willing
Represents the bridge between wishing and action
awakening experience- existentialism
A personal confrontation with death that can cause a radical shift in an individuals perspective on life and their behaviours
- most powerful of these is a confrontation with death
Mechanisms of existential psychotherapy
-Empathy in the existentialist therapeutic stance
-The here and now
-Dreams
-Fellow travellers
-Therapist transparency
Who can be helped in existential psychotherapy
-In situations where deeper, more ambitious goals are appropriate
-When a client seeks to attain greater personal growth
- When clients are confronting a boundary situation
Unfolding (Buber)- existentialism
The process through which the therapist uncovers that which was inside the client all along
authentic being-existentialist
wondering less about the way things are and more that things are
How do we get disconnected from authentic experience
Our authentic experiences are difficult to access
There are things in our own experience that are difficult to represent
There is so much information
What is most meaningful to clients according to existentialism
The experience of making sense of their experience in ways that give their existence in the moment a transformative quality
Returning the client to a more home-like state, more at one with the world and in touch with the intrinsic value and wonder of existence
Object permanence through piagets research
Children initially cannot comprehend that when someone leaves, they will come back
Predictive processing/ coding
-Our mind highly influences what we experience
-When their is an error in our perceptions we can update our model and our next prediction will be more aligned with the world
-Our brain is trying to reduce the uncertainty in the world and establish a stronger connection to reality
-When this process is blocked by some resistance/ defence you are less connected to the external and internal world (You lose coherence, meaning and experience and suffer from the existential perspective)
Behavioural inhibition system
Introduced by gray
When you encounter novel stimuli that you dont know how to engage with or respond to, it engages the behavioural inhibition system (anxiety) in response
Entropy
Uncertainty
Any kind of living/autopoietic organism is one that reverses the natural increase of entropy (because things naturally tend towards disorder/disorganization)
When you encounter a small bit of entropy in relation to your goal you…
adapt by changing your action strategy for the same goal
too much entropy leads to
dissolution of goals and therefore subsequent experiences of uncertainty
ie. Your goals become obsolete in light of traumatic experiences
Two aspects (implications) to goals
- Implication of structure (Larger/longer, smaller/sooner)
- Implication of process (ability to accommodate)
The danger of meaninglessness
Separation from culture
The individual is submerged in a world of disorder, senselessness and madness
Lack of meaning- Uncertainty- Anxiety
Industrial revolution and existentialism
-Technology disconnected people from their work (seen as a cog in the machine)
-Identity with work is challenged- People no longer seen as artisan/ skillful
-Now, what is viewed as most “real” is the objective and the rational [top-down organization] (i.e., “just a dream”; “your negative emotions are irrational/childish”)
-There is a movement away from the subjective and toward the abstract. The concrete and subjective aspects of existence are devalued.
Existentialist view on newspapers
Takes away your attention from your current experiencing and directs it towards a wider world from which you are often detached
Hated by Kierkegaard who said that took people’s concerns away from what their central
concern should be: their own lived and experienced life.
Freedom defenses
Procrastinate, apathy, act on whims, behave in obsessive or phobic ways
Delegate choices to others
Rebellion
Placing responsibility on others
How to address freedom defenses
- Take the responsibility necessary for growth
- Slow down and pause
- Change cant to wont
- Highlight the clients obstacles to responsibility
Isolation defenses
-Constantly striving to be noticed and affirmed
-Fusing with others (conformity)
-Using others as means to feel connected (Treating them as Bubers “it”)
How to address isolation defenses
Focus on awareness of fundamental aloneness
Encourage client to dive into feelings of lostness and aloneness
Work toward a relatively need free relation
Defenses against meaninglessness
Hedonism
Unthinking cosmic religion
- Depression as clinical manifestation of this
How to address meaningless defenses
Address it via engagement-Develop terrestrail meanings
Religion- Identifying with way of life
Self-transcendent projects (legacies) such as altruism, dedication to a cause, self-actualizing etc.
Research on existentialism
Not a lot
Meta analysis suggesting that it leads to greater meaning and less problems and more psychopathological improvements
Efficacy of existential therapy on eating disorders
Significant effects on meaning and less anxiety/stress, eating disorder symptoms, and greater psychological well-being.
