Existential Therapy-Ind Counseling Theories

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Key figures in existential counseling include:

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-Viktor Frankl, Rollo May, Irving Yalom

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The central focus of existential therapy is on

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the nature of the human condition

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The human condition includes:

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-a capacity for self-awareness
-freedom of choice to decide one's own fate
-responsibility
-anxiety
-the search for meaning
-being alone and in relation to others
-facing the reality of death

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The crucial significance of the existential movement is:

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-that it reacts against the tendency to identify therapy with a set of techniques

-instead, it bases therapeutic practice on an understanding of what it means to be human

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The philosophy of existential therapy:

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-it is an approach vs. a firm theoretical model

-it stresses core human conditions

-personality development is based on the uniqueness of each individual

-sense of self develops from infancy

-focus is on the present and on what one is becoming (this approach has a future orientation)

-self-awareness before action is stressed

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Treatment goals:

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-to help people see that they are free and become aware of their possibilities

-to challenge people to recognize that they are responsible for events that they formerly thought were happening to them

-to identify factors that block freedom

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Therapeutic relationship:

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-the therapist's main tasks are to accurately grasp clients' being-in-the-world and to est. a personal and authentic encounter with them

-the immediacy of the cx-tx relationship and the authenticity of the here-and-now encounter are stressed

-both client and therapist can be changed by the encounter

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Techniques:

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-are not stressed in this approach

-therapist can borrow from other approaches as needed

-diagnosis, testing, and external measurements are not deemed important

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Applications of existential therapy:

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-people facing life transitions or dev. crises

-people with existential concerns (making choices, dealing with freedom and responsibility, coping with guilt and anxiety, making sense of life)

-individual or group counseling

-marital or family counseling

-crisis intervention

-community mental health work

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The greater our self-awareness

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the greater our possibilities for freedom.

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Developing a capacity for self-awareness includes understanding the following:

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-we are finite and do not have unlimited time to do what we want in life

-we have the potential to take action or not; inaction is a decision

-we choose our own actions and we partially create our own destiny

-existential anxiety is an essential part of living: as we increase our awareness of the choices available to us, we also increase our sense of responsibility

-we are subject to loneliness, meaninglessness, emptiness, guilt, and isolation

-we are basically alone yet we have an opportunity to relate to other beings

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What is existential guilt?

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-it is being aware of having evaded a commitment or having chosen not to choose

-what we experience when we do not live authentically

-it results from allowing others to define us or make choices for us

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2 central tasks of the therapist are:

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1. inviting clients to recognize how they have allowd others to decide for them

2. encouraging them to take steps toward autonomy

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Existential therapy helps clients come to terms with:

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the paradoxes of existence: life and death, success and failure, freedom and limitations, and certainty and doubt

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Three main therapeutic tasks in existential therapy, according to Bugental, are:

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1. to assist clients in recognizing that they are not fully present in the therapy process itself and in seeing how this pattern might limit them outside of therapy

2. to support clients in confronting the anxieties that they have so long sought to avoid

3. to help clients redefine themselves and their world in ways that foster greater genuineness of contact with life

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The central goal of existential therapy is:

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helping clients to develop increased awareness, which allows clients to realize they are able to make changes in their way of being in the world

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The 3 phases of existential therapy include:

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1. therapist assisting client in identifying and clarifying their assumptions about the world: helping clients to examine their values, beliefs, and assumptions and to reflect on their own role in creating problems of living

2. encouraging clients to fully examine the source and authority of their present value system and to develop new insights and restructuring of their values and attitudes so as to have a more clear picture of the life they want to live

3. helping clients take what they are learning about in therapy and putting it into action