Theories Of Counseling - Existential Therapy

Front 1

What are the goals of existential therapy?

Back 1

- assist clients in their exploration of the existential givens of life and how they are ignored
- helping clients find meaning
- themes: mortality, freedom, responsibility, anxiety, and aloneness
- challenge clients to accept responsibility
- increasing awareness

Front 2

Who contributed to the existential philosophy?

Back 2

- Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Buber ("I/Thou"), Binswanger ("existential analysis), Boss, Sartre ("bad faith")
- Frankl, May, Yalom, Bugental

Front 3

Existential analysis

Back 3

- Binswanger
- emphasizes the subjective and spiritual dimensions of human existence

Front 4

- Bad faith

Back 4

- what Sartre calls blaming others
- excuses made up by individuals for failing to acknowledge their freedom

Front 5

Victor Frankl

Back 5

- developed logotherapy
- freedom to find meaning in all that we think
- life has meaning under all circumstances
- central motivation: will to meaning
- must integrate body, mind, and spirit to be fully alive

Front 6

Rollo May

Back 6

- brought existentialism from Europe to the US
- translated key concepts into psychotherapeutic practice

Front 7

Irvin Yalom

Back 7

- based his approach based on the notion that existentialism deals with basic "givens of existence": isolation and relationship with others; death and living fully; and meaninglessness and meaning

Front 8

View of human nature

Back 8

- existential tradition seeks a balance between recognizing the limits of human existence and the opportunities of human life on the other
- capacity for self-awareness
- creating identity and establishing meaningful relationships
- search for meaning, purpose, values , and goals
- awareness of death and meaning
- freedom and responsibility
- anxiety as a condition for living

Front 9

Capacity for Self-Awareness

Back 9

- freedom, choice, and responsibility are the foundation of self-awareness
- must realize we are finite and do not have unlimited time
- have the potential to act or not to act
- choose our actions, and can partially create our own destiny
- subject to loneliness, meaninglessness, emptiness, guilt & isolation
- basically alone, but need to relate to other beings

Front 10

Freedom and Responsibility

Back 10

- 3 values of therapy: freedom to become within the context of natural and self-imposed limitations
- capacity to reflect on the meaning of our choices
- capacity to act on the choices we make
- people avoid taking responsibility by "bad faith" or inauthenticity
- freedom, existential guilt, and authenticity
- therapist invites client to recognize how they let others decide for them and encourages them to choose for themselves

Front 11

Inauthenticity

Back 11

- "bad faith"
- not accepting responsibility

Front 12

Freedom

Back 12

- implies that we are responsible for our lives, our actions, and our failures to take action

Front 13

Existential guilt

Back 13

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

Front 14

Authenticity

Back 14

- implies that we are living by being true to our evaluation of what is a valuable existence for ourselves
- it is the courage to be who we are

Front 15

Striving for identity and relationship to others

Back 15

- part of the human condition is being alone, but we also depend on relationships
- part of therapy consists of challenging clients to look at ways they have lost touch with their identity
- by helping clients face their fear that their lives are meaningless, can help clients create a self that has meaning that they have chosen

Front 16

Search for meaning

Back 16

- must trust clients to create their own value system
- existential vacuum
- may be a vacuum between discarding old values and discovering new ones
- feeling of meaninglessness is the major existential neurosis of modern life

Front 17

Existential vacuum

Back 17

- meaninglessness can lead to emptiness and hollowness, a condition Frankl called existential vacuum

Front 18

Anxiety as a condition of living

Back 18

- existential anxiety: the unavoidable result of being confronted with the "givens of existence": death, freedom, choice, isolation, and meaninglessness (experience this as we become aware of our freedom and the consequences of accepting or rejecting it)
- normal anxiety: an appropriate response to an event being faced
- neurotic anxiety: anxiety about concrete things that is out of proportion to the situation

Front 19

Awareness of death and nonbeing

Back 19

- death can be viewed as a positive force that enables us to live as fully as possible (once we have accepted the reality of our death)

Front 20

4 aims of existential therapy

Back 20

- to help clients to become more present to both themselves and others (moving toward authenticity)
- to assist clients in identifying ways they block themselves from fuller presence
- to challenge clients to assume responsibility for designing their present lives
- to encourage clients to choose more expanded ways of being in their daily lives

Front 21

Therapist's role?

Back 21

- primarily concerned with understanding the subjective world of clients and with clients avoiding responsibility
- usually deal with people who have a restricted existence

Front 22

Restricted existence

Back 22

- having limited awareness of oneself
- often vague about the nature of their problems

Front 23

Therapeutic relationship

Back 23

- quality of person-to-person encounter is the stimulus for change
- relating in an I/Thou fashion means that there is direct, mutual, and present interaction
- core is respect: faith in clients' ability to cope authentically with their troubles and discover alternate ways of being

Front 24

Initial phase of counseling:

Back 24

- therapist assists client in identifying and clarifying assumptions
- therapist teaches them how to reflect on their own existence and to examine their role in creating their problems

Front 25

Middle phase of counseling:

Back 25

- clients are assisted in more fully examining the source and authority of their present value system
- clients get a better idea of what kind of life they consider worthy to live and develop a clearer sense of their internal valuing process

Front 26

Final phase of counseling:

Back 26

- focuses on helping people take what they are learning about themselves and put it into action
- aim of therapy is to enable clients to discover ways of implementing their examined and internalized values in a concrete way between sessions and after therapy has terminated

Front 27

Strengths from a multicultural perspective

Back 27

- does not dictate a particular way of viewing or relating to reality
- focuses on the sober issues each of us face: love, anxiety, suffering, & death
- focus on subjective experience (phenomenology)

Front 28

Shortcomings from a multicultural perspective

Back 28

- may be excessively individualistic
- may ignore social factors that cause human problems
- highly focused on self-determination, which does not take into account factors dealing with oppression

Front 29

Values

Back 29

- meanings shared by people living in a given society or across cultural and historical times
- Frankl called these shared meanings "values"
- 3 groups of values: creative, existential, and attitudinal

Front 30

Noodynamics

Back 30

- essential for maintenance of mental health
- in trying to transcend our biological drives and social and cultural environments in the pursuit of values and meanings , often creates tension that keeps us oriented toward our values and meaning

Front 31

Noogenic neurosis

Back 31

- a disorder that develops when one remains in a prolonged state of existential vacuum (sense that life has lost all meaning)

Front 32

Symptoms of collective neurosis

Back 32

- aimless day-to-day attitude toward life stemming from uncertainty about the future
- fatalistic attitude arising out of lack of control over life
- collective thinking
- fanaticism (stems from group loyalty and persecutes those who think differently)

Front 33

3 factors underlying widespread meaninglessness:

Back 33

- disappearance of innate instincts
- steady erosion of traditional values brought about by the advance of science
- diversity of value orientation in many cultures which makes commitment to any particular set of values difficult

Front 34

4-step procedure for logotherapy:

Back 34

- dereflection: helping clients to divert their attention from the problem
- attitude modulation: helping clients to view their predicament from different perspectives
- creating an openness to new meanings
- helping clients make new commitments and pursue new goals

Front 35

Umwelt

Back 35

- the world around / the environment

Front 36

Mitwelt

Back 36

- interpersonal world

Front 37

Eigenwelt

Back 37

- inner world of self

Front 38

Motivation:

Back 38

- self-actualization
- people make choices in their journey towards self-fulfillment

Front 39

Time orientation:

Back 39

- focus is on the present

Front 40

Holistic or atomistic?

Back 40

- holistic approach: conceptualizes the individual as a whole person
- explores all 3 levels of the experience of being-in-the-world (umwelt, mitwelt, eigenwelt)

Front 41

Pathology may result from:

Back 41

- failure to actualize one's potential (existential guilt)
- failure to confront fear of the unknown
- lack of authenticity and the perception of differences between what one is and what one ought to be
- meaninglessness
- experience of nothingness and concern with death and dread
- lack of engagement in or denial of any of the levels of being-in-the-world

Front 42

Techniques?

Back 42

- no firm set of techniques
- relies on providing understanding and caring in the context of a genuine therapeutic relationship
- therapists do not prescribe homework (would curtail client's sense of responsibility and free choice)