1. Existential Therapy

2. View of Human Nature: people..
Have capacity for self-awareness
Have freedom, responsibility, and choice
Strive for identity
Establish meaningful relationships
Search for meaning of life
View anxiety as a condition of living
Are Aware of death

3. The Capacity for Self-Awareness
We can reflect and make choices because we are capable of self-awareness.
Expanding our awareness by realizing that:
Time is limited
We have the choice to act or not to act
We must search for meanings in our life
We are alone

4. Freedom, Responsibility, & Choice
We are
free to choose among alternatives
responsible for our choices, lives, actions…
Responsibility is not to blame others for our problems

5. Striving for Identity Identity is “the courage to be”
We must trust ourselves to find our own answers
Our greatest fear is that there is no self
Struggling with our identity:
Challenging clients---in what ways have they lost touch with their identity and instead let others to run their life.

6. Relationship to others
Aloneness
We are alone---So, we must give meaning to life, decide how we will live, have a relationship with ourselves, and learn to listen to ourselves.
Relatedness
We need to create a close relationship with others
Challenging clients----What do they get from their relationships? How do they avoid close relationships?

7. The Search for Meaning
Therapists’ trust is important in teaching clients to trust their own capacity to find their way of being.
Meaninglessness in life leads to emptiness
Human beings need a sense of meaningfulness in their lives.

8. Anxiety – A Condition of Living
Anxiety arises from one’s strivings to survive.
Existential anxiety is normal

9. Awareness of Death Death provides the motivation for us
to live our lives fully
to take advantage of each opportunity to do something meaningful
to live in the present

10. Therapeutic Goals To help clients become authentic
To expand self-awareness
To increase potential choices
To help clients accept responsibility for their choice

11. Therapist’s Function and Role
Understand the client’s subjective world
Encourage clients to accept personal responsibility
When clients blame others, therapist will ask them what they have done to contribute to their situation.

12. Client’s Experience in Therapy
They are challenged to take responsibility for their decision and to take actions to change.
Major themes in therapy sessions are anxiety, freedom and responsibility, isolation, death, and the search for meaning.
Assist client in facing life with courage, hope, and a willingness to find meaning in life.

13. Therapeutic Relationship
Truly caring for the clients
An authentic love for the clients (is nonreciprocal)
Trusting clients’ potential to cope with their problems
Therapists have an authentic with themselves and are authentically open to the client
Therapists share their reactions with the clients by showing genuine concern and empathy as one way of deepening the therapeutic relationship.

14. Therapeutic techniques & procedures
It is not technique-oriented
The interventions are based on philosophical views about the nature of human existence
Free for draw techniques from other orientations
The use of therapist self is the core of therapy

15. Research on existential therapy
More studies are related to existential themes such as death and anxiety, or meaninglessness.
Purpose-in Life (PIL) Test (Crumbaugh & Henrios (1988): measuring meaninglessness.
Yalom and colleagues conducted a series of research on existential group therapy
Comparing with a waiting list control or no treatment group, participants in the existential group therapy showed increase in psychological functioning, increase in existential awareness, and improvements in immune functioning.

16. From a multicultural perspective: contribution
Is applicable to diverse clients who are searching for meaning of life
Many similarities between Eastern thought and existential psychotherapy
Existential therapy is particularly relevant for working with cross-cultural issue (Van Deurzen-Smith,1988)

17. From a multicultural perspective limitations
Ignore social factors that cause human problems
Even if clients change internally, they see little hope that the external realities of racism will change
For many cultures, it is not possible to talk about self outside the context of the social network
Many clients expect a structured and problem-oriented approach instead of a discussion on philosophical questions.