Comments on: Existential Therapy

By: novice counselor

novice counselor — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:16:43 +0000

I completely agree. The therapist needs to experience the client’s emotions or at least have a good idea what it is like to feel as the client does.

By: Marc Handelman

Marc Handelman — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:18:46 +0000

Psychotherapists must always start off trying to meet their patients on an experiential level. Failing to do so leads to objectification and dehumanization of the other person. Whether or not various psychological techniques are used, or physiological interventions such as medication are administered, a therapist’s primary task begins in finding access to the patient’s emotional state. The work of a therapist must involve the experience of the patient in all its nuance and complexity.

For the therapist who works within an experiential framework, a large part of the work must involve finding access to the experiences of his patients in himself. While being a ‘warm and caring’ therapist may be important, it is relatively hollow in contrast to the therapist actually having a sense of how it feels to be you, how it feels to be experiencing the world as you do. A therapist must be comfortable sitting with feelings, both yours and his own, if he is to be helpful. The need to objectify patients and rely primarily on a conceptual or theoretical understanding of their problems, or a categorical diagnosis, often serves as a defense and blocks truly knowing the patient’s suffering and struggles.

By: Clare Mann

Clare Mann — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:24:05 +0000

Valuable comparisons being made here. I have a few thoughts on the existential perspective. It might be more accurate to consider ‘creating meaning’ rather than finding it – subtle words but profound in that the notion that ‘it exists out there but is as yet illusive’ is very different than living with the total co-construction of our reality i.e. that nothing is fixed. The Existential-Phenomenological perspective questions the assumption of fixed identity, instead, seeing Self as a focal point in relation, i.e. the self-in-relation (to others, to itself) rather than a fixed or separate entity. (Heidegger 1962, Spinelli 1994).

‘Understanding Jake’s condition’ might possibly be understood as ‘it is measurable and identifiable’. Subtle words again but the key is to ‘help Jake understand his predicament’ – care must be taken by the therapist not to ‘fix’ the condition by applying existential concepts as items – instead by using their relationship the client came bring into awareness his worldviews i.e. personal, social, physical and worldviews – which are ever changing and intersubjective.

‘Gaining closure’ is an interesting notion. A client can be assisted to confront ‘their’ meanings of endings. ‘Closure’ is, as with each of our experiences, a highly subjective process – there is no point at which something is ended – it is merely re-oriented within our ‘meaning making’ existence.