Preview

Existential Psychotherapy

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
193 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Existential Psychotherapy
Existential psychotherapy encourages people to address the emotional issues they face through full engagement and to also take responsibility for the decisions that caused them to develop (Corey, 2016). People who undergo this form of therapy are guided to accept their fears and they are also given the skills necessary to overcome them through action. By gaining control of the direction of one’s life, the person in therapy is able to design the course of his or her choosing; creating in the individual a sense of liberation and a feeling of letting go of the despair associated with insignificance and meaningless (Corey, 2016). Existential psychotherapy involves teaching the person in therapy to grow and embrace his or her own life and to exist

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Existentialism is a term applied to the work of certain late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual.…

    • 361 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Psy/4065

    • 298 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In psychotherapy, existential approaches ask individuals to use anxiety to make positive life changes. Rather than repress this anxiety, patients are encouraged to use it constructively to transform undesirable situations or other aspects of their life. The existential…

    • 298 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    There are various aspects of self – actualisation and obstacles that can be identified during therapy. Some of them are described in this essay: locus of control, conditions of worth, positive regard and self- regard.…

    • 2723 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Psychodynamic Therapies

    • 1991 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Cognitive behavioural and psychodynamic approaches to therapy seem to offer contrasting modes of treatment for psychological difficulties, largely due to the fact that they originate from very different theoretical and philosophical frameworks. It seems likely, therefore, that treatment for a woman experiencing depression, anxiety and feelings of inadequacy will proceed along very different lines according to each approach. There do appear to be some features, however, which are common to all effective ‘talking’ therapies, notably rooted in the therapeutic relationship itself and in the qualities and skills of the therapist, whatever their persuasion.…

    • 1991 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    With this freedom and responsibility comes with the reality of having to live with the consequences of whatever choice was made (Erford, 2010). Existential therapy is about understanding the human experience as it encounters such things as loneliness, isolation, despair and eventually death. The psychological problems such as anxiety that stem from the human experience are viewed as the result from the inhibited ability to make authentic, meaningful, and self-directed choices about how to live (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999). Battling the challenges of the human experience can cause unhappiness and when that happens, individuals begin asking questions regarding their existence (Jacobsen, 2007).…

    • 2423 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sometimes there is sad, and then more than sad. Then among gifted minds, there is existential depression sad. In James T. Webb’s article, “Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals” he explains the thought process of higher thinking individuals and how the thinking can affect their emotional state. Existential depression is when people ponder life’s existential questions like death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness, for a prolonged period of time. Tess in Aryn Kyle’s short story, “Nine” is an example of a gifted child with existential depression. She often contemplates the deaths of people around her, and her own mortality. She also is cut off emotionally from people, but not by her own design. She is isolated from her father’s life, pushed to the side, and almost forgotten. The people she lives with cause Tess to have these issues with her life, and as an effect, she qualifies as a gifted child with existential depression.…

    • 708 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Grief is a natural and emotional response evoked by significant loss, especially when it entails suffering from the loss of a loved one. A grieving client enters therapy with the expectation of finding meaning in and understanding of how to overcome their emotional distress, interpersonal conflicts and the pain they may be experiencing. Different approaches to therapy may angle this task differently, for example, changing self-defeating thinking patterns in cognitive behaviour therapy or interpreting historical mal-adaptive patterns as in transactional therapy. The two approaches I have chosen for the purpose of this assignment are Existential Therapy and Group Therapy.…

    • 3290 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Better Essays

    Famed American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, once said, “We may define therapy as a search for value.” That value that the client is seeking is in one’s self. Self value is very important. Human beings are creatures that require self validation; why do they exist? Why do they continue to live? Why do they live when so many others die around them? Is there is a purpose to their life, to their existence and is that purpose, that value, of enough worth to warrant their continued existence. The job of the therapist, in many ways, is to provide that value. The therapist often serves a similar purpose as that of a Wall Street trader; raise the value of the stock each individual holds inside them self. The therapist, like the Wall Street trader, has many tools at his or her disposal, many theories, programs and tools have been made available through decades of research, trial and error practice and many bright minds have spent countless hours studying the human psyche in order to provide effective means of intervention. Therapists and psychologists spend much time working through different agencies, services and clinics in order to effectively use these tools that have been made available. For the purpose of this paper the writer will consider such an agency, its purpose, methods and the wonderful and professional people that make it happen.…

    • 2030 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Evaluating Medical Model

    • 403 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Humanist-Existential Approach- associated with client centred therapy, empathy & unconditional positive regard. Rodgers (1951)- ‘Client Centred Therapy’.…

    • 403 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This essay will compare and contrast the Person-Centred and Cognitive-Behavioural approaches to the understanding of and working with fear and sadness. It will do this by first summarising the basic theory of person centred Therapy and Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and how each theory interprets the causation of fear and sadness. This essay will then use a short paragraph to discuss the relationships and therapeutic alliance within Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and person centred Therapy. This essay move on to examining the techniques used both in Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and person centred Therapy. This essay will finally look at the essay writer’s preferred Therapy approach.…

    • 1661 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    From this perspective, whatever interventions the therapist and client use needs to assist them in identifying and developing the client’s strengths. This is a collaborative discovery process, which requires presence and commitment of both the therapist and client (see Jones-Smith, 2014). Previously mentioned Existential-Humanistic approach is fitting with the strengths-based approach. The therapist who works from the Existential-Humanistic approach considers his/herself as a fellow traveler of the client’s process (Yalom & Josselson, 2014). The therapist utilizes one’s own internal experience of the client and the therapeutic relationship to deepen the understanding of the client. E-H Therapy encourages both the therapist and client to attune to their own the whole here-and-now bodily experience (Friedman,…

    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Existentialism

    • 1023 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Every person in the world has one thing in common and that one thing is death. Not many people want to face the fact that everyone will die at a certain point in time until that time is brought among them. Existentialism is the theory of being a living human individual and that ultimately life is meaningless because the world keeps moving on when death occurs. This theory is prevalent in the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus and the film Office Space by Mike Judge. In The Stranger a shipping clerk named Mersault lives his life without caring about societal standards and he believes that having faith in a higher god is a waste of his time. In Office Space a man named Peter Gibbons is programmer at a software company called Initech, he is fed up with a job and the lifestyle that he is living in. Although the characters in The Stranger and Office Space inflict with different plots and people, they share the same indifference to the world, choose their own path, and accept the consequences of their decisions.…

    • 1023 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Existential Therapy

    • 1934 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Both theories stress the client's ability to change and the fact that the client is the expert on their own life and worldview. Further both theories focus mostly on the client's future and do not concentrate on the problems of their clients past. They both believe that their should be an authentic and collaborative relationship between clients and counselors and that the client is in charge of their own change. Both therapies also do not stress diagnosis. Existential therapy in contrast to SFBT does not have a lot of techniques that are used in therapy. Therefore it serves well as a foundation of this integrative approach. When working with this foundation the counselor sees their client as capable of self-awareness, responsible and able to choose their own future, in search of meaning in their life and faced with anxieties that are part of the human condition. This can work well with SFBT techniques that are goal-oriented, positive, and focus on the future. Techniques from SFBT that can be integrated with the existential therapy foundation are pretherapy change, the exeption questions, the miracle question and scaling questions. Pretherapy change looks at what the client has already done to change before the first therapy session. This can help demonstrate to the client the importance they have in the design…

    • 1934 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Grendel's Self Discovery

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The philosophy that is existentialism is “a philosophical movement which exercised an influence on many of the arts as well as on philosophy and psychology.” The belief in people have free will and can choose what they want to be is in other words what existentialism. Existentialism was a philosophical movement that dealt with the ideas of the way of life by many philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre did not agree with traditional arguments of human nature he argued that in the case of human beings “existence precedes essence.” In his famous quote, the meaning is that humans have no set or fixed nature that determines what they will do.…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Personal Models of Helping

    • 2169 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The following paper discusses the personal model of helping called the existential therapy model. The model of therapy is used to help people in counseling live better, stress free lives by exploring themselves and learning to live an authentic life. This model is effective when the therapist is authentic themselves and are genuine about helping others, which builds a positive relationship between the therapist and the client. This kind of model allows the client to open up and gives them the ability to explore themselves; past, present, and future. Existential therapy allows the client to understand that their lives are a direct response from the choices that they make in their lives. The therapist also gives the client tools to help change the new found negative behaviors. And although change is sometimes hard to adapt to, with the proper tools from the therapist and motivation from the client, the correct path to an authentic live can began and goals achieved. Existential therapy recognizes the problems of the human condition and existence while at the same time emphasizing human beings' great potential and freedom to respond constructively to these challenges. It helps individuals who choose depression as a response to existential difficulties to break this negative pattern ("Ehow.com", 2013).…

    • 2169 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays