Existential Therapy: an introduction

Existential Therapy:
an introduction
Emmy van Deurzen
2015
@Emmy van Deurzen 2015

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Emmy van Deurzen
 PhD, MPhil, MPsych, CPsychol, FBPsS, UKCPF, FBACP,
ECP, HCPC reg
•Visiting Professor Middlesex University -UK
•Director Dilemma Consultancy
•Director Existential Academy
•Principal New School of Psychotherapy
and Counselling - London

Books by Emmy

3d edition of Existential Counselling and
Psychotherapy in practice or
Everyday Mysteries, 2nd edition
or Skills book for intro

most relevant
in relation to meaning:
2009 book on happiness

Mystery and paradox of
human existence
 Life is a mystery to be discovered, explored
and lived, not a problem to be solved
 All of human existence is situated in the
tension between polarities and paradoxes
played out in dilemmas, contradictions and
conflicts.
 We can learn to understand better how we
intertwine with the world at all levels.

Imagine a person like a
sphere

Your own little sphere of existence
matters

That person is located in a universe with
other planets, stars, suns, moons and
spheres

Sphere as a planet or a cell: micro or
macro level.

If a cell: connection with other cells,
function and internal constitution are
paramount

If planet: orbit and position
matter

Merleau Ponty: Visible and
Invisible
 Things are structures – frameworks – the stars of our
life: they gravitate around us. Yet there is a secret
bond between
us and them –
through perception
we enter into the
essence of the flesh
(Visible and Invisible: 220)

You experience yourself as having a
nucleus: a core, a heart or a soul

Perhaps we are more like suns,
generating heat and light

Solar anatomy

Layers of the sun
 Corona, chromosphere, photosphere, convection
zone, and core.

Layers of a person’s life.
4.Physical: Umwelt
3.Social: Mitwelt
2.Personal: Eigenwelt
1.Spiritual: Uberwelt

Merleau Ponty: soul
 The soul is the hollow of the body, the body is the
distension of the soul. The soul adheres to the body
as their signification adheres to the cultural things,
whose reverse or other side it is. (233)

We find ourselves in situations that
affect and oppress us.

Spiritual:
Good/Evil
Intuitions, values, beliefs, purpose, meaning.
Worldview/Ideas.
Personal:
Strength/Weakness
Thoughts, memories, identity, freedom.
Selfhood/Me.
Social:
Love/Hate
Feelings, relations, belonging, acknowledgement.
Communication/Others.
Physical:
Life/Death
Sensations, actions, environment, body, things.
Survival/World.
Dimensions of existence

Existential Space
Physical space
Social space
Personal space
Spiritual space

Therapy
 Understand a person’s situation and its tensions,
including context and subtext.
 Elucidation of what is the case
 Putting things back into perspective
 Seeing and working with connections
 Creating meaning and purpose from
connectivity
 Learning about life: onto dynamics.
 Liberation

Happiness or Meaning?
 Are we after happiness or meaning?
 Is the ultimate objective something else, like
intensity or contact with reality?
 Are we perhaps just after life itself, but afraid
of it?
 What does it mean to live a good life?
 Can we live a good life without offering
ourselves up for depth and therefore
suffering?

Both positives and
negatives
See how
they
relate
_
+

What is paradox?
opposites
are
inevitable
Only to the extent that we
accept polarities, conflicts
and contradictions do we
learn to live with truth
Onto-dynamics rather than
psycho-dynamics:
Life is tension between
opposites

Making sense of life
High
Big
Far
Good
Low
Small
Near
Bad

Energy is the flow between
two poles
Source: kidzoneweather.com

tension, dilemma, conflict,
opposition, polarities,
paradox
 Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
 Human evolution proceeds with constant
conflict and forward movement in
overcoming a previous state.
 Paradoxes and dilemmas
are integrated
and gone beyond.

Transcendence
Thesis Antithesis
Synthesis
Dialectics

future
Thesis: my view
(past )
Antithesis: your view
(present)
Dialectics:
transcendence in space
Synthesis:
a wider view

Paradoxes of human
existence
challenge gain loss
Physical Death and
pain
Life to the full Unlived life or
constant fear
Social Loneliness
and
rejection
Understand
and be
understood
Bullying or being
bullied
Personal Weakness
and failure
Strength and
stamina
Narcissism or self
destruction
Spiritual Meaning-
Lessness
and futility
Finding an
ethics to live
by
Fanaticism or
apathy

Why happiness is not a good enough
goal for life
 Greater values than
happiness:
 love, truth, beauty, loyalty,
honour, courage, freedom.

Baumeister (1991:214)
 Happiness is when ‘reality lives up to your
desires’.
 Long-term goals offer a sense of direction,
but it is necessary to have short-term goals
in order to derive daily meaning.
 In fact it is having short term achievable
goals that allow us to feel efficient and
purposeful that gives us most of a sense of
self worth and value of life.

Baumeister (1991) Meanings of
Life
 Baumeister concluded that there are four basic needs
for meaning:
1. Need for purpose (spiritual)
2. Need for value (social)
3. Need for efficacy (physical)
4. Need for self-worth (personal)
 It is the process of going in the general direction of
these four objectives that makes for a good life.

The right level of challenge
 To live a meaningful life and have goals and values
is not enough: you must also feel you are capable
of achieving these things.
 ‘It is necessary to find moderately difficult tasks to
maintain that middle ground between boredom (too
easy) and anxiety (too hard).’ (41)

VALUES AND BELIEFS
 Values and beliefs are the basis of a personal
code of ethics which is about:
 how I want to live my life
 how I want to treat others
 how I want to be treated by others
 how I aim to evaluate my actions and those of
others
 how I feel about human existence as a result

Onto-dynamics
 Learning to live in line with the laws of life
 Paradox, conflict, difficulty and dilemmas are our
daily companions
 When crisis comes we need to have the courage
to descend to rock bottom
 From there we can build something better

No prescription
 Existential therapy does not have to impose
rules for living. It enables people to uncover
the laws of life, and recover their capacity
to trust in these and be inspired by life again
when they were forlorn, forsaken, desperate
or confused.

Being open to worldview
and ideology
Polytheism:
Many Gods
Monotheism:
One God
Marxism:
Society as
God
Psychology:
Individual as
God
Atheism: No
God
Science:
Facts are
God
Humanism:
Mankind as
God
Agnosticism:
Don’t know
God
Pantheism:
All is God

How to create value?
 Through committed and engaged action
 Step by step
 Diligently proceeding no matter what
challenges come on your path
 Steady progress comes from undaunted
focus on your project
 Flexibility and finding joy in the process
rather than aiming for success or happiness
 In friendship and collaboration with others.
 Valuing what matters

An educational project
Lifeisforlearning

Overview of conflicts, challenges and paradoxes on four dimensions
World Umwelt : where? Mitwelt : how? Eigenwelt: who? Uberwelt: why?
Physical:
survival
Nature:
Life/
Death
Things:
Pleasure/
Pain
Body:
Health/
Illness
Cosmos:
Harmony/
Chaos
Social:
affiliation
Society:
Love/
Hate
Others:
Dominance/Sub
mission
Ego:
Acceptance/
Rejection
Culture:
Belonging/
Isolation
Personal:
identity
Person:
Identity/Freedom
Me:
Perfection/
Imperfection
Self:
Integrity/
Disintegration
Consciousness:
Confidence/
Confusion
Spiritual:
meaning
Infinite:
Good/
Evil
Ideas:
Truth/
Untruth
Spirit:
Meaning/
Futility
Conscience:
Right/
Wrong

Engagement is key
 We go towards the world or keep away
 We flee, freeze, stay in place, or approach,
loving or fighting with the world around us
 We do this not only with other people
 We do it with objects, animals, humans, our
selves and also with ideas, expectations,
hopes, fears and many other things
 We are always in relationship and are more
or less available and engaged

Existential psychology is
about a different way of life:
a way of being.
It is not just about knowledge
You have to
live it.@Emmy van Deurzen 2015

Your future is as bright as
your willingness to engage
and learn

Existential Therapy
 Talking about your troubles is only helpful if
you can talk through them in constructive
dialogue taking you beyond blame and
shame.
 No pathology
 Focus on Problems in Living
 Philosophical view of human existence

Landscapes of our life
• Understand the Lebenswelt:
the world in which we live.
How do we co-constitute the world?

Focus of existential
therapy
 Ontological questions
 Addressed by tackling everyday ontic
problems

Definition
 Existential therapy is a
philosophical method of
psychotherapy, which focuses
on the clarification of human
existence to enable a person to
engage with problems in living in
a creative, active and reflective
manner in order to find new
meaning and purpose.


Worldview
 Existential therapy values the interactive, relational
and embodied nature of human consciousness and
human existence. It considers that human beings are
free to effect change in their lives in a responsible,
deliberate, ethical and thoughtful manner, by
understanding their difficulties and by coming to
terms with the possibilities and limitations of the
human condition in general and of their own life in
particular. It emphasizes the importance of finding
meaning and purpose by engaging with life at many
levels, physical, social, personal and spiritual. It does
not prescribe a particular worldview but examines
the tensions and contradictions in a person’s way of
being. This will include a consideration of existential
limits such as death, failure, weakness, guilt, anxiety
and despair.

How does it work?
 There are many forms of existential therapy and each
has its own specific methods and ways of exploring
difficulties and change, but all forms of existential
therapy work with dialogue to enable a person to
find their own authority in exploring their life and the
way they want to live it. This will often involve a
philosophical and ethical exploration of the big
questions of human existence, such as truth,
meaning, justice, beauty, freedom, consciousness,
choice, responsibility, friendship and love. Existential
therapy is a pragmatic and experiential approach
which favours embodiment, emotional depth, clarity
and directness and which employs the principles of
logic, paradox, dialectics, phenomenology and
hermeneutic exploration amongst other methods.

Aims
 Existential therapists aim to approach a person’s un-ease or
suffering in a phenomenological, holistic way. Symptoms are
not seen as the defining aspect of a person’s troubles, but
rather as an expression of the person’s disconnection from
reality or as a way of coping with an existential crisis. A
person’s experience will be considered at all levels and equal
attention will be paid to a person’s past, present and
future. Existential therapists facilitate a person’s greater
awareness of their mode of being in the world, helping them
to be more in touch with their concrete physicality, their
interactions and relationships, their engagement with their own
identity or lack of it, their concept of what grounds their being
and the ways in which they may be able to bring the flow and
their capacity for transcendence, learning and pleasurable
forward movement back to life. It helps people to tolerate
and embrace suffering and difficulty to engage with it
constructively.

Training
 Existential therapists are trained in specialist
training programmes, that require four years
of training at post-graduate level and which
involve theoretical learning, skills training,
practical learning under supervision, a
process of personal therapy to learn to
apply existential principles in practice and
the completion of some form of
phenomenological research project.

Buber’s encounter
 The interhuman: das Zwischenmenschlichen; the
in-between is where real communication takes
place (Buber, Between Man and Man, 1929).
 All actual life is encounter (ibid: 62)
 This is where truth is found.
 In inter-subjectivity we create the world in which
we live together: I-It or I-Thou.

Directive or non
directive?
 The existential therapist is purposeful
(directional) rather than directive. Also direct.
 Directiveness denies autonomy and can easily
lead to stagnation or rebellion
 Non directiveness can lead to confusion and
dependency
 A productive therapeutic relationship will be
challenging to both people
 Clients will value a therapist who is willing to
stand with them and who is able to teach them
something new about life

Later Sartre
 I believe that a man can always make
something out of what is made of him.
This is the limit I would today accord to
freedom: the small movement which
makes of a totally conditioned social
being someone who does not render
back completely what his
conditioning has given him. Which
makes of Genet a poet when he had
been rigorously conditioned to be a
thief. (Between Existentialism and Marxism, 33-34.)

 Man’s task is simple:
he should cease letting
his existence be a
thoughtless accident
Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science

We cannot avoid all danger and all
problems and need to learn to cope with
adversity and difficulties: life is a challenge
 It is by going down into the abyss that we
recover the treasures of life.
 Where you stumble lies your treasure
 Joseph Campbell

There is no abstract ethics. There is only an ethics in
a situation and therefore it is concrete.
(Sartre, Notes For an Ethics:17)
Learning to live is a moral
struggle

Is human emotional suffering
avoidable?
Or does the road of life inevitably take us
through lows and into dark and scary
places?

Is happiness desirable?
Ordoesitsoftenusand
stopusreflectonlife?

Asking the Big Questions
and learning to Reflect

How to live? What is
truth? What is the
ultimate value of life?

Nobody is spared crisis,
Conflict or LOSS
Are we ever prepared for the life changing challenges?

Even if you play it safe and try to
avoid catastrophes
You still need courage and
persistence to brave unexpected
blows of fate: many respond with
anxiety and depression

Facts: depression
 2-10% of European citizens experience depression related
problems
 Each year: 33.4 million Europeans suffer
 Inability to feel pleasure, tiredness, worthlessness, helplessness,
hopelessness and feelings of guilt
 Most suicides (30-88%) related to it
 60.000 deaths by suicide p.a. in the EU (2X > road acc)
 Most common cause of disability in the world, strongly
associated with heart disease in linear causal fashion
 Total cost p/a: UK: £15 billion USA: $100 billion
 Last decade: EU and WHO policy to promote mental health

Facts: anxiety
 Often considered in relation to stress
 Estimated 15.7 million Americans are affected each year
 12% of European population at any time
 The core features of GAD are chronic (>6 months) anxious worrying
with symptoms of hyper vigilance, hyper arousal and tension
 International study: 5.6 to 18.1% for anxiety disorders, of which GAD and
panic disorder together accounted for over half of the prevalence
figures (Baumeister & Hartner, 2007).
 But also Phobias, Panic, OCD, PTSD, SAD (social anx)
 NICE figures: cost of anxiety in EU: 41 billion Euros (2004 prices)
 Long term use of benzodiazepines (Xanax, Librium, Valium, Ativan):
worsens it

Size and burden of mental
disorders
 Most frequent disorders: anxiety (14%), insomnia
(7%), major depression (6.9%), somatoform (6.3%),
alcohol and drug dependency (4%), ADHD (5%)
dementia (1-30%)
 38.2%, i.e. 164.8 million persons affected per year.
 Percentage of disorders of brain: 26.6%, headache,
sleep apnoea, stroke (8.24), dementia, brain injury,
epilepsy, parkinsons, ms, brain tumours (overlap)

People crave happiness and
want to eliminate their
symptoms
in 2010 some 16 million prescriptions were
issued for anti-depressants in the UK: a
10% rise on the previous year. Iceland: 9%

SSRIs: Happy pills?

SSRIs as panacea especially with anxiety, but also
NRIs and SNRIs
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (Fluoxetine, Prozac, Paxil,
Zoloft)
noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (Reboxetine, Edronax, Mazanor)
Serotonine- norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (Venlafaxine)
(anxiety, ADHD)
 From 2006 to 2010: 43% increase in prescriptions for
the SSRI antidepressants
 2009 BMJ paper titled "Explaining the rise in
antidepressant prescribing’’: SSRIs are given for all
sorts of problems
 2000-2005: already 36% increase in SSRI

Unhappiness is not an
illness
Many people take the view they deserve happiness
 On this view, things like love, friendship,
meaningful activity, freedom, human
development, or the appreciation of true beauty
are ‘‘merely’’ instrumentally valuable for us, i.e.
they are not good as ends but merely as means
to the only thing that is good as an end, namely
happiness. Bengt Brulde 2006.

Camus: Sisyphus’ plight
Enable people to tackle the important issues
 There is but one truly serious philosophical
problem and that is … whether life is or is
not worth living. (Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus)
 Is rolling the stone up the hill sufficient to fill a
human heart?: meaning is found because of
challenges, not despite them

Project: active
transcendence
 Man is characterized above all by his going
beyond a situation and by what he succeeds in
making of what he has been made.
 This is what we call the project.
(Sartre, Search for a Method:91)

What happens when life is
hard?
Migrant mother in USA depression 1936

Buchenwald

Survival is an issue@Emmy van Deurzen 2015

Resilience
 How do we overcome obstacles?
 How do we survive difficulties, crises, trauma?
 How do we rise above adversity?
 Are there personal qualities that enable a person
to be resilient?
 Think about times in your life when you have faced
adversity, difficulty or crisis.
 How did you overcome them?@Emmy van Deurzen 2015

Being lost and finding
something new
 Heidegger’s aletheia (ἀλήθεια): truth means:
unveiling the hidden
 In loss we become homeless, Unheimlich and are
forced to find ourselves for the first time.

Laing:
Breakthrough in stead of
breakdown.
 Loss and transition are about breakdown of
the old.
 Instead of breaking down and becoming
depressed it can mean we break through
some block and move on to a next level.
 In the process we become stronger.
 We establish values that are more deeply
rooted.

What is the harvest of our
suffering?
 Ultimately, man should not ask what the
meaning of his life is, but rather must
recognize that it is he who is asked.
 In a word, each man is questioned by
life; and he can only answer to life by
answering for his own life; to life he can
only respond by being responsible.
Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p.172

Frankl’s way to
meaning
•Experiential values:
what we take from the
world.
•Creative values: what we
give to the world.
•Attitudinal values : the
way we deal with suffering.

How do we create
meaning?
 What is of most value in your life?
 What would you give other things up for?
 What would you give your life for?

Emotions are our
orientation.
 Emotions are like the weather: never none.
 They are the way we relate to the world.
 They define the mood of the moment.
 They are our atmosphere and modality.
 They tell us how and where we are.
 They show us what we want and don’t want
 Learn to tune in rather than tune out.

We are lenses, prisms, the I is like the
eye
We refract light/life
 We transform what we receive and either
reflect it, absorb it, stop it, ward it off or pass
it on in tact.
 We can also learn to magnify and illuminate
it, refracting all its facets

Befindlichkeit
 Befindlichkeit, attunement, disposition or
state of mind: the way I find myself. The way
I am situated in the world, disposed towards
it. Affectedness: an implicit understanding
of the world, not yet articulated. (later:
understanding and language)
 In an ontic fashion every moment of our
experience will be coloured by a particular
tonality, or mood (Stimmung).

Different quality of experience
at each dimension

How do we experience
our world?
 We are lenses, prisms for light to refract. We
allow light through, reflect it, magnify it,
block it, divert it. We change the tone and
mood and affect the world in turn.

Tune into the feelings and moods that
colour our worldview
 They create different atmospheres at different times.

The colour of emotion

Depressed worldview

Four kinds of emotions
• Loss of
value
• Aspire
to value
• Threat
to value
• Gain
value
approach fight
flightfreeze

Threat to value:
pride, jealousy, anger
Pride
Jealousy
Anger

Loss of value
(despair, fear, sorrow):
Despair,
fear,
sorrow

Aspire to value:
desire, envy, shame
Desire
Envy
Shame

Gain value: hope, love, joy
Hope,
love, joy

pride
jealousy
anger-
despair
fear
sorrowshame
envy
hope-
desire
love
joy
Sadness
Low
Happiness
High
Anxiety
Excitement
Engagement
Depression
Disappointment
Disengagement

Meaning and Purpose
 Find out what the inner landscape of a person is:
what is meaningful to them.
 Find out what your purpose in life is.

Socrates
The unreflective life is not worth living

Aristotle
 Eudaimonia: the good life : virtue ethics
 Should benefit the community at large rather than only the
individual
 Philosophy teacher's discourse with the pupil (client) should
be a co-operative, critical one that insists on the virtues of
orderliness, deliberateness and clarity

Aristotelian practice
 Pupils are taught to separate true beliefs from false
beliefs and to modify and transform their passions
accordingly
 Winnowing and sifting opinions
 Virtue ethics: live in line with the demon: force,
power, spirit.

Epicureans
 The Epicureans seek to treat human suffering by
removing corrupting desires and by eliminating pain
and disturbance (ataraxia).
 Adjust values retaining only those that are attainable
and may bring pleasure.
 Relinquish the unobtainable and adjust expectations
to what is realistic, so that with a slight of hand we
can obtain what we think we want.

Stoics: overcoming weakness
 Ordering of the self and soul
 Exercise of the mind
 Lack of moral fibre and emotional weakness
 Everything is connected, but Stoics consider that
different temperaments need different approaches
and that there is a critical moment (kairos) for
change :
 Zeno: virtue is its own reward

Skeptics
Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360-275 B.C.)
 The Epicurean view is that pleasure is the only good
and we are taught to adjust our needs so as to
guarantee the procurement of pleasure from small
natural resources.
 Skeptics: the only way to stop pain and suffering is to
simply not believe in or desire anything.
 So whilst Epicureans try to get rid of false beliefs, the
Skeptics want to get rid of all beliefs.

Stoic goal
 For the Stoics the pupil's goal is to become his own
teacher and pupil
 In order to improve a person's life the soul must be
exercised everyday, for instance by the use of logic
and poetry
 The objective is wisdom, the only ultimate value and
virtue and leads to eudaimonia, the flourishing life:
wisdom, courage, justice, temperance
 The means: detachment and self-control : apathy

Spinoza-ethics
 Prop.VI. The mind has greater power over
the emotions and is less subject thereto, in
so far as it understands all things as
necessary. (under a species of eternity)

Sartre Theory of Emotions
 The existence of desire as a human fact is sufficient
to prove that human reality is a lack. (87)
 Human reality is its own surpassing towards what it
lacks; it surpasses itself toward the particular being
which it would be if it were what it is. (89)

Sartre’s emotional theory
 Embodied human existence mobilizes itself towards
or away from that which it desires or dreads.
 We can do magic in letting ourselves fall into
emotion, thus transforming the world in bad faith.
 Difference between reflective and non reflective
emotions.

Care
Jealousy
Anger
Fear
RejectionShame
Envy
Approval
Love
Acceptance
Isolation
Separateness
Belonging
Oneness
Engagement
Disengagement
Emotional Compass

Greed
Stinginess
Frustration
Disgust
PainNeed
Craving
Excitement
Lust
Pleasure
Deprivation
Emptiness
Satisfaction
Fullness
Gain
Survival
surprise
Loss
Threat
shock
Sensory Compass

Superiority
Stubbornness
Defiance
Deflation
HumiliationInferiority
Anxiety
Courage
Commitment
Confidence
Imperfection
Weakness
Perfection
Strength
Success
Failure
Mental Compass

Pride
Prudence
Wrath
Resignation
DisillusionmentGuilt
Aspiration
Hope
Resoluteness
Bliss
Futility
Absurdity
Meaning
Purpose
Good
Evil
Moral Compass

We need problems and
challenges: to learn and evolve
 Camus:
 In the depth of winter I finally learned that there
was in me an invincible summer
 Happiness is nothing except the simple harmony
between a man and the life he leads

Taoism: Yin (moon/dark/
female) and Yang
(light/sun/male)

Chiaroscuro, clair-obscur,
the light and shade of life

The art of living is to be equal to all
emotions rather than to select only
the pleasant ones

Anxiety as source of
energy
Anxiety is life energy rather than a symptom of
illness
Anxiety individualizes. This individualization
brings Dasein back from its falling, and makes
manifest to it that authenticity and inauthenticity
are possibilities of its Being. (Heidegger 1927:191

Making suffering
meaningful
 Processing is of prime importance.
 Assimilate crisis and make it meaningful.
 Process emotions, values, beliefs
 Transcend and overcome.
 Rise to the challenge
 Find the purpose and meaning in the
suffering

Spiritual:
Integrate what has happened in world view
Improve rather than give up values, beliefs, purpose, meaning.
Stick with what is true.
Personal:
Allow the event to strengthen your character
Express thoughts and memories. Regain a sense of freedom in relation to adversit
Learn to yield as well as be resolute.
Social:
Seek to go beyond hateful and destructive relations by isolation and avoidance t
Reconciliation is possible. Seek belonging with like minded allies.
Communicate your emotions without reproach, resentment, bitterness.
Physical:
Seek safety when under threat.
Trust and heed sensations of stress. Find natural environment that can soothe as
well as expand your horizons.
OVERCOMING TRAUMA

Loving your Life
 Loving your fate and destiny in all its manifestations
(Nietzsche’s Amor Fati)
 Challenges and difficulties are not the enemy, nor to be
avoided but rather to be welcomed as grist for the mill
and par for the course: life as an adventure.

Bringing down emotional intensity:
painting the world pale or in pastel shades

Going beyond
happiness
 Happiness as a high is doomed: every high is
followed by a low.
 Constant pleasure leads to addiction and misery.
 Happiness as contentment may be more feasible,
but could easily lead to mediocrity and lack of
awareness.
 Beyond the quest for happiness is the quest for right
living.
 This is not just about meaning and purpose but about
truth, being, nothingness, learning and evolution,
dialectically integrating paradox.

What helps?
 Those who have experienced trauma do better if they
have good social support.
 They do significantly better if they have integrity and a
sense of wholeness. (to survive trauma you either need
good conscience or no conscience at all…)
 The conflict or trauma has to be put to good use.
 There has to be a safe place one can retreat to.
 It makes a big difference whether you can take some
responsibility for your fate.
 It helps if you feel your trauma is in some ways a proof of
your character or a building block of it.

Project
 Man is characterized above all by his going beyond a
situation and by what he succeeds in making of what he
has been made.
 This going beyond we find at the very root of the human-
in need. (scarcity)
 This is what we call the project. (elementary objective,
original intention)
(Sartre, Search for a Method:91)

Rita’s Grief
 When I speak to Rita, who is grieving over
her husband and small son who have
perished in a car accident, the words that I
say to her at first hardly reach her.
 She is in a place of relative safety deep
inside of herself, in a state of suspended
animation behind the façade that she turns
to the world. She barely engages with
people at all.

Rita’s grief 2
 At first it is not my words that make the link to
her world, but the consistency that I can
offer in being attentive and careful to not
hurt her further or push her too hard.
 I spend nearly half an hour in relative silence
with Rita, at times formulating her fear on
her behalf, gently, tentatively, checking for
verification by noting her response.

Rita’s grief 3
 Mostly the work consists of me letting
myself be touched by her suffering and
learning to tolerate her pain with her, so
that I can offer reactions and words that
soothe and move her forward to a place
where she can begin to face what has
happened to her so shockingly out of
the blue. In this process she guides me
and exposes more and more of her
nightmarish universe to me as she
perceives me as capable of venturing
further into it with her.

Bringing down emotional intensity

Rita
World Physical Social Personal Spiritual
Umwelt Take
interest in
objects,
space
Meet
others
Relate to
own body
again
Recognize
value
Mitwelt Leave
dead
behind
Love dead
still
Find self
valid
Find others
valid
Eigenwelt Recover
sense of
self care
Rediscover
love
Love self Find
project
Uberwelt Make
sense of
disaster
Life with
others is
worthwhile
I am me
and this
matters
There is a
purpose to
it all

Overview of conflicts, challenges and paradoxes on four
dimensions
World Umwelt Mitwelt Eigenwelt Uberwelt
Physical Nature:
Life/
Death
Things:
Pleasure/
Pain
Body:
Health/
Illness
Cosmos:
Harmony/
Chaos
Social Society:
Love/
Hate
Others:
Dominance/S
ubmission
Ego:
Acceptanc
e/
Rejection
Culture:
Belonging/
Isolation
Personal Person:
Identity/Freed
om
Me:
Perfection/
Imperfection
Self:
Integrity/
Disintegratio
n
Consciousness:
Confidence/
Confusion
Spiritual: Infinite:
Good/
Evil
Ideas:
Truth/
Untruth
Spirit:
Meaning/
Futility
Conscience:
Right/
Wrong

Dimension Positive
Purpose
Negative
Concern
Minimal
Goal
Optimal
Value
Physical: Health Illness Fitness Vitality
Pleasure Pain Safety Well Being
Strength Weakness Efficacy Ability
Life Death Survival Existence
Social Success Failure Skill Contribution
Belonging Isolation Kinship Loyalty
Acceptance Rejection Recognition Cooperation
Love Hate Respect Reciprocity
Personal Identity Confusion Individuality Integrity
Perfection Imperfection Achievemen
t
Excellence
Independenc
e
Dependenc
y
Autonomy Liberty
Confidence Doubt Poise Clarity
Spiritual Good Evil Responsibility Transparenc
y

Rising above your emotions
 Above the clouds the weather is steady even when it
rains below.
 Transcending our own situation and emotions allows
us to understand our own response.

Potentiality is more than
actuality
 From project to action in our own lives.
 Plotting a route through the obstacles
 Potentiality of past as well as of the present
and future.
 Living in time: transcendence

Emotional well being
and joy of living
 An ability to creatively encounter problems,
challenges and crises.
 Capacity for re-establishing equilibrium
through strong, dynamic centre of narrative
gravity.
 Enhanced enjoyment of life, appreciation of
physical world, others, self-worth and
meaning.

Rely on your
capacity to face
whatever
may come.

Values and actions to aim for
1. Earning your keep with your own labour
2. Understanding others
3. Pondering your own motivations
4. Reflecting on your life
5. Living true to your own values
6. Living in line with the purpose and truth of human existence.
7. Contributing more to the world than you take from it.
8. Respecting nature and the universe
9. Making your life matter
10. Loving as much as you can.
11. Being prepared for change and transformation.
12. Knowing when to be resolute and when to let go.
13. Having rules to live by and change them when necessary.

Background action to make
life right.
 to be healthy and look after your body the best way possible.
 to enjoy what is free in the world and be close to nature
 to be loving with others and care for someone deeply.
 to respect and esteem yourself and make sure others do too.
 to find concrete goals worth putting your whole energy into.
 to learn to question things and not take anything for granted
 to find life interesting and relish every minute
 to be prepared to let things go and be ready to die
 to strive for wisdom and excellence
 to be content and find routines that satisfy you
 to achieve something, whatever, and leave the world a better place than you found it.

Optimal living
All living things are struggling for existence, even unwittingly
and unwillingly. They struggle passively just to exist, to be left
in what seems to be peace and quiet; and they struggle actively
to grow and to expand. (Jaspers,1951:204)

Tillich, 1966:15
 ‘Truth is found in the midst of
struggle and destiny, not as Plato
taught, in an unchanging beyond. ‘
(Tillich,1966:15)

DESIRES FEARS VALUES
PHYSICAL life death vitality
SOCIAL love hate reciprocity
PERSONAL identity freedom integrity
SPIRITUAL good evil transparency
Human values rediscovered.

Kierkegaard’s paradox
 Personhood is a synthesis of possibility and
necessity. Its continued existence is like
breathing (respiration), which is an inhaling and
exhaling.
 Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death: 40

Magritte:
Empire of
Lights.
Learning to live with paradox and the tensions of life@Emmy van Deurzen 2015

Checklist of existential
therapy
 1. Collaboration, liberty and equality
 2. Uncovering the implicit
 3. Themes and personal predicaments
 4. Four worlds and emotional compass
 5. Projects, values, fears and tensions
 6. Complexity; connectivity
 7. Structural analysis: clarity
 8. Meanings: hermeneutics, heuristic practice
 9. Paradoxes: positives and negatives
 10. Dialectics: human evolution and transcendence
 11. Liberation and freedom
 12. Savouring life: both resolution and letting be.@Emmy van Deurzen 2015

When it is dark enough, you
can see the stars. Ralph Waldo
Emerson

Eventually: Earth Rises
again
1968 picture from Apollo mission

Existential Therapy: an introduction

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