Chapter 4 Existential Theory

EXISTENTIAL
THERAPY

Note taken from Key Reference Text :
Theory & Practice of Counseling & Psychotherapy,
Gerald Corey 9th Ed.
Note taking by ONG SING YEE (KB, PA)

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

■ KEY CONCEPTS
■ THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS
■ APPLICATION: THERAPEUTIC

TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

SEMINAR OBJECTIVE

■ VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
✓ Understand what is existential tradition and basic

dimensions of human condition
■ Proposition 1: Capacity for Self Awareness

■ Proposition 2: Freedom and Responsibility
■ Proposition 3: Striving for Identity and Relationship to Others
■ Proposition 4 : The Search for Meaning
■ Proposition 5: Anxiety as a Condition of Living
■ Proposition 6: Awareness of Death and Nonbeing

✓ Understand, explain and apply the 6 propositions in life
scenarios.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
■ Existential tradition seeks balance between recognizing the limits and tragic

dimensions of human existence on one hand and the possibilities and
opportunities of human life on the other hand.
■ Desire to help people engage the dilemmas of contemporary life, such as
isolation, alienation and meaningless.
■ Focus: individual experience of being in the world alone and facing the
anxiety of this isolation.
■ Human are in a contrast state of transition, emerging, evolving and becoming
in response to the tensions, contradictions, and conflicts in our lives.
■ Basic dimensions of the human condition
- The capacity of self awareness
- Freedom and responsibility
- Creating one’s identity and establishing meaningful relationship with others
- The search for meaning, purpose, values and goals
- Anxiety as a condition of living
- Awareness of death and nonbeing.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Proposition 1 : The capacity of self awareness

■ Freedom, choice and responsibility constitute the
foundation of self awareness.

■ The core existential position is that we are both free
(willful, creative and expressive) and limited (by
environmental and social constraints).

■ Increasing self awareness – awareness of
alternatives, motivations, factors influencing the
person and personal goals – aim of all counseling.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
Proposition 2 : Freedom and Responsibility
■ Embraces 3 values
- The free to become within the context of natural and self imposed limitations
- The capacity to reflect on the meaning of our choices
- The capacity to act on the choice we make
■ Bad faith – inauthencitity of not accepting personal responsibility
■ Freedom – we are responsible for our lives, for our actions and for our failures to take action
■ Existential guilt – being aware of having evaded a commitment, or having chosen not to choose.
- A condition that grows out of a sense of incompleteness, or a realization that we are not what we

might have become.
■ Authenticity implies we are living by being true to our own evaluation of what is valuable existence

for ourselves; it is the courage to be who we are.
■ Links free to responsibility
■ Therapist assists clients in discovering how they are avoiding freedom and encourages them to

learn to risk suing it.
■ They have the task of teaching clients that they can explicitly accept that they have choices.
■ 2 central tasks of the therapist are inviting clients to recognize how they have allowed others to

decide for them and encouraging them to take steps toward choosing for themselves.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Proposition 3 Striving for identity and relationship to others

The courage to be

■ Courage entails the will to move forward in spite of
anxiety producing situations, such as facing our death.

■ 1 of the greatest fears of clients is that they will discover
that there is no core, no self, no substance, and that
they are merely reflections of everyone’s expectations of
them.

■ Once clients have demonstrated the courage to
recognize this fear, to put it into words and share it, it
does not seem so overwhelming.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Proposition 3 Striving for identity and relationship to
others

The experience of aloneness

■ Before we can have any solid relationship with
another, we must have relationship with ourselves.

■ We are challenged to learn to listen to ourselves.

■ We have to be able to stand alone before we can
truly stand beside another.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Proposition 3 Striving for identity and relationship to
others

The experience of aloneness

■ Before we can have any solid relationship with
another, we must have relationship with ourselves.

■ We are challenged to learn to listen to ourselves.

■ We have to be able to stand alone before we can
truly stand beside another.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Proposition 3 Striving for identity and relationship to
others

The experience of relatedness

■ The therapist can challenge clients to examine
what they get from their relationships, how they
avoid intimate contact, how they prevent
themselves from having equal relationships, and
how they might create therapeutic, healthy and
mature human relationships.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Proposition 3 Striving for identity and relationship to
others

Struggling with our identity

■ Part of the therapeutic journey consists of the
therapist challenging clients to begin to examine
the ways in which they have lost touch with their
identity, especially by letting others design their life
for them.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
Proportion 4: The search of meaning
■ A distinct human characteristic is the

struggle for a sense of significance and
purpose in life.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Proportion 4: The search of meaning

The problem of discarding old values.

■ One of the tasks of the therapeutic process is to
help clients create a value system based on a way
of living that is consistent with their way of being.

■ The therapists job is to trust in the capacity of
clients to eventually derived value system that
provides the foundation for a meaningful life.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
Proportion 4: The search of meaning
Meaningless
■ Major existential neurosis of modern life
■ Lead to emptiness and hollowness =

existential vacuum.
■ Experienced when people do not busy

themselves with routine or with work.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Proportion 4: The search of meaning

Creating new meaning

■ Logotherapy is designed to help clients find
meaning in life.

■ Meaning must be pursued obliquely

■ Life is a by product of engagement, which is a
commitment to creating, loving, working and
building.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Proportion 5: Anxiety as a condition of living

■ Existential anxiety – unavoidable result of being confronted
with the givens of existence – death, freedom, choice,
isolation, and meaninglessness.

■ Arises as we recognize the realities of our mortality, our
confrontation with pain and suffering, our need to struggle for
survival, and our basic fallibility.

■ Normal anxiety – an appropriate response to an event being
faced, can be used as a motivation of change.

■ Neurotic anxiety – anxiety about concrete things that is out of
proportion to the situation. Out of awareness, and it tends to
immobilize the person.

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Proportion 6: Awareness of Death and
Nonbeing

■ As a basic human condition gives
significance to living.

■ Death provides the motivation for us to take
advantage of appreciating the present
moment.

SEMINAR OBJECTIVE

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS
■ Therapeutic Goals
✓ Able to list our the 4 essential aims of existential humanistic

therapy
■ Therapist’s Function and Role
✓ Understand therapists role
■ Client’s Experience in Therapy
✓ Able to explain client’s experience in therapy
■ Relationship Between Therapist and Client
✓ Able to explain relationship between therapist and client in I/thou

relationship

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Therapeutic Goals

■ Assist clients in moving toward authenticity and learning to
recognize when they are deceiving themselves.

■ Aims at helping clients face anxiety and engage in action that is
based on the authentic purpose of creating a worthy existence.

■ 4 essential aims of existential humanistic therapy

- To help clients become more present to both themselves and
others

- 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.

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Therapist’s Function and Role

■ Understanding the subjective world of clients to help
them come to new understandings and options.

■ Consistently invite clients to accept personal
responsibility

■ Restricted existence – limited awareness of
themselves and are often vague about the nature of
their problems.

■ To assist clients in seeing the ways in which they
constrict their awareness and the cost of such
constrictions.

■ Often ask clients to reflect on or write about
problematic events they encounter in daily life.

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Client’s Experience in Therapy

■ Clearly encouraged to assume responsibility
for how they are currently choosing to be in
their world.

■ Take action to the basis of the insights they
develop through the therapeutic process.

■ Active in the therapeutic process.

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Relationship Between Therapist and Client

■ Give central prominence to their relationship with the client.

■ Attention is given to the client’s immediate, ongoing experience.

■ A voyage into self discovery and a journey of life discovery for
both client and therapist.

■ I/ Thou relationship. I/ It and the I/ Thou. The I/ It is the relation
to time and space, which is a necessary starting place for the
self. I/Thou is the relationship essential for connecting the self
to the spirit and in so doing, to achieve true dialogue.

■ Core of the therapeutic relationship is respect, which implies
faith in clients’ potential to cope authentically with their troubles
and in the ability to discover alternative ways of being.

■ The crucial role the presence of the therapist plays in the
therapeutic relationship.

SEMINAR OBJECTIVE

APPLICATION: THERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUES AND
PROCEDURES
■ Phases of Existential Counseling
✓ Understand and apply 3 phases in counseling
■ Clients Appropriate for Existential Counseling
✓ Understand the suitable clients for Existential

Theory

APPLICATION: THERAPEUTIC
TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

■ Not technique oriented
■ Practitioners prefer description,

understanding and exploration of the
client's subjective reality.
■ Therapists need to adapt their interventions
to their own personality and style.

APPLICATION: THERAPEUTIC
TECHNIQUES AND
PROCEDURES.

Phases of Existential Counseling

■ Initial phase: therapists assist clients in identifying
and clarifying their assumptions about the world.

■ Middle phase: clients are assisted in more fully
examining the source and authority of their present
value system.

■ Final phase: helping people take what they are
learning about themselves and put it into action

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