Existential therapy摘录

We live in a period of rapid transition, in which we feel alienated from fellow human being. Existential therapy asks deep question the nature of the human being and the nature of anxiety, despair, loneliness, grief, isolation and anomie. It also deals with the question of creativity and love.

I am now living and I could take my life."

It is not easy to define "being" because in our society, being is always transplanted by economcis status or other external category. The "I am" experience is the precondition for the solution. On the other hand, the threat of nonbeing is always present. The experience of "being" is also called ontological experience.

Normal and neurotic anxiety

Anxiety arises from our personal need to survive, to preserve our being, and to assert our being.

The characteristics of normal anxiety: 1) proportionate to the situation 2) we can come to terms with it 3) can be used as a stimulus to confront the dillema

The characteristics of neurotic anxiety: 1) not appropriate to the situation 2) is repressed 3) tends to paralyze the individual

Mental health --> live as much as possible without neurotic anxiety, but tolerate the normal anxiety

Guilt and guilt feeling

Neurotic guilt involves fantasized transgressions, while the normal guilt sensitize us to the ethical aspects of our behavior. Another form of guilt is the guilt towards oneself, for the failure of living up to one's potentiality.

The three forms of world

The human world is the structure of meaningful relationships in which a person exists and in the design of which he or she participates.

- Umwelt : world around, environment

- Mitwelt : the world of one's fellow human being

-Eigenwelt: the relationship to one's self

The significance of time

The most significant events are the ones which are immediate.

Whether or not a patient can recall significant event in the past depends upon his decision regarding the future. Some hope and commitment toward changing something in the immediate future are necessary before a patient's uncovering of the past will have reality.

Our human capacity to transcend the immediate situation

The lie is a bahavior of transcendence. P267 go back later in time.

Other system

Behaviorism

- conflict with existentialism: the chasm between abstract truth and existential reality. - whether or not the thing being studied has reality is irrelevant (p268?)

Orthodox Freudianism

- existentialists rejects "unconscious" because it gives the patient excuse to avoid responsibiity

The interpersonal school of psychotherapy

- one's own world is omitted

The chasm between truth and reality

Two streams of human thoughts: 1. Essence (Plato, perfect form) 2. Existence (existing person, world and time)

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche

Try to rediscover the psychological being of the living being instead of some isolated psychological experience

differentiate person and the theory about this person

Freud: an instinctually driven being is at war with a world that prevents the gratification of his sexual and aggresive drive

Neo-fraudian: not guided by instincts but by interpersonal environment.(growth versus security)

Existentialsm: the conflict is between the individual and the "givens" of existence. --> Ultimate concerns (see below).

Death

Death will come and there is no escape.the awareness of the inevitable death and the spontaneous wish to continue to live.

Freedom

Freedom refers to the fact that the indivual is responsible for his own world, own life design, own choices and actions. human bieng is "condemned to freedom". We create our own selves and our own world --> there is no ground beneath us. only an abyss, a void, a nothingnes.

Conflict between our awareness of groundlessness and the wish for ground and structure.

Responsibility: individuals have different modes of responsibility. Some will transfer their responsibility to others. Willling represents the passage between responsibility and action. Willing consists first of wishing and then deciding.Wish is closely alligned to feelings: blockers to wishing --> no affect/ impulsitivity (failing to discriminate between wishes)/ compulsitivity (driven by ego-alien inner demands). Decisional panic --> delegate the decision to others.

Willing:

Isolation

existential isolation: no matter how close we feel towards another individual, there is still a gap. We enter existence alone and must depart from it alone.The wish of our fundamental isolation and the wish to be protected and to belong a larger whole.If one acknowledge one's isolated situation in existence, one can turn lovingly towards other persons. intead, one will be using others as a shield against isolation.

Many attempts to deal with isolation through fusion --> blur their ego boundaris and avoid personal growth. Fusion underlies the experience of being in love.

Meaninglessness

if each person must die, if each person constitues his own world, each is alone in an indifferent universe. Is it possibile that a self-created life meaning is sturdy enough to bear one's life?

Our perceptual neuropsychological organization always patterns the stimulus. In an unpatterned world the individual is unsettled. How does a being who requires meaning find meaning in an universe that has no meaning?

Variety of concept

The awareness of ultimate concern --> anxiety --> defense mechanism

The existential frame views the indivudal primarily as fearful and suffering.

Psychotherapy

The therapist assumes that the patient experiences some anxiety that is derived from the utimate concern which he is partially unconsicous with. Then he deals with the anxiety is some maladaptive ways.

own your feelings, statements, and actions.

The inability to feel and wish is a pervasive characterological trait.