Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy.

Abstract

Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy by Rollo %ayTHE FUNDAMENTAL CONTRIBUTION of existential therapy is its understanding of man as being. It does not deny the validity of dynamisms and the study of specific behavior patterns in their rightful places. But it holds that drives or dynamisms, by whatever name one calls them, can be understood only in the context of the structure of the existence of the person we are dealing with. The distinctive character of existential analysis is, thus, that it is concerned with ontology, the science of being, and with Dasein, the existence of this particular being sitting opposite the psychotherapist.Before struggling with definitions of being and related terms, let us begin existentially by reminding ourselves that what we are talking about is an experience every sensitive therapist must have countless times a day. It is the experience of the instantaneous encounter with another person who comes alive to us on a very different level from what we know about him. "Instantaneous" refers, of course, not to the actual time involved but to the quality of the experience. We may know a great deal about a patient from his case record, let us say, and may have a fairly good idea of how other interviewers have described him. But when the patient himself steps in, we often have a sudden, sometimes powerful, experience of here-is-a-new-person, an experience that normally carries with it an element of surprise, not in the sense of perplexity or bewilderment, but in its etymological sense of being "taken from above." This is of course in no sense a criticism of one's colleagues* reports; for we have this experience of encounter even with persons we have known or worked with for a long time. 1 The data we learned l We may have it with Mends and loved ones. It is not a once-and-for-all experience; indeed, in any developing, growing relationship it may-probably should, if the relationship is vital-occur continually. 8 Gabriel Marcel, The Philosophy of Existence (1949)* P-*• *Ibid. Italics mine. For data concerning the "morbid effects of the repression'* of the sense of being, cf. Fromm, Escape from Freedom, and David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd, 5 Ibid., p. 5. 14 This is an interpretation of Heidegger, given by Werner Brock in the introduction to Existence and Being (Regnery, 1949), p. 77. For those who are interested in the logical aspects of the problem of being vs. non-being, it may be added that the dialectic of "yes vs. no, M as Tillich points out in The Courage to Be, is present in various forms throughout the history of thought. Hegel held that non-being was an integral part of being, specifically in the "antithesis" stage of his dialectic of "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." The emphasis on M wilT* in Schelling, Schopenhauer. Nietzsche, and others as a basic ontological category is a way of showing that being has the power of "negating itself without losing itself/* Tillich, giving his own conclusion, holds that the question of how being and non-being are related can be answered o...

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