EXISTENTIAL THERAPY:Rollo May, Role of Counselor, Logotherapy

<< GESTALT THERAPY:Role of the Counselor, Assessment

COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO COUNSELING:Stress-Inoculation Therapy >>

Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632

LESSON 31

EXISTENTIAL THERAPY

The existential approach to counseling is unique in its diversity. There is no unanimity among existentialists

about how to formulate a theory to accompany their ideas of helping others. Existentialism is represented in

the writings of several prominent American theorists, including Sidney Jourard, Abraham Maslow, Irvin

Yalom, Rollo May.

zExistentialists have some beliefs in common:

· The importance of anxiety

· The importance of values

· The importance of freedom

· Responsibility in human life and an emphasis on finding meaning.

However, existentialists differ in their emphasis, for example emphases on consciousness, human anxiety

and dread, the treatment of persons and our relationships with them.

Roll May (1961) and Victor Frankl (1962) are probably the best known theorists of existential counseling,

and this section concentrates on them and their ideas.

Rollo May

Rollo May was born in 1909 in Ada, Ohio. Like Alfred Adler, May was the second child of six children.

Unlike Adler, however May was the oldest son in his family. His father, who worked for the YMCA,

encouraged May to learn self-discipline through swimming. The relationship between Mays's parents was

discordant, and he described the home life of his boyhood as unhappy. Consequently, he became a loner

and a rebel during his adolescence.

During two of his summer vacations in Greece, he traveled to Vienna and enrolled in seminars conducted

by Alfred Adler. As a result, May became interested in psychoanalysis. During his years in Greece he was

also extremely lonely and thus began working incessantly. The result was a breakdown which he reflected

on years later: "I had learned enough psychology at college to know that these symptoms meant that

something was wrong with my whole way of life. I had to find some new goals and purposes for my living

and to relinquish my moralistic, somewhat rigid way of existence".

In 1933, May returned to the United States to enter the Union Theological Seminary. There he was strongly

influenced by Paul Tillich, an existential theologian. May completed his doctorate at Columbia in 1949.

May's most influenced book, the Meaning of Anxiety, was published a year later. May believed that anxiety

could work for the good as well as the detriment of people. He lectured on this subject at some of the most

distinguished universities in the United States, including Yale and Harvard.

May was a confounder of the Association for Humanistic Psychology in the 1960s and later wrote two other

well-known books, Love and Will (1969) and The Courage to Create (1975). In the 1980s, he retired to the San

Francisco area, where he concentrated on writing about the meaning of myths for modern society and

continued to promote a humanistic approach to the study of persons. He died on October 22, 1994, at the

age of 85.

131

Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632

Victor Frankl

Victor Frankl was born in 1905 in Vienna, Austria. He received a medical degree in 1930 and a Ph.D in

1949 from the University of Vienna. Although Frankl was a student of Freud, he became interested in

existentialism in the 1930s while reading some philosophers. He is sometimes referred to as the founder of

the third school of Viennese psychotherapy (logotherapy)

View of Human Nature

· As a group, existentialistic believe that people form their lives by the choices they make. Even in

the worst situations, such as the Nazi death camps.

· Existentialists focus on this freedom of choice and the action that goes with it. They view people as

the authors of their lives: how much one restricts his or her life depends on personal decisions. For

example individuals who prize creativity, dedication of services to others, friendship, and self-

growth within a community or family environment may, as Abraham Maslow describes, have peak

experiences they feel truly integrated and connected with the universe in a very emotional way. On

the other hand, those who are self-indulgent may feel a sense of normlessness and valuelessness.

They may experience what Freud(1959) calls an existential vacuum

· The existential view notes that making choices results in anxiety. Existential therapy encourages

clients to confront their anxieties and to make important decisions about how to relate to others

How the meaning of Life can be Discovered? (Frankl, 1962)

By doing a deed that is by achieving or accomplishing something.

By experiencing a value, such as a work of nature, culture, or love.

By suffering that is, by finding a proper attitude toward unalterable fate.

Existentialism focuses on the meaning of anxiety in human life. The emphasis within this framework is on

the inner person and how authentic individuals search for values in life. By being aware of feelings and the

finite nature of human existence, a person comes to make healthy, lifeenhancing choices.

Role of Counselor

· The counselor serves as a model of how to achieve individuals' potential and make decisions.

· The focus is living productively in the present, not recovering a personal past.

· Existential counselors do not use psychological tests, nor do they make diagnoses in accordance

with the DSM-IV.

Goals

· The goals of existentialists include helping clients realize the importance of responsibility,

awareness, freedom, and potential.

· A major goal of counseling is for client to shift from an outward to an inward frame of reference.

No longer will activities depend on the judgment of others: rather; activities will be evaluated by

clients first.

· Further goals include making the client more aware of his or her existence, calling attention to the

client's uniqueness, helping the client improve his or her encounters with others, assisting the client

in establishing a will to meaning , and encouraging the client to make a decision about both present

and future directions in life.

Techniques

· The existential approach has fewer techniques available than almost any other model of counseling.

Yet this apparent weakness is paradoxically strength because it allows existential counselors to

borrow ideas as well as use a wide range of personal and professional skills.

132

Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632

In any case, clients usually benefits from existential counselors who are able to address client needs

in a multidimensional and highly personalized way. An example of this approach can be seen in

those people coping with loss: depressed persons tend to adopt emotion-focused strategies,

whereas non-depressed individuals use multiple and varying strategies.

Existential counselors also make use of confrontation. Clients are confronted with the idea that

everyone is responsible for his or her own life. Existential counselors borrow some techniques such

as imagery exercise, awareness exercise, and goal-setting activities from other models.

Logotherapy

· One of the most widely known existential therapy

· Finding meaning in callous, uncertain and meaningless world

· Viktor Frankel developed it to find ways of dealing with experiences in Nazi concentration camps.

· Finding a personal meaning of existence: Frankl sought meaning because of his experiences in life.

His mother, father, brother and wife had died in concentration camps of Nazis.

· Techniques of "paradoxical intention" and "de-reflection": paradoxical intention= continuously

doing the feared response; De-reflection= not paying attention to the feared object and diverting to

more constructive activities

Evaluation

There are number of unique aspects in the existential approach to counseling:

The approach emphasizes the uniqueness of each individual.

· The approach recognizes that anxiety is not necessarily a negative condition.

· The approach gives counselors access to a tremendous amount of philosophy and literature that is

both informative and enlightening about human nature.

· The approach stresses continued human growth and development and offers hope to clients

through directed readings and therapeutic encounters with the counselor.

· The approach is effective in multicultural counseling situations.

· The approach helps connect individuals to universal problems faced by mankind, such as the

search for peace and the absence of caring.

· The approach may be combined with other perspectives and methods (such as those based on

learning principles and behaviorism) to treat extremely difficult problems, such as alcoholism.

Professionals who embrace more structured approaches have noted several limitations in the existential

approach.

· The approach has not produced a fully developed model of counseling.

· The approach lacks educational and training programs. Wallace (1986) for instance wonders if

May's existential approach will last.

· The approach is difficult to implement because of its subjective nature.

133

Table of Contents: