![]() ![]() ![]() I have a family and a career, but that isn’t quite it either. I am a father and a husband, but that isn’t all that I am. To use an example similar to a case described by May: I am a professor, but that is not really who I am. It is all too common for us to associate ourselves with external factors: I am a professor, I am a student, I work at a store, I run a business, etc. The aversion arises from the Western tendency to dehumanize people through strict adherence to scientific principles of research, i.e., to reform humans in the image of machines (May, 1983).Īn essential aspect of existential psychotherapy is to help individuals realize their own being, their own role in choosing the form that their life will take. The affinity arises from a historical place in American psychology that was very similar to existentialism: William James’ emphasis on the immediacy of experience, the importance of will, and the unity of thought and action. May believed that American psychology has had both an affinity for and an aversion to existential psychotherapy. By asking deep questions about the nature of anxiety, loneliness, isolation, despair, etc., as well as about creativity and love, existential psychotherapists seek to avoid the “common error of distorting human beings in the very effort of trying to help them” (May & Yalom, 1995). ![]() Chapter 25: May: Existential Psychology Part 6: Existential PsychotherapyĮxistential psychotherapy is not so much a technique as it is an overall approach to understanding the nature of the human being. ![]()
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