SEVEN PAPERS ON EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS ... - Wagner College

existentially. It has been confirmed that, in practice, seasoned therapists of all stripes leave
behind their theoretical constructs when facing another human being in the therapeutic setting.
Theory must then be elaborated in complex ways in order to account for this simple fact.
A behaviorist, who focuses on bits of behavior, understood as movements, and cannot
see her patient as a whole. Similarly, a psychoanalyst understands her patient to be an
ensemble of structures and functions, the unity of which is sacrificed in consideration of the
mutual influences of three agencies, the id, ego and superego. An existential psychotherapist,
by contrast, sees before him another autonomous human being, whose existence is positioned
in such a way that the world is no longer hospitable. The world is unheimlich (uncanny) and
uninhabitable for the individual. He does not see the “other” sitting there as a body or a psyche,
but rather as an instance of embodied existence, temporal through and through and timeconstituting,
not in time as a span of time, not an object occupying a series of points in the flow
of objective chronometric time.
An existential therapist does not assume a position of power by formulating a diagnosis in
order to determine how to proceed. Sitting across from him is a unique instance of being in a
world, as different from any other instance of human be-ing as, say, two animal species differ
from each other. He is encountered by a way of be-ing that, as a function of the individual's
temporality, is thoroughly immersed in language, which has the client just as it has the therapist.
The therapeutic pair are subject to the dispensations of language, to which each participant
responds differently in dialogue.
Like the therapist, the other person sitting there is known to be implicated in a network of
human relationships. An existential therapist assumes that the person’s humanity has been
transferred to her through a relationship, typically the very early, socially formative relationship
with her mother. This coexistence is a feature of existence.
All of the features of existence are equally fundamental and primordial.
An existential therapist does not attempt to change his client's personality, modify her
behavior, or help her adjust to her current life situation. These ways of working with another
human be-ing in a world are based on constructs which fail to see the structure of human be-ing
as existence, which Martin Heidegger famously called Da-sein, literally, be-ing here and now for
a while in a particular historical setting.
What does an existential therapist do for his client? We assume that the physical is
distinguishable from the social at only a very abstract and artificial level. We cannot even say
that the physical and the social are mutually influential, since they are indistinguishable at the
level of existence, where experience arises. In other words, like the distinction between mind
and body, the distinction between body and society, the individual and the group, has
surpassed where experience arises. And that is where existential psychotherapy takes place.
Either element of the pairs mentioned presupposes the other and both presuppose our being in
a world. Starting from either point of view obscures our understanding of human life at the
outset.
Who Is an Existential Psychotherapist?
Perhaps one of the most important issues to raise in our culture of credentials is the training of
existential psychotherapists. Currently, the programs of study in existential psychotherapy are
few in number. The opportunities to study are at the time limited to the Center for Existential
Therapy, the California School of Professional Psychology, the California Institute of Integral
Studies and the Saybrook Institute, all in the San Francisco Bay area. The models for training
offered at these places are excellent, as is that offered by the School of Psychotherapy and
Counselling at Regents College, London.
The important question is whether traditional programs in clinical psychology are
appropriate for the existential psychotherapist. Clearly, the answer is a resounding "No." Only a