SEVEN PAPERS ON EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS ... - Wagner College

Heidegger's view is that existence is such a clearing. Existing, we bring things to light. We
bring to light what was not apparent before. When, in infancy, we first exist, we first bring things
to light in this sense. We engender meaning, thereby making things accessible, but also
problematic, to us for the first time. It is important to recall that we are always somewhat in the
dark about everything we make seeable and we are totally in the dark about most things. The
trade-off is inevitable (7). In those moments of existential vulnerability just described, some of
what we have made luminous darkens, but we also see more of what did not see before.
What we have in the course of a typical life is a number of these normative
transformations of clearing, which are tantamount to transformations of the individual's world.
They are expectable transformations, based on hormone-mediated physical changes. While the
physical development on which they are based is continuous, existential changes are not. They
are always, in a sense, surprising and unanticipated, and they are not correlated with
chronological age, which is no sure predictor of any existential transformation. This is why
developmental psychology has had to admit to such wide ranges of normal variability, which
while comforting in a way, has made the application and usefulness of developmental
psychology less sure. For example, even assuming that two identical twins had equal
measurable amounts of serum testosterone levels, nothing predicts when one of the two boys is
no longer a boy, but is now a man. But it this realization that matters most to each of them. The
changes are not merely psychological, nor are they merely social. They are existential.
As noted, existence is often transformed even in the absence of physical changes of the
kind described. Someone I love has rejected me or died, or I have been dismissed from my job. I
have come into a lot of money or been assigned powers I did not have before. My wife
becomes pregnant, or I become famous. Or something seemingly trivial or unimportant occurs,
and an my existence is transformed. There can be no objective assessment of what counts as
important in a person's life. Anything can precipitate existential change. On the other hand,
there are, for example, few women who can, for example, remain indifferent to mastectomy.
Few men do not change as result of the waning physical strength that follows as a consequence
of ageing. I leave for another time considerations of why certain individuals are more
susceptible to events that have little impact on most of us.
Individuals seek out existential and other sorts of therapy when their existence has
changed. They often have symptoms, but just as often, it is the lack of any specific symptoms
that characterizes their complaint. Vaguely sensing that something is not the case, they come to
us. What can we do? What should be the goal of our work?
Therapeutic Revalidation
When an individual has experienced a transformation of his existence and is unclear about what
has happened, he may turn to us. What does she want from us? Contrary to general opinion
and what she may believe, she does not want our help. Existential analysis is not among the
"helping professions," if that means intervening in people's lives. Intervention is certainly the goal
of those in the helping professions, such as medicine, whose practitioners operate on our bodies,
attempt to change our habits, or modify our physical functioning using medications or even
more drastic interventions. Instead, existential therapists look after a person in a different sense.
Helping, which is based on intervening in the life of another person, will always violate the
person's existence. In 1927, Heidegger made the distinction between two kinds of looking after
or looking out for others. One steps in for the other and takes over for her. This is intervention, and
it takes away her freedom. For someone who intervenes, being able to help requires that the
person (temporarily) give up her freedom. In contrast to this kind of solicitude, Heidegger
distinguished a kind that steps aside and makes way for the individual to find her own way (8).
The existential analyst works in this way, which is in complete contrast to intervention.