SEVEN PAPERS ON EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS ... - Wagner College

I will forego discussion of the work of Binswanger, Boss and the other early existential
analysts. [12] Instead, I will ask why, in spite of its academically unfashionable status, the
existential approach is still so compelling, especially to the current generation of students,
precisely because of its emphasis on authenticity. [13] The answer to the question is that
existential analysis emphasizes the client’s authenticity in a world where the attainment of
uniformity by means of techniques of adjustment–whether to one’s past (as in psychoanalysis) or
to social norms (as in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapy)–is increasingly stressed.
Strong rejection of this tendency among students in the first decade of the new millennium
echoes the mood among students in the 1960s and 1970s when existential psychology first had
an impact on undergraduate and graduate programs in philosophy and clinical psychology.
Now young people are once again challenging the abrogation of personal freedom that
contemporary society seems hell-bent on forcing on them. There is increasing suspicion about
the loss of control over one’s body as well the surrender of freedom that pharmacotherapy
entails. The is a feature of life in the 21 st century that was not yet a major influence in the era of
the “counter-culture” which had seen the use of psychotropic drugs only since the late 1950s.
In the approach I am describing, two worlds interpenetrate, one of which is illuminated,
but thanks only to the participation of both individuals for whom their authenticity is at stake.
One partner must allow himself to recede somewhat into the shadows, but without losing
visibility. This is the one who retains responsible oversight of (but not authority over) the
encounter, without forcing or permitting any loss of either his own or his partner’s autonomy. In
existential analysis the world of one becomes highly visible in a unique situation, the peculiarity
of which lies in the fact that it is set up precisely to reveal what has been eclipsed for her. This
state of affairs–the eclipse of existence–is what brings about the need for a therapeutic
encounter in the first place. Few other life situations allow us such an opportunity for exposure.
The fundamental quality of the therapeutic venture in existential analysis is its singleminded
goal of illuminating possibilities that are hidden. If we define authenticity as being open
to the full range of possibilities available to an individual, existential analysis is the work of
providing a situation that permits the recovery of one’s authenticity.
What other forms of psychotherapy term symptoms I consider to be unformulated
questions. Depression, anxiety, phobic ideation, perceptual anomalies, and even bizarre and
extraordinary systems of thinking are viewed as distinctive openings onto a world. The existential
analyst allows questions to be asked that have been banned from articulation. Opportunities for
allowing such questions to surface rarely occur in the everyday busyness of life where nearly
everything is necessarily taken for granted or assumed, that is, left unquestioned. Of course, how
could it be otherwise? Social life requires a wide range of relatively inflexible assumptions about
space and time, place and persona, and admissible modes of interpersonal relating. Everyday
interactions allow, as the Poet Robert Graves put it, “no occasion for approach or discourse.”
[14] We simply repeat the catch phrases the prevent us from losing our balance on the surface
of that web of connections and relations that is our social life. “How are you?” “What’s new?”
We mime the gestures and verbal exchanges learned from our parents, peers and the media,
but forget that each of these habits of talk has been acquired at the expense of a loss of
freedom to speak openly. To that extent, everyday life, as Heidegger pointed out, demands
inauthenticity of each of us and could not continue in its familiar way without that sacrifice.
Lapsing into routinized patterns of reaction, we necessarily forget ourselves. We find
ourselves in a world of systems of communication and linguistic continuities. More and more, no
matter where we are, we are never alone. Consider the cellular phone, now carried as though
it were a tiny transitional object in Donald Winnicott’s sense. With or without this device, we
ceaselessly make small talk, mini-assertions emitted without reflection or consideration. None of
this is avoidable, but it must be recognized for what it is, since we are creatures who mind what
is going on, in the sense that we are reminded of it at every turn, pay attention to it, and must
look after it.