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HISTORY

Precursors

There are two streams in the history of human thought. One is of essences, seen most clearly in Plato’s

 belief that there are perfect forms of everything and that things such as a specific chair are imperfect

copies. These essences are clearest if we imagine mathematics: a perfect circle and a perfect squareexist in heaven, of which our human circles and squares are imperfect copies. This requires an

abstraction that leaves the existence of the individual thing out of the picture. proposition can be true

without being real. Perhaps !ust because this approach has wor"ed in certain areas of science, we tendto forget that it omits the living individual.

#ut there is another stream of thought coming down through history: namely, existence. This viewpointholds that truth depends upon the existing person, existing in a given situation $world% at that time.

&ence the term existential. This is what 'artre meant in his famous statement, ()xistence precedes

essence.* The human being’s awareness $i.e., his or her existence% precedes everything he or she has tosay about the surrounding world.

+own through history, the existential tradition is exemplified by many thin"ers. These include

ugustine, who held that (Truth dwells in the inner man* +uns 'cotus, who argued against Thomasquinas’s rational essences and insisted that human will must be ta"en as basic to any statement and

#laise Pascal, as in his famous statement, (The heart has its reasons which reason "nows nothing of.*

There remains in our day the chasm between truth and reality. nd the crucial question that confronts

us in psychology is precisely this chasm between what is abstractly true and what is existentially real

for the given living person.

Beginnings

-ier"egaard, iet/sche, and those existentialists who followed them foresaw this growing split between truth and reality in 0estern culture, and they opposed the delusion that reality can be

comprehended in an abstracted, detached way. Though they protested vehemently against arid

intellectualism, they were by no means simple activists, nor were they antirational. nti1intellectualismand other movements that ma"e thin"ing subordinate to feeling must not be confused with

existentialism. )ither alternative2ma"ing a human being entirely sub!ect or ob!ect2results in losing

the living, existing person. -ier"egaard and the existential thin"ers appealed to a reality underlying

both sub!ectivity and ob!ectivity. 0e must not only study a person’s experience as such, they held, buteven more, we must study the one who is doing the experiencing.

3t is by no means accidental that the greatest existentialists in the nineteenth century, -ier"egaard and iet/sche, happen also to be among the most remar"able psychologists of all time. contemporary

leader of existential philosophy, -arl 4aspers, originally a psychiatrist, wrote a notable text on

 psychopathology. 0hen one reads -ier"egaard’s profound analyses of anxiety and despair or iet/sche’s ama/ingly acute insights into the dynamics of resentment and the guilt and hostility that

accompany repressed emotional powers, it is difficult to reali/e that one is reading wor"s written more

than 566 years ago and not a contemporary psychological analysis.

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)xistential therapists are centrally concerned with rediscovering the living person amid the

dehumani/ation of modern culture, and in order to do this they engage in in1depth psychological

analysis. Their concern is not with isolated psychological reactions in themselves but rather with the

 psychological being of the living person doing the experiencing. They use psychological terms with anontological meaning.

)xistential therapy sprang up spontaneously in different parts of )urope and among different schoolsand has a diverse body of researchers and creative thin"ers. There were psychiatrists2)ugene

7in"ows"i in Paris, )rwin 'traus in 8ermany and then in merica, 9 ). von 8ebsattel in 8ermany2 

who represent chiefly the first, phenomenological stage of this movement. udwig #inswanger, .'torch, 7edard #oss, 8. #ally, ;oland -uhn in 'wit/erland and 4. &. 9an +en #erg and < 4.

#uytendi!" in &olland represented the second, or existential, stage.

Current Status

)xistential psychotherapy was introduced to the =nited 'tates in 5>?@ with the publication of

 Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology, edited by ;ollo 7ay, )rnest ngel, and

&enri )llenberger. The main presentation and summary of existential therapy was in the first twochapters, written by 7ay: (The Origins of the )xistential 7ovement in Psychology* and

(Aontributions of )xistential Psychology.* The remainder of the boo" is made up of essays and casestudies by &enri )llenberger, )ugene 7in"ows"i, )rwin 'traus, 9 ). von 8ebsattel, udwig

#inswanger, and ;onald -uhn. The first comprehensive textboo" in existential psychiatry was written

 by 3rvin Balom $5>@5% and entitled Existential Psychotherapy.

The spirit of existential psychotherapy has never supported the formation of specific institutes because

it deals with the presuppositions underlying therapy of any ind. 3ts concern was with concepts abouthuman beings and not with specific techniques. This leads to the dilemma that existential therapy has

 been quite influential, but there are very few adequate training courses in this "ind of therapy simply

 because it is not a specific training in technique.

The founders of the existential movement always stated that specific training in techniques of therapy

could be obtained at any number of schools of therapy, and that the student was responsible for

molding his or her own presuppositions in existential form.

;ollo 7ay, an existentialist before he "new the word, found that the existing person was the important

consideration, and not a theory about this person. &e had argued in his Ph.+. dissertation, publishedunder the title !he "eaning of Anxiety in 5>?6, for a concept of normal anxiety as the basis for a theory

of human beings. &e had already, before his training in the 0illiam lanson 0hite 3nstitute,

experienced the futility of going to analysis five times a wee" for two years. &e was trained as a

 psychoanalyst in the 0illiam lanson 0hite 3nstitute, the neo1

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therapist as rnold a/arus uses some existential presuppositions in his multimodal psychotherapy. ll

of this is possible because existential psychotherapy is a way of conceiving the human being. 3t goes

deeper than the other forms of psychotherapy to emphasi/e the assumptions underlying all systems of

 psychotherapy.

7a!or wor"s include 7ay’s !he "eaning of Anxiety $5>DD%, "an%s &earch for 'imself $5>?E%, and

 Existential Psychology $5>C5%. Others are 4ames #ugental’s !he &earch for Existential (dentity $5>DC%,7edard #oss’s !he Analysis of Dreams $5>?Da% and Psychoanalysis and Daseinanalysis $5>@F%, and

9i"tor