Existential and Constructivist Psychology: A Developing Dialogue

Psychology understood as a human science has become a broad field of several traditions. They include 1) phenomenology and hermeneutics, 2) psychoanalysis, 3) humanistic psychology, and 4) the critical movements of feminism, critical theory, post structuralism, etc. Instead of trying to be comprehensive in this introduction, we shall instead focus on the core human science tradition since it has founded our approach at Duquesne. Duquesne University's Department of Psychology was established in the early 1960s on the philosophical foundations of existential phenomenology and philosophical anthropology, sometimes also referred to as phenomenological anthropology. Philosophical anthropology was an attempt to develop a philosophically rigorous logos of anthropos, or articulate understanding of the structure of being human. One might think of it as the philosophical dimension of the existential phenomenological movement that swept Europe and the western world through much of the twentieth century. Existential phenomenology remains an approach to studying psychological phenomena with assumptions and methods that remain true to human experience and action as they are concretely lived and constituted. Philosophical anthropology used the phenomenological approach to understanding and describing human existence. For psychologists this tradition provides a conceptual foundation within which it becomes intelligible to think critically and creatively about the diverse field of psychology. Without being unthinkingly eclectic, we can ask what psychology's various approaches and empirical findings contribute to our understanding of psychological life. The various disciplines in psychology (e.g., the various branches of psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, social psychology, psychophysiology) can be critically evaluated in terms consistent with existential foundations (van Kaam, 1966). Existential phenomenology is thus not one approach among several but the conceptual possibility of a rigorous integrative ground to the development and practice of psychology as an indigenously human science. It thus continues to provide a conceptual ground for integrating feminist and post structural critical theory as well. The focus on existential phenomenology in this course honors the tradition of this department. More importantly, I think that a grounding in this tradition helps us maintain our conceptual and ethical bearings in the field of (clinical) psychology. First, our habits of language are so rooted in Descartes' ontology that they have come to be taken for granted as merely labels for what is real: mind-body, inner-outer, subjective-objective, experience-behavior, illusion-fact, meaningful-measurable, psychological-medical. No-one ever told us that such terms are impositions on the structure of existence or that they tend to violate the primacy of experience as it is given in the ordinary conduct of our lives. It seems obvious (to me) that, if we want to understand the experience of others, and be able to help them speak about their experiences with increasing complexity, depth, and differentiation, or if we want to understand the phenomena with which others are engaged or confronted, then the discipline of phenomenology is particularly helpful. That is because it offers a body of literature and a methodology that repeatedly and systematically sees through the above linguistic oppositions so that the other's experience—as well as our experience of the other—can be more accurately described. It also pays attention to the horizons of meaning and significance in which human life and experience are constituted.

This chapter presents the historical roots of existential and humanistic theories and then describes four specific theories: European existential-phenomenological psychology, Logotherapy and existential analysis, American existential psychology and American humanistic psychology. After examining these theories, the chapter presents a reformulated existential-humanistic theory, which focuses on goal-striving for meaning and fulfillment.

2016

This volume explores the interface of philosophy and existential therapy from six different theoretical perspectives. In this sense, the book focus on applied philosophy or philosophical therapy. Thus, the main conclusion from the book is that existential therapy is a philosophy and therapy of existence rather than a kind of psychotherapy: (1) Negative Sociality. A Study of Social Alienation and Conflict in Jean-Paul Sartre and Ronald D. Laing; (2) Existential Teleology and Ethics. From Aristotle to Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmy van Deurzen and Michel Foucault; (3) The Relevance of Aristotelean Ethics to the Conception of Existential Psychotherapy; (4) A Discussion of Narcissistic Sexuality; (5) Differences and Similarities between Existential Therapy and CBT; (6) A Problematization of Therapeutic Neutrality

Existential Psychology East-West (Volume 1 - Revised and Expanded Edition), 2019

Existential Psychology East-West is a collection of chapters exploring existential psychology in a cross-cultural context. The original version was published in preparation for the First International Conference on Existential Psychology held in Nanjing, China in 2010. This revised and expanded edition includes several updated chapters as well as five new chapters. The book consists of three sections. The first section provides an introduction to existential-humanistic psychotherapy along with a case illustration. Section 2 contains 13 chapters from Eastern and Western scholars exploring the theory of existential psychology. The third section contains 10 chapters building from Rollo May’s work on myth. Each chapter explores the existential themes of a myth embedded within a particular cultural context. The book concludes with an Annotated Bibliography of important works in existential psychology. Existential Psychology East-West is an important contribution to the field with many influential Eastern and Western scholars including Kirk Schneider, Xuefu Wang, Ilene Serlin, Mark Yang, Ed Mendelowitz, Heyong Shen, Erik Craig, Myrtle Heery, Alan G. Vaughan, Louis Hoffman, and Nathaniel Granger, Jr.

What Is Existentialism? Vol. II, 2021

The term “existentialism” was coined in the 1940s. Whereas other books regarding existentialism merely repeat the platitudes that “There is no such thing as existentialism” or that “The term ‘existentialism’ has no coherent meaning,” this two-volume set actually answers the question “What is existentialism?” . Volume I identifies the seven (7) principles of existentialism and the necessary and sufficient conditions for a philosophy to be existential, and introduces readers to the depth of the problem by showing how the question “What is existentialism?” can be answered in multiple ways, all of which are provided in this two-volume set. . Vol. I, then, provides the “archaeological” answer to the question by showing the philosophical framework existentialism inherited from transcendental philosophy. Vol. I also provides the “genealogical” answer by tracing the history of the thematization of this framework through German Romanticism, concluding with an illustration of how the major existential philosophers: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and Marcel, expressed and developed the principles of existentialism. . Volume II provides a discussion of essential distinctions with which to correctly understand, and formulate thoughts about, existentialism, for example, discussions of existentialism as a kind of character ethics, existentialism as a critique of Descartes’ philosophy, the difference between existential individuality and modern subjectivity, and a discussion of the “moment of vision.” . Vol. II concludes, then, with a discussion of how existential philosophy takes be-ing, as an end-in-itself, as its point of origin. Vol. II also provides a number of helpful appendices. These appendices address some miscellaneous, though important, concerns regarding existentialism, and provide charts illustrating the interrelations between the key concepts of existentialism.

2023

2022

This study tackles one of the contributions and applications of existentialism in the domain of existential therapy and counseling which is a human orientation that looks for the meaning of the human existence in a philosophical way. It is one the main important modern orientations in psycho-therapy and counseling and counseling psychology in the human phenomenal orientation that was shaped by Rolo May, Paul Tillich, Irvin D. Yalom, and Victor Emil Frankl. The meaning of life for these existential therapists exceeds self-esteem, achievement, and understanding into moving up above and getting the self higher. In this paper, we shall give a scientific reading of the nature of existentialism and the domains of its application in the psycho-therapy and counseling, mainly in the existential psycho-therapy. This is to be done through giving a historical background on the phases of its development, its pioneers, definition, bases, applications, and therapeutic and counseling techniques Keywords: Existentialism; theory in counseling psychology; existential psychotherapy.

In the following paper we provide a personal definition of the existential philosophy and the existential subject. Before that we explore other historical definitions of existentialism. We were mainly interested in the relation between existentialism and nihilism, the focus of existential philosophy on the individual and the situation of the studied philosophical trend on the 1950's zeitgeist. The definition of existentialism as a form of trans-rationalism and its capacity to become a practical alternative to contemporary academic philosophy were also emphasized.

Existential analysis (V. Frankl) as clarification of possibilities for an existence that is appropriate to human dignity, gives a general anthropological frame for psychotherapeutical forms of intervention. In theory and practice the further development of the existentialanalytical concept of person pointed to three basic faculties of personhood: they form the framework for a methodically structured procedure of existential analysis termed "personal existential analysis". This begins with personal conditions for existence, where personhood is unable to break through to a meaningful existence by obstruction of just those basic faculties. In addition to that, personal existential analysis offers a theoretical structure for the application of different psychotherapeutical forms of intervention and techniques.