Existential Humanistic Psychology

Background: Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) resulting from early childhood trauma often requires novel therapeutic approaches and may manifest in adaptive strategies that appear pathological to conventional assessment frameworks (Cloitre et al., 2013; Ford, 2020). The relationship between existential meaning-making, autonomous self-governance, and trauma recovery remains underexplored in cases of sophisticated self-regulatory systems developed during critical developmental periods (Herman, 2015; van der Kolk, 2014). Objective: To conduct comprehensive evaluation of functional outcomes, adaptive capacity, and existential framework of a self-constructed psychological governance system developed in response to severe early childhood trauma, with particular attention to autonomous meaning creation and self-initiated reconnection processes. Methods: Comprehensive N-of-1 longitudinal analysis of a self-reported trauma response system maintained for approximately 20+ years post-implementation. Multi-dimensional assessment conducted using Herman's three-stage recovery model, ICD-11 CPTSD criteria, established resilience and adaptive functioning measures, existential-phenomenological frameworks, and autonomous self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Results: Subject demonstrates exceptional emotional regulation, autonomous boundary maintenance, preserved agency, and sophisticated self-initiated meaning creation alongside existential clarity regarding absence of inherent meaning. The governance system functions as elaborate organizational structure that enables autonomous choice-making from position of existential authenticity, demonstrating successful completion of all three stages of trauma recovery through unconventional but highly effective self-directed means. Conclusion: Subject exhibits markers consistent with successful complex trauma recovery and high-functioning adaptive capacity achieved through autonomous meaning creation. The case demonstrates that functional excellence and existential clarity regarding meaninglessness can coexist, challenging traditional assumptions about meaning-making requirements in trauma recovery. Findings suggest need for expanded assessment frameworks recognizing autonomous self-governance as valid recovery pathway.

The concept of existential shattering was introduced by Tom Greening before being developed by several of his former students and colleagues. Initially, it was defined as a sudden dismantling of one’s meaning systems in worldview. In this article, we further develop and expand the definition of existential shattering, adding further nuance to its definition.

Keywords: Existential Shattering, Existential Therapy, Trauma, Moral Injury, Limit Situation

I take my task here as a kind of weaving. I wish to throw the net wide and show how Martin Heidegger and Medard Boss have offered me an understanding of the human realm, and its grounding in Being, that has intimately informed how I am as a psychotherapist. This human realm, between sky and earth, has been communicated by them not just in philosophically logical ways, but also in evocatively human ways that may be "held" and embodied. It is in this spirit that I wish to use the term "freedom-wound" in order to indicate and evoke what I will call the "soulful space" of being human -how we are grounded in both great freedom and great vulnerability. Such ambiguity may describe the essence of a human kind of openness, and the lived understanding of such ambiguity may be shown to give direction to psychotherapy in the following ways: a) It welcomes psychotherapy clients to the human realm as wound and freedom. Such "wound" and "freedom" is not merely historical and social, but is given and can be taken up and lived in more welcome ways. There are "wounds" and vulnerabilities that can be avoided or can be "healed," but there is a great vulnerability that cannot. There are many freedoms that can be taken away or fought for, but there is a great freedom (with its responsibility) that cannot. Daseinsanalytically-oriented psychotherapy may give deep permission to clients to encounter and experience a kind of "settling down" into these dimensions as they come through in the unique vicissitudes of their own life, and to take them up and live them forward. b) It understands so-called "psychopathology" as flights and distortions of the human freedom to which one is called and also as the forms of refusal to the human vulnerabilities and limits that are existentially given. In this respect, one of the ways that Heidegger has served us is to indicate the relevance of grounding the understanding of human being in a larger ontological context from which he or she is not separate. Such non-separation is the ground of a "calling" beyond us yet intimate to us, and as such, cannot be fully understood by humanism, cognitivism or psychologism. So-called "psychopathology" thus goes beyond psychology to the socalled "spiritual" and "moral" realms of our response to "callings" that are not just "within" our "minds" but are "there" in the mutual arising of Being and beings. Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk

In my recent essay, Hitting the Notes, I seize upon the metaphor of music to evoke psychological understandings that are the stuff of art and literature far more than the province of theoretical schemas or professional guilds. The professions, in my not inconsiderable experience, tend to become dully programmatic and institutional over time. I attempt to invoke in my essay a feeling for nuance broadly  overlooked, an aesthetic realm where literary and even musical emanations are given their due.

The Corps of Depth Healers, founded by Kirk Schneider in 2023 and assisted by Tyler Gamlen, emerged in response to escalating social, political, and environmental crises. The Corps addresses contemporary challenges such as political polarization, mental health disparities, and societal fragmentation through emotionally restorative relationships, depth healing, and bridge-building. Key initiatives include Experiential Democracy Dialogues, based on Schneider’s work, which promote depolarization and empathy in a polarized world. Central to the Corps’ philosophy is Schneider’s concept of awe—an experience that fosters profound connection and meaning. The organization operates through a consortium model, collaborating with like-minded groups committed to social justice and depth psychology. Its Depth Dialogues podcast further extends its outreach by engaging scholars and activists. Looking ahead, the Corps envisions systemic mental health advocacy, proposing the creation of a Psychologist General and a national Office of Psychological Advisors. It is also developing a comprehensive training program to equip professionals with depth psychological tools for social healing, uniting individuals across various fields to address existential and societal crises through transformative depth healing and community restoration.  Note: This paper is a draft of an article that appeared as an
"online first" publication in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, December 10th, 2024 and may not reflect the final published version of record.

In order to study the diffusion and evaluatíon in Europe of the works of early Latin American psyehoanalysts the lntemationale Zeitschrijt für Psychoanalyse (1913Psychoanalyse ( -1941) ) was examined. Using a biblíometrie approach, notices, book reviews and resumes constituted the material for tbis study. Tbe books and papers of Honorio Delgado (1892• 1969), a Peruvian psychíatríst, were the most diffused Latin American works. The evaluation of them was positive. The majority of books reviews and resumes were written by Karl Abraham . a German psychoanalyst. El presente estudio tiene como propósito determinar la difusión y valoración crítica en la Internationale Zeitschriit für Psychoanalyse (Revista Internacional de Psicoanálisis) de los trabajos psicoanalíticos de estudiosos latinoamericanos.

The concept of existential shattering was introduced Tom Greening and further developed by Hoxie (2013), Vallejos (2015), Ren et al. (2018), and Hoffman and Vallejos (2018). “Existential shattering is the sudden and unexpected dismantling, or shattering, of one’s self-conception and worldview as a consequence of an event or process that the individual has experienced” (Hoffman & Vallejos, p. 847). While the shattering is sudden, Hoffman and Vallejos note that it can be the result of a gradual process or cumulation of events over time. Existential shattering has similarities but remains distinct from, moral injury. Furthermore, it has implications for differentiating types of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that are relevant for problem identification and case formulation. When PTSD is accompanied by existential shattering, it may be necessary to adapt traditional treatments, including considering meaning and self-perceptions.
In this presentation, we begin by introducing existential shattering, including considering the development and evolution of this concept over time. Defining existential shattering includes distinguishing it from similar concepts, such as moral injury. Next, we consider implications for case formulation, including diagnosis and problematic identification. From this foundation, we consider psychotherapy implications, including challenges to working with clients experiencing existential shattering. We maintain that an existential-integrative approach, which utilizes a critical assimilative integrative approach to existential-humanistic therapy, is an ideal approach for working with most individuals who have experienced an existential shattering. This approach combines the development of resources to manage overwhelming emotions with an existential-humanistic approach that focuses on issues of meaning, freedom/responsibility, relationships, and community while emphasizing the importance of the therapeutic relationships and presence.

Rollo May’s "Power and Innocence," first published in 1972, is aptly subtitled: "A Search for the Sources of Violence." Written during the mayhem of the Vietnam War (a mortifying conflagration remembered here where I write along the South-Central Vietnamese coast, as the American War), May’s book has been on my mind for some time. We are living in perilous times in so many respects, and one finds few voices as relevant, wise, or compelling as May’s on what he called the daimonic—a coinage borrowed from the Ancient Greeks for that part of the mind, largely unconscious, associated with humanity’s darkened corners.

Mapping the Trajectory of the Self A personalist/existential take on the journey to selfhood by Tim Quinlan Prologue Socrates once insightfully observed that the "unexamined life is not worth living," an aphorism to which the late American neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi wittily retorted with his own adage that the "unlived life is not worth examining." Both aphorisms nicely sum up our task in life, namely meaning-seeking and meaning-making. Since the dawn of consciousness, humankind has been engaged in attempting to answer the questions: What is life all about? Where does meaning lie?-in knowledge, in love, in wisdom, in family, in nation, in things, in values, in beliefs of all types?

Constructivism and existential psychology are distinct approaches to therapy that share many important commonalities. Included in the commonalities are a focus on meaning, relationships, change, and experience. We maintain that an existential-constructivist foundation can provide an ideal foundation for integration that can deepen approaches to therapy that resonate with aspects of existential and constructivist therapies. Three approaches to therapy highlight possibilities for integration: caregiver family therapy, equine-facilitated therapy, and substance abuse therapy. Building from these examples, various approaches to integration emerging from constructivism and existentialism can prove fruitful for developing a constructivism-existential psychology integration. Both existential and constructivist approaches to therapy are typically categorized under the umbrella of humanistic therapies, although they have maintained somewhat of an ambivalent relationship over time. Historically, there has been tension and some disagreement. Much of this can be resolved, however, and there are fruitful opportunities for integration. Vos and colleagues (2017) and Hoffman (2009a), for example, elucidated some possibilities for convergence and collaboration. The primary aim of this article is to explicate how an existential-constructivist approach can be a powerful foundation for integration that can strengthen other psychological approaches. We begin by considering the similarities and differences of constructivist and existential approaches, including considerations of how these can fit together. Next, we discuss three approaches (caregiver family therapy, equine-facilitated therapy, and substance abuse treatments) and one context (social applications) that can benefit from an existential-constructivist integration.

Carol Lamb, a well-respected spiritual teacher, trauma therapist and author passed away in November 2023. This paper completes her life's work by documenting her past life memory of Kristina, a Russian aristocrat at the time of the Russian revolution in 1917; a memory which surfaced when Carol was 14 years of age. Although Carol researched the thread of this life through individual past life recall sessions over many years and group soul sessions, several of which she documented in previous papers, she was not able to complete the project. The co-authors have meticulously examined and pieced together Carol's copious notes and documented recall sessions to bring this information in Carol's own words to an interested global community, for the benefit of those studying the continuity and multidimensional nature of consciousness with particular reference to soul groups. To complete this compelling story, five past life recall sessions are included in the text together with received guidance from a non-local source.

The briefest reverie on existential psychology and psychotherapy and an intuitive/literary tradition that, increasingly, we forget. My essay is dedicated to the memories of Rollo and Georgia May--and our mutual friend, Eugene Taylor, as well. It winds down with a video performance of Mark Knopfler's "Two Pairs of Hands": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRLGFWjI1zE. "Sans musique," mused Nietzsche once upon a time, "la vie serait une erreur."

The briefest reverie on existential psychology and psychotherapy and an intuitive/literary tradition that, increasingly, we forget. My essay is dedicated to the memories of Rollo and Georgia May--and our mutual friend, Eugene Taylor, as well. It winds down with a video performance of Mark Knopfler's "Two Pairs of Hands": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRLGFWjI1zE. "Sans musique," mused Nietzsche once upon a time, "la vie serait une erreur."

En este escrito ofrezco algunos elementos y reflexiones para llamar la atención sobre la importancia de asumir con seriedad la interfase psicoanálisis/ética, un terreno en el que se pueden lograr interacciones e
intercambios muy productivos. Para esto señalaré cómo la historia de la
ética médica comparte rasgos con lo propuesto por Freud en algunas de
sus obras sobre cómo ha de proceder un analista y, cómo ética y técnica
van de la mano. Incluiré también algunos temas referidos al código de ética de la Asociación Internacional de Psicoanálisis y a la ética en la práctica profesional, que fueron además ocasión para que el Instituto Colombiano de Psicoanálisis organizara una serie de conferencias durante el primer semestre académico de 2021.

Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian Neurologist and Psychiatrist. He worked from the frame work of existential therapy. During world war II, he was under Nazi captivity, it is this experience that shaped his work and development of Logotherapy. It is considered the "Third Viennese school of Psychotherapy" with Freud's psychoanalysis as first and Adler's individual psychology as second Viennese school of psychotherapy. After the camps were liberated, in 1946, he published his world famous book-'Man's Search for Meaning' outlining his experiences in the concentration camp as well as the basic tenets and techniques of logotherapy. Frankl became one of the key figures in existential therapy and a prominent source of inspiration for humanistic psychologists.

By tracing how Wang Baoqiang and Giulietta Masina configure the concept of innocence in four films – Fellini’s Il Bidone/The Swindle (1955) versus Li Yang’s Blind Shaft (2003), and Fellini’s La Strada/The Road (1954) versus Feng Xiaogang’s A World without Thieves (2004) – this article demonstrates that similar human conditions produce similar cinematic responses. The parallel elements here include bankrupt political systems (Maoist socialism and Mussolini’s fascism) accompanied by economic prosperity and the advent of materialism, in which individuals attempt to regain a sense of self through the traditional values of their cultures, whether Confucianism in China or Christian humanism in Italy: the focus on innocence in both Chinese and Italian films has also attracted similar critical responses. This article touches on the relationship between the following responses and the analysis of the films: Italian Neorealism in contrast with Chinese documentary realism, nostalgia for home, ...

This article follows the author's personal process of discovering the import of Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology for the creation of Existential-Humanistic Self-Development Theory (DeRobertis, 2012, 2017; DeRobertis & Bland, 2020). The article begins by noting a prolonged period of fundamental unfamiliarity with Adler due to a conspicuous absence from the author's formal education. It then highlights the myopic coverage that he was exposed to from secondary sources, which was subsequently outmoded by exposure to the works of Hall and Lindzey (1978), Ansbacher (1971, 1990), and Adler himself. The author discovered his developmental viewpoint owed much to Adler's work on the social conditions of development, the language of the body, creative power, final fiction, and Gemeinschaftsgefühl. The article concludes with signposts for future study, some of the ways in which Adler's views have proven to be ahead of their time, and a call for psychologists to recognize the contemporary significance of Individual Psychology in a contentious cultural climate.

Psychology has always prided itself on being a science, as having earned its emancipation from “metaphysics” (meaning philosophy), though not without controversy (DeRobertis & Iuculano, 2005). In harmony with Maslow’s (1961) landmark observations, psychology should become genuinely psychological by becoming hierarchical-integrative, but (putting aside the special nature of each research project, which is a given) lifeworld research, which would necessarily be phenomenologically driven, ought to sit at the top of the hierarchy (DeRobertis, 2017; DeRobertis & Bland, 2020).

The Russians have been misrepresented. They may not have enough to eat there, but they are determined that art, education and music must be free to all. I am eager to see if there is one country in the world that does not worship commercialism more than the mental and physical education of its chip dren.

This article considers existential-humanistic (EH) psychotherapy in relation to concepts in Chinese culture and shows how those approaches are experienced in the body. An embodied form of EH group dance movement therapy called "KinAesthetic Imagining" can bridge West and Eastern philosophies through symbolic nonverbal communication. In the following article, the philosophical foundation and training of KinAesthetic Imagining is described. It is followed by a dialogue and observations from a student from China whose background in existential philosophy, and Yalom group therapy gave her a philosophical perspective on becoming embodied. She describes her own experience of a theme central to existential psychotherapy, death, and rebirth and how she experienced this in her body in a new and profound way.

Human beings are sexual beings. While this is an existential reality, the way individuals relate to sexuality—their own and the sexuality of others—varies significantly. In our contemporary world, understanding what it means to be sexual beings is ever-evolving. Eros and Psyche is an in-depth encounter with sexuality through diverse existential perspectives. In this 2-volume series, many leaders in the existential field explore topics including how Heidegger and Foucault could reinvigorate your sex life, sexuality and the arts, finding God in the bedroom, and working with sexual attraction in psychotherapy. Eros and Psyche is essential reading for existential scholars, researchers, and therapists.

Volume 2 focuses on clinical and spiritual perspectives with chapters by Tom Pyszczynski, Peggy Kleinplatz, Susi Ferrarello, Nisha Gupta, Steve Simpson, Louis Hoffman, Melissa Racho, and others.

Issues of sexual attraction-whether the client's attraction to the therapist, the therapist's attraction to the client, or a mutual attraction-are among the most feared clinical situations for many therapists. An abundance of clinical and ethical perspectives address how to handle these attractions; however, there are few resources from an existential perspective. Many psychological perspectives on sexual attraction in therapy emphasize boundaries and risk management. While these issues are important and necessary to consider regardless of therapeutic orientation, they advocate responses rooted in ethics codes rather than ethical thinking and decision making, or even consideration for the client and their relationships (Berry, 2014). Existential-humanistic psychotherapy, conversely, focuses on issues of freedom and responsibility, choice, self-awareness, interpersonal awareness, and the real relationship in psychotherapy. This chapter considers both attractions to the therapist and therapist attraction to the client utilizing an existential-humanistic lens. The existential-humanistic approach allows for the client and/or therapist to explore the deeper meaning of these attractions within the establishment of appropriate boundaries. Several case vignettes help illustrate clinical and ethical thinking about issues of attraction as well as strategies to work with these attractions within the context of the therapy relationship.

I am quietly moved to see this essay (really, an open letter to my father written on the occasion of his 90th birthday) being recently viewed in Columbia, Portugal, Germany, Turkey, India, Casablanca, and Amman--indeed, as far away as Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Pakistan; Qatar; and, perhaps further, even Utah. My father was a standup guy character-wise, someone who had a huge influence on my own evolution and manner of being in the world. Rollo May liked to point out that psychotherapists function in this capacity initially within their families of origin. In youth, I was a hypersensitive observer attempting to fathom subliminal personal and familial codes. Eventually, I did take on a bit more of a therapeutic role during my father's struggle in later decades with severe mixed depression, a biologically-induced presentation within a spectrum of manic depressive illness in which depression and mania commingle, often in tortured and tortuous ways. The very best of existential psychology would not exist without the myriad expressions of, and insights into, human nature underwritten by mood disturbance. It is significant, observes my friend and colleague Nassir Ghaemi, that William James writes of a "sick soul" (in contrast with the "healthy-mindedness" typifying the once-born and constitutionally buoyant) in The Varieties of Religious Experience. Humanistic psychology's longstanding eschewal of science is one way in which it falls short in achieving more nuanced understandings and truths.

This article presents a part of the results of the Magister research the non-afirmative formation theories as conceptual articulations between existential-humanistic psychology and the critical pedagogy. It makes an integration of philosophical, epistemological, anthropological fundaments of existential-humanistic psychology. It uses a qualitative methodology: hermeneutic, in order to comprehend and understand authors and to build theoretical inference. © Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Sociales.Este artículo presenta parte de los resultados de la tesis de Maestría: Las teorías de la formación no afirmativas como articulaciones conceptuales entre la Psicología humanista-existencial y la pedagogía crítica. Hace una integración de  las bases filosóficas, epistemológicas, antropológicas  de la Psicología humanista-existencial. Utiliza metodología de corte cualitativo; la hermenéutica, para comprender e interpretar los autores y construir inferencia teórica. © Revista Colombiana de Cienc...

Existential anger, as it is included in the study, can be defined as the feeling of pure anger towards human existence, which emerges as a result of the thought processes carried out on the meaninglessness and nothingness of the life that individuals live, which we can associate with the concepts of existential anxiety and existential crisis. The study aims to develop a psychometric measurement tool to measure anger towards existence, which is thought to be experienced in individuals. The study was conducted with a sample of 342 people between the ages of 18-67. In order to test the construct validity of the existential anger scale, similar scale validity was made, and the relationship of the scale with similar scales was examined. Pearson Correlation analysis was used to determine the relationships between scales. It is aimed that the Existential Anger Scale can contribute to the study of psychological disorders such as anger disorders, substance addiction, anxiety disorders and depression in the field of psychology and psychotherapy. It is also thought to shed light on possible future existential psychology-based research and the existential dimension of personal development.

"Perhaps, if we dared to be free, more would be revealed than we care to admit. I sometimes wonder why we do not have a journal in our profession which publishes anonymous contributions. We might then hear and feel more of the real give-and-take in all those closed offices, get a fuller flavor of the encounter between the two people, patient and psychiatrist, who are in and of themselves what we call psychotherapy. The answer to the skeptic who questions the worth of psychotherapy is neither the withdrawn posture of the adherent of a closed system who dismisses all inquiry as suspect, nor an eruption of pseudoscientific verbal pyrotechnics. Problems will not be solved by professional arrogance or more guilds and rituals. For it is more by being than by doing that the meaningful and deeply felt communion  . . . will emerge. This demands as much honesty and freedom from us as it does from our patients, and as much trust on our part as we would someday hope to receive from them."--Robert Coles, "A Young Psychiatrist Looks at his Profession"

This workshop seeks to explore relational dynamics that often emerge in intimate relationships, including psychotherapy. Love and sexual attraction between therapist and client are topics that therapists often avoid, frequently out of fear. In this workshop, we clarify common misunderstandings about love as they emerge in the therapy process. As a foundational premise, we maintain that love and caring for our clients is valuable, if not essential, to the therapy process. A plethora of clinical and ethical perspectives address how to handle what may be by-products of love, such as sexual attraction; however, there are extremely few resources from an existential perspective on the factor of “love” in psychotherapy. The lack of preparedness on these issues often leads to therapists withholding love and care for their clients. This workshop prepares existential therapists to ethically, effectively, and compassionately work with love and attraction in psychotherapy.

"We possess art less we perish of the truth."--Friedrich Nietzsche, Notebooks

"Art flies around truth but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before."--Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks

"We possess art less we perish of the truth."--Friedrich Nietzsche, Notebooks

"Art flies around truth but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before."--Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks

In this brief commentary on Abraham Maslow's (1969) Toward a Humanistic Biology, it is argued that Maslow's engagement with life science was a way for him to highlight the importance of innovative research for the development of third force psychology. The way Maslow envisioned psychology as involving two forms of objectivity indicate that, had he been steeped in phenomenology, he likely would have endorsed a hermeneutic-phenomenological vision of science. It is further argued that his vision of the third force was inherently developmental and laced with cultural themes.

This article traces the early history of existential-humanistic developmental psychology. It is argued that this area of inquiry was built upon the pioneering work of a heterogeneous array of authors from numerous backgrounds, including American humanistic psychology, European existential and phenomenological psychology, social and self-styled psychoanalysis, personalistic psychology, comparative psychology, Gestalt psychology, education and pedagogy, philosophy, and anthropology. The conceptual yield of the historical overview was distilled down to a cluster of four broad themes: the whole developing person-in-context, lived-time, the living body, and an enduring call to pedagogy.

"These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs."--Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Reliance"

A partir de las aportaciones de la sociología simétrica propuesta por Bruno Latour y del marco conceptual ofrecido por la historia de las ciencias, esta investigación atiende una serie de objetivos puntuales. En primer lugar, buscamos comprender qué fue lo que determinó que Erich Fromm estableciera su residencia en México -entre 1949 y 1973- y cómo fueron recibidas sus propuestas en el contexto científico e institucional. En esos términos, intentamos descifrar qué elementos facilitaron la construcción de redes entre diversos actores para lograr la difusión de sus planteamientos teóricos. Ubicamos los espacios de diálogo que abrió y las contribuciones que logró concretar en las estructuras académicas del país. Así mismo, bosquejamos un balance de las obras que este autor escribió y publicó mientras radicaba en México con el propósito de explicar la importancia de esta etapa en su itinerario profesional. Nos concierne revelar a través de qué canales culturales se fueron asimilando los planteamientos del psicoanálisis humanista. Para ello, fue necesario analizar la traducción y socialización que realizara la comunidad formada por Fromm para trascender el campo clínico y participar con acciones concretas en la vida de la sociedad mexicana.

This special section of the Journal of Constructivist Psychology on existential and constructivist psychologies has been long in the making. As the contributions make clear, existential and constructivist psychologies can serve as strong foundations for integrative work. Several factors contribute to their ability to serve as foundations for integration. First, existential and constructivist perspectives naturally attend to the philosophical issues that are often problematically neglected when doing integrative work. Second, existential and constructivist perspectives are flexible approaches that have avoided excessive reification. Third, existential and constructivist perspectives tend to avoid techniques and overly structured or manualized approaches. Finally, in the therapy context, both attend to many of the common factors of psychotherapy, such as relationship factors (see Elkins, 2015). A challenge in integrating existential and constructivist perspectives has been existential psychology's connection with phenomenology. As discussed in the first article by Lincoln and Hoffman, although existentialists tend to draw on phenomenology, not all existentialists are phenomenologists and not all phenomenologists are existentialists (see also Flynn, 2006). Although the influence of phenomenology on existential thought is undeniable, it is not necessary or beneficial to require existential psychology to be excessively bound to phenomenology. Existential psychology can have a broader base. This is not to suggest a contentiousness between phenomenology and constructivism; there are many convergences between phenomenology and constructivist psychology, as noted in the article by Ferrarello. As is evident in the articles presented here, meaning is a primary area of convergence between existential and constructivist perspectives. The dialogues pertaining to meaning demonstrate the complexities in understanding meaning and related concepts, such as purpose (see Vos et al.,

“Struggle is the perpetual food of the soul, and it knows well enough how to extract the sweetness from it.”—Friedrich Nietzsche, Gesammelte Werke “The only possible spiritual development is in the sense of depth.”— Samuel Beckett, Proust “The individual completes the creative work vastly relieved and more a person than before—but also maimed . . . Human progress is never one-dimensional.”—Rollo May, Love and Will

This paper is a preliminary contemplation regarding the application of phenomenological intentionality towards deepening one's encounter with everyday direct experience. Conducting one's lifeworld phenomenologically-as in living phenomenologically-involves an experiential mirroring of the same depth and intimacy of approach or encounter in everyday experience that the existential-humanistic phenomenological research method and therapeutic orientation utilizes in efforts to elucidate the scientific, philosophical and psychological study of lived experience. This paper invites contemplations regarding how imbuing a phenomenological philosophical approach to one's everyday encounter with life might facilitate connecting to a deeper self as well as more intrinsically meaningful and fulfilling quotidian experiences. This introductory exploration provides a starting point for remembering what is possible in human experiencing-and available-through exercising a refined intentionality of approach to living beyond that which is facilitated in clinical and psychotherapeutic practice.

Contemporary protests movements, which are distinguished from historic movements by relying on decentralized leadership and utilizing social media and technology, have a central role in addressing social justice issues. Black Lives Matter represents one of the most influential and controversial of the contemporary protests movements. Much of the controversy is connected to misunderstanding, distorted portrayals, and attempts to discredit the movement. Through an examination of the history of Black Lives Matter, and consideration of issues such as privilege and polarization, it can be recognized that the Black Lives Matter movement is providing a healthy cultural critique and creative use of pain, anger, and suffering to advocate for human dignity and positive cultural change. Furthermore, the principles of existential–humanistic psychology can be used to deepen the understanding of Black Lives Matter and other protest movements, while also offering important guidance on how to avoid...