Phenomenology and Depth in Existential Psychotherapy

Abstract

All psychotherapies try to approach what is essential for alleviating patient suffering. In humanistic psychotherapies such as person-centered, Gestalt, and existential therapy, the focus is typically centered on the person, the essence of the human being. The person, however, as that which is free in human beings, cannot be fixed or measured. This raises a difficult question: How do we gain systematic access to this “person” when they cannot be grasped concretely? Drawing on Existential Analysis, the authors describe a phenomenological approach as possibly the most suitable method for this therapeutic task, because it is pervaded by an attitude of allowing the other to be free and a respect for the uniqueness of the person. In this approach, what is essential is drawn from the depth of the person, simultaneously involving the depth of the therapist, while bracketing foreign interpretations and theories. This article describes this method for accessing personal depth in psychotherapy via an existential-phenomenological perspective.

Existential Therapy and Jungian Analysis: Toward an Existential Depth Psychology

“…The fundamental method or technique of existential analysis or therapy is phenomenology (see Diamond, 2016a; Längle & Klaassen, 2021 [this issue]):For existential therapists, “phenomenology” refers to the disciplined philosophical method by which these ultimate concerns or “givens” are addressed, and through which the person’s basic experience of being-in-the-world can best be illuminated or revealed, and thus, more accurately understood. This phenomenological method begins by deliberately trying to set aside one’s presuppositions so as to be more fully open and receptive to the exploration of another person’s subjective reality.…”

“…But, whatever topic arises or emerges in the moment, the conversation is always collaborative and interactive rather than unilateral and authoritarian, though at times there may be protracted periods when the patient is speaking of vitally important matters while the therapist passively (though not entirely inertly or nonresponsively) listens with empathic care. In this sense, the existential therapist focuses at least as much on the process of what is going on currently in the consulting room as on the content of what is being said per se—attending to how something is being expressed (including nonverbal language) as well as to what is tellingly not spoken—and on the intimate quality of the interaction between two human beings actively engaged in this collaborative effort (see, e.g., Längle & Klaassen, 2021 [this issue]).…”

“…Here, Jung, then a young alienist , as psychiatrists were referred to at that time (see Diamond, 2018), had the courage to listen to, trust, honor, and disclose what came up within himself during this one-off encounter, and to intuitively use it improvisationally during the session (see Längle & Klaassen, 2021 [this issue]). Similarly, in existential depth psychology, each encounter between patient and therapist is considered crucial, since it is recognized as possibly being the final session.…”

“…Indeed, this is another way of defining and thinking about the fundamental meaning of the term depth in both Freud and Jung’s depth psychology and existential therapy: In this context, depth refers not only to working directly with the phenomenological manifestations of the “unconscious,” “shadow,” or the “daimonic,” or to Freud’s fastidious focus on the patient’s earliest and, therefore, presumably most remote, repressed, “deepest” traumatic childhood experiences but also to the willingness to look and see more deeply, penetratingly, intently, unflinchingly, openly, mindfully, and unassumingly, at the bare existential facts of life and life’s ultimate concerns, and to encourage clients or patients to more deeply or intensely experience the truth of their own subjective being-in-the-world in the present moment (see Berra, 2021 [this issue]; Längle & Klaassen, 2021 [this issue])…”

Dynamics of Existential Personality Fulfillment in the Course of Psychotherapy

“…V. Frankl viewed therapeutic change as finding the global meaning of a situation or human life in general [6]. Psychotherapy involves revealing the clients' ways of restraining themselves from the "fullness of existence" and the possibilities to make life choices consciously, based on the knowledge of their patterns [7,8]. Existential psychotherapist E. Spinelli explains therapeutic changes through the process of de-sedimentation [9].…”