Existential psychotherapy is a style of therapy that places emphasis on the human condition as a whole. Existential psychotherapy uses a positive approach that applauds human capacities and aspirations while simultaneously acknowledging human limitations. Existential psychotherapy shares many similarities with humanistic psychology, experiential psychotherapy, depth psychotherapy, and relational psychotherapy.
TIMELINE OF EXISTENTIAL THERAPY
Existential therapy developed out of the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and Soren Kierkegaard. As one of the first existential philosophers, Kierkegaard theorized that human discontent could only be overcome through internal wisdom. Later, Nietzsche further developed the theory of existentialism using concepts such as the will to power and personal responsibility. In the early 1900s, philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre began to explore the role of investigation and interpretation in the healing process. Over the next several decades, other contemporaries started to acknowledge the importance of experiencing in relation to understanding as a method to achieving psychological wellness and balance.
Otto Rank was among the first existential therapists to actively pursue the discipline, and by the middle of the 20th century, psychologists Paul Tillich and Rollo May brought existential therapy into the mainstream through their writings and teachings, as did Irvin Yalom after them. The popular approach began to influence other theories, including logotherapy, whic developed by Viktor Frankl, and humanistic psychology. At the same time, British philosophers expanded existentialism further with the foundation of The Philadelphia Association, an organization dedicated to helping people manage their mental health issues with experiential therapies. Other institutions that embody the theory of existentialism include the Society for Existential Analysis, founded in 1988, and the International Community of Existential Counselors, created in 2006.