Artwork: "Transcending beyond duality" by Helena Arturaleza
“Sustainable flourishing of man and humanity is possible only by meaningfully dealing with all the challenges and sufferings of life. Then we live deeply and fully...
Unsustainable prosperity is any form of provision and enjoyment of meaningful affluence. We live luxuriously and safely, and sometimes it seems meaningful to us...
Molting is a carefree but superficial existence in which we find little meaning….
Persistent misery is any failure to deal with suffering and challenges and hence their senseless constant deepening…”
Existential Psychodynamics
There are three brilliantly written seminal books in the field of psychotherapy and existentialism:
- “Existential Psychotherapy” by Irwin D. Yalom;
- “Sleep and Existence” by Ludwig Binswanger and Michel Foucault;
- "Psychotherapy and Existentialism” by Viktor Frankl
The "Existential psychotherapy" is a fundamental study that matured over many years in the mind of its creator, using rich empirical material, building on what has been achieved by many schools and specialists.
Another merit of the study, divided into four main sections corresponding to the four basic concerns, Death, Freedom, Isolation and Meaninglessness, is that it examines these existential categories in great detail and nuance, as well as their relation to other essential existential situations.
The fact that a large number of significant literary texts are devoted to existential quests are cited in the volume and it is also quite important.
Let's recall what Freud said: "And writers are valuable allies, and their insights are to be highly valued, for they usually know too much about things between heaven and earth, of which our scholastic wisdom has not even dreamed."
Image: “LearningMind”
Three foundational books in the field of psychotherapy and existentialism, and each in its own way seeks the way in the human-human and patient-therapist relationship. A path not easy for both, a path not without mistakes, a path where you make the choice to be yourself.
There are other affinities between these books - for example, both Viktor Frankl and Irwin D. Yalom were awarded the Oscar Pfister Award.
Oskar Pfister is a prominent Swiss psychoanalyst and theologian who bridges the gap between psychology and religion. He is an associate of Freud.
And If Freud emphasizes the human desire for pleasure, Adler - for power, then Frankl considers the desire for "will to meaning" fundamental in human life.
One of the important aspects of Frankl's teaching is that man, who by nature is not free from certain circumstances – biological, psychological and sociological, is always free to choose a position in relation to these conditions.
This opens up a new dimension – that of the noetic. Man becomes capable of taking a position in relation not only to the world but also to himself.
This specific and only human dimension he calls noological.
From here follows another important point in the teaching - the specific human ability to distance oneself from oneself is used for therapeutic purposes (not only in short-term therapy) as a technique called paradoxical intention. A good sense of humor is inherent in this technique, i.e. humor as an ideal way for man to distance himself and rise above his own difficult situation.
The second basic position in logotherapy is the will to meaning.
Frankl opposes the “will to pleasure” (Freud) and the” will to power” (Adler) as derivatives of the original will to meaning. Pleasure is an effect of the realization of meaning, and power is a means to an end.
In these statements, oddly enough, Frankl and Freud are close to each other.
Freud himself wrote: “Respect for the greatness of genius is certainly great. However, our respect for the facts must be greater".
In his book, Frankl often quotes Goethe: “If we take man as he is, we make him worse; if we perceive it as it should be, we help it to become so." See how close Freud's words sound to this: "In both good and evil man is capable of more than he thinks."...
In the essay "The Meaning of Life", the emphasis is that until its last moment, life never ceases to have or retain meaning. Here is also the question of the so-called existential vacuum and existential frustration, which are often observed.
He also says that one should not ignore the tragic experiences of life, forming the "tragic triad": suffering, guilt, transience.
According to him, the “patient” despairs not of the suffering, but whether the suffering has meaning, and one would shoulder any suffering as long as he sees meaning in it.
Irwin Yalom's book Existential Psychotherapy is the most comprehensive study among the three books mentioned. It deals with four basic concerns:
Death, Freedom, Isolation, and Meaninglessness.
The first basic conflict is the tension between the inevitability of death and man's desire to continue existing.
Freedom is reduced to man's responsibility for his actions, to the fact that he is the author of his own world.
Interpersonal isolation boils down to the basic truth that each of us enters our existence alone and must depart from it alone.
The fourth basic concern is that everyone must construct their own meaning in life. These four basic concerns form the corpus of existential psychodynamics.
Existentialism in general does not lend itself easily to explanation…
But the existential tradition is ageless, and there is no great thinker who has not dealt with questions of life and death. Here are Kierkegaard, Camus, Sartre, Unamuno, Buber, Binswanger, Frankl, and Rollo May and many more…
And there is no person who is not absorbed and does not devote some time to existential questions.
Of course, everyone can read these brilliant books and find their own “existential essence”…
The more we learn…the more we understand and the more we understand - lesser we judge…
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Stob, Bulgaria