Existential Therapy, Psychotherapy & Counselling

This course serves as a comprehensive overview of the central theories and practices of contemporary Existential Therapy (ET). It is ideal for anyone working in the mental health sector and is especially valuable to qualified:psychotherapistscounsellorspsychiatristsclinical psychologistslife coaches and pastoral workers. As well as those training towards such professions.

Whilst the course may also of interest to non-professionals with a personal interest in psychology and philosophy: specialist academic language is used throughout the course and it is pitched at a postgraduate level; it is mainly intended for mental health professionals and refers to therapeutic techniques and strategies throughout. The Goals of Existential TherapyExistential therapies have different goals to more conventional approaches to mental health, principle goals include:Helping people to live more authentic lives and avoid various forms of inauthentic behaviour Maximising autonomy and freedom by encouraging people to assume responsibility for their choices (and their lives)Helping people to find (or construct) a sense of meaning, purpose and value in lifeCultivating wisdom and the pursuit of philosophical truth: overcoming self-deception and harmful delusionsHelping people to face reality and certain "existential givens" (such as death/mortality) so that they can live more full and engaged livesExistential therapies are firmly rooted in existential philosophy and often draw on the ideas of prominent existential philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Buber, Nietzsche & Sartre - most of whom were writing in a time where the distinction between philosophy and psychology was less rigid than it is today. Likewise, existential therapies tend to be heavily influenced by phenomenology and phenomenological philosophers (such as Hegel and Heidegger).

Due to this influence of phenomenology existential therapies tend to emphasise subjectivity and inter-subjectivity; the nature and significance of phenomenology are something explored in this course. Helping people to reconnect with the subjective nature of their lives (instead of viewing themselves as passive objects or labels or in terms of overly reductionist biographical narratives) is both an important goal and a central method of many approaches to existential therapy. Furthermore, these approaches to therapy emphasise the role of will, choice, and volition in the challenges (and sometimes symptoms) that present in the lives of patients/clients and in the therapeutic process: they are, in part, a reaction to overly-deterministic and reductionist accounts of human behaviour and psychology.

In truth, there is no single 'Existential Therapy' but multiple 'existential therapies' - different branches of therapy and psychotherapy that are informed by different existential philosophers and existential psychologists: the course covers the three most prominent existentially-orientated approaches to therapy and psychotherapy:LogotherapyExistential-Humanistic TherapyExistential Phenomenological Therapy (and 'The British School')It also takes an in-depth look at the model of existential psychotherapy developed by Irvin Yalom and explores more recent developments in the field: Existential-Positive Psychology, Positive Psychology 2. 0, and potential avenues for integrating existential therapy with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)The Aims of The CourseThis course focuses on outlining, describing and explaining the central concepts, theories and practices of Existential Therapy: it does not pretend to present a particularly critical or evaluative analysis, it does not explore the evidential basis of existential therapy nor does it attempt to 'sell you' Existential Therapy. Critical appraisal of the value of existential therapy is something I will leave to you.