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• Existential therapy focuses on fundamental themes like mortality, meaning, freedom, responsibility, anxiety, and the feeling of being alone, relating them to an individual's current struggles.
• The goal is to help clients explore "the givens of life," understand how they sometimes ignore or deny these realities, and appreciate how addressing them can lead to a more thoughtful and meaningful existence.
• Clients are encouraged to contemplate life, acknowledge their spectrum of choices, and then make decisions.
• Existential therapy is based on the idea that humans are naturally free and therefore accountable for the decisions
• Humans create their own lives and design the paths they follow in life

Viktor Frankl

• Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) founded the Youth Advisement Centers in Vienna in 1928 and ran them until 1938.
• From 1942 to 1945, Frankl was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, which greatly influenced his views on existential therapy
• Frankl believed people always have choices, regardless of their circumstances and thought the essence of being human involved searching for meaning and purpose, which can be found through actions, experiences, and even suffering.
• He is known as the founder of the "Third School of Viennese Psychoanalysis," in addition to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis and Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology.
• Logotherapy, developed by Frankl, means "therapy through meaning.”
• Key ideas include; life has meaning in all circumstances, the primary motivation for living is the will to meaning, freedom to find meaning in what we think, and body, mind, and spirit all need to be integrated to be fully alive.

Rollo May

• Rollo May's personal struggles with existential concerns and the failure of two marriages contributed to his interest in psychology and counseling.
• He studied the works of Søren Kierkegaard, and from this he recognized the existential dimensions of anxiety, which resulted in him writing The Meaning of Anxiety(1950).
• The existential theologian Paul Tillich was greatly influential on Rollo May, becoming his mentor and personal friend.
• May's writings emphasize the importance of human experiences, such as recognizing and dealing with power, accepting freedom and responsibility, and discovering one's identity.
• May believed that psychotherapy should be aimed at helping people discover the meaning of their own lives and should be concerned with the problems of being, rather than problem-solving.
• According to May, the real challenge is for people to live in a world where they are alone and where they will eventually have to face death.

Irvin Yalom

• Irvin Yalom (born in 1931) is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
• Heavily involved in group psychotherapy since 1970 upon publishing "The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy"
• Works address four "givens of existence" which consist of: freedom and responsibility, existential isolation, meaninglessness, and death
• He advocates for using the here and now of the therapeutic relationship to explore a client's interpersonal world, and believes that the therapist must be transparent, especially regarding their experience of the client.

Key Historical Figures And Their Ideas

• Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855): Addressed anxiety and uncertainty in life, in which anxiety is associated with making basic decisions about how we want to live, and is not pathological
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900): Emphasized the importance of subjectivity, expression a revolutionary approach to the self, ethics, and society, and that humans are creatures of will as opposed to impersonal intellects
• Martin Heidegger (1889–1976): Reminds that we exist in the world", and should not try to think of ourselves as beings apart from the world into which we are thrown
• Martin Buber (1878–1965): Humans live in a kind of betweenness", emphasizing the importance of presence, as well as that the therapist and client could never be on the same footing because the latter comes to the former for help
• Ludwig Binswanger (1881–1966): Proposed a holistic model of self that addresses the relationship between the person and his or her environment, further emphasizing the subjective and spiritual dimensions of human existence
• Medard Boss (1903–1991): They talked of dasein", or being-in-the-world, which pertains to our ability to reflect on life events and attribute meaning to these events
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980): Believed humans are more free than earlier existentialists had believed, values are what we choose, and failure to acknowledge our freedom and choices results in emotional problems

Contemporary Figures

• James Bugental (1915–2008): Focused on helping clients examine the answers to life's existential questions and assisting the in revising their answers to live more authentically term coined the term, coined the term "existential-humanistic psychotherapy"
• Emmy van Deurzen: States people are not "sick" but rather are "sick of life or clumsy at living,” further teaching her psychotherapy clients to commit to the self-searching process, and that existential therapy should not be aimed at curing their patients

View of human nature

• The existential tradition aims to strike a balance between acknowledging the limitations and tragic aspects of human existence and recognizing the potential and opportunities in human life.
• From the existential perspective, the fundamental aspects of the human condition include: self-awareness, freedom and responsibility, creating one's identity and meaningful relationships, searching for purpose and values, experiencing anxiety as a part of living, and awareness of death.

Proposition 1: Capacity for Self-Awareness

• Freedom, choice, and responsibility create the foundation for self-awareness
• Capabilities increase with awareness

Proposition 2: Freedom and Responsibility

• People are generally free to determine their choices
• The freedom to become and reflect on the meaning of choices is essential

Proposition 3: Identity and relationships

• People seek to preserve uniqueness yet connect with others and nature.
• Loneliness and alienation arise from lack of connection.

Proposition 4: Search for Meaning

• A distinctly human characteristic is the struggle for a sense of significance and purpose in life.
• Clients may need a clear intention to make it easier for them make the right, suitable ones. 

Proposition 5: Anxiety as a Condition of Living

• Arises from personal efforts to survive with various feelings generated. 
• Existential anxiety is the unavoidable result of being confronted with the "givens of existence" including; freedom, choice, isolation, and meaninglessness

Proposition 6: Awareness of Death And Non-being

• Gives significant to living and is a basic human condition

Therapeutic Goals

• Clients are invited to recognize that they are not living fully authentic lives and to make choices that will lead to their becoming what they are capable of
• To guide toward authenticity
• Claims authorship-taking responsibility for actions

Therapist function and role

• Assist clients in seeing the constriction of their actions
• Assist one to accept responsibility

Phases of Existential Counseling;

• Therapists guide clients in identifying world assumptions.
• Therapists support more self-examination that leads to new insights.
• Therapists enable people to implement examined values in concrete ways.

Multicultural prospective

• Existential counselling probably is the most useful method for helping clients find harmony and meaning in all cultures

Existentialism diversity

• Existential practitioners can be criticized on grounds ignoring the social factors  causing human issues,