T.O.P. Prelim Lectures: Existential Psychology

T.O.P. Prelim Lectures: Chapter 8 - Existential Psychology

• Course: Existential Psychology
• Topic: Overview of Existential Psychology
• Existential psychology is rooted in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and other European philosophers.
• Early existential psychologists and psychiatrists include Ludwig Binswanger, Medard Boss, Victor Frankl.
• Rollo May believed people are responsible for who they become and that many lack the courage to face their destiny.
• Post-industrial societies show a trend towards dehumanization of people.
• Kierkegaard addressed both person's experience and experiencing person.
• Kierkegaard and later existentialists emphasized balance between freedom and responsibility.

Topic: Biography of Rollo May

• Rollo Reese May was born April 21, 1909, in Ada, Ohio.
• He was the first son of six children.
• He had a somewhat distant relationship with his parents.
• His parents frequently argued, and separated.
• He followed a course very similar to Erik Erikson's, 10 years earlier.
• His books, articles, and lectures established May as the best-known American representative of the existential movement.

Topic: Background of Existentialism

• Existentialism is interpreted differently by philosophers and psychologists.
• Common elements found in existential thought include: existence precedes essence, opposition to the subject-object split, search for meaning in life, responsibility for who one becomes, and anti-theoretical basis.
• The increasing dehumanization in postindustrial societies is a focus of existentialist thought.
• Basic concepts: Being-in-the-World; Alienation in three areas (separation from nature, lack of meaningful relationships, alienation from oneself).
• Three simultaneous modes in being-in-the-world: Umwelt (environment), Mitwelt (relationships with others), and Eigenwelt (relationship with oneself).
• Dread of not being (non-being or nothingness); Death is most obvious avenue, but fears can cause people to live defensively and avoid confrontation with non-existence.

Topic: The Case of Philip

• Philip, an architect, struggles with a complex and turbulent relationship with someone named Nicole.
• Their idyllic summer together morphs into concerns about marriage and growing mistrust.
• Philip experiences betrayal and abandonment.
• Philip's reaction to this love-loss reveals features of May's work around anxiety, intentionality, destiny, psychopathology, and psychotherapy.
• Philip sought therapy from Rollo May.

Topic: Anxiety

• Anxiety arises when people realize their existence or something connected with it may be destroyed.
• May defined anxiety as the subjective state of an individual realizing the potential destruction of their existence, thereby becoming nothing.
• The acquisition of freedom leads to anxiety.
• May differentiated between normal and neurotic anxiety.
• Normal anxiety is proportionate to the threat.
• Neurotic anxiety is disproportionate and involves blocking from awareness including repression.
• Normal anxiety can be positively productive when a person gains insight into their life; Neurotic forms lead to dogma instead of genuine understanding.

Topic: Guilt

• Guilt arises when people deny their potential, misunderstand others' needs, or are oblivious to their reliance on the natural world.
• Both anxiety and guilt are ontological rather than reactive.
• May identified three forms of ontological guilt: separation guilt, relational guilt, and self-imposed guilt (all based on different aspects of being-in-the-world: Umwelt, Mitwelt and Eigenwelt).

Topic: Intentionality

• Intentionality is the structure that gives meaning to experience and allows people to make future decisions.
• Without intentionality, people cannot choose or act.
• Intentionality is the structure of meaning that enables us as subjects to understand and interpret the objective world.

Topic: Care, Love, and Will

• Care is the opposite of apathy, a state where something matters.
• Love is delight in (and valuing) the presence and development of another, as much as one's own.
• Will is the capacity to organize oneself toward a certain goal or direction.
• May identified four kinds of love: sex, eros, philia, and agape (biological, psychological, friendship, and altruistic).

Topic: Freedom and Destiny

• Freedom is the ability to understand that one is determined.
• It comes from an understanding of one's destiny.
• Existential freedom represents freedom of action, freedom of doing.
• Essential freedom represents freedom of being.
• Destiny isn't preordained, but rather our goal or terminus.

Topic: The Power of Myth

• People in Western civilization feel a need for myths.
• Myths are not false but rather conscious and unconscious system beliefs for interpreting personal and social problems.
• Rationalistic language prioritizes truth, whereas myth prioritizes communication of an experience.

Topic: Psychopathology

• Defined by May as a lack of communication and interpersonal connection (inability to know others and to share oneself).
• Apathy and emptiness are major maladies of modern times.
• May views symptoms (like headache) as temporary or permanent, based on early childhood experiences.

Topic: Psychotherapy

• He advocated facilitating greater self-awareness/conscious experience to support freedom of choice.
• Psychotherapy should improve people, help them expand consciousness, and enable them to become more freely human.
• May viewed therapy as a combination of religion, science, and friendship.

Topic: Concept of Humanity: May's Existential Psychology

• May valued notions of free will

• May considered a nuanced view of human nature, without becoming overly pessimistic.

• May emphasized teleology (understanding actions in context of future), rather than causality (cause and effect).

• May supported that conscious and unconscious force play important role in development.

• May supported that social & biological forces both play a role in development.

• May emphasized uniqueness in human experience.