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Existential Psychology

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Sander L. Koole
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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Sander L. Koole

VU University Amsterdam

November 4, 2008

Key words: existential psychology, terror management, experimental existential

psychology, meaning, identity, death, freedom, isolation, alienation

Address correspondence to Sander Koole, Department of Social Psychology, Vrije

Universiteit Amsterdam, van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, the

Netherlands. Email: SL.koole@psy.vu.nl.

Existential psychology is a branch of psychology that studies how people

come to terms with the basic givens of human existence. The existential perspective

has important roots in philosophy, which has long tried to made sense of people’s

being in the world. The philosophical tradition most associated with existential

psychology is existential philosophy, which was pioneered by such thinkers as

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. These and other existential philosophers have

written about the anxiety that is inherent in human existence, people’s need for

meaning in a meaningless world, and the importance for people to make their own

choices according to their own authentic desires. Existential psychology has also been

influenced by artistic expressions of the confusion and alienation that people

experience in their confrontation with meaninglessness and absurdity, which can be

found in the work of novelists such as Dostoevsky and Kafka, and existentialist

writers such as Sartre, de Bouvoir, Camus, Ionesco, and Beckett.

Traditionally, existential psychologists have rejected the use of experimental

methods in psychology, preferring instead to analyze people's subjective experience

and personal phenomenology. This methodological position caused a separation

between existential psychology and mainstream academic psychology, which since

the early 20th century has become increasingly experimental and oriented towards the

natural sciences. Existential psychologists were more influential in the therapeutic

domain, however, where their ideas and methods were incorporated in an emerging

existential psychotherapy. Otto Rank, a former collaborator of Sigmund Freud, was

an important precursor of this therapeutic movement. Rank rejected Freud’s emphasis

on early childhood experiences, while emphasizing people’s personal responsibility in

the here-and-now, along with relational themes. Rank’s will therapy sought to use the

person’s creative will as a vehicle for transformation and psychological growth. Rank
is credited with having an important influence on Rollo May, a leading figure in the

development of existential psychotherapy in the USA. In Europe, a pioneer of

existential psychotherapy was Victor Frankl, who developed his logo-therapy, which

focuses on the importance of finding meaning in life.

A landmark volume on existential psychotherapy was published by Irvin

Yalom in 1980. This important work describes the historical background of existential

psychotherapy, and the main ideas and methods that are used by existential

psychotherapists. Existential psychotherapy regards people's existential struggles and

their associated anxiety and alienation not as dysfunctional, but rather as an inevitable

consequence of the human condition. By allowing clients to face their deepest

existential fears, existential psychotherapy seeks to make clients free to appreciate the

true significance of life. Existential psychotherapy further encourages clients to search

for a new and increased awareness of what matters in the present. This awareness is

intended to enable clients to achieve a new freedom and responsibility to act. Various

academic programs in Britain offer training in existential psychotherapy and

counseling. Publications on existential psychotherapy appear regularly in the journals

of the British Society of Phenomenology and the Society for Existential Analysis. In

2006, Emmy van Deurzen and Digby Tantam founded the International Community

of Existential Counsellors and Therapists.

Since the mid 1980s, there has been a renewed interest in studying existential

themes among experimentally oriented psychologists. A major impetus for this

development was given by terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Solomon, &

Pyszczynski, 1986), a theoretical perspective that was inspired by the existential

perspective, most notably the work of sociologist Ernest Becker. TMT has

emphasized the important role of existential anxiety in social behavior. The theory

assumes that people’s realization of the inevitability of their own death gives rise to a
tremendous potential for death anxiety. To manage this death anxiety, people rely on

various social-cognitive constructions that give them a sense of symbolic immortality.

Prominent among these constructions are people’s sense of self-esteem, which gives

people a sense of enduring value, and cultural worldviews, which assure people that

their world is meaningful and predictable.

One of the most important scientific innovations of TMT has been to render

classic existential thought into a form that can be tested through empirical, and even

experimental methods. More specifically, one of the key tenets of TMT has been

investigated by briefly reminding people of death, a procedure which experimental

psychologists refer to as “priming”. The effects of death reminders are then observed

in people’s subsequent behavior. According to TMT, people’s needs for self-esteem

and stable worldviews are increased by the psychological confrontation with death.

Accordingly, reminders of death should lead to increased strivings for self-esteem and

increased efforts to uphold one’s cultural worldviews. Both predictions have been

confirmed in a large number of social-psychological experiments (Greenberg,

Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997). By thus wedding an existential outlook with

sophisticated experimental methods, TMT research has created an important bridge

between existential psychology and its scholarly sibling, experimental psychology.

The integration of experimental and existential psychologies has also been

extended to other existential themes. Indeed, these developments have given birth to a

new sub-discipline of psychology, which is now known as experimental existential

psychology (XXP; Greenberg, Koole, & Pyszynski, 2004; Pyszynski, Greenberg,

Koole, & Solomon, in press). XXP studies how people are coping with existential

concerns through experimental methods. Although existential psychologists originally

rejected the use of experimental methods, it is important to recognize that the split

between existential and experimental psychology occurred during the 1920s, a time
when experimental psychology was theoretically and methodologically more narrow

and less sophisticated than it is today. Indeed, modern experimental methods and

theories have are increasingly capable of elucidating the high-level cognitive

processes that presumably underlie people’s existential concerns. The arsenal of

modern methods in XXP includes priming, response time measures, and even neuro-

imaging techniques. By using rigorous methods of observation and experimentation,

XXP aims to complement traditional approaches in existential psychology, which are

grounded in the subjective phenomenology of people´s existential concerns.

In a recent review article, Koole, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski (2006)

distinguished five major existential concerns that are central to current research in

XXP. A first major existential concern is death, and refers to the psychological

conflict between people’s awareness of the inevitability of death versus their desire

for continued existence. A second major existential concern is isolation, and arises

from the conflict between people’s need to feel connected to others versus

experiences of rejection and the realization that their subjective experience of reality

can never be fully shared. A third major existential concern in XXP relates to people’s

sense of identity, and arises from the conflict between people’s desire for a clear sense

of they are and how they fit into the world versus uncertainties because of conflicts

between self-aspects, unclear boundaries between self and non-self, or limited self-

insight. A fourth major existential concern is freedom, and originates from people’s

experience of free will versus the external forces on behavior and the burden of

responsibility for their choices. Finally, a fifth major concern in XXP is meaning and

stems from the conflict between people’s desire to believe that life is meaningful and

the events and experiences that appear random or inconsistent with one’s bases of

meaning.
 A host of experimental studies have confirmed that the “big five” existential

concerns have a pervasive influence on people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions

(Koole et al., 2006). Notably, XXP research indicates that existential concerns are

often most influential in human behavior when these concerns are activated outside of

awareness. This paradoxical set of findings creates an intriguing link between

existential psychology and modern theories of unconscious thought. Whereas modern

psychologists believed initially that the unconscious consisted strictly of `cold`

cognitive computations, XXP research suggests that the unconscious may also harbor

motivational conflicts that have existential implications for people (Westen, 1998). In

a way, these findings confirm what many classic existential thinkers have long

suspected: That existential concerns are a major force in human behavior, and that

ignoring these concerns only serves to deepen the psychological conflicts that are

associated with them.

Greenberg, J., Koole, S. L., & Pyszczynski, T. (Eds.) (2004). Handbook of

experimental existential psychology. New York: Guilford.

Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences

of a need for self-esteem: a terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister

(Ed.), Public self and private self (pp.189-212). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1997). Terror management theory of

self-esteem and social behavior: Empirical assessments and conceptual

refinements. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology

(Vol. 29, pp. 61-139). New York: Academic Press.

Koole, S. L., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2006). Introducing science to the

psychology of the soul: Experimental existential psychology. Current

Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 212-216.

Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Koole, S. L., & Solomon, S. (in press). Experimental

existential psychology: How people cope with the facts of life. In S. T. Fiske

and D. T. Gilbert (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology. New York: McGraw-

Hill.

Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud. Toward a

psychodynamically informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin,

124, 333–371.

Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

Suggested Readings
 Greenberg, J., Koole, S. L., & Pyszczynski, T. (Eds.) (2004). Handbook of

experimental existential psychology. New York: Guilford.

Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Koole, S. L., & Solomon, S. (in press). Experimental

existential psychology: How people cope with the facts of life. In S. T. Fiske

and D. T. Gilbert (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology. New York: McGraw-

Hill.

Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

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