SUBJECT:
SCHOOL PERSPECTIVE
TOPIC:
EXISTENTIAL
PERSPECTIVE
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SUBMITTED TO:
MAM AYESHA
EXISTENTIALISM
―The current existence, situation, of individuals, motives, self-perception,
Psychological problems‖
● Existentialism focuses on man‘s search for meaning & purpose in life.
● Existentialism is a way of thinking that focuses on what it means for
people to exist.
● A philosophical movement.
● The premise that people must make choices about their life while
knowing they are
● Mortal – is what existentialism is all about.
History:
● It was one of the leading philosophical movements of twentieth century.
● A clear account and emphasized individuality, free will personal
responsibility in the modern world.
● Varied relationship with arts, humanism, &; politics.
Main ideas:
Existentialism focuses on personal choice & Questions: What does it mean to exist?
1. Existence precedes essence:
a. It is one of the most crucial concepts in existentialism. This explores the
idea that we exist & find meaning later. We have free choice to create
our meaning develop our values. ‗To create meaning‖ is our purpose in
life. Existential philosophers believe that when we‘re born, we‘re
‗nothing‘. Through developing meaning, we become what we make of
ourselves.
2. Freedom:
a. Existentialism emphasizes the importance of unrestricted freedom for
individuals to make their own choices. These choices, due to the
freedom that individuals have allow them:
b. Create goals
c. Make something of us
d. Create meaningful experiences in life.
3. Absurdity:
a. Existential philosophers connect the concept of absurdity of life to
creation of meaning. Absurdity means that there are a lot of unknown
circumstances in life, anything can happen to u at any time. They
believe that life is ‗absurd‘ & has no meaning until we attach
importance to it.
4. Anxiety:
a. It often occurs when u become aware of absurdity of life. It can lead to
a sense of overwhelming dread. ―Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom‖
5. Authenticity:
a. It is about being genuine & making choices in a way that is
fundamental to who u are regardless of external pressures.
6. Abondment:
The ideas that human are their only source of value. This can create feelings
of Loneliness & isolation.
THOMAS SZASZ
1920- 2012
➢ Born in hungry .
➢ Spend most of his time in USA.
➢ Fellow of APA or member of American Psychoanalytic Association.
➢ Quickly realised that psychiatric system is faulty.
➢ Professor of Psychiatry at State University of New York.
➢ In 1960 (An Essay :The myth of mental illness).
➢ He wrote 35 books.
➢ He was pioneer of anti- psychiatry movement.
Main ideas
1. The myth of mental illness:
Szasz claim that mental illness a myth.
My aim in:
Is there such a thing as mental illness ? To argue that:there is not?
● Disease is defines as a physical lesion.
● ‗Mental illness‘ is logical and semantic error.
● The reason is so that it can serve as a justification for psychiatric
interventions & institutions.
2. Abolition of involuntary mental hospitalization:
● Involuntary treatment is violence against humanity.
● Detention should only take place under the criminal justice system.
3. Presumption of Hospitalization:
● Disapproved actions, thoughts, emotions repressed through psychiatric
interventions.
● Thus suicide, unconventional religious beliefs, unhappiness, anxiety,
shyness, sexual promiscuity, shoplifting, gambling, overeating, smoking,
illegal drugs use are all symptoms of illnesses that need to be cured.
4. Separation of psychiatry & state:
● The state should not interfere with mental health practice, which ought to
be an individual voluntary activity.
5. Right to die:
● Szas argued that individuals should be able to choose when to die without
interference from medicine and state.
● He considered suicide to be among the most fundamental right, he opposed
state sanctioned euthanasia.
6. Right to use drugs:
● Drug addiction is a social habit not a disease. ● Supports a drug free market
STRENGHTH AND WEAKNESS OF THEORY
Strength
While existentialism focuses on how human beings interpret the world
around them, the theory posits that human beings have the freedom to act in a way
that appeals to them; however, human beings should similarly be willing to bear
the consequences of their actions. Therefore, this becomes a major strength of this
theory.
Weakness
The main weakness of existentialism is in the aspect of quietism, pessimism, pure
subjectivity, and moral relativity. Quietism relates to what an individual cannot
actualize; therefore, another individual should do it. This is the argument of the
existentialist and it becomes its weakness because this perception does not result in
the self-improvement of an individual.
Another weakness of the existentialist view is its argument that there is no God that
determines what occurs in the world and there is nothing as an afterlife. This view
creates pessimism in human beings. Absolute subjectivism constitutes a weakness
in the existentialist view. It posits that individuals should do whatever is
best for them. Such insinuation and attitude lead to conflicts and total breakdown of
an effective value system in the society.
Existential therapy
Existential therapy focuses on the anxiety that occurs when a client
confronts the conflict inherent in life. The role of the therapist is to help the client
focus on personal responsibility for making decisions, and the therapist may
integrate some humanistic approaches and techniques.
Existential therapy helps the individual accept and come to terms with specific
givens in life, such as facing awareness of their death.
There are four ultimate anxiety concerns trusted source that existential therapy
addresses:
1. Freedom and responsibility
2. Isolation
3. Death
4. Meaninglessness
Existential therapies address questions about the nature of our existence. The belief
is that by overcoming distress related to existential topics, mental health challenges
such as anxiety will be reduced or prevented.
Techniques used in existential therapy
If you‘re wondering what to expect if you see an existential therapist, there
are a few standard techniques used.
The first technique commonly used in existential therapy is what Frankl termed
logo therapy. Logo therapy looks at fears that cause symptoms of anxiety or other
mental health symptoms. In logo therapy, the basic premise is that there is
anticipatory anxiety when a person encounters or thinks about a fearful situation.
In logo therapy, the focus is on the precipitating event that causes symptoms.
Sometimes sessions are even geared to replicate and confront symptoms at a more
targeted level than ever before. The goal is to help separate yourself from the
symptoms, so they lose their grip on you.
Another technique commonly used in existential therapy is Socratic
questioning trusted source. Socratic questioning is a technique that existential
therapists use to help you gain a new perspective. Socratic questions are a series of
graded questions that help facilitate behaviors and thoughts toward therapeutic
goals.
Benefit of existential therapy
Existential therapy may be beneficial for people with a variety of symptoms,
including:
• Anxiety
• Dependency or use disorders
• Depression
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Apathy
• Shame
• Resentment
• Meaninglessness
• Psychosis
Some studies have also found that existential therapy may have positive
benefits for people who are incarcerated living with advanced cancer trusted
source, or chronically ill trusted source Likewise, one study also found that older
adults living in care homes may also see some benefit from existential therapy.
People who practice existential therapy often have two areas of training. The first is
mental health training. Most people will have a graduate degree in psychology or
counseling or a medical degree in psychiatry. Secondly, they may also have
completed additional work in philosophy.
Purpose
The overall purpose of existential therapy is to allow clients to explore their lived
experience honestly, openly and comprehensively. Through this spontaneous,
collaborative process of discovery, clients are helped to gain a clearer sense of
their experiences and the subjective meanings they may hold.
VIKTOR EMIL FRANKL
(March 26, 1905 – September 2, 1997)
Biographical Sketch
An Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist who developed the
psychological approach known as logo therapy, widely recognized as the ―third
school‖ of Viennese psychotherapy. The basis of Frank‘s theory was that the
primary motivation of an individual is the search for meaning in life and that the
primary purpose of psychotherapy should be to help the individual find that
meaning.
The younger Frankl showed an early interest in psychology. He took a particular
interest in studying depression and suicide, and he set up youth counseling centers
in Vienna in a successful effort to decrease teen suicide in the city. A few months
before his death, He produced the classic book in English as (Man‘s Search for
Meaning).
Logotherapy
Logotherapy literally means therapy through ―meaning‖. Frankl believed
that humans are motivated by something called a will to meaning, which
corresponds to a desire to seek and make meaning in life.
Frankl developed logo therapy after surviving Nazi concentration camps in the
1940s.
Techniques
Three techniques used in logo therapy include deflection, paradoxical intention and
Socratic dialogue.
Dereflection
Dereflection is aimed at helping you focus away from yourself and toward other
people allowing you to become whole and to spend less time feeling preoccupied
with a problem or worry. This technique is meant to combat hyper-reflection, or
extreme focus on an anxiety-provoking situation or object. Hyper-reflection is
often common in people with anticipatory anxiety
Paradoxical Intention
Paradoxical intention is a technique that invites you to wish for the thing that you
fear most. This was originally suggested for use in the case of anxiety or phobias
in which humor and ridicule can be used when fear is paralyzing. For example, if
you have a fear of looking foolish, you might be encouraged to try to look foolish
on purpose. Paradoxically, your fear would be removed when you set an intention
to behave as foolishly as possible.
Socratic Dialogue
Socratic dialogue is a tool used to help you through the process of self-discovery by
noticing and interpreting your own words. During Socratic dialogue, your therapist
listens closely to the way you describe things and points out your word patterns,
helping you to see the meaning in them. This process is believed to help you
realize your own answers—often, these are already present within you and are just
waiting to be discovered.
Logotherapy is used today for a variety of purposes, including addiction, pain and
guilt, anxiety, grief, and depression.
• To awaken the client‘s sense of responsibility and meaning.
• To help the client discover their true identity and place in the world.
• To help the client pursue what really matters in life.
• To make life better for self and others.
Conscience
The concept of conscience is at the heart of Logo therapy, the mechanism
which enables a person to become attuned to that which is the ―main concern‖ of a
human being: meaning. It is to be distinguished from the Freudian concept of the
superego.
Consciences maybe refer as
• The sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of
one‘s own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to
do right or be good
• A faculty, power, or principle enjoining good acts Key to the understand
Frankl‘s definition of conscience is the
―Transcendent quality of conscience‖. Frankl writes, ―All freedom has a ―from
what‖ and a ―to what‖. The ―from what of man‘s freedom is his being driven,
and the ―to what‖ is his being responsible, his having conscience. It is one of the
human endowments that receive the message from beyond the self. It is more like
an antenna that detects external meaning rather than the ―tapes‖ of the superego.
The Existential Vacuum
The strive after meaning can definitely cause frustration that leads to spiritual or
existential neurosis; the experience of having life meaningless or purposeless. For
Viktor meaning is what we desire on the other hand meaninglessness is a hole, a
vacuum. In order to get satisfaction, we let things rush to fill this hole or vacuum
which Viktor named existential vacuum. The sign of existential vacuum is
boredom. And to fill it we make certain vicious cycles; whatever we do is not
enough and we keep doing it; like obsessions e.g., collecting coins etc.
These neurotic vicious cycles are founded on something Frankl refers to as:
Anticipatory anxiety
Someone may be so afraid of getting certain anxiety-related symptoms that getting
those symptoms becomes inevitable. The anticipatory anxiety causes the very
thing that is feared! Test anxiety is an obvious example: If you are afraid of doing
poorly on tests, the anxiety will prevent you from doing well on the test, leading
you to be afraid of tests, and so on.
Hyper intension
This is a matter of trying too hard, which itself prevents you from succeeding at
something. One of the most common examples is insomnia: Many people, when
they can‘t sleep, continue to try to fall asleep, using every method in the book. Of
course, trying to sleep itself prevents sleep, so the cycle continues.
Hyper reflection
In this case it is a matter of ―thinking too hard.‖ Sometimes we expect something
to happen, so it does, simply because its occurrence is strongly tied to one‘s beliefs
or attitudes - the self-fulfilling prophecy. Frankl mentions a woman who had had
bad sexual experiences in childhood but who had nevertheless developed a strong
and healthy personality. When she became familiar with psychological literature
suggesting that such experiences should leave one with an inability to enjoy sexual
relations, she began having such problems. Psychopathology
Frankl gives us details as to the origin of a variety of psychopathologies. For
example,
Anxiety neurosis
Anxiety neurosis is seen as founded on existential anxiety - the sting of conscience.
The individual, not understanding that his anxiety is due to his sense of unfulfilled
responsibility and a lack of meaning, takes that anxiety and focuses it upon some
problematic detail of life. The hypochondriac, for example, focuses his anxiety on
some horrible disease; the phobic focuses on some object that has caused him
concern in the past; the agoraphobic sees her anxiety as coming from the world
outside her door; the patient with stage fright or speech anxiety focuses on the
stage or the podium. The anxiety neurotic thus makes sense of his or her
discomfort with life.
Obsessive-compulsive Disorder
OCD works in a similar fashion. The obsessive-compulsive person is lacking the
sense of completion that most people have. Most of us are satisfied with near
certainty about, for example, a simple task like locking ones door at night; the
obsessive-compulsive requires a perfect certainty that is, ultimately,
unattainable. Because perfection in all things is, even for the obsessive-
compulsive, impossibility, he or she focuses attention on some domain in life that
has caused difficulties in the past. The therapist should attempt to help the patient
to relax and not fight the tendencies to repeat thoughts and actions. Further, the
patient needs to come to recognize his temperamental inclinations towards
perfection as fate and learn to accept at least a small degree of uncertainty.
Depression
Like most existential psychologists, Frankl acknowledges the importance of genetic
and physiological factors on psychopathology. He relates depression to the
feelings of inadequacy we feel when we are confronted by tasks that are beyond
our capacities, physical or mental. On the spiritual level, Frankl views depression
as tension between what the person is and what he ought to be. The person‘s goals
seem unreachable to him, and he loses a sense of his own future.
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is also understood by Frankl as rooted in a physiological
dysfunction, in this case one which leads to the person experiencing himself as an
object rather than a subject. Most of us, when we have thoughts, recognize them as
coming from within our own minds. We own them, as modern jargon puts it. The
schizophrenic, for reasons still not understood, is forced to take a passive
perspective on those thoughts, and perceives them as voices. And he may watch
himself and distrust himself -- which he experiences passively, as being watched
and persecuted.
Frankl believes that this passivity is rooted in an exaggerated tendency to
selfobservation. It is as if there were a separation of the self as viewer and the self
as
viewed. The viewing self, devoid of content, seems barely real, while the viewed
self seems alien.
Although logo therapy was not designed to deal with severe psychoses, Frankl
nevertheless feels that it can help: By teaching the schizophrenic to ignore the
voices and stop the constant self-observation, while simultaneously leading him or
her towards meaningful activity, the therapist may be able to short-circuit the
vicious cycle.
Finding meaning
Frankl discusses three broad approaches for finding meaning. These approaches are
● Experiential values
● Creative values
● Attitudinal values
●
1. Experiential values
The first is through experiential values, that is, by experiencing something - or
someone - we value. This can include Maslow‘s peak experiences and aesthetic
experiences such as viewing great art or natural wonders. The most important
example of experiential values is the love we feel towards another. Through our
love, we can enable our beloved to develop meaning, and by doing so, we develop
meaning ourselves!
Love, he says, is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.
Needless to say, there can be no love without connecting or connectedness.
Love is the recognition of the uniqueness of the other as an individual, with an
intuitive understanding of their full potential as human beings. Frankl believes this
is only possible within monogamous relationships. As long as partners are
interchangeable, they remain objects.
2. Creative values
A second means of discovering meaning is through creative values, by ―doing a
deed,‖ as he puts it. This is the traditional existential idea of providing oneself with
meaning by becoming involved in one‘s projects, or, better, in the project of one‘s
own life. It includes the creativity involved in art, music, writing, invention, and so
on. Frankl views creativity (as well as love) as a function of the spiritual
unconscious, that is, the conscience. The irrationality of artistic production is the
same as the intuition that allows us to recognize the good. He provides us with an
interesting example:
We know a case in which a violinist always tried to play as consciously as possible.
From putting his violin in place on his shoulder to the most trifling technical
detail, he wanted to do everything consciously, to perform in full self- reflection.
This led to a complete artistic breakdown Treatment had to give back
to the patient his trust in the unconscious, by having him realize how much more
musical his unconscious was than his conscious.
3. Attitudinal values
The third means of finding meaning is one few people besides Frankl talk about:
attitudinal values. Attitudinal values include such virtues as compassion, bravery, a
good sense of humor, and so on. But Frankl‘s most famous example is achieving
meaning by way of suffering. He gives an example concerning one of his clients:
A doctor whose wife had died mourned her terribly. Frankl asked him, ―if you
had died first, what would it have been like for her?‖ The doctor answered that it
would have been incredibly difficult for her. Frankl then pointed out that, by her
dying first, she had been spared that suffering, but that now he had to pay the price
by surviving and mourning her. In other words, grief is the price we pay for love.
For the doctor, this thought gave his wife‘s death and his own pain meaning,
which in turn allowed him to deal with it. His suffering becomes something more:
With meaning, suffering can be endured with dignity.
Frankl also notes that seriously ill people are not often given an opportunity to
suffer bravely, and thereby retain some dignity. Cheer up! We say. Be optimistic!
Often, they are made to feel ashamed of their pain and unhappiness. In Man‘s
Search for Meaning, he says this: ―everything can be taken from a man but one
thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one‘s attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose One‘s own way.‖ Transcendence & Supra-meaning
Transcendence comes from the Latin word ―trans‖, meaning ―beyond‖ and the
word ―scandare‖, meaning ―to climb‖.
Transcendence refers to a spiritual or religious state, or a condition of moving
beyond physical needs and realities. Transcendence is also known as Supra-
meaning. Supra-meaning is the idea that there is, in fact, ultimate meaning in life,
meaning that is not dependent on others. It is a reference to God and spiritual
meaning.
Viktor Frankl believed that, beyond anything else, human beings crave meaning.
We can endure any what, he thought, as long as we have a why. Frankl calls this
ultimate meaning of life its supra-meaning. For Frankl, the super-meaning will be
forever beyond our grasp as finite humans. Our task is not to bear the
meaninglessness of life, but to bear the fact that we can‘t fully understand its
ultimate meaning. Again, it was his experiences in the death camps that led him to
the conclusions that In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness
of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen.
They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches
and spiritual freedom.
It should be understood that Frankl‘s ideas about religion and spirituality are
considerably broader than most. His God is not the God of the narrow mind. It is
not even the God of institutional religion. God is very much a God of the inner
human being, a God of the heart. This God is clearly transcendent, and yet
profoundly personal. He is there, according to Frankl, within each of us, and it is
merely a matter of our acknowledging that presence that will bring us to supra-
meaning. On the other hand, turning away from God is the ultimate source of all
the ills.
Conclusion
Existential psychologists are not only concerned with ―being‖ but with
―becoming‖ as well. They desire to help clients find the path in life that is their
own, a path that
they desire to travel, a path that brings self-fulfillment. Societal conventions,
adherence to cultural norms and ideologies, or rigid beliefs and attitudes handed
down generationally often result in discontent and illness, a feeling of having no
control over one‘s life or decisions, a loss of a ―sense of self‖. But that doesn‘t
mean that existential psychology denies the struggles and pain that individuals must
confront. By definition, the term ―existential‖ is often described as the ―pains‖ of
existence.
These pains take the form of not only conflicts and harsh realities, but also
the realization that one is inherently isolated in his or her experience, that life has
no inherent meaning structure, that one is responsible for authoring his or her life
story, and that one dies – ceasing to exist at all. If confronted honestly, this
realization helps one to live life more fully, but if not addressed, it can lead to a
number of ―living‖ or ―being‖ issues and problems.
