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Met Freud in 1907 until Freud's death in 37
Existentialist ideas/terms used by the theorists
Dasein (term given to human beings by Heidegger) means "a being there"; in the
thick of things, being there instead of being here (where we might belong, or feel more
at home)
Throwness - we are thrown into a universe not of our choosing; "I" (conscious and
free) is not separate from "that" (predetermined and physical)
Focus on authenticity there are clear "better" and "worse" ways of living life, and
the more you are aware of your self, your social world, of your duty, of the inevitabilities
of being human, the "better" you are.
You are "worse off" if you are inauthentic, caught up in generalization (thinking of
people as one big mass) and forfeiting freedom.
Life is not about pleasure or even happiness (though they're OK too) life is about
doing your best to be your best.
Inauthenticity
Conventionality is the ignoring of one's freedom; living a life of shallowness.
(You can become too "busy" to notice your decisions; you can turn to authorities or
peers or media for guidance)
Trying to understand client's "world view" or "world design":
How do you see the physical world?
The social world?
Your personal world?
Your relationship to time? (Are you in the past, in the future, living as a flash or living
forever?)
What is your mode: singular (alone and selfreliant), dual, plural (membership in a larger
body), or anonymous (quiet and secretive, in the background?) Does it change?
DEATH
argues that freud denied the overwhelming power of death as a source
of anxiety, instead limiting his patients to more specific (and thus, more "curable")
anxieties
death can be assisted by first identifying one's cognitive style (field dependent or field
independent, or "rescuer" vs "specialness")
and then realizing that "existence cannot be postponed", that death is inevitable and so
can be either heroic or miserable. You can either do everything or do nothing.
death anxiety is inversely proportional to life satisfaction.
one can also become desensitized to death if it is revealed to them over and over in
small "doses"
FREEDOM / RESPONSIBILITY
all denial and redirection can be improved by assuming responsibility: not "he bothered
me" but "I let him bother me"; not "I did it unconsciously" but "whose consciousness is
it?"
responsibility can be attained with six steps:
learn how others see them
learn how their behavior makes others feel
learn how their behavior creates opinions in others
learn how others' opinions create their opinion of themselves
patients often have behaviors that fulfill their "prophecies" a therapist can come at
them from a different angle, one in which they don't fit the mold (ie. in a non
transference) and address them as long as they occur in the "here and now"
Frankl: "Can anyone blot out the happiness you've experienced? [...] can anyone blot
out the joy you've created in others? Can anyone blot out what you've achieved and
accomplished?"
"Cosmic" meaninglessness can be addressed when it is understood to be an
experience, not a definitive perspective, and that it does not invalidate past "matterings"
CASE HISTORY: a patient at the age of 55 began to write poetry and found she was
great at it; she comes to Yalom at 60,
diagnosed with cancer
feeling that her life has been a lie
he is able to reassure her that she did not feel this way before, when that life mattered; a
deep state of doubt does not invalidate the meaningfulness of life prior.
she realizes that her poetry came from the experience she had had of living a full life.
"just because a relationship may not have a future reality, why strip it of its current
reality?"
those who are likely to extend themselves continuously and in authentic fashion to
others will, through the peopling of their inner world, experience a tempering of their
eistential anxiety and be able to reach out to others in love rather than to grasp at them
in need."