Existential Analytic Psychotherapy

Existential Analysis is an example of a theoretical advancement which has far outstripped the development of actual techniques adapted to the new theory. There is no accepted technique of psychotherapy in existential analysis.1 The technique varies with the analyst. What remains the same is the general program as to how the patient should be regarded and understood. All such analysts will begin with an attempt to understand the phenomenological world of the other person. Beyond that there are wide differences in practice. In part these differences are fruitful since they represent a continued exploration unhampered by a dogma of technique.

Two points will be made here. The first is that there is such an organic unity between the phenomenological approach and existential theory that the theory can and will be derived here from the basic phenomenological frame of reference. The second point is that there is a psychotherapeutic approach which most closely fits the theory. In fact a close adherence to the theory demands a particular approach. The approach has been called gestalt therapy, and considerable credit for it is due to Dr. Frederick S. Perls.2, 3 So, in addition to rederiving existential analytic theory from its phenomenological foundations, we will show a psychotherapeutic approach which fits this theory.

The door into existential analysis is through phenomenology and in this case the structure of the door implies much of the house. In the phenomenological approach to another person, one attempts to understand his mode of being-in-the-world. There are a number of immediate and important implications. One is not coming to his world with objective yardsticks or categories. One cannot translate his world into oral, anal, genital, id, ego or superego terms unless the patient spontaneously sees these as real characteristics of his world. There is no objective, outside-of-him system into which one can fit his world. One must be ready to discover worlds radically diffe