Existential Factors in Psychotherapy

I would title my contribution to this Round Table: “Existential Factors in Psychotherapy.” I intend to discuss just that, but also, in so titling my contribution I intend to affirm that existential, or as it is also designated, ontological psychiatry, is not another rival school nor a therapeutic system apart.

Existential psychiatry is not structured to compete with or to displace psychonanalysis, or the systems of Jung, Adler, Horney, Sullivan, Meyer, et al.

Instead, existentialism proffers to extend the conceptual embrace and to enlarge the therapeutic competences of psychiatry. It can serve as a precious addendum to any system, theory, and practice of psychotherapy, which remains “open-ended.”

Existential psychiatry is an embodiment of distinctive knowledge and comprehension rather than the protagonist of novel therapeutic techniques. Knowledge and comprehension are not, however, without effect on technique; hence as concepts of existential psychiatry are gained and then are added to the corpus of psychiatric theory and knowledge, technique perforce is affected. But, again it must be affirmed, existential psychiatry may effect a shift in therapeutic accents, may bring into awareness considerations previously not appreciated or neglected, but none nor all of this adds up to novel or new techniques.

I have referred to existential psychiatry as “proffering an extended conceptual embrace.” Precisely what does this mean? Bluntly stated, it refers to the ontological comprehensions which are nuclear to existential psychiatry. Note the terms—ontological and existential. They are as related as is the minute to the hour. The existential is the micro-component of the extended ontological macro-process. For this reason it is proper to speak of “the existential moment” in the ontological continuum. Experientially we are subjectively cognizant of the existential moment. The ontological continuum is only perceptible by mentation; but the ontological continuum is a reality in exte