Spontaneity Versus Technique: A Study of the Applicability of Existentialist Concepts in Psychotherapy

There has been a considerable amount of speculation concerning the relationship between Existential Philosophy and so-called Existential Psychotherapy (or Existential Analysis).* What makes such speculation bewildering is that existential philosophy does not represent a completed, closed system, but rather a new, and only vaguely defined, vantage point; and that under the heading of “Existential Psychotherapy,” one finds a conglomeration of many new and not-so-new approaches. Finally, such speculation appears rather futile when one comes to realize that many if not most of us who have been interested in widening the horizons set by a deterministic natural science, have a rather scanty background in general philosophy and particularly in existential philosophy. Furthermore, neither therapist nor patient can free themselves completely from the fetters of a culture steeped for centuries in a dualistic-materialistic world view. Thus, the more-or-less harmonious mixtures of phenomenologic and analytic approaches in various psychotherapies might appear most crude and unscientific to the sophisticated philosopher. Yet the occasionally voiced opinion that existential philosophy and existential psychotherapy are entirely separate fields would only augment the disparity between the two. We should much prefer to hope that as the language of the philosopher becomes more familiar and palatable to us (both therapists and patients), we may approach some day the point where the existential philosophic and the psychologic view of the human being coincide. In the meantime, most psychotherapists, far from being full-fledged philosophers, may borrow from the wealth of concepts of existential philosophy those which promise to be fruitful in their work with patients, and they will not be overly concerned with the problem of whether these concepts fit neatly in a systematic phenomenologic approach.

To clarify this, let us rather schematically distinguish three large groups of contemporary