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Existential analysts often say that their principles and procedures are very different from those of contemporary psychoanalysts. In fact, some even claim they have uncovered a new dimension in psychology. I will not attempt to disuss the basis of this claim, because such a discussion would prove unconvincing or superfluous. The existentialists may easily set it aside on the ground that it is far too rational or too much a product of the modern philosophy of nature and science which they have by-passed. And those who are already convinced of the fallacies of existential analysis would be bored by a close study of its ideas. The existentialists are not interested in serious criticism, and their critics are not serious about existentialism.
The roots of this sharp cleavage go much deeper than the pure analysis of ideas alone, and I could not hope to trace them within the scope of this paper. Instead, I will consider the one proposition that existentialism has no relevance to psychoanalysis. Certain corollaries that follow from this proposition are, of course, extremely relevant—for example, that dread is conquerable, that the irrational is a continuous aspect of experience, or that a symbol has elements both affective and cognitive, immediate and reflective, prelogical and logical, or expressive and referential—whichever set of terms you happen to prefer. These corollaries are required in order to observe and describe the patterns and discontinuities of experience and to preserve their integrity in the shared transaction of therapy. Hence the theme of this paper: that existentialism is, philosophically, a