Existential therapy has slowly been gaining recognition
In 2016, there were 136 existential-therapy institutions in 43 countries across six continents, and existential practitioners in at least 48 countries worldwide.
Recent studies show the benefits of using existential therapy for patients with advanced cancer, incarcerated individuals, and elderly people residing in nursing homes, among others; a number of meta-analyses have gathered data on its effectiveness.
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- Its origins go back to the existential philosophers of the 20th century, mainly to Jean-Paul Sartre, who declared in 1943 that we are “condemned to be free.”
- Viktor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning in 1946, and coined logotherapy as a method of creating meaning.
- Rollo May moved his perspective of the “existential-humanistic” approach in the 1950s from Europe to America.
- In 1980, Irvin Yalom defined the basis of the field of existential therapy, by establishing the four “givens” of the human condition: death, meaning, isolation, and freedom.
- Today there are a few different branches of existential therapy, but they all emphasize the fact that we can deal with existential givens in a way that can move us toward a free, authentic existence.
Existential therapy concentrates on free will, self-determination, and the quest for meaning. It views experiences like as anxiety, alienation and depression as normal phases in the human development and maturation.
This process involves a philosophical examination of a person's experiences, emphasizing the person's freedom and responsibility to facilitate a higher degree of meaning and well-being in their life.
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One of Buddhism's most popular teaching is the so-called 'impermanence. The term refers to the idea that everything has an end, no matter how difficult might seem to deal with at a certain point in time.
- Freedom Of Will: Human beings can freely choose their response to the outward circumstance.
- Will To Meaning: Human beings are completely free to achieve their goals and purposes in life, with the search for meaning being the primary motive, even forsaking pleasure for pain in the process.
- Meaning In Life: Meaning is an objective reality, and is not an illusion or a personal perception. Humans have the responsibility to be at their best possible selves by extracting meaning from every moment.