Book Description
The first part of this book contains a new system of existential psychotherapy illustrated by a few case studies.The Second Section entitled Gallimaufry is a selection of articles on various topics.

Book Description

Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy promises to be a landmark in the fields of psychotherapeutic theory and practice. A comprehensive revision of its predecessor, The Psychology of Existence, co-edited by Kirk Schneider and Rollo May, Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy combines clear and updated guidelines for practice with vivid and timely case vignettes. These vignettes feature the very latest in both mainstream and existential therapeutic integrative application, by the top innovators in the field. The book highlights several notable dimensions: a novel and comprehensive theory of integrative existential practice; a premium on mainstream integrations of existential theory as well as existential-humanistic integrations of mainstream theory; a focus on integrative mainstream as well as existential-humanistic practitioners, students, and theorists; a discussion of short-term and cognitive-behavioral existential-integrative strategies; a focus on ethnic and diagnostic diversity, from case studies of multicultural populations to vignettes on gender, sexuality, and power, and from contributions to the treatment of alcoholism to those elucidating religiosity, psychoses, and intersubjectivity.

Customer Reviews (1)

Best presentation of current efforts.
The leading international practitioners of existential-humanistic therapy have chapters in this book. Kirk Schneider provides the most detailed description of the psychological and philosphical foundations of this work. Each case demonstrates both the influence of this foundation and the power of its application. Schneider's well articulated position reflects a resurgence in interest in "humanizing" psychotherapy. ... Read more

Book Description
The Dictionary of Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling is a comprehensive lexicon of existential terms, their meaning and application. With over 350 entries

(cross-referenced throughout), the book is the ideal companion to studying the the ideas of existential pioneers, such as Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre.

Drawing on their experience as existential practitioners, Emmy van Deurzen and Raymond Kenward achieve the difficult task of making complex philosophical concepts accessible and practically relevant. Through the use of illustrative quotations and examples, they translate existential terminology into everyday language and show how the ideas are employed in practice. They also examine associated themes such as sexuality and religion and appraise the main strengths, weaknesses and limits of the existential approach.

The Dictionary of Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling will be invaluable to all trainees and practitioners of the existential approach and to all counsellors and psychotherapists who recognise the centrality of philosophical concepts to their practice. ... Read more

Book Description
As people struggle with a sense of crisis and confusion they search for clarity and meaning. Increasingly they turn to psychotherapists and counsellors, who will find in this book a powerful existential approach to therapy that helps people to make sense of themselves by addressing their social, cultural and political context as well as their personal and interpersonal issues. It makes room for paradox and the acceptance of the inevitable. It allows for questioning and re-evaluation. The existential approach lends itself to time-limited work. Existential therapists do not encourage dependence. But this book also shows that such a brief, tough approach does not mean it is task oriented or superficial, rather that it is possible to allow for the free play of existential concerns and cover much territory in limited time. Clients and therapists will find this approach effective, topical and relevant. "... an important contribution to the literature on existential psychotherapy. The book brings forward two valuable innovations. One is the demonstration of the idea that brief or time-limited therapy can be done very effectively on existential principles, dealing with deep life issues. The other contribution is the idea of the Existential Wheel which is embodied in charts that depict and clarify the essential concepts and methods of existential psychotherapy, a powerful device that will be useful to experienced therapists as well as those less familiar with existential therapy." Bo Jacobsen, University of Copenhagen "... provides an overview of the principal ideas and concerns of existential therapy and an accessible exposition of the authors' model from an applied standpoint. Case material derived from the authors' practice illuminates and makes plain that, even if time limited, their approach makes accessible many of the deep issues that are usually viewed as emerging only in long term therapy. These instructive, and often deeply moving, contributions succeed in conveying the human meeting that exemplifies the authors' work with clients, and personifies the existential approach to the therapeutic encounter." From the Foreword by Emesto Spinelli, London ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An excellent Book
This book is an excellent look at how the brief therapy paradigm can beused in an existential setting.The wheel of existence is an interestingidea, and provides a useful counterpoint against say, Emmy van Deurezen'sideas, based on Binswangers 4 modes of being.Very interesting. ... Read more

Book Description
Existential Perspectives on Human Issues offers students, teachers and practitioners alike a definitive handbook for the practice of existential psychotherapy. Divided into four parts, the book presents different dimensions of living; physical, social, personal and spiritual. Each chapter gives a brief overview of the literature on the topic under discussion as well as a historical background. Theory and practice are addressed with case illustrations highlighting particular relevance. Critical considerations, possible drawbacks and research needs are additionally detailed and suggested further reading is given. ... Read more

Book Description
This work is available on its own or as part of the 7 volume set Selected Works of R. D. Laing ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

ontological roots of schizophrenia
This is an interesting book on how schizophrenia is more of an 'existential' problem than an illness. I think it has some real practical applications for those who work with this population. I wouldn't, however, throw out the more clinical way of viewing psychosis.

R. D. Laing is good
In particular, I endorse the back cover of another of his books, where it says that schizophrenics constantly try to escape because they perceive it is impossible to fulfill their needs. He stated it in a better way, of course; this is just how I remember it.

respect
i just think that this book should be one that everyone reads at some point in their lives (sooner rather than later!). it really gives you something special, something i have very rarely experienced in a book. open the book and open your mind!

The engine of the Sixties! Or, one of 'em.
This book felt to me strangely intimate, and understanding when I first read it.Laing, who was a clinical psychiatrist, presents case studies of people who feel overly self-conscious and self-critical, fearful to be on the street alone, hiding from social contact -- common enough feelings which he treats with supreme empathy, not judgement or haste to reform. He explains in the preface his analysis is based on existenstial thought, yet, he avoids the amoralistic tendencies of this genre of philosophy. His emphasis is more on the process of alienation of self from self, and inner self from outer self, into a "split." He gives analysis of the so-described schizoid and schizophrenic personality, attempts to analyze why a person slips into so-called "psychosis" -- in his analysis a schizophrenic person is forming a logical reaction to an untenable situation.Here he leans on other writers, such as Gregory Bateson's double-bind theory.

Laing's writing is poetic in some places, and is literate in a way psychology books seldom are.i recommend this book highly to anyone who wants to know more about their own behavior, and others'.

An existential approach to the conception of the self
In this valuable study, Dr Laing proposes to examine the way some individuals are very proficient in acquiring a false self in order to adapt to false realities and to give an account of specifically personal forms of depersonalisation and disintegration. It is no small task for the therapist to articulate what the patient's "world" is and his way of being in it in order to outline his psychopathology. The author states that if we look at his actions as signs of a disease, we impose categories of thoughts on the patient in our effort to try to explain his mental state and it isn't easy for the therapist to transpose himself into the patient's strange and alien view of world in order to understand his existential position.
Dr Laing states that many patients suffer from "ontological insecurity" because they feel insubstantial, the ordinary circumstances of life constituting a continual threat to their own existence. He mentions personalities like Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Francis Bacon. Then Dr Laing proceeds by giving the account of three forms of anxiety encountered by the ontologically insecure subject: engulfment, implosion and petrification. To illustrate these three forms, the author describes the case of Mrs R. who suffered from agoraphobia and schizohphrenic withdrawal.
Interestingly enough, the schizoid individual constantly feels vulnerable as he is exposed by the look of another person and that is why he fears live dialectical relationships with live people and prefers to relate himself to depersonalised persons or to phantoms of his own fantasies, thus the distinction between the "embodied" and "unembodied" self. Such an individual is afraid of the world, frightened that any impingement will be total and engulfing. He is afraid of letting himself "go", of coming out of himself or of losing himself because he feels that he will be depleted, exhausted, emptied, robbed or sucked dry. So for the schizoid individual, direct participation in life is felt as being at a risk of being destroyed by life. One aspect of this individual's ontological insecurity is the precariousness of his subjective sense of his own aliveness and the sense that others threaten this tentative feeling. The schizoid individual strongly believes in his own destructiveness by others. This view is in accord to the existentialist's philosophy represented by Jean-Paul Sartre who stated in his famous theatre play "Huis Clos" that "L'enfer, c'est les autres."
Thus a false self can arise in the individual which is in compliance with the intentions and expectations of the other or with what are imagined to be the other's intentions or expectations. Indeed, the self-conscious person feels he is more the object of other people's interest than in fact he is. And so the schizoid individual carries out defences like being like everyone else, being someone other than oneself, playing a part, being nobody or being incognito and anonymous. So if the gaze of others is experienced as a threat, there is a constant dread and resentment at being turned into someone else's thing (what Sartre called "l'être-pour-autrui"), of being penetrated by him, and a sense of being in someone else's power and control. Freedom then consists in being inaccessible. Love too for schizoid individuals is viewed as disguised persecution since it aims to turn him into an object of the other.
This type of individual can be himself in safety only in isolation. With others he plays an elaborate game of pretence and his social life is felt to be false and futile. But the more he keeps his "true self" concealed and unseen, the more he presents to others a false front and the more compulsive this fake presentation of himself becomes. This can lead to a complete disintegration of the personality. ... Read more

Book Description

This second edition of the Encyclopedia of Drugs, Alcohol, and Addictive Behavior reflects changes in the attitudes about, use, and knowledge of drugs and alcohol since the first edition published in 1995. These changes include the decrease of crack cocaine use and resurgence of heroin use; changes in laws dealing with drug use (on both the state and national levels), and new discoveries leading to a better understanding of how drugs work and what makes them addictive. More than 700 articles, written for both the student and layperson, cover the social, medical and political issues related to drugs and alcohol, as well exploring and explaining types of addiction.

Book Description
After discussing 8 common ways in which we deny, evade, cover-up, and repress the deeper dimensions of death, this book---drawing on insights provided by Martin Heidegger---creates the new concept "ontological anxiety", which differs both from the physical-biological-medical fact of death and from our emotional-subjective-personal fear of ceasing-to-be.This existential-phenomenological approach requires a paradigm shift in our thinking about death, but this new model may make better sense of what we are already deeply feeling.

The first three sections of this book explore and distinguish the following three dimensions of death: Each dimension of death may be described in 7 corresponding features:

THE FACT OF DEATH

1. intellectual construct.

2. empirical fact.

3. observable occurrence.

4. finitude.

5. objective-external.

6. abstract-general.

7. unowned.

THE FEAR OF CEASING-TO-BE

1. emotional response.

2. arises from empirical fact.

3. personal apprehension.

4. awareness of my finitude.

5. subjective-deep.

6. specific-personal.

7. owned.

ONTOLOGICAL ANXIETY

1. inner state-of-being

2. arises from my internal 'nothing'.

3. existential disclosure.

4. constant internal threat.

5. arises from the core of my self.

6. more mine than my death.

7. lays claim to my self. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Adolescence, published by Thomson Gale on December 22, 2005. The length of the article is 2848 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: Yalom (italics added)

Citation Details
Title: An existential view of adolescent development.
Author: Bill Fitzgerald
Publication: Adolescence (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 40Issue: 160Page: 793(7)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
Have you ever felt the nameless dread?Terror and anguish without a cause?This book gives a name and a careful description to the nameless threat, our free-floating anxiety, which we have all felt but perhaps not faced.

First we must separate existential anxiety from ordinary fears as clearly as possible.Then (developing insights provided by such thinkers as Heidegger, Kierkegaard, May, and Binswanger), we can proceed to analyze the many dimensions of this inner condition-of-being.How do we cope with anxiety?Can we channel it creatively, helping us to become more Authentic?And it is possible to live beyond angst? ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, published by Brill Academic Publishers, Inc. on September 22, 2000. The length of the article is 4769 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: PHENOMENOLOGICAL REFLECTION AND TIME IN VIKTOR FRANKL'S EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY.
Author: Jim Lantz
Publication: Journal of Phenomenological Psychology (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2000
Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Volume: 31Issue: 2Page: 220

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
Cultivating a sense of existential meaning is identified in psychological literature as an important factor in preventing illness, in promoting health, and in successfully adapting to lifes changing circumstances (resiliency as well as recovery). A lack of this sense of meaning, which the editors refer to as existential vacuum, can form the basis of such disorders and diseases as neurosis, depression, aggression, suicide ideation, and substance abuse. Scholars have studied these relationships for years. But new developments in the field and results of recent qualitative analyses have led to a new focus on how people experience the world and draw meaning from ordinary life. Based on their research over the last ten years, the editors write, Existential meaning plays a crucial role in moderating the effects of stress oh physical health and psychological well-beingThe role of existential meaning at different stages of life, and at points of transition between stages, has much to teach us about optimal human development across the life span.The editors have organized the book into three sections. In the first they and their contributors lay out the foundational models and definitions that are current in the study of existential meaning. Part two emphasizes research methodology, particularly issues relevant to investigation and measurement of questions and experiences of personal meaning (clinical and sociological). The third section offers specific applications of the theories, models, and methodologies presented in the first two parts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Top Resource
There have been several attempts (ie PT Wong) to putbook out of this calibre but editors Reker(Trent Univ,Canada) and Chamberline(Massey Univ. NZ) have succeeded. The volume works because the theory, research and applied sections not only have most of the key people writing about what they know, but the focus is on the use in 'everyday people.' Topics are timely and boldly go where few researchers have gone before ie., aging, Alzheimers/AIDS and religiosity. The editors summarize and offer future directions to this much needed volume. ... Read more