The.
attempted to gain a sense of the subjective phenomena of mental illness using existential concepts (Owen 1994). In America psychotherapists May and Yalom (1984) formulated their unique type of existential psychotherapy, as did Frankl (1963) in Austria .
th logotherapy, and also Laing (1960), working with schizophrenics, in the anti-psychiatry movement in Britain. .
Ironically many of the writers celebrated as existentialists deny to be grouped together as one school of thought, agreeing wholly on all concepts, thus a diverse collection of tenets are represented under the umbrella of existentialism. .
Arising from a deeply philosophical root of ideas existentialism explores the experience of existence, asking what does it mean to be in this world. Concerned with ontology, rather than aetiology, existential theorists avoid models that categorise indiv.
uals, seeking to uncover that which is universal in the human dilemma (Deurzen-Smith 1996). Scientific enquiry fails to procure a complete worldview of "human-being" by pertaining to unexamined assumptions (Jaspers 1963). Human-being is revealed in the .
rkings of guilt, conflict, psychosis, suffering and death. Only by facing up to these contingencies can humanity be accomplished. .
Bugental (1978) defines identity as a process, not a fixidity, and when one realises this one is faced with the nothingness of being. This nothingness, the non-existence of an essence of being, is the primary source of freedom that one must face in each.
nd every moment. Kierkegaard (1944) theorises that such freedom brings about existential anxiety through the contemplation of choice and the realisation that one's destiny is not fixed but open to an infinitude of possibilities.
Existential anxiety differs fundamentally from psychological anxiety such that it may have no immediately perceivable cause, it seems irrational, pervades one's whole being, may manifest as an unexplainable dread and arise only in moments when normal se.