Introduction

My boyfriend died, when I was sixteen, in a car accident. It was the first time I got so close to death. Before that moment, I had never thought of death; I knew, or at least I thought I knew, what it was but I never thought it could happen to someone I loved. It seemed to be true and inescapable for everyone else but me and my loved ones. I remember not leaving my room and staying in bed all day long for a significant period of time. I thought that it would not matter if I got up and be really successful or stayed in bed and be a failure because we were all going to be buried underneath no matter what we accomplish or not here. My life had no meaning, and nothing mattered.

Some people consider that time heals all the wounds but I do not know if it was time or my parents’ force that got me out of my room. It was back to school, in other words, back-to-life time. I was waking up every morning, putting on my uniform and going to my French high school, Lycee Saint Joseph, just like before but I did not feel anything like that before. It was as if my body was there but my soul was somewhere else, somewhere far away. It was as if I put my life on hold and was living in the past and asking to myself constantly the ultimate question “why”. It was like putting a band-aid on my deep wound and not letting its breath.

In my French literature class, we had to read this book called L’etranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus of whom I had no idea; in class, we were talking about the philosophical movement called “existentialism”. “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know” – were the first lines of Camus’ book. It shocked me to see how someone could not remember the time of their mother’s death. It was terrible and non-understandable for me because I still remembered the exact time when I was called to be informed about the car accident. So I remember reading it at one breath. As I was turning the pages, it was as if Camus had been writing about me, the main character Meursault was actually me. Just like me, Meursault was an unperceptive man, existing only by sensory feelings and nothing more. The plot strongly resembled to my life, as he had no meaning in his life, and it was only when his death sentence was given, Meursault realized that life was absurd but he was the only one who was responsible for creating his own meaning in life.

The realization of death gave him meaning. As we talked more and more about existential movement and as I got to read more books, especially those by Sartre, I made existentialism my philosophy of life. I adopted the theory of existentialism as a way to cope with the deep wound I obtained because of my boyfriend’s death, and I saw the way out for many other people in that philosophy. The fact that existentialism is a powerful tool for self-realization, for the deep inside change, made me aware of the advantages of existential therapy popular in the field of psychology and psychiatry nowadays. Hence, I am writing the present paper to investigate the basic assumptions of the existential philosophy, and to identify its value in psychotherapy.

History and Philosophical Principles of Existential Therapy.

Existential therapy is seen an innovative, third force in psychotherapy, after the emergence of psychoanalysis and behavior therapy (Sapp, 2010). It is essential to note that all three approaches are particularly distinct in terms of viewing the personality, the environment surrounding him or her, and the basics of psychotherapeutic intervention methods. There are many subdivisions of psychotherapy based on existentialism, including the Gestalt therapy, behavior therapy, or the person-centered division of psychotherapy (Sapp, 2010). The value of existentialism is in the fact that it offers a constructive, effective approach to solving human dilemmas deriving from the mental unease and disturbance (Spinelli, 2007). This approach is experiential, which means that the immediate and past experience of the psychotherapy client is taken as the basic material for analysis and intervention.

Existentialism has deep roots in the ancient times, with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle being the forebears of existential thought (Sapp, 2010). Aristotle produced many works on the issue of soul immortality, and advocated happiness as the main goal in life. Descartes was a later follower of existentialism and wrote a study of dualism of soul and body being responsible for various domains of the human life (Sapp, 2010). Heidegger, Buber, Camus, and Sartre, among others, are viewed as the pioneers of existentialism research and studies in the more recent period of time, while Frankl and Binswanger are the first psychotherapists who introduced a notion of existential therapy into psychotherapeutic practice (Sapp, 2010).