The existential psychotherapy approach posits that the inner conflict bedeviling us issues not only from our struggle with suppressed instinctual strivings or internalized significant adults or shards of forgotten traumatic memories, but also from our confrontation with the “givens” of existence.
Yalom, Irvin. The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients . HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Dr. Paul Pearsall wrote that the three big existential questions which most human beings consider are: why was I born, what is the purpose of my life, and what happens when I die? These questions rarely come up explicitly in psychotherapy but they are the background story lying in the unconscious whatever the client’s complaint. Sometimes they do come up in the course of therapy and the competent therapist must be able to manage them in a non anxious manner. Knowing the answers to these questions is the basis for understanding what makes a person tick. In order for the therapist to manage these concerns in a non anxious way, the therapist must have some understanding of his/her own answers. As the Temple of Apollo at Delphi famously had engraved over the entrance, “Know thyself.”
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