Existential Therapy
Viktor Frankl:
- Practicing physician before becoming a prisoner at a concentration camp during the Second World War
- His whole family perished in the concentration camp, causing a major shift in his thinking
- Meaning and purpose became human motivator (logo therapy-therapy through meaning)
- Treatment relationship is central to the process of affecting change
- Everyone experiences anxiety and difficulties of growth and change
- Placed emphasis on social responsibility
- People avoid conflicts and as a result, neglect potential meaning in their lives
- Believed existential therapy should be viewed as an attitude towards human beings
- There is a sense of aloneness that everyone faces
- Goal of therapy is to help client face challenges and be authentic while having courage
- Confronting death will help people lead richer and fuller lives
- Elaborated on the therapeutic alliance
- Self-in-world construct system, ideas of who and we are and how our worlds work
- African American advocating the cross-cultural counseling movement