Existential Psychotherapies   [Archived Catalog]
2023-2024 Academic Catalog and Student Handbook with Summer Addendum
   

PSY 2040 - Existential Psychotherapies


The existential psychotherapist works with fundamental existential themes of human existence: death and freedom, choice and responsibility, isolation, relatedness, and meaning and mystery. These themes organize the basic structures with which human life is shaped and experienced, and therefore provide the context for an existential psychotherapy. This existential psychotherapy course explores clinical applications of existential theory to the human situation in individual and group therapy. As an introduction to existential psychotherapies, this course is in three parts: Part I (theory) lays out the historical and philosophical traditions that underlie existential psychotherapeutic practice; Part II (therapy) shows how existential therapy grows out of existential theory; and Part III (application) uses the case study method to consider how existential psychotherapy can be applied to a diverse set of problems and clientele. Though open to all students, this course also satisfies the Clinical Interventions III/IV requirement in the Clinical Psychology degree program, with Clinical Interventions I & II as prerequisites. Cross-listed as EHP 2040 - Existential Psychotherapies . 3 credit(s)