please, send me references about existential therapy - sartrean perspective

-- jose teixeira (trindadeteixeira@hotmail.pt), December 20, 2002

Answers

Sartre's perspective was not a therapeutic one, although he probably influenced some of the existential psychotherapists. I'd start by reading an article on existial psychotherapy or Daseinsanalysis in an encyclopedia of psychology. Some of the writers whose work you should examine include Medard Boss, Rollo May, and Ludwig Binswanger. There is a good overview chapter by Steen Halling and Alex Carroll, entitled Existential-Phenomenological Psychology in Donald Moss (Ed.), Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology: A Historical and Biographical Sourcebook (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1999). Several biographical essays in that book may also be worth reading: "James T. Bugental: Continuity and Change," "Ronald Laing: Existentialism and Psychoanalysis," and "Rollo May: Liberator and Realist." If you run a search in the WorldCat you'll find hundreds of books.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), December 20, 2002.

Irvin Yalom wrote a very interesting book called _Existential Psychotherapy_. It does not take an historical perspective, but more of a conceptual one. As I recall, it has sections devoted to each of what Yalom believes to be the central existential issues: death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. It's getting a little old now (1980) -- as is existentialism itself -- but still a good place to start.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), December 20, 2002.