The Therapeutic Relationship as Viewed by Existential Psychotherapy: Re-Embracing the World

Abstract

Existential psychotherapy places pivotal significance upon the interrelational aspects of human experience. By so doing, the therapeutic relationship itself becomes the principal means through which the client's presenting symptoms and disorders are disclosed as direct expressions and outcomes of the client's overall "way of being" rather than as isolated and disruptive impediments. This paper examines the therapeutic relationship as viewed from four primary interrelational dimensions. Further, it focuses upon psychotherapy's tendency to exclude "the world" from the therapeutic relationship and provides two novel and challenging alternatives whose principal aim is to "bring the world back into the therapeutic relationship."