Existential psychotherapy is based upon the principles of both humanistic and existential psychology, the latter being a movement with roots in the existential philosophy and writings of Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ortega y Gasset, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Tillich, Marcel, Buber, and others. Otto Rank, Medard Boss, Ludwig Binswanger, Karl Jaspers, Eugene Minkowski, Ronald Kuhn, V. E. von Gebsattel, J. H. Van Den Berg, H. J. Buytendijk, and G. Bally were among the first to apply existential principles to the practice of psychotherapy (calling it Daseinsanalyse or existential analysis) in Europe, followed prominently by Viktor Frankl (Vienna), R. D. Laing (London), and Rollo May, J. F. T. Bugental, Thomas Szasz, Frederick “Fritz” Perls, and Irvin Yalom in the United States. It was psychologist Rollo May along with psychiatrist Henri Ellenberger who, in 1958, introduced the European existential analysts to American clinicians in their...
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Derived in part and reprinted by permission from Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity by Stephen A. Diamond, the State University of New York Press, ©1996, State University of New York. All rights reserved.
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Diamond, S.A. (2020). Existential Psychotherapy. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24348-7_222
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