Invitation to Existential Psychology: A Psychology for the Unique Human Being and its Applications in Therapy Book

About the author     vii
Preface     ix
What is existential psychology?     1
Existential psychology     1
The real person and the role of phenomenology     1
Can psychology be about life itself?     4
Three basic life concepts: life feeling, life courage and life energy     5
The big questions of life     11
What is it to live authentically?     15
What makes existential psychology different?     20
Happiness and suffering     23
The concepts of happiness and suffering     23
Happiness in mainstream sociology and psychology     24
Happiness in humanistic psychology     26
What is suffering?     28
Four ways of dealing with suffering     30
Happiness as an existential concept     36
The role of happiness in therapy     40
Love and aloneness     43
What is love?     44
Various types of love     45
Is it possible to love everybody?     47
The role of aloneness in human life     50
Can human beings learn to stand alone?     53
Can personal development and social bonds go hand in hand?     54
Love as acultural and social phenomenon     61
Helping clients with problems of love and aloneness     62
Adversity and success: The role of crisis in human development     65
What is a crisis, and what is a trauma?     65
Crises and therapy: Three other schools     66
The existential theory of crisis     69
The three dimensions of a crisis     72
How do I get through a crisis?     78
Are crises desirable or undesirable?     82
Death anxiety and life commitment     85
Approaching one's own death     86
Three theories of death anxiety     91
The effect of being exposed to death     98
How can I help a dying person?     102
What is a serene relationship to death?     105
Free choice and the obligations of your life reality     107
How we make important life decisions     108
Theories of decision-making     111
How your decisions affect your way of being yourself     115
What do we do when we cannot choose freely?     118
Is your present life determined by outside forces?     119
Can you take over your present life?     125
To find the meaning of life in a chaotic world      131
Life goals, life meanings and life values     131
What life goals and meanings do people have?     132
Do goals and meanings change during the course of life?     138
Life values, cross-cultural perspectives and the globalised world     143
Redirecting your life in accordance with your life values     144
Towards a meaningful life in a chaotic world     146
Existential writers and their major works     149
Existential therapy and counselling     159
Bibliography     163
Index     171