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D.Litt. et Phil. / The emphasis on the person of the therapist as a subject of theoretical and practical psychotherapy emerges at this time in history largely because of the reemergence of the concern with the uniqueness of human experience over the past century. This study hopes to gain some understanding of the self by focusing specifically on the experience of the trainee Gestalt therapist in order to gain insight into the essence of her experiences of being trained as a therapist. The phenomenological system of inquiry is employed as the mode of research in an attempt to study the experiences of five trainee therapists undergoing specialized training in Gestalt therapy during the second year of their professional training as psychologists at RAU. In an attempt to gain an in-depth understanding of their experiences, phenomenological interviews were held and recorded and thereafter transcribed verbatim. Intra- and inter-individual analysis of the transcriptions were done and a number of central and common themes emerged from the inter-individual analysis which capture the essence of their experiences as trainee Gestalt therapists. The value of this study lies mainly in its ability to gain an in-depth understanding and insight into the lived experience of trainee Gestalt therapists. The responses from the participants has implications for future training in Gestalt therapy as well as the general training of therapists within the South African context.

Patients are living longer with many types of cancer; however, often they face sudden possibilities of dying, not only due to their advancing illness but due to complications of their treatment. Consequently, they can express substantial existential distress. Nurses’ close proximity to patients puts them in an ideal place to assess and engage with patients’ existential distress; yet this kind of research has been scarce. The purpose of this doctoral thesis was to explore nurses’ experiences of being with patients facing the threat of mortality. Yalom describes this threat as the fear of death, isolation, anxiety and responsibility about freedom, and meaninglessness. The study took place in a cancer setting where care is highly technological and goals of cure dominate, specifically, two bone marrow transplant units of one institution in Canada. Benner’s methodology of interpretive phenomenology guided data collection and analysis of focused observations and interviews with 19 registered nurses. The experience of fighting cancer while preparing for the possibility of letting go was the main theme. Letting go did not reflect nurses’ intents to abandon life but to release patients (if only briefly) from perceived norms of the curative culture. More specifically, the main theme was characterized by: 1) working within the culture of cure and the possibilities of patients dying, 2) concern about “bursting the bubble of hope,” 3) whether to and how to respond to patients’ distress and dying, and 4) coping with patient involvement. In the context of responsive relationships (patients and their families, and healthcare colleagues), nurses reported engaging in communication about the threat of patients’ mortality, and responding with letting be and supporting families to let go, the management of technology and prevention of technological intrusions, and striving for patients to have “easier” deaths. Results indicate a potential to enhance nurses’ supportive care constituted by their perceived responsibility to engage and respond to patients’ existential distress. Moreover, this study suggests that more attention is warranted not only to policy, education, and research that focuses on patients’ existential well-being, but to the well-being of nurses working within tensions of curing and comforting.

Patients are living longer with many types of cancer; however, often they face sudden possibilities of dying, not only due to their advancing illness but due to complications of their treatment. Consequently, they can express substantial existential distress. Nurses’ close proximity to patients puts them in an ideal place to assess and engage with patients’ existential distress; yet this kind of research has been scarce. The purpose of this doctoral thesis was to explore nurses’ experiences of being with patients facing the threat of mortality. Yalom describes this threat as the fear of death, isolation, anxiety and responsibility about freedom, and meaninglessness. The study took place in a cancer setting where care is highly technological and goals of cure dominate, specifically, two bone marrow transplant units of one institution in Canada. Benner’s methodology of interpretive phenomenology guided data collection and analysis of focused observations and interviews with 19 registered nurses. The experience of fighting cancer while preparing for the possibility of letting go was the main theme. Letting go did not reflect nurses’ intents to abandon life but to release patients (if only briefly) from perceived norms of the curative culture. More specifically, the main theme was characterized by: 1) working within the culture of cure and the possibilities of patients dying, 2) concern about “bursting the bubble of hope,” 3) whether to and how to respond to patients’ distress and dying, and 4) coping with patient involvement. In the context of responsive relationships (patients and their families, and healthcare colleagues), nurses reported engaging in communication about the threat of patients’ mortality, and responding with letting be and supporting families to let go, the management of technology and prevention of technological intrusions, and striving for patients to have “easier” deaths. Results indicate a potential to enhance nurses’ supportive care constituted by their perceived responsibility to engage and respond to patients’ existential distress. Moreover, this study suggests that more attention is warranted not only to policy, education, and research that focuses on patients’ existential well-being, but to the well-being of nurses working within tensions of curing and comforting.

Thesis (M.A.)--Liberty University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

ABSTRACT The Meaning of Being: The Challenges of Existential Psychology for Biblical Counseling Frederick Nobuya Rodeheaver In fulfillment for the degree Doctor of Philosophy The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 2017 Chair: Dr. Jeremy Pierre The thesis of this dissertation is that any anthropology that guides pastoral counseling must account for the totality of the human experience, including an individual’s subjective experience of his or her life. Existential psychology, while captive to its own faulty assumptions, has made this kind of anthropological subjectivity a primary focus and thus becomes a helpful dialog partner to the biblical counseling movement in its continued trajectory of theoretical and methodological refinement. This dissertation concludes that while the insights of existential psychology are helpful to biblical counseling, due to its naturalistic assumptions their own therapeutic foci are more comprehensively answered from a theological framework, specifically in the doctrines of the imago Dei, and Christology. The study concludes with practical applications of existential psychology’s insights in the counseling relationship after they have been recast into a Christological context. Chapter 2 examines existential psychology in detail with particular emphasis on its key distinctive; a focus on existence instead of essence. The chapter concludes with a discussion explaining the failure of existential psychology to be the corrective to human understanding that its proponents hoped it to be. Chapter 3 investigates the three unique foci that existential psychology stresses to capture or understand personal subjectivity; the pursuit of authenticity, the problem of anxiety and the question of authority & autonomy. Chapter 4 recasts the very issues of chapter 3 in a Christological context based upon the imago Dei and its corollary doctrine the imago Christi. This recasting provides a surer foundation to the very issues that existential psychology emphasizes and provides the theological link to the therapeutic advantage that is found in existential psychology’s insight and techniques. Chapter 5 provides the practical application of the insights and discoveries of chapters 2 through 4 to the counseling relationship between the biblical counselor and counselee. Chapter 6 summarizes the main arguments of the dissertation and provides recommendations for future research.

M.A. / Existentialism and phenomenology as philosophical systems combined to form a branch of psychology called the existential-phenomenological psychology. The philosophical section of this study demonstrates that contribution. Ludwig Binswanger, a Swiss psychiatrist, was one of the major proponents of this paradigm. He applied the concept of “existential analysis” to psychotherapy, in reaction to psychoanalysis. His objective was to integrate philosophy, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry. The existential-phenomenological approach to therapy was introduced to the American audience by Rollo May, one of the intellectual leaders of the “Third Force” Movement. Rollo May’s existential approach contributed to the existential-humanistic thought of the “Third Force.” The “Third Force” Movement was launched in 1964 at the Old Saybrook Conference in Connecticut, United States of America. It started as a social movement in protest against the dominance of behaviourism and orthodox psychoanalysis. An eclectic group of thinkers attended the conference. Some of whom were Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Carl Rogers, George Kelly, Clark Moustakas, Gordon Allport, Charlotte Buhler, James Bugental, and others (Elkins, 2000). The “Third Force” Movement emerged at this conference. Because humanistic principles (whose philosophical origins are discussed in 2.4 below) were adopted as guiding philosophy of the movement, the name “Humanistic Movement” is often used. The two names are used alternatively in this study. If depth psychology is the “First Force”, and behaviourism the “Second Force”, then humanistic psychology is the “Third Force” (Brennan, 1998a, 1998b). The term “movement” is used throughout the study to denote the diversity of epistemologies within the “Third Force”, namely, existential, phenomenological, transpersonal, and the Gestalt thought. However, this study focuses on the theoretical contributions by the intellectual leadership of the movement (Rollo May, Abraham Maslow & Carl Rogers) with the exclusion of Gestalt therapies. Thus, Rollo May represents the existential-phenomenological approach, Maslow the humanistic-transpersonal, and Rogers the humanistic-phenomenological (though transpersonal to some degree: Section 4.3.2.2 illustrates this notion). Textbooks and journal articles indicate that the history of the “Third Force” Movement is rather complex and inconsistent in terms of reporting. This study reflects on the main events that led to the emergence of the movement and subsequently the current status within mainstream psychology. The “Third Force” moved psychology beyond the confines of the laboratory and the clinic into politics (egalitarian governance), education, and environmental issues. This study discusses existentialism, phenomenology, and humanism as contributing philosophies, the emergence of existential-phenomenology as a paradigm in psychology, and the history and contributions of the “Third Force” Movement. The existential and the phenomenological epistemologies are inherent within the “Third Force”, hence the link (in this study) between existential-phenomenology and “Third Force” humanism. There are therapies that benefited from the existential-humanistic thought. These include the following: Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), the ecosystemic approach, career counselling, and psychoanalysis (self-psychology). The emergence of postmodernism and cyber technology placed new challenges on the “Third Force.” Consequently, this study reviews the status and vision of the movement in the New Millennium.

This study compares meaning in life scores of leader, non-leader, and deviant adolescents. Two thousand nine hundred and forty-nine secondary school students took the Purpose In Life Test. The students were divided into groups according to their behavior, their level of academic achievement, their sex, and grade level. Results: The leader group had the highest meaning in life score, the non-leader group had the second highest meaning in life score, and the deviant group had the lowest meaning in life score. The higher achieving group did not have higher meaning in life score than did the lower achieving group. Male and female students did not have significantly different meaning in life scores. Grade eight and nine students had higher meaning in life scores than did grade ten, eleven, and twelve students. These findings provide empirical evidence in support of several inferences based on Frankl's theory of meaning in life. First, a higher level of social and athletic involvement is associated with high meaning in life and a sense of usefulness and identity. Secondly, existential vacuum underlies deviant behavior of students who isolate themselves by violating the rules and sanctions of the school. Thirdly, academic success or subject matter mastery was not related to high meaning in life. Fourthly, questioning the meaning of life is most apt to occur during the later stages of adolescent development, namely, during grades ten, eleven, and twelve. Replication of this study would determine whether or not these findings and inferences are true of adolescents in general. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

Submitted in part fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2009. / This study documents the journey of five addicted individuals who practice energy-based healing interventions over a period of four months, and provides an in-depth understanding of the embodied meaning of addictive and non-addictive being-in-the-world. The design of the study is qualitative and proceeds from an existential- phenomenological perspective whereby the data is collected through unstructured pre and post intervention interviews. Addiction is reformulated in terms of the flow of energy within and without the subtle energy system of the human body, and viewed largely from the chakra system of traditional Indian healing. The addicted person is thus perceived as a resonating node of the universe through which energy exchanges freely and fluidly or constrictedly and addictively.