Existential anxiety
Vol.14,No.3(2020)
Abstract
Keywords:
existential philosophy; phenomenology; Gestalt psychotherapy; existential anxiety
The notion of existential anxiety originally came up with the philosophers of existentialism in the last century. They referred to it as the basic aspect of human existence, namely the anxiety of finiteness, isolation, and nonsense of being. They are resulting in the freedom to choose the meaning of life, the world, and oneself. Psychotherapeutic approaches that consider existential phenomenology as their philosophical basis work with this human experience, underlining its determining meaning, but despite references to it, they do not usually deal with it systematically. GT's founder, Fritz Perls, also approached anxiety from an existential point of view and considered it a necessary step in the search for individual meaning. The article tries to explain existential anxiety as a necessary consequence of the awareness of one's own existence as being in the world and at the same time looks at specific manifestations of its presence in individual experience in biological, psychological, social life, and therapeutic context. The article is based on a lecture given in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2013, as part of a summer psychotherapeutic training organized by the Gestalt Associates Training Institute in Los Angeles.
existential philosophy; phenomenology; Gestalt psychotherapy; existential anxiety
Copyright © 2021 Anton Polák