Existential psychotherapy and the therapeutics of activism* |
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Authors: | Rebecca Greenslade |
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Affiliation: | UKCP, MBACP (Accred), London, UK |
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Abstract: | This paper considers the socio-political perspectives of Sartre, de Beauvoir and Fanon and their relationship to existential psychotherapy practice. It argues that their existential analyses of oppression must play a greater part in informing existential psychotherapeutic practice and pedagogy. In this current neo-liberal political age, in which therapy is increasingly being utilised as a form of psychological coercion and mystification, an understanding of the structures and systems of alienation and oppression that construct experience must translate to a broadening therapeutic concern beyond individual to social change. The author suggests that engaging with a politics of alienation and actively responding to the oppressive social conditions which generate distress and marginalisation should be intrinsic to existential psychotherapy practitioners and their representing institutions. |
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Keywords: | Existentialism psychotherapy oppression neo-liberalism activism |
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