Dysfunctional Personal Experiences and Existential Dilemmas

This article presents a theoretical discussion of the results from the research, “An Existential Understanding of Anxiety: An Integration of the Ideas of May, Yalom, and Schneider.” It focuses on the development of dysfunctional experiences according to the theoretical perspectives of Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, and Kirk Schneider. Dysfunctional experiences emerge when human beings experience (implicitly or consciously) different existential dilemmas and are unable to make consistent decisions and confront the experience of anxiety that results from such contact. In this sense, dysfunctional experiences are not developed simply from the consciousness of existential givens, as suggested by Yalom (1980 Yalom , I. ( 1980 ). Existential psychotherapy . New York , NY : Basic Books . [Google Scholar]), but by the dialectical and paradoxical relationship with the following human dilemmas: life versus death, freedom versus determinisms, isolation versus intersubjectivity, meaning versus insignificancy, individuation versus adaptation, and sense of power versus impotence. This idea implies that anxiety and dysfunctional experiences could emerge, in daily life, from the need to take concrete decisions when faced with several possibilities or dilemmas, and not only from the awareness of those possibilities.