Presenting: Living Authentically and Finding Meaning (Part 2): Experiential & Clinical Applications

The question of meaning is a deeply human issue. It accompanies us in our everydayness and may erupt suddenly after significant changes or tragedies. Finding meaning is also intimately connected to authenticity, since personhood is constituted through engagement with the world and its values. Human beings become more truly who they are in dialogue with the world and through taking up activities that facilitate self-transcendence.

Drawing upon the framework of Viennese Existential Analysis (EA), this two-part talk will elaborate on the historical and theoretical dimensions of the question of meaning (D. Klaassen) as well as on the experiential and clinical applications for addressing meaninglessness (J. Kwee). EA is a phenomenological and person-centered psychotherapy that aims to assist clients in finding an ‘inner yes’ to life, to facilitate authentic decisions and to bring about a responsible way of dealing with life. In EA, meaning is understood as one of four conditions for a fulfilled existence, alongside motivations to be, to live one’s feelings and values, and to be oneself.

The historical and theoretical dimensions of finding meaning connect present-day Viennese Existential Analysis back to its roots in the life and work of Viktor Frankl. Frankl was the first to find a way to bring the philosophical and religious question of meaning into psychotherapy through his elaboration of the existential turn. He proposed moving from the ontological to the existential, in which the person is invited to experience themselves as questioned by life. The practical logotherapeutic and existential-analytical methods addressing meaning aim to assist clients with accurate perception of their situation, their felt experience of values, finding their own position, and living their authentic response. Practical methods of dealing with meaninglessness will be elaborated and illustrated through clinical examples.