What is existential therapy?

What is existential therapy?

Existential therapy is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on the fundamental challenges of being human: questions of meaning, responsibility, identity, agency, and how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world around us. Rather than concentrating primarily on symptoms or diagnoses, it attends to a person’s lived experience as a whole. I offer psychoanalytically informed existential therapy in person in Cambridge, MA and virtually throughout Massachusetts.

What does existential therapy focus on?

Existential therapy approaches psychotherapy from a humanistic perspective, emphasizing the experience of the whole person rather than reducing someone to a set of symptoms or problems to be fixed. Instead of relying on manualized or protocol-driven treatments, the work centers on the developing relationship between client and therapist as a space for reflection, understanding, and change.

In my work, I tend to orient around ideas such as authenticity, freedom, subjectivity, embodiment, and choice—less around coping skills and techniques, and more around how one comes to live more fully and deliberately.

How Is Existential Therapy Different from CBT or Skills-Based Therapy?

Many contemporary approaches to therapy are short-term and structured around standardized methods. While these approaches can be helpful and practical, some people find that something deeper still feels unresolved.

Existential-psychoanalytic therapy places greater emphasis on insight, emotional experience, and the ways we construct meaning in our lives. If you have tried cognitive-behavioral or skills-based therapy and found it useful but incomplete, this approach may offer a more reflective and comprehensive form of support.

What working together might look like?

Of course, this is a difficult question to answer, as a central tenant of this approach is that relationships are co-constructed.  Said another way, the way the therapy looks will differ depending on the ways in which you and I come together in the therapy.  However, across all the people I work with, I strive for collaboration, curiosity, empathy, and to create a space that can support the “safe risks” of the psychotherapeutic process.

Who tends to benefit from this approach?

Because of the relational nature of this approach, my perception is that it is suitable for most clients.  However, I think this approach is particularly appealing to clients facing major transitions, engaging in questions of personal identity, seeking to make meaning out of what feels like a “meaningless” existence, experiencing relationship struggles, and people who have struggled with approaches to therapy that felt overly manualized.

Common Questions

o   Is existential therapy evidenced-based?

 Existential therapy is not as rigorously researched as other modalities, as it is difficult to do research on long-term treatment models and, often, existential therapy’s concerns are hard to operationalize (also true of psychoanalysis).  However, decades of psychotherapy research have demonstrated that much of what existential therapy concerns itself with—therapeutic rapport, meaning-making, emotional engagement, authentic encounter—are critical to positive outcomes in long-term therapy.

o   How long does therapy usually last?

 Existential therapy is generally not time limited and “how long” will depend on the needs of the individual client.  That said, most of my clients will stay in therapy for several months, and in many instances years.  I consider this less a marker of inefficiency, but representative of the endless ways in which this approach can be applied to help people examine their lived experience.

 o   Do you work in-person or online?  How do we start?

 I have an office in Cambridge, MA that I am at three times a week.  I also offer therapy throughout Massachusetts via telehealth.  If what you have read here resonates and you are interested in working together, I welcome you to reach out here.