Existential Therapy: Does Death Help One Live A Better Life

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Why or how does talking about death help one live a better life? Existential therapy is about helping people to overcome obstacles and reclaim their lives, to set themselves free, to help their clients attain this control over their own lives. Many therapists will tell the clients to confront death, to talk about it extensively. One of the most influential therapists of existential therapy who believed in this concept of talking about death was Irving Yalom. Existential therapy and talking about death were both innovative ideas for the time, and the latter is still considered uncomfortable for many people. Thanatophobia, or the fear of death, haunts many people for the majority of their lives, thinking about the eventual end of their existence. …show more content…
Ultimately, all people are concerned with death, and the fear of death is a source of anxiety for everyone from an early age” (Austad, C. 2009). Thanatophobia is one of the most common fears along with heights and public speaking. Although some would argue that it is not the fear of death itself, but a fear of the process of dying and the anxiety about how one will leave the world (Sun, K. 1993). Despite this, hardly anyone will ever talk about their own or others impeding doom. This overarching fear may be the reason why many religions have explanations as to what happens when we cease to live. We humans have the instinctual self preservation, but when confronted with our eventual demise we attempt to think of what we want to happen after. Christianity has heaven and hell, many Buddhists believe in recreation, the Greeks believed in Hades, and many people choose to believe in the idea of ghosts or spirits. We attempt to pass on our values to others, to be vindicated or to simply have people who accept and believe in what we believe in. Some may say that this process is a way for us humans to deny death or to simply minimize it’s impact and terror. This can be a great thing that has people accepting death, or just frequently talking about it, and having social interactions with those with the same beliefs (Niesta, Fritsche, & Jonas 2008). But this can also lead to social isolation from people who don’t believe in …show more content…
Existential therapy arose in the 1950’s in mainly Europe to immigrate to American Psychology in the 1950-60s. Its name comes from the latin root “existare” or “to become” it is known as the philosophy that examines the experience of the individual as something that is unique and isolated. Early existential therapists directly encountered the horrors of war and genocide and based the therapy off of these experiences. Often grouped with humanistic therapy because of similar beliefs, existential therapy has a firm basis in death and war and other aspects of human behavior that are usually overlooked by other therapies. The therapy is an inquiry into the nature of human existence and focuses on an authentic person actualizing their potential. There is also a firm focus on responsibility, the I-Am Experience, freedom, meaninglessness and isolation. The I-Am Experience is the recognition that one day you will not be alive, and the subsequent working out their existence. Some of the earliest existential therapists were Ludwig Binswanger, Soren Kierkegaard and Merdard Boss, Binswanger and Boss lived and practiced in Switzerland. Kierkegaard is credited as the Danish father of existentialism and explored the topics of
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