Running Head: EMMY VAN DEURZEN
1
Emmy van Deurzen: An Existential Approach to Psychotherapy Shalom Alaichamy PPSY700B Moral Identity Formation and Psychotherapy Azusa Pacific University
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
2
Emmy van Deurzen: An Existential Approach to Psychotherapy In this paper I will explore the psychotherapy approach developed by Emmy van Deurzen, a prominent existential psychologist working in the United Kingdom. Van Deurzen has written several books on the subject of existential therapy but does not take her goal to be the development of yet another model of psychotherapy. Rather, she encourages therapists from all approaches to reflect on, and incorporate, the values and questions that she brings to the therapy room. These values and questions draw heavily on philosophy, both classical and more recent existential philosophy. Reflecting on the insight philosophy has given her in the therapy process, van Deurzen says, “Philosophical training prepares you to be more aware of clients’ beliefs, values and purpose in life” (Feltham, 2013, p. 38). In this paper I will try to uncover the themes and values undergirding van Deurzen’s philosophical approach as well as examine the process and goals of her psychotherapy. Along with a deeper understanding of this model, I hope that this will also show the relevance of her approach to other therapy models. Personal Background A brief look at Emmy van Deurzen’s personal background (van Deurzen, 2014) will provide a useful backdrop to understanding her ideas. Van Deurzen was born in the Netherlands and grew up listening to the harrowing experiences of her parents and other adults during World War II. She refers to this as “second-generation traumatization.” In this way, fear and anxiety about life and death became a strong motivating factor early in her life. She soon found herself attracted to classical philosophy, especially Socrates’ commitment to truth. Later she studied the existential philosophers and developed a passion for phenomenology, which laid the foundation for her understanding of human consciousness and freedom, which in turn informed her
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
3
therapeutic approach. As we explore van Deurzen’s approach, we will see these themes of anxiety, commitment to truth, the uniqueness of the individual experience, and flexibility in creating meaning. Inadequate Goals for Psychotherapy Before delving into the main ideas of van Deurzen’s existential psychotherapy, it is important to consider her thoughts about the objectives of psychotherapy in general. I will highlight two specific areas that van Deurzen addresses in this regard: first, the quest for happiness and second, the role of emotions (van Deurzen, 2009). Happiness Van Deurzen sees happiness as a commonly held objective for society in general and for psychotherapy as well. She addresses positive psychology in particular, describing it as an approach that provides a shortcut approach to happiness. Positive psychology, she says, isolates behavior that leads to happiness and then encourages people to directly engage in that behavior in order to achieve a state of happiness. She even goes so far as to compare positive psychology to psychopharmacology (van Deurzen, 2009, p. 71). In objecting to this approach, van Deurzen points out that the impact of such attempts are short-lived. Moreover, the complexity of the human condition is overlooked, and the negative but useful aspects of life are ignored. Van Deurzen blames much of this on contemporary society and its obsession with pleasure. This is enabled by society’s modern habit of using science for packaged solutions and products, happiness being one of them. However such misguided attempts and misguided methods only end up making things worse. As van Deurzen concludes, “Negativity not dealt with or expressed accumulates till it explodes back into our lives in a different guise” (van Deurzen, 2009, p. 75).
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
4
Response to Emotions Included in a superficial search for happiness are inadequate responses to emotion. Van Deurzen illustrates these responses by analyzing the Epicureans, the Skeptics, and the Stoics (van Deurzen, 2009, p. 148). She points out that the Epicureans sought to rid themselves of beliefs and desires that did not lead to pleasure, thus eliminating pain. The Skeptics got rid of beliefs and desires as a whole, and the Stoics exercised careful control over their emotions. All of these fall short, says van Deurzen, and instead we should face and accept our negative emotions and learn from them. Emmy van Deurzen’s Existential Psychotherapy The Deep Metaphor We are now in a position to better understand van Deurzen’s own ideas about life, the human condition, and psychotherapy. These ideas are built around the deep metaphor of engaging fully with life. There are several important concepts bundled into this metaphor and these concepts help understand van Deurzen’s psychotherapy more fully. Engaging with life means facing life’s negative elements as well as the positive ones, and it means facing them courageously. To engage fully requires a whole-hearted and passionate response to life. To face life and engage with it fully in this way, one also needs to understand life and oneself. This means that the search for truth, or clarity, is of paramount importance for van Deurzen. Accordingly, she often describes attaining clarity as the goal of psychotherapy. It is clarity that allows us to find meaning in life, to make sense of our emotions, and to find a path forward amidst the confusion of life. I should add, however, that I don’t believe that attaining clarity is the deep metaphor for this model. Even though clarity plays a crucial role, it appears to
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
5
me that van Deurzen sees it primarily as an enabling step toward the ultimate goal. Courage, passion, and clarity, then, are key elements that enable us to engage fully with life. The Four Dimensions of Life’s Challenges Seen from this perspective it is clear that it is important to understand both the human self (which is doing the engaging) and life and its problems (the object of the engagement). For van Deurzen and her approach, it is more important for the therapist to be aware of the variety of human problems, rather than being skillful at categorizing people according to disorders (van Deurzen, 2009, pp. 82-83). While these problems come in countless forms, they can also be loosely categorized so that the therapist can have a starting point from which to understand the client’s individual context. Van Deurzen groups life’s challenges and problems along four dimensions: physical, social, personal, and spiritual. The physical dimension includes such problems as sickness, dissociation, and death. The social dimension includes problems such as difference, discord, and destruction. The personal dimension includes such things as dilemma, disappointment, and dread. The spiritual dimension includes such things as disillusionment and doubt. All of these are approached from an existential perspective, so, for instance, the response to dissociation might be to help the client better understand their consciousness as an embodied experience and to experience the body as a subject rather than an object. Another example would be a response to a destructive person which would explore how the person’s violence might be caused by an inability to express an internal fear. The Goals of van Deurzen’s Psychotherapy In response to these challenges, this model does not address symptoms or seek to modify behavior (van Deurzen, 2014, p. 15). Rather, following the theme of engaging fully with life, van
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
6
Deurzen’s psychotherapy draws on several themes from existential philosophy in order to help clients understand and embrace life. The model is based on the key belief that meaning is not intrinsic to the world, but that the client must create the meaning (van Deurzen, 2002, p. 6). A search for meaning, then, is one of the main elements of this psychotherapy. Also important is an understanding of the paradoxes of life such as, for instance, one can truly live only when death has been acknowledged (van Deurzen, 2002, p. 18). The search for meaning often has as its starting point a sense of crisis, a failure of meaning in the client’s life, or an unavoidable sense of anxiety. Clients need help to face, understand, and overcome this crisis or anxiety. In the process they will need to recognize their strengths, understand the freedom that they have, attain clarity regarding their values and choices and finally embrace their life situation with all its challenges and its opportunities (van Deurzen, 2014, p. 15). The Ethical Framework of Van Deurzen’s Model Obligatory Ethics Holding up Van Deurzen’s model against the ethical categories described by Frankena (1971) helps us to understand the model’s ethical underpinnings. At the broadest level, Van Deurzen’s model exhibits a normative ethics. In other words, there is a clear set of norms or goals at the heart of the model. These norms are formulated primarily as an obligation theory. Van Deurzen’s writings are full of exhortations regarding what to pursue, how to pursue it, and the urgency of pursuing it. Moreover, these obligations are of a moral nature because van Deurzen considers it good and right for us to follow these exhortations. We now turn to what it is that van Deurzen thinks we should pursue.
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
7
Ethical Egoism Van Deurzen’s model of existential therapy has a specific end in mind. She talks about the various ways in which we should think about life and what steps we should take in psychotherapy, but it is always with an end goal. This indicates that a teleological ethic guides her model. There are no universal rules for people to follow (which would make it a deontological model) and there is certainly no reference to Christian agapism. Her teleological ethics are bound to the individual’s good. It is the individual’s life that her model is concerned about: how the individual will respond to life’s challenges and find meaning. This indicates that ethical egoism is the main ethical underpinning of van Deurzen’s model. “A Meaningful Life” as the Teleological Ends This ethical egoism is of the non-hedonistic variety, which is clear from van Deurzen’s stance regarding pleasure. Pleasure is an inadequate goal for human life for van Deurzen: “Happiness is a mood, not a project or an end goal” (van Deurzen, 2009, p. 82). I believe that the teleological ends for van Deurzen’s model can be summarized as the meaningful life. This is the non-moral good toward which we are urged to strive. We can see these non-hedonistic but individualistic and teleological elements when Van Deurzen says, “Helping people to learn to live a good life in their own way is what existential psychotherapy aims to achieve” and that “what is good is relative to what you want to achieve” (van Deurzen, 2009, p. 53). Enabling virtues The themes of courage, passion, and clear thinking run throughout van Deurzen’s thinking. As such, these virtues play an important role and complete this normative ethical framework. Van Deurzen says we have to “look life in the eye”, to let “human passion matter again” and be concerned with the “clarification of human dilemmas” (van Deurzen, 1998, p. 3).
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
8
If these virtues functioned as goals in themselves, it would mean that van Deurzen’s model was based on virtue ethics. Instead, in her model, they function in service of the teleological end. Referring to clarity regarding self, for instance, van Deurzen encourages us to “plant the seeds of a new living understanding of ourselves which leads to a respect and welcoming of life” (van Deurzen 1998, p. 33). In other words, the ultimate goal for the practice of these virtues is engaging with life in a meaningful way. Nondescriptivist Meta-ethics Van Deurzen does describe possible forms of the good life and examples of desirable ethical behavior. But she does not deduce or uncover objective rules for such behavior. Therefore her ethics is not of the definist kind. Ethical questions, for van Deurzen, are primarily framed as life goals that are set by each client after overcoming crisis and anxiety and after attaining clarity. Since there is no mapping of ethical principles to an objective reality, I consider van Deurzen’s ethical framework to be nondescriptivist. In van Deurzen’s words, “Phenomonology [allows] for a free and open exploration, without a blue print of morality or a dogmatic theory of human reality” (van Deurzen, 2014, p. 12). The importance of clarity indicates that in this model, ethical principles can be reasoned about even if they are not universal and objective. Van Deurzen places great emphasis on being able to think morally, even coining the term “morability” to describe this ability (van Deurzen, 2009, p. 55). However, because there no universal moral law to follow, people have to work out their own moral values. A major goal of psychotherapy, then, is to develop and foster this skill in people.
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
9
The Self, The client and the Therapist The Human Self The self, for van Deurzen, is not fixed and rigid but, rather, flexible with the freedom to reshape itself. The self includes reason, will, emotion and behavior. Behavior is clearly not the defining feature of the self for van Deurzen. Emotion is a normal feature of humanity, an indicator of how the self is responding to life. Reason and will, however, play the most important role in van Deurzen’s conception of the self. We can see this in the exhortations toward courage in facing life, and in the use of the dialectic dialog to achieve clarity. The self is also constructed in relation to others, so that interpersonal relationships become an important part of psychotherapy. However, there is no link between the self and any transcendental being. The self itself is not transcendental in the spiritual sense. Conceptualizing the self in these ways distinguishes van Deurzen’s ideas considerably from a Christian view, in which there is a deeper spiritual essence that transcends the physical life. Moreover, the self from a Biblical viewpoint, is constructed in relation to God. From perspective reconstruction (or healing) of the self is accomplished through recovering the transcendental connection with God. In contrast, for van Deurzen, the re-construction of self is accomplished through clarity, selfreflection, and vis-à-vis life other humans (not God). The Therapist It follows from this perspective, then, that the relationship between the client and therapist is critical for this existential model. Van Deurzen sees the therapist’s role as one that promotes self-awareness in the client and facilitates clarification of the client’s values and goals. This is the crucial help that the client needs and this is what allows for change and growth.
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
10
Van Deurzen also calls on the therapist to practice good living in the therapist’s own life. The therapist must be passionate about pursuing the truth about life. When the therapist models a deep engagement with life, and faces with life with clarity and courage, the therapist has the moral authority (not to mention life skills) to encourage the client to do the same. Van Deurzen goes so far as to say that therapists’ “ability to manage their own lives becomes a test of their readiness to be [the clients’] mentor.” Also important for van Deurzen, is that the therapist should not come to therapy armed solely with a vast amount of scientific psychological knowledge. The therapist needs wisdom to use this knowledge correctly. The therapist also needs an understanding of life’s problems (as understood according to the four dimensions of life) so that they can understand the client. This perspective calls for humility in the therapist, as we realize that we are all facing the same struggles in life. The Client This non-pathologizing perspective also prevents the therapist from seeing the client in terms of disorders, but rather allows the client to be seen as a human being struggling with basic life problems (van Deurzen, 2009, p. 81). Rather than a deficiency or pathology, it is the struggle with existential problems that causes psychological difficulties. This understanding allows the therapist to help the client uncover basic resiliency and strengths in order to help the client face the problems of life. In doing so, happiness is not the targeted outcome, but rather that people are enabled to “tackle and repossess their own lives, in harmony with the other people around them …” (van Deurzen, 2009, p. 171).
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
11
The Role of Religion While van Deurzen (2009) recognizes the importance of spiritual purpose—which she sees as the meaning we give to life on large scale—religion itself has little room in her model. This is in keeping with her background as well as her reflection on how society has evolved in its understanding of morality and spirituality. Marx, Freud and Nietzsche have changed the way we thought about humanity and God. Religions, with their coherent but narrow ideologies, were comforting but no longer convincing. Therefore it is now up to each individual to develop skills for moral thinking and find individual moral clarity. While this is the positive aspect of our modern context, the negative side is the temptation is to withdraw from the quest for spiritual meaning and so allow our lives to become superficial and dissatisfying. Regardless of this view of religion, there is still a sense in van Deurzen’s writing, of reaching out in hope to the universe for an answer to the question of meaning. While it does not appear that she believes in a transcendental being, she expresses hope that the universe itself is benevolent and that this benevolence extends to arranging one’s experiences in life. Regarding faith in such a belief she says, “My leap of faith is to trust that life will give the exact experiences that are most apt for learning to live” (van Deurzen, 2009, p. 175). This idea seems to be more of an after-thought, because it does not find its way into the therapy process itself—a process where the emphasis is on the arbitrariness of life. Perhaps it is just an indication that such hope is inevitable even when one has courageously accepted life and all its problems. Conclusion Emmy van Deurzen’s existential approach to psychotherapy presents a very insightful and helpful model. In closing, I want to highlight a few important strengths, and some related weaknesses. The first strength has to do with the model’s conception of the client. Drawing on
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
12
the existential view of the self, van Deurzen’s model sees the client as being able to change and more importantly, being involved in that change. This last part is crucial, because the whole therapeutic process hinges on helping the client achieve clarity and the ability to live their own lives again in a deeply meaningful way. Related to this is one weakness of the model—the reliance on philosophical and logical thinking, a method that may not resonate with all clients. It is possible that reliance on reason might distract from problems that are more directly related to emotion and behavior. The second strength is that this approach does not pathologize the client. Rather than considering the client deficient in some way, it recognizes that we all struggle with the same existential challenges. This leads to the third strength which is the way in which this model takes life’s problems seriously. It does not shy away from negative events or negative emotions. It is realistic to the extent that happiness is not even a goal for the model. Rather, the goal is to understand and embrace life. While this emphasis on engaging with life is a positive and realistic goal, it highlights one final deficiency in the model—its primarily individualistic approach. Though van Deurzen mentions in passing that our society overemphasizes individuality (van Deurzen, 2009, p. 56), her approach is primarily concerned with the individual. The world and social relationships are important only so far as they benefit the individual’s quest for meaning. But in the final analysis, this quest for meaning, and the goal of the meaningful life, are deeply significant objectives and cannot be ignored by the individual.
EMMY VAN DEURZEN
13
References Deurzen, E. v. (1998). Paradox and passion in psychotherapy: An existential approach to therapy and counselling. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Deurzen, E. v. (2002). Existential counselling & psychotherapy in practice. London: Sage Publications. Deurzen, E. v. (2009). Psychotherapy and the quest for happiness. Los Angeles: Sage. Deurzen, E. v. (2014). Becoming an existential therapist. Existential Analysis, 25(1), 6-16. Feltham, C. (2013). Learning to love my own life. Therapy Today, 24(3), 38-40. Frankena, W. K. (1973). Ethics. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
