Existential Empathy: The Challenge of ‘Being’ in Therapy and Counseling
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. What’s the Matter with Existential Concerns?
2.1. It Is the Client’s Call
2.2. Is There Room for Existential Concerns in Therapy?
3. The Challenge of ‘Being’ in Therapy
3.1. What to Do or How to Be?
3.2. Existential Empathy
C1: The thing that sort of has thrown me this week is that… well, I feel better about the physical condition I talked of last week, and I sort of made friends with my doctor which makes me feel a little better, as though we’re not going to be quietly fighting without saying anything. And I think that I have more confidence in my medicine. I read an article about this and it said it’s very hard to diagnose, so I don’t hold that against him. But he feels he has to be sure, sort of… [words lost] giving me X-rays and I’m frightened because I kind of feel that they’re trying to be sure it isn’t cancer. That really frightens me terribly [T: Mhm], and…. I think it’s when I let that… thought come to me, maybe it is and what if it is and… that’s when I felt so dreadfully alone.
T1: HmHm… You feel if it’s really something like that… then you just feel so alone [8 s pause].
C2: And it’s really a frightening kind of loneliness because I don’t know who could be with you… and it seems rather [7 s pause].
T2: Is this what you’re saying? Could… could anyone be with you in… in fear, or in a loneliness like that? [Client weeps, 30 s pause]. Just really cuts so deep [C shakes her head, 13 s pause].
C3: I don’t know what it would feel like if there were somebody around that I… could feel sort of… as though I did have someone to lean on, in a sense… I don’t know whether it would make me feel better or not. I was trying to think, well, it’s just something that you have to grow within yourself… Just sort of stand… even just the thought of it, I mean, it’ll be two weeks, I suppose, before they know. Would it help to have somebody else around, or is it just something you just have to… really be intensely alone in? And that’s the… well, I just felt that way this week, so dreadfully, dreadfully, all by myself sort of thing…
T3: Just a feeling as though you’re so terribly alone… in the universe, almost, and whether… [C: Uh-hum] whether it even—whether anyone could help—whether it would help if you did have someone to lean on or not, you don’t know [15 s pause].
C4: I guess probably basically, that’d be a part of it you would have to do alone. I mean, you, just couldn’t take anybody else along in some of the feelings; and yet, it would be sort of a comfort, I guess, not to be alone.
T4: It surely would be nice if you could take someone with you a good deal of the way into your… feelings of aloneness and fear [14 s pause].
C5: I guess I just have [20 s pause].
T5: Maybe that’s what you’re feeling right this minute.
3.3. Empowering the Therapist’s Being
“ [Empathy] means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive, moment to moment, to the changed felt meanings which flow in this other person… It means temporarily living in the other’s life… In some sense it means that you lay aside your self; this can only be done by persons who are secure enough in themselves that they know they will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and that they can comfortably return to their own world when they wish.”
4. Conclusions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
1 | In Rank’s work (Rank 1932, 1936), the souls refers to the core of our being, which is closely connected to existential and spiritual dynamics that are transcending the individual, but that are at the same time core dynamics in the life of this person and their relationships (Kramer 2019). From Rank’s perspective, therapy is basically a process of finding new ways of living while being part of these existential dynamics. |
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Vanhooren, S. Existential Empathy: The Challenge of ‘Being’ in Therapy and Counseling. Religions 2022, 13, 752. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080752
Vanhooren S. Existential Empathy: The Challenge of ‘Being’ in Therapy and Counseling. Religions. 2022; 13(8):752. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080752
Chicago/Turabian StyleVanhooren, Siebrecht. 2022. "Existential Empathy: The Challenge of ‘Being’ in Therapy and Counseling" Religions 13, no. 8: 752. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080752