Wednesday, May 25, 2016

I'm not doing existential psychotherapy

Psychoanalysis is existential:

"It is only after I was well into the revision of my original manuscript that I became familiar with the large body of post-Freudian psychoanalysis and discovered that certain characteristic concerns of existential psychology had been incorporated within the Freudian framework through its extension into the pre-oedipal period of development and into the psychopathological manifestations of the developmental disturbances of this period that are found in borderline and narcissistic illness. The sharp opposition between existentialism and contemporary psychoanalysis on this score is therefore not warranted…. The psychoanalytic interest in the existential themes of pre-oedipal pathology is itself a historical development, which was antedated by their description in existentialism" (Izenberg, The Existentialist Critique of Freud, 1976)

No comments:

Post a Comment