a type of humanistic therapy that helps the client overcome emotional or behavioral problems by dealing with major philosophical issues in life, including death, freedom, isolation, and meaning. (533)
A humanistic therapy that emphasizes people's free will and tries to help them achieve a personal outlook that will give meaning to their lives.
The significance of the approach is that it reacts against the tendency to view therapy as a system of well-defined techniques; it affirms looking at those unique characteristics that make us human and building therapy on them. It emphasizes choice, freedom, responsibility, and self-determination. In essence, we are the authors of our life.
An insight therapy that emphasizes choice and responsibility to define the meaning of one's life. In contrast with humanistic therapy, it tends to be less cheerful or sanguine in outlook, focusing more on the anxiety that is inherent to confronting one's ultimate aloneness in the world.
Existential psychotherapy is partly based on the existential belief that human beings are alone in the world. This aloneness leads to feelings of meaninglessness which can be overcome only by creating one’s own values and meanings. We have the power to create because we have the freedom to choose.