Existentialism enters the depth-psychology corpus not as a unified doctrine but as a contested intellectual horizon against which clinicians, ontologists, and phenomenologists negotiate the meaning of finite human existence. Yalom’s foundational systematization treats the existential givens — death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness — as the irreducible ultimates beneath every neurotic structure, insisting that authentic confrontation with these ‘givens of existence’ is not destabilizing but ‘ultimately healing.’ Heidegger’s Being and Time supplies the philosophical substratum: his analyses of Being-towards-death, thrownness, projection, and the inauthenticity of das Man constitute the ontological grammar that existential therapy translates into clinical idiom. Jung engages the tradition more tangentially, indexing existentialism as a single entry within his broader concern for subjective psychological experience, while Hillman’s archetypal psychology simultaneously inherits and critiques existentialist anthropocentrism, subordinating the solitary existing subject to the plural claims of soul and image. Flores acknowledges the existential dimension operative within Alcoholics Anonymous, where responsibility, finitude, and meaning serve recovery rather than philosophical abstraction. Across these authors, the central tension is between existentialism’s radical individualism — each Dasein must face death as its ‘ownmost’ possibility — and the relational, communal, and unconscious forces that depth psychology insists no act of resolute self-ownership can wholly supersede.
the confrontation with the givens of existence is painful but ultimately healing. Good therapeutic work is always coupled with reality testing and the search for personal enlightenment
Yalom argues that an existential therapeutic stance rejects both anxious truth and denial, affirming that honest confrontation with life’s ultimate conditions is therapeutically curative rather than destabilizing.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980thesis
existentialism defined by, 22; on fears of children, 101; on Freud, 288, 289; on insight, 339; on isolation, 354; on patient-psychotherapist relationships, 414; on will, 293
Yalom’s index documents the structural centrality of existentialism to the text’s theoretical architecture, specifically via Rollo May’s formal definition of the term and its ramifications across will, isolation, guilt, and therapeutic relationship.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980thesis
Death is Dasein’s ownmost possibility. Being towards this possibility discloses to Dasein its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, in which its very Being is the issue.
Heidegger identifies Being-towards-death as the existential structure through which Dasein’s authentic individuation becomes possible, furnishing the philosophical core of the existentialist encounter with finitude.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
death is understood as an indefinite something which, above all, must duly arrive from somewhere or other, but which is proximally not yet present-at-hand for oneself, and is therefore no threat.
Heidegger analyzes the inauthenticity of everyday Being-towards-death, showing how the impersonal ‘one dies’ diffuses existential confrontation and enables evasion of one’s ownmost possibility.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
everyday Dasein already is towards its end — is constantly coming to grips with its death, though in a ‘fugitive’ manner
Heidegger argues that even inauthentic Dasein is ontologically oriented toward death at all times, making existential finitude a structural rather than merely biographical concern.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Care harbours in itself both death and guilt equiprimordially. Only anticipatory resoluteness understands the potentiality-for-Being-guilty authentically and wholly
Heidegger links the existential structures of death and guilt within the unifying concept of care, demonstrating that authentic existence requires simultaneous confrontation with both finitude and groundedness in thrownness.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
unless we have an existentiell understanding, all analysis of existentiality will remain groundless
Heidegger insists that formal existential analysis must be anchored in concrete existentiell — that is, lived — understanding, establishing the essential link between ontological structure and actual human existence.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
existentialism and, 272-280
Flores identifies a direct theoretical connection between Alcoholics Anonymous and existentialism, treating responsibility, meaning, and finite self-knowledge as operative principles within the recovery framework.
, Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations An, 1997supporting
existentialism, 290
Jung’s index entry for existentialism places it within the broader concern for subjective psychological and religious experience, signaling engagement with the movement without systematic elaboration.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
existentialism, 55
Hillman references existentialism in passing within the context of individuality, exceptional persons, and the daimon, suggesting an implicit critical distance from existentialism’s ego-centered framework.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996aside
Daseinanalyse, 99
Hillman’s index notation of Daseinanalyse signals the clinical application of Heideggerian existential ontology to the phenomenology of suicide and soul, representing the existential-analytic tradition within depth psychology.
, Suicide and the Soul, 1964aside
How is the ontological possibility of an authentic Being-towards-death to be characterized ‘Objectively’, if, in the end, Dasein never comports itself authentically towards its end
Heidegger interrogates the paradox of projecting authentic Being-towards-death when such authenticity is always already concealed from others, raising the question of the intersubjective limits of existential analysis.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting