Existenzanalyse 1/2018

Ausgabe 1/2018

Accompaniment as a profession

Silvia Längle

Accompaniment constitutes an intermediate area between counseling and psychotherapy. It helps people to physically and existentially meet the challenge posed by inevitable and unalterable life situations. According to existential analytical understanding, this requires a specific competence of the accompanying person: They require an accepting, helping-to-carry presence, which is able to endure the accompanied in their distress, and must be able to dwell with them appropriately in their situation. With the accompanying in view, this contribution presents the aim of training for the occupation in Existential Analysis, thereby enabling them to achieve this in the accompaniment situation. In the process, concrete consequences for the accompanying and the accompanied are outlined which may develop from such a competence: stabilization in the here and now, so that the present moment gains a quality worth living through the ability to dwell upon the situation. The potentially healing effect for those accompanied is described, in which also the affected person may arrive at an acceptance of the situation, whereby it finds closeness to itself and an own way dealing with the situation.

Keywords: accompaniment, Fundamental Motivations,
acceptance, respect, meaning

Psychooncology and Existential Analysis

Care and treatment in hospital setting

Clemens Farkas, Elisabeth Andritsch

Cancer, as an existence-threatening illness, is connected to a multitude of burdening factors for many patients, demanding multiple adaptation efforts in all areas of life. The people affected and their family members, as well as those treating them are questioned in their being by the tremors of life and thus encounter existential themes. In this confrontation with uncertainty, loss of identity, loss of control and hold, psychooncology can play a supportive role through accompaniment and treatment. This “putting into question” and “being questioned” is not solely capable of giving support with the methods of Existential Analysis when dealing with the occurrences of cancer disease, but also allows realization of existence.

Keywords: cancer, psychooncology, existential threat, disease management, accompaniment

Existential work in mobile social-psychiatry care

Esther Artner

A case study will give account of the chances and opportunities existential work provides in the field of mobile social-psychiatry care. The framework conditions, the particular setting, the structuring of relationship between client and caregiver, the challenges and attitude of the person taking care are sketched out and illustrated.

Keywords: mobile social-psychiatry care, accompaniment

Overcoming powerlessness for an active participation in life

Accompaniment of children towards maturation and integration

Birgit Koller

On the basis of the existential analytical conception of man, and by strengthening the four fundamental motivations, the person of the child can be activated with the help of existential analytical counseling and accompaniment, establishing in the process an alternative to coping reactions for the accomplishment of everyday life. In the following, a project was presented in which 100 children and juveniles with four to fourteen years of age were accompanied in their development and maturation in order to enable them an autonomous way of life within a period of 20 years. In addition, ways are pointed out showing how the unknown becomes familiar through phenomenological perception, by which means integration sets in.

Keywords: developmental support, accompaniment of
maturation, migrant background, integration

Progress report

Effectiveness of training for existential analytical counselor

Helga Grubitzsch und Klaudia Gennermann

Grubitzsch’s progress report shows how she experienced the training for existential analytical counselor and which effects it took on her life. Gennermann’s commentary illuminates the structural and content related specifications of the GLE-D curriculum with regard to the presented process of development. In this manner, the effectiveness of training can become apparent from different complementary perspectives.

Keywords: training, existential analytical counseling, effectiveness, self-experience

„I only want safety“

Particularities in counseling and psychotherapy in the context of escape, trauma and people searching for protection

Eva Eckhard und David Nowrouzi

The following contribution addresses the characteristics in the counseling and psychotherapy of people who fled their home countries. It begins with a discussion of the phenomenon “escape” from an existential analytical point of view and its effects on the four Fundamental Motivations. Facts of life of refugees in Austria are outlined thereafter and intercultural aspects such as the understanding of counseling and therapy in different cultures, the role of interpreters in counseling situations or the meaning of the family in collectivist societies are touched upon. Finally the contribution deals with the dynamics of powerlessness and activism referring to the therapists.

Keywords: escape, trauma, interculturality, counseling of refugees

The counseling practice of Caritas Burgenland: On the application of personal Existential Analysis in couple counseling

Wolfgang Zöttl

To a large extent, existential couple counseling consists in creating personal places of encounter for the couple. This contribution outlines the usage of couple dialogue as an instrument for the establishment of space for encounter within the scope of couple counseling in the Caritas Burgenland. It shows how the basic idea of the Imago Dialogue according to Harville Hendrix is integrated into the process model of Existential Analysis (PEA).

Keywords: personal responsibility, encounter in relationships, personal couple dialogue, process model (PEA), imago-dialogue

Existential Self-Coaching – Inspiring new ideas for everyday life

An experience report on Self-Coaching for laypeople

Marco Schicker

Many everyday situations and incidents keep our minds busy. Some bug us for quite some time and make us brood. The workbook “existential self-coaching” helps in these occasions with guided self-reflection and specific thought-provoking inputs in order to foster a handling which is personal. Starting point is the coping reactions that can be detected in one’s own behavior. Based on these and the corresponding fundamental motivations, questions are asked and statements are made which give direction to reflection and thought. Aim is to support the coachee through targeted inspiration in the personal handling of a situation.

Keywords: self-coaching, coping reactions, personal handling

Are Pleasure and performance a contradiction?

Ursula Dobrowolski

This paper focuses on a question which is raised in therapy sessions very often: The relation between pleasure and performance. When is performance experienced as something exhilarating and when does it become a burden? While referring to the existential-analytic concept of meaning, this article tries to distinguish between the “healthy” performance that causes flow and happiness, and “unhealthy” performance that sickens and may finally lead into burnout.

Keywords: burnout, flow, meaning, performance, phantom meaning, pleasure

Where desire is forbidden …

Barbara Gawel

… and one’s own liking is not allowed to have any room; where spontaneous pleasurable experience must give way to obedient appropriateness – this is where feelings of displeasure, narrowness, emptiness and lack of freedom develop. Particularly in childhood this can have effects on the psychosomatic level, e.g. in sleeping, eating and hygienic behavior, but also in the lack of concentration, perseverance, and interest. Through the prohibition of one’s own liking, the important human potentiality to experience and express oneself is lost. This connection between “liking” and zest for life is discussed in its essential features and exemplified with two case studies from child therapy. This also includes the possibility of parental work supplement to the treatment of the child.

Keywords: desire, displeasure, liking, child and youth therapy