Az Egzisztenciális Pszichológia évszázada

Abstract

Existential psychology emerged in the middle of the twentieth century, from psychoanalysis on the one hand and phenomenological psychiatry on the other. Its early proponents, such as Ludwig Binswanger, were dissatisfied with the epistemological foundations of psychi­atry and psychoanalysis and sought to apply philosophical approaches - such as Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger’s fundamental ontology - that could provide a background for psychopathological research and psychotherapeutic activity that would be appropriate to the ‚object’ of these disciplines, i.e. the nature of a particular human existence. This is how Dasein analysis was born, followed by logotherapy and existential analysis, following Viktor Frankl’s initiatives. After the Second World War, existential psychology also appeared in the Anglo-Saxon world, in the form of existential-humanistic psychology in America and existential-phenomenological psychology in Britain. After the 1980s, this approach was mar­ginalised, but after the turn of the millennium, the global crisis of civilisation and popular authors such as Irvin Yalom brought it back to the centre of attention. In this article, we will look at this historical process, the main themes of existential psychology (‚conditio humana’) and the possible applications of the approach.