Existential Psychotherapy

We miss something, Mercury—the poignance of the transient—the intimation of mortality—that sweet sadness of grasping at something you cannot hold?”

The existential conflict is thus the tension between our awareness of our absolute isolation and our wish for contact, for protection, our wish to be part of a larger whole.

Learning to live well is to learn to die well;

The existential position emphasizes a different kind of basic conflict: neither a conflict with suppressed instinctual strivings nor one with internalized significant adults, but instead a conflict that flows from the individual’s confrontation with the givens of existence.

“No man enjoys the true taste of life but he who is willing and ready to quit it.”

“Freedom” in this sense, has a terrifying implication: it means that beneath us there is no ground—nothing, a void, an abyss. A key existential dynamic, then, is the clash between our confrontation with groundlessness and our wish for ground and structure.

“Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it.”