Existentialism, Humanism and Psychotherapy

Authors of American psychology textbooks habitually refer to the “existential-humanistic” or “humanistic-existential” approach to treatment, while therapists in the UK and Europe say that this usage is inaccurate, and that the differences between the existential and humanistic approaches outweigh their similarities. To assess the merit of these competing claims, we must distinguish between literary and philosophical humanism, which is European in origin, and humanistic psychology, which is a recent American innovation. Having carefully discriminated between the two, it transpires that the similarities between the two approaches are often greater than Europeans concede, but also less than many Americans imagine. The fact that existential psychotherapy in Europe precedes American humanistic psychology by more than two decades entitles existential psychotherapists outside the USA to insist on the uniqueness and specificity of their approach. Consult almost any textbook on Abnormal Psychology in the United States and you will discover that existential psychotherapy and humanistic psychology are viewed as kindred approaches to treatment here. Under the heading of “Models of Mental Disorder”, often in the first few chapters, one generally finds the “humanistic-existential ” or “existential-humanistic” model discussed alongside of the cognitive, behavioral psychodynamic and sociocultural approaches. Meanwhile, in the UK and Europe, the existential and humanistic approaches are considered very different, the former originating on European soil, the latter being a recent American import regarded warily at best (e.g. Spinelli, 1989). The recent debate between John Rowan and Ernesto Spinelli in The Handbook of Humanistic Psychology (Schneider, K., Bugenthal, J. & Pierson, J.F., eds. 2001) indicates just how deep and convoluted these disagreements have become. While Rowan is eager to deny any fundamental differences, arguing that “we should talk all the time about existentialhumanistic psychotherapy” (p. 448), Spinelli replies that American psychologists are profoundly mistaken, and that we must make clear conceptual distinctions between the existential and humanistic approaches to psychotherapy. Some would argue that this spirited disagreement only concerns a handful of psychotherapy practitioners. But beyond that, everyone who reads, writes or