Embrace subjectivity: existentially-informed clinical psychological science, practice, and teaching

ABSTRACT

Objective

In this argumentative literature review, we advocate an existentially-informed clinical psychology. Many of today’s challenging societal issues would benefit from the lens of existentialism, and our field has seen an emergence of interest lately in topics such as death anxiety as a transdiagnostic construct. We see this context as opportune for an existential-psychological confluence of ideas and praxes.

Method

We identify and review here four relevant ongoing streams of literature (core existentialism philosophy, existentially-oriented psychotherapy, death anxiety psychometrics, and terror management theory) and argue in favour of their increasingly intertwined integration with one another and with the broader field of clinical psychology.

Results

We propose methods for both academics and practitioners alike to more fully embrace an existentially-informed mindset, culminating in a set of ten recommendations for clinical psychology across applied clinical work, research/scholarship, and pedagogy/supervision. Examples include increased use of qualitative data via case study and mixed-method approaches in our science, enhanced incorporation of existential themes (including but not limited to death anxiety) into psychotherapy, and adoption of a student-focused freedom-enhancing existential mindset in teaching.

Conclusions

Our field has made great strides in deepening the understanding of how life’s ultimate concerns inform mental health and functioning in recent years, and we support an even more robust endorsement of existential frameworks in clinical psychology to continue such progress.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. Existentialism is a humanistic philosophy, emphasizing choice, responsibility, authenticity, and acceptance of limitations in life.

2. Scholarship in psychotherapy, psychometrics, and other psychological topics benefits from influences of existential philosophy.

3. Death anxiety is a transdiagnostic etiological variable and therapies involving existential themes are empirically supported.

What this topic adds:

• (1) Existentialism has many clinically useful lessons to offer psychology, across its teaching, research, and psychotherapy.

• (2) Areas of clinical psychology involving death anxiety, mortality salience, meaning-making, and others should be better integrated.

• (3) We advocate the adoption of an existentially-informed clinical psychology and offer suggestions for moving forward.

KEYWORDS:

• Existentialism
• pedagogy
• psychotherapy
• research methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.