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Abstract
The origins of today's humanistic and existential schools of psychotherapy may be seen to lie in the philosophical theories of existentialists such as Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre. In their focus on being and self, some therapies converge meaningfully with the aims and methods of depth psychotherapy – including the later psychoanalytic theory of W.R. Bion. In rather remarkable ways, Bion's views of mental growth and the active counter/transferential process may be seen as conceptually closer to Kierkegaard's notions of relational being and truth – and to Sartre's interplay of subjectivity and objectivity – than they are to certain of Freud's classical constructs.
Bion conceives of psychoanalysis as a mutual activity, one where the transference dynamic is characterized by ‘client-and-therapist-as-relationally-present’. More than this, the active investment of the analyst's person in the countertransference parallels existentialism's notion of relational being. As a form of joint-feeling and mutual exploration, the patient's emotions, conflicts, and neuroses are seen as intimately related to similar experiences both felt and expressed by the analyst. While neutrality and objectivity remain priorities in Freud's initial theory of analysis, Bion's thought reflects a transference dynamic characterized by the essential ingredient of comradeship.
It is not that Bion's theory is necessarily the only (or the best) example of an existential counterpart to psychoanalytic theory. It is difficult, however, not to be inspired by elements of his framework that resound clearly with the more powerful tenets of existentialism. While it is primarily the schema of transference/countertransference examined in the current paper, Bion's later writings also examine other themes that may too be considered as existential in direction.