Guest Editor’s Commentary

This special issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology comes at an extremely tumultuous time for American, European, and global culture, as well as for the only slightly more than century-old field of psychotherapy itself. We are living today in an age not only of miraculous technological, scientific, and medical advances, but also one rife with rancor, rage, anxiety, alienation, despair, nihilism, narcissism, brutality, hatred, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and, now, in the completely Kafkaesque, divisive, polarizing, petulant time of Trumpism. Existential frustration, anger, resentment, and embitterment are running rampant in America, as evidenced in our seemingly ever-escalating violence epidemic. Nightmarish mass shootings–which curiously, virtually vanished during the global pandemic but tragically returned this year with a vengeance–currently occur on an almost daily basis. Interpersonal hostility and incivility permeate society, threatening to tear it apart. Some even fear–especially in the wake of the violent, seditious assault on the U.S. Capitol building by enraged citizens and their continued unfounded contention regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election–that our possibly fatally fractured nation may be teetering on the verge of a bloody second civil war. To make matters worse, vicious acts of political, religious, and ideological terrorism and the aggressive, antagonistic, and bellicose war of words between the leaders of the United States and countries like North Korea, Russia, and Iran push us precariously closer to the brink of nuclear conflict and possible mass annihilation. To describe this perturbing, toxic, and dangerous state of affairs as a collective existential crisis would be no exaggeration.

At the same time, the very survival, vitality, identity, and viability of the profession of psychotherapy–weakened by an ongoing internecine civil war regarding the essential nature and etiology of psychopathology and fundamental philosophy, values, methodology, meaning, and purpose of therapeutic treatment–has come under attack, having been insidiously curtailed, undermined, eroded, degraded, denigrated, disempowered, and devalued, and, thus, can be said to be in the throes of its own bona fide existential crisis. Indeed, we are, as both a culture and profession in radical transition, uncomfortably confronted today with the stark existential reality of what Rollo May (1969) described as the “daimonic,” and Carl Jung (1961) called our “collective shadow,” regarding the grave perils of which he so presciently warned:

Today we need psychology for reasons that involve our very existence. . . . We stand face to face with the terrible question of evil and we do not even know what is before us, let alone what to pit against it . . . we have no imagination for evil, but evil has us in its grip . . . (p. 331)

Given our present predicament, we all-too-clearly desperately need psychology and psychotherapy now more than ever, but this begs the crucial question: Is contemporary psychotherapy as currently practiced truly up to the challenge? Former editorial board member and famed contributor to the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Viennese psychiatrist and existential analyst Viktor Frankl (1946/1984), keenly observed some 50 years ago,

Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it. The existential vacuum which is the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a private and personal form of nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the contention that being has no meaning. . . . Psychotherapy, however, . . . will never be able to cope with this state of affairs on a mass scale if it does not keep itself free from the impact and influence of the contemporary trends of a nihilistic philosophy; otherwise it represents a symptom of the mass neurosis rather than its possible cure. Psychotherapy would not only reflect a nihilistic philosophy but also, even though unwillingly and unwittingly, transmit to the patient what is actually a caricature rather than a true picture of man. (pp. 152-153)

Today’s superficial, symptom-centered, watered-down, medicalized, mechanistic, impersonal, manualized, rote, egocentric, scripted, and simplistic psychotherapy is symptomatic of the current times and collective neurosis of this era. Not only does most contemporary psychotherapy still suffer from the philosophical nihilism and naiveté regarding the perennial problem of evil to which Frankl, May, and Jung referred, but from the pervasive materialism, biocentrism, hyperrationalism, reductionism, literalism, anti-intellectualism, depersonalization, and dehumanization of our day. Consequentially, the core complex or neurosis of our current times may be a sense of insignificance, inferiority, frustration, alienation, anonymity, and impotence, and what I have elsewhere referred to as a resulting “wicked rage for recognition,” from which emanates a personal and collective tidal wave of pernicious resentment, anger, rage, enmity, and violence. This general loss of individualism, purpose, and empowerment here in America is reflected in the diminution and disparagement of the potential importance, power, value, and significance of psychotherapy. There has, in this century, been an insidious devaluation and diminution of psychotherapy and what it can offer, both among the public and within the profession. At the same time, it is no mere or meaningless coincidence that within this same period (1999-2016), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Fifield, 2018), suicide rates in this country rose by 30% overall, and by 45% in middle-aged Americans, an alarming and dramatic trend attributed partly by that government agency to what they accurately describe as a “depths of despair” phenomenon. Clearly, today we urgently need psychotherapy that can adequately address these “depths of despair” rather than seeking merely to medicate, rationalize, dismiss or otherwise suppress such profound existential suffering. But where can such real psychotherapy be found? Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and C.G. Jung’s analytical psychology have plummeted in prestige and popularity since their heyday. Traditional humanistic approaches to therapy like Carl Rogers’ person-centered therapy, Fritz Perls’ Gestalt therapy, Viktor Frankls’ logotherapy, and Rollo May’s existential therapy—exceedingly popular during the 1960s and 1970s with their lofty goals of personal growth, authenticity, awareness, and self-actualization (Maslow)—have more or less succumbed to the expediency, affordability, and flimsy practicality of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and psychopharmacology. To be sure, current mainstream therapies can, by themselves or in combination, be helpful in managing and mitigating certain serious psychiatric symptoms, but they tend typically to lack the depth, breadth, richness, philosophical or spiritual dimension, empathic caring, compassion, and deep clinical wisdom of humanistic and existential therapy or Jungian analysis.

This Special Issue takes a contemporary look at both existential psychotherapy and Jungian analysis–each of which definitively informed many of the basic precepts of humanistic psychology–and, in part, considers the possibility of a reconciliation or marriage between these two, for some clinicians, seemingly antithetical and sometimes philosophically antagonistic therapeutic approaches. For despite the deeply divided and discouraging state of affairs in psychotherapy today, this troubling trend may be poised to tilt teleologically toward greater balance and compensation, as suggested by the growing dissatisfaction with what passes for real therapy these days, and the growing resurgence of interest being voiced by both clients/patients and practitioners in therapies that take a more in-depth, philosophically informed, humanistic, wholistic, nontechnical, compassionate, empathic, emotional, experiential, and spiritual orientation to the intrinsic challenges and vicissitudes of human existence.

Especially prominent today among these still evolving approaches is existential psychotherapy. Hence, the specific focus in this special issue on some of the varied and diverse expressions and iterations of existential therapy practiced currently. (For additional international perspectives, see, for instance, the websites of the World Confederation for Existential Therapy and the Second World Congress for Existential Therapy.) These nine articles, in concert, represent a small but vital cross-section of contemporary existential therapy, some speaking specifically and directly to its potential compatibility, integration, fusion, or hybridization with other existing types of psychodynamic treatment, particularly Jungian analysis, and others alluding to its fierce independence and fundamental philosophical uniqueness. For example, my own introductory article “Existential Therapy and Jungian Analysis: Toward an Existential Depth Psychology” explores some of the similarities between Jung’s analytical psychology and existential psychotherapy, offering up an integrative synthesis of these two essentially humanistic approaches which I call “existential depth psychology.” Providing valuable and philosophically well-founded counterpoint for balance, Jungian analyst Ladson Hinton’s¹ article, “Is Jung Existential or Not? Reflections on Temporality and Everydayness,” provides a personal, phenomenological, and existential critique of Jung’s seeming preference and proclivity for addressing transpersonal “archetypes” and the “collective unconscious” rather than the ordinary, mundane realities, struggles, tedium, and daily demands of temporal human existence.

Just as in Jungian analysis, there is a recurring concern here among most of these essays with the quest for therapeutic “depth”—albeit understood and defined differently by existential analysts and depth psychologists—as we see in Gianfranco Buffardi’s² “The Existential Processing of Archetypes: Some Prospects for Recognition and Elaboration in Existential Therapy,” which discusses working deeply with archetypal patterns in existential therapy; in coauthors Alfried Längle and Derrick Klaassen’s³ heartfelt and fundamentally humanistic contribution, “Phenomenology and Depth in Existential Psychotherapy”; and in psychiatrist Lodovico Berra’s “Existential Depression: A Non-pathological and Philosophical-Existential Approach,” a sobering yet hopeful and moving meditation on the psychology, philosophy, and in-depth therapeutic treatment of the archetypal experience of “existential depression.” A more classically Jungian approach to comprehending and working with an archetypal symbol from the dream of a depressed young woman suffering from a potentially suicidal existential life crisis, and her successful psychotherapy, is presented in Shi Congxin and Qian Yongxia’s “A Jungian Analysis of the Archetypal Image of the Fish from a Chinese Cultural Perspective.” Psychologist James Dillon’s article “Reassembling the Real Person: A Jungian and Mythical-Dramatistic Approach to Human Development” discusses his own developmental version of the Jungian individuation and existential-humanistic self-discovery and reintegration process; while psychotherapists Roshanak Vahdani and Max Phillips present and exemplify a practical clinical integration of Jungian and existential themes in their “Existential-Jungian Analysis: Reconciling the Personal and Archetypal Realms in the Consulting Room.” Finally, given the profound philosophical underpinnings of existential therapy, Jungian analysis, and humanistic psychology in general, we close with philosopher Kevin Aho’s psychologically astute and postmodern analysis of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s abysmally alienated, angry, resentful, embittered, and spiteful “underground man” from the classic 1864 Russian novel Notes from the Underground—the first part of which was described by philosopher Walter Kaufmann (in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 1956/1975, p. 14) as being “the best overture for existentialism ever written”–in his rich, very relevant, timely article titled “Dostoevsky, Existential Therapy, and Modern Rage: On the Possibility of Counseling the Underground Man.”

There can be no doubt that the small world of psychotherapy–and the greater world at large–needs now what these essentially humanistic psychotherapies can offer. It is my sincere hope that savoring this tasty and substantial little sampling of the leading edge of existential and humanistic therapy and its fruitful intersection and cross-pollination with Jung’s depth psychology specifically will serve as inspiration to our readers, and as some evidence and encouragement that what I like to refer to as “real therapy”–therapy that courageously confronts and addresses, rather than ignores, suppresses, and avoids, the daimonic and daunting existential facts of life, and does so humanely, compassionately, and deeply–is presently being widely practiced around the world, evolving still, and remains capable of being a vital, viable, valuable, compensatory, and constructive force in today’s increasingly vapid mental health marketplace. This Special Issue speaks directly to how we can–nay must–rehumanize therapy right now, before it becomes too late.