Existential Empathy: A Qualitative Exploration of Therapists’ Development Following Experiential–Existential Training

Existential empathy is an emerging construct within humanistic and person-centered psychology. It refers to the therapist’s capacity to remain present with a client’s existential concerns, to resonate with these concerns, and to communicate this resonance empathically. Recently, an experiential–existential psychotherapy (EEP) training program was developed to cultivate existential empathy by enhancing therapists’ openness to existential concerns and their ability to engage with them. This qualitative study explores how therapists experience the development of their existential empathy following participation in EEP training. It also explores which elements of the training they perceive as most helpful. Ten therapists were interviewed before and after the 1-year training program using two methods: a Change Interview and an Existential Cue Interview, the latter involving a video stimulus of a client expressing her existential concerns. Findings suggest that training can enhance therapists’ existential awareness, their capacity to remain present with existential issues, and their ability to engage with these issues from a human-to-human stance. Effective training appears to require a combination of cognitive components, such as theoretical frameworks, and experiential components, including personal engagement with one’s own existential issues.