PSYC1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Existential Therapy, Umwelt, Existentialism
19 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Rollo Ma’s eistential analsis
Humanistic/phenomenological/existential approach to personality
• Human condition described as bleak
• The individual is a free, self-determining agent who constructs their meaning in life
• Aims to describe features of human existence uninterested in explanatory concepts
Key existentialist questions
• What is the meaning of human existence
• What does it mean to be a self
• What kinds of struggles does the self have to go through in order to be
• What meanings does the individual create, so as to organise the understanding of self and
reality
Dassein
• Our "being" in the world is fluid and relational
• "becoming" - indicates fluidity, dynamic nature of being in the world
Modes of the world (interrelated)
• Umwelt
o Around world
o Natural physical biological world, including own body
o Biological drives, needs and instincts of the individual
o Environment
• Mitwelt
o With world
o The world of being with others
o In the encounter between people both persons are changed
• Eigenwelt
o Own world
o Relationship to oneself
o One's subjective reactions to the world at large
o Self-awareness and relatedness
o Uniquely present in human beings
o How we see and relate to real world in its true perspective
o Basis on which we relate
o e.g. death and anxiety
• Awareness of possibility of dying heightens meaning of life
o Existential anxiety, possibility of bad events occurring
o Anxiety is a feature of human existence
o Self esteem can be destroyed
Free will
• Individual is free, responsible, self determining agent
• Man is being who can be conscious of and therefore responsible for his existence
• Man is nothing but what he makes of himself
• Man is something which propels itself towards a future and is aware of doing so
• Existentialism rejects determinism
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Humanistic/phenomenological/existential approach to personality: human condition described as bleak, the individual is a free, self-determining agent who constructs their meaning in life, aims to describe features of human existence uninterested in explanatory concepts. Dassein: our being in the world is fluid and relational. becoming - indicates fluidity, dynamic nature of being in the world. Modes of the world (interrelated: umwelt, around world, natural physical biological world, including own body, biological drives, needs and instincts of the individual, environment, mitwelt, with world, the world of being with others.
