PSY 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Rollo May, Fritz Perls, Kurt Koffka
Document Summary
In a sanitarium for three years in new york. Dealt with depression, helplessness, and awareness of mortality. He was critical of quick fixes that lacked emphasis on responsibility. The 4 problems of existence and themes for therapy: meaninglessness, freedom, isolation, death. How do we make meaning in an ultimately meaningless existence. Life is most meaningful when people live according to their values. We have the freedom to change and make something positive out of the negative. Therapy helps clients learn what you must create within. We can lessen our anxiety about death by leading a meaningful life through: Contributing something to humanity that will survive beyond death. The whole is other than the sum of the parts. The most dominant need or unfinished situation becomes the figure and emerges into the foreground out of the rest of the person"s experience which becomes the ground, or background. Closure of conflicts and injuries from the past.
