The Role of Spirituality in Existential Confrontation with a Case Study

Author/s: Hatice Hilal Saçar

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.37898/spc.2022.7.3.177 

Year: 2022 Vol: 7 Number: 3

Abstract

This study deals with existential psychotherapy from the perspective of Rollo May and Irvin Yalom; it includes the concepts of death, freedom, meaning, responsibility, and loneliness. Furthermore, an existential approach is an approach that cares about cultural sensitivity and works with its clients from this perspective. When it comes to sensitivity to culture, it is almost impossible not to talk about religion and spirituality. Spirituality has been an increasingly found field in literature in recent years. In addition, it is an indisputable fact that the spiritual resources of the client should be investigated, the spiritual and religious dimensions of the clients should be studied in the psychological counseling process, and sustainable coping mechanisms should be developed. When the literature is examined, it is seen that there are insufficient studies on how to deal with spirituality in the psychological counseling process in terms of existential theory. For this reason, this study aims to address the perspectives of existentialist philosophers on spirituality, to reveal the relationship between spirituality and existential psychology, to bring a spiritual perspective to existential psychological counseling processes on this ground, and to offer technical and process suggestions to the field workers. For this purpose, relevant literature information, existential spiritually oriented counseling principles and techniques, evaluations, suggestions in the conclusion, a case example, and formulations of this case are included in the study. With the given titles, a unique perspective is presented to spiritually oriented counseling practices from an existential perspective, and existential techniques are adapted to the culture.

Keywords
Existential psychotherapy, spirituality, psychological counseling