Pragmatic Existential Counseling and Psychotherapy

Intimacy, Intuition, and the Search for Meaning

Jerrold Lee Shapiro

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781483368993
• eBook ISBN: 9781483369013
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education Counseling
• Index: Social Sciences

"This is a masterful primer on existential therapy that has been forged from the pen of a highly seasoned theorist, researcher, and practitioner.   In Pragmatic Existential Counseling and Psychotherapy: Intimacy, Intuition and the Search for Meaning, we gain the insight and personal experience of one who has lived and breathed the field for over 50 years—alongside some of the greatest practitioners of the craft, most notably Viktor Frankl.  This volume is superb for students interested in a broad and substantive overview of the field."  
—Kirk Schneider, Columbia University  

Pragmatic Existential Counseling and Psychotherapy integrates concepts of positive psychology and strengths based therapy into existential therapy. Turning existential therapy on its head, this exciting, all-new title approaches the theory from a positive, rather than the traditional deficit model. Authored by a leading figure in existential therapy, Jerrold Lee Shapiro, the aim is to make existential therapy positive and easily accessible to a wide audience through a pragmatic, stage wise model. Shapiro expands on the work of Viktor Frankl and focuses on delivery to individuals and groups, men and women, and evidence based therapy. The key to his work is to help the client focus on resistance and to use it as a means of achieving therapeutic breakthroughs.  Filled with vignettes and rich case examples, the book is comprehensive, accessible, concrete, pragmatic and very human in connection between author and reader.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Contents
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Publisher Note
• 1 Context The Author’s Life as an Existential Experiment
• 2 How Philosophy Becomes Therapy
• 3 Essential Concepts and Themes in Theory and Therapy
• 4 Existential Counseling and Psychotherapy Strategies, Qualities, and Methods
• 5 The Centrality of Resistance in Counseling and Therapy
• 6 Using All the Data How Do Therapists Know What They Know?
• 7 The Four Epigenetic Phases of Psychotherapy
• 8 Show Me the Evidence! What Is the Proof That Existential Therapy Works?
• 9 Beyond the I-Thou Dyad Group, Couple, and Family Therapy1
• 10 Gender and Culture in Existential Therapy
• 11 Life Transitions and Existential Psychotherapy
• 12 An Existential Case Study
• References
• Index